Conversational Commerce

There’s a new term in marketing—Conversational Commerce. The term is an outgrowth of the rise in popularity of social media. Consumers are learning about brands and products on Pinterest and Instagram, and being sold on Facebook and Twitter. This is social media for business. And while it’s free to build a social page, it can take years of sharing updates to build an audience, even when paying to play.

Social MediaThe digital world is getting crowded, and to be seen and heard among a cluttered landscape of messages, photos, and videos you have to disregard the old way of thinking that social media is free and easy to use, to the new reality that you need to pay to promote your posts and updates and increase quality to maintain loyalty.

To get started (or back on track) choose the social sites that give you the best opportunity for an investment return. We’ve listed our top recommendations by Monthly Active Users (source).

Facebook (1.87B). The Facebook platform is forgiving. Editors have plenty of opportunities to edit, delete, hide and rank posts, and specific audiences can be targeted. All businesses, large and small, want a Facebook page in order to interact with their consumers on the go — and because Americans of all demographics are spending more time on Facebook than anywhere else. However, Facebook Messenger (1B) can be considered intrusive.

Pinterest (150M) and Instagram (600M) and Tumblr (550M). If your product or service has a high visual component, these are your go-to channels. Pinterest will have a slightly more mature audience while Instagram appeals to millennials and young people.

Twitter (317M). Unless you are a politician, best-selling author, fan-favorite actor or rock band, Twitter may not provide the payback you want for the time it takes to write one 140-character tweet. Twitter’s growth has stagnated for business users, but it still has over 300 million followers.

LinkedIn (106M). Once the social page for job seekers, Linked-In commercial marketers are there now to build a brand, advertise, publish content, or sponsor someone else’s content.

WhatsApp (1M) is sometimes used by business for customer communication and support, and Snapchat (300M) has been used by business for the occasional scavenger hunt, usually centered on fast food.

YouTube and Google are like salt and pepper. Staples on the dinner table. For video publishing, a YouTube page is a must. The benefit of using Google+ is simple truth: Google search likes it when you play in their sandbox and having a Google+ page helps your business website rank higher in search results.

One of the greatest misunderstandings about social media marketing is that it’s important for businesses to BE on social media. Not true. It’s important for businesses to be ACTIVE on social media. Being active means that you are willing to allocate the people, time, and budget that’s required to manage the “art” of social media interaction and monetize and track its results. Or hire someone who can.

A Bit about Blogging

There’s a lot to say about the value of blogging.

blogging_au_plein_air

“Blogging Au Plein Air, after Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot” by Mike Licht on Flickr

For starters, Google plays favorites with websites that update on a regular basis. Blogs network – they generate quality backlinks with colleagues who share a common interest and start conversations. Blogs are a powerful tool for building relationships with customers – in certain industries, maybe the most powerful! I could go on, but I promised “a bit” about blogging so intend to stick to my promise.

Top 3 Types of Bloggers

  1. The sincere blogger. He or she blogs at least twice a month, loves to write, is good at it, and considers the blog an important cog in the gears that keep the business thriving. He shares a lot about his business, a little about himself, and sees his blog as the linchpin of an overall marketing strategy, and not just an add-on.
  2. The cheater. The Cheater wants to blog at least twice a month, understands the value of blogging, but never got an A+ (or even a C) on creative writing assignments in the 9th grade, or ever for that matter. She buys greeting cards with sentiments so she doesn’t have to think up what to say in a letter. On her blog, she cheats by grabbing an article sent to her inbox by someone else, and basically “forwarding” the article with only a quick, one sentence endorsement. Not a bad method, and far better than no blog at all.
  3. The mystery writer. This type is clever. He’s way too busy, busy, busy, to do the research required for a well-written blog. So he found a ghost writer who can get into both his business and his head, and write from his heart. His blog fans don’t need to know they’re not his words, because in a sense they are. He’s figured out that paying $50 per post to a real writer while he earns the equivalent of $125 an hour working the money end of the business– well, do the math, then hire a ghost blogger.

If you want to learn more about setting up a blog or finding a ghost blogger, let us know. If you have ideas about blogging, tell us what you think in the Comments section.

Mobile-designed Sites

Do you use a smartphone? A recent survey shows that 46% of Americans own smartphones (Pew Research, March 1, 2012). In the USA, 101 million people (13+ years old) use smartphones, and almost 50 million report that they use their mobile browser (TechCrunch, March 6, 2012). Are we making it easy for these web surfers to view our sites?

We all use smartphones to view websites differently than we do on our desktop or even laptop computers. Mobile browsers are used for shorter, more targeted browsing. When we’re away and have a few moments of wait time, we pull out our smartphone and check a website (or app, or game!).

When mobile browsing, we are looking for what’s new, to find directions or a phone number, or to catch a quick (meaning short!) read that we’ve been meaning to get to, or to link with something that catches our eye, i.e., specific to one’s location. Been meaning to buy a product? Want to register for that event? Need to pay that invoice? All can easily be done by a visitor accessing your website via their smartphone.

smartphone

easy to read and navigate

Mobile devices have constraints different from desktop/laptop browsing. Smartphones, due to their much smaller size and cellular network, have a lesser rate of data throughput (bandwidth); they just don’t download pages as quickly. Obviously they have a smaller screen size.

Well-designed sites show well on mobile browsers. Mobile-designed sites go a step further to present the information in a way that displays even better on the mobile screen, and may not present all of the pages, large images, or the entire information presented on the ‘normal’ site. Typically mobile pages are presented in a one-column format rather than a typical two- or three-column design. Navigation is also treated differently for easier clicking.

ActiveCanvas builds mobile sites using the same content as the conventional site (so there’s no duplication) and without adding a lot of code that needs to be downloaded (so there’s not extra download time). The mobile sites are responsive to the needs of mobile users, and any extra code stays on the server- not on the mobile device.

Got your smartphone handy? Check out our site (www.activecanvas.com) on your mobile browser. Let us know what you think, and let us know what smartphone you are using.