eMarketing Trends|Verbal Acrobatics & Graphic Gymnastics

The growth in the Mobile Industry over the last decade has made it paramount for all businesses to have Mobile Sites in order to reach this growing new target market.

Current local (South Africa) trends show that:

• There are ten million mobile Internet users in SA (Five million PC Internet users in SA)
• One in six Google searches in SA originates off a mobile device.
• In South Africa about 40 percent of mobile phone users have WAP-enabled phones.
• The top Mobile Applications currently in South Africa are: Mxit – with 15 million+ users – and Facebook.
• Mobile search and eCommerce will be a large area of growth in 2010.

In short, this indicates an importance for businesses to target mobile searchers and users of mobile applications.

Some of the best Mobile Site examples I can give include BBC, the Goal mobi site, and College Humour (N/B: “these examples obviously look better on your mobile phone – feel free to suggest your favourite mobile sites below“).

However, when creating a Mobile Site it is also imperative to build and optimise the Mobile Sites so it is user-friendly and accessible on the Mobile Web.

Mobile Design and SEO Best Practices
When designing a Mobile Site one aspect to consider is that one must understand that mobile searchers/users are different from PC searchers/users. In order to cater for Mobile users designers must:

• Provide an elegant experience by considering whether individuals possess a smart phone (for example an iPhone with fully featured web browsing) or a standard mobile phone (with stripped site features).
• Consider that phones are not used like PC’s – users are usually on the go therefore the site should be more goal oriented – Relevancy and Simplicity is key.
• Mobile designs are to conform to the new W3C standards in order to create mobile-friendly style sheets (CSS).
• Mobile Sites must be small, lightweight and fast-loading site – (< 20kb / page).
• Consider User Agent Detection –  this is another form of transcoding which takes into consideration the type of mobile phone an individual uses to search and provides more uniform browsing experience for various device types.

Once the Mobile Site has been built, Mobile SEO steps can now come into play. These include:

1.    Validating the page with the .Mobi Validator or the W3C Validator
2.    Following ‘traditional’ on-site  SEO Best Practices such as:

• Major keywords in the title tagging
• H1’s and body text
• Rich keyword Meta Titles and Descriptions
• Keyword-rich anchor text for internal links

3.    Mobile Search results tend to reflect ‘Local Search results’ – your site must be optimized for local type searches. Also submit your business info to local directories making sure your site is verified and included in sites like Google’s Local Business Center.
4.    Get the Mobile Site spidered and indexed – submit to major search engines:

• Google Sitemaps
• Yahoo! Submit Your Mobile Site

In short, the above Mobile Design and SEO factors are to be strongly considered when building a Mobile Site. These aspects help provide a solid Mobile Site foundation for your Mobile Campaign or Strategy. For further Mobile Campaign or Strategy enquiries, visit our Virtuosa website.

On Thursday you can gain the edge over everyone else before the start of the new year by attending this year’s Annual Conference. 10 leading trend experts, all in specialist areas have been asked to come up with then things for 2010.

In every way, 2010 is a landmark event for South Africa as we host one of the world’s great sporting events. What most South African business people need is intelligence, a blueprint, a GPS system that will point out opportunities and pitfalls. This event is sure to provide some interesting insights and impressive ideas.

The team at Virtuosa will be attending the event hosted at the Wanderers Club and once again keep you up to date with live blogging and tweets. So if you are not able to be there in person be sure to follow us on the day.

The line up of speakers includes:

• Dr Nikolaus Eberl – CEO, Nation of Champions
• Prof John Simpson – Director, Unilever Institute for Strategic Marketing, UCT
• Matthew Buckland – General Manager Publishing & Social Media, 24.com
• Dion Chang – Trends Analyst, Flux Trends
• Lebo Biko – Managing Director, BBDO Consulting
• Dr John Ledger – Associate Professor of Energy Studies, University of Johannesburg
• Dr Iraj Abedian – CEO, Pan-African Investment and Research Services
• Glen Lomas - CEO, DDB South Africa
• Martin Rosen - Managing Director, Mega Vision Media
• Alan Knott-Craig – Former Vodacom CEO

Only a few hours after Microsoft announced deals with Twitter and Facebook to integrate real time data into Bing’s search results, Google’s Marissa Mayer announces at the Web 2.0 Summit that Google Social Search will be launching in the coming weeks.

There has been so much said about this in the last 24 hours, and it is hard to keep up with all the blogs, news and article mentions. Let me try and summarize quickly…

Yesterday Microsoft announced sealed agreements to access real-time content from social networking sites Facebook and Twitter to boost search engine results in Bing. According to Microsoft executives at a presentation at a San Francisco Internet conference, Bing is hoping to take on current dominant search leader Google in the sphere of Social Search and will have access to Twitter’s entire store of public data in real time as well as content from social networking site Facebook. At the same conference, it was also announced that a standalone Twitter search service will be offered at Bing, with some ranking technology other than sort by date involved, and that shortened URLs will be expanded. And finally, there would be some integration within the regular Bing service itself.

Only a few hours later, Google’s Marissa Mayer announced Google Social Search will be launching in the coming weeks. This feature will allow you to see results for queries from people in your social network and will work only via your own Google Profile. In your profile, if you add add links to social networks you’re a member of, such as FriendFeed or Twitter, Google will scan who you are connected to and give your results from those people which will then be integrated in to regular results. Google emphasised their goal of creating the most comprehensive, relevant and fast search and believe that their search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, looking forward to having a product showcasing how tweets can make search better in the coming months.

There has been such talk for some time and even though Bing (MSFT) beat Google to it by first announcing the integration of real-time data into search results, it is clear that this move from both indicate what the future of Search holds for us. Social Integration. Real-time data in Search results! This indicates the importance of consumer perception and the value of comments made by the average consumer and the trust they have regarding brands and products.

This is somewhat confirmed by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg saying that The Future is Social, Not Search. While Google is by far Facebook’s biggest rival in terms of Paid Advertising, it was clear that no love is lost between Google and Sheryl Sandberg, an ex-Googler. Sandberg said that Facebook is leading the net from the information age to the social age, where people will be finding their important answers not through Google but through their friends. As for search, Sandberg said Google would still have a place in the future, even if it’s not very big.

The face of search is indeed going to change and the race to be there first is definately on. The next days, weeks and months will be very interesting.

How will consumer behaviour affect search and the ranking relevance of brands and products in the SERP’s?

My personal prediction is that this affect won’t be seen immediately, but that it will slowly take affect as both Search Engines integrate real time data over the coming months.

For me, the future of Search will neither be Search, nor Social. The future of Search will be “Social Search” – Integrated Real-Time Search, (hopefully) relevant, updated results, as it happens.

How Bing and Google will control what is included in the search results will be interesting to see, but this can only be a good thing for companies doing Online Reputation Management. Hopefully businesses and corporates will be forced to operate in the social spaces more to not only control the conversations, but also add to it, or respond.

Resources:

• Facebook and Twitter Now More Important to Search Rankings?
• Microsoft’s Bing seals Facebook, Twitter deals
• RT @google: Tweets and updates and search, oh my!
• Bing To Do Deal With Twitter, Launch Its Own Twitter Search
• Google Social Search Is Coming & More On Google-Twitter
• Microsoft, Google in deals with Twitter, Facebook
• Google’s New Social Search Is A Big Chess Move Against Facebook
• The Future is Social, Not Search, Facebook COO Says

In recent years email newsletters have become one of the most important traditional online marketing strategies used to drive leads and traffic to a company’s website. Ben’s Beautiful Email Newsletters is a website dedicated to publishing creative and innovate company newsletters.

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For those of you who couldn’t join us at today’s Mega Brand Forum you really did miss out! It was a great event, with wonderful insights and engagement from the Brand custodians and the Brand Champions.

There are however two more events coming up this year presented by The Journal of Marketing, so make sure you book early to avoid disappointment.

• 29 October: Retail Brands: How they stay on top
• 26 November: The annual conference

If you are one of the lucky few that have managed to book a ticket for the Mega Brand Forum tomorrow you will have a front row seat to all the action, insights and tips on how brands like Sun International, Avis Rent A Car, FNB, BP Southern Africa, and BMW got those awards.

If however, you won’t be able to be there you can still catch a piece of the action, by following our live tweets and blog updates. So tune in tomorrow and find out the success stories from 5 of South Africa’s Top Brands.

With the Top Brand Survey still fresh in everybody’s memory it’s the perfect time for the Mega Brand Forum.

The Journal has selected five top brand winners and invited their custodians to present their success stories highlighting key points such as:

• History of the brand
• HOw the brand is managed in SA
• What the competitive climate looks like
• HOw the brand stays fresh and successful
• What the brand outlook is for next year

The Brands that will be in the hotseat include:
Sun International – David Coutts – Trotter, Chief Executive
Avis Rent A Car – Wayne Duvenage, Chief Executive
FNB – Gisele Wertheim -Aymes, Media Director
BP Southern Africa – Tristao Abro, Brand & Insight Manager: Marketing
BMW (South Africa) Xoliswa Ndungane, General Manager: BMW Brand

Don’t miss out the event will take place on the 17 September 2009 at the Michelangelo Hotel from 07h00 to 11h00. Visit The Journal’s Facebook page for more details.

Recently I had the pleasure of attending the second Monash Business Communication Forum hosted by Monash University and Stone. The forum focused on digital communication as an essential part of business communication.
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Earlier this week Facebook announced some significant changes to the way users can search on their site. Users are now able to search for comments that friends have made in the last 30 days. In addition you can also find out what any users with a public profile are saying about a particular topic or news events.
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Brands and Facebook

In this document we see how brands can utilize Facebook! A very nice read!!!