It’s been hard. Very very hard. And joyful. At times ecstatic. And then exhausting. And then heartwarming. For a company with a simple name like “Happy Marketer”, running this company has been a complicated roller-coaster of emotions.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen our logo somewhere on Facebook, Google, YouTube or an Email. It’s rare for us for companies like ours to talk about our journey. I don’t really know why. Maybe secrecy is valued. Maybe they’re scared of naming clients. Probably because nobody has the time to go write an epic novel.

Well, I hope nobody minds this one. Today’s a good day, and we want to celebrate. So I’m just going to jot down the highlights of our journey. Hopefully, other companies ahead of our curve will chuckle. And companies & freelancers who think they’re a little behind our curve will realize that it all works out.

Mostly, I just hope it’s an interesting read. Most of the team, most of our clients, most of our friends have never heard this story and this is the first documentation of that journey.

Quick shoutout – Khyathi, Anshu & Aneza – all the ladies who worked sleepless nights to make this celebration possible. The awesome video, epic graphics, accompanying newsletter, facebook posts, cover photos, site changes, new branding docs and of course – the new logo was possible thanks to these awesome ladies!

Do comment at the bottom and let us know what you think!

So, What’s Up With That Name?

The most common question I’ve gotten in 4 years is about the origin of the name “Happy Marketer”. Here’s the real scoop – when happymarketer.com was registered in early 2009, it wasn’t meant to be an agency or services company.

My original vision for the company was to combine my two loves – Marketing & NLP.

In the years prior to that, I had really enjoyed getting lost in NLP & Hypnosis, and these fields had helped me find happiness in the passion for marketing. And the original vision was to do training to help Marketing Professionals move beyond subject expertise – and help them realize their true love for marketing.

Eventually it turned out that the truly unhappy marketers were usually in client offices, and the only way to bring them to happiness was to go fix their marketing problems. And the agency part of the business organically grew out of that need to make up 80% of our work.

Oh, and yes. For those of you who’ve watched our old logo for years. The smiley WAS inspired from Amazon’s logo, used as a blueprint, coloured orange, mirror-imaged and used in the old logo by yours truly! It’s finally been fixed with months of hard work and a rebranding project.

So, here’s how our story started …

Mid 2009 – Dave & Rachit get their First Client!

In those first few months, we had an exciting run trying to get our first client, sucking it up and growing from being a freelancer (me), deciding to stop working for the man (Dave) and finally settling on a name we could both agree on. That first project was a government sponsored grant for a couple of SMEs. It was put together by our good friend Joey at SPRING Singapore, and without it we would’ve never gotten off the ground.

We have some fond memories of brand new clients from that era – Keystone Cable, with their gorgeous building overlooking Johor, POS Printers with the most complex printing machinery we’d ever seen and ComSOC Technologies where we decided to go overboard and build them a new website as part of an SEO Project! It was also the first time we dealt with paperwork & politics with government projects.

Late 2009 – Training Business Takes Off!

We always figured that training was small businesses and entrepreneurs, but our minds were blown when we started receiving enquiries for training from some really large companies! I’m very thankful to our first two corporate training clients – JobsDB & AirAsia.

It really showed us that when it came to Social Media & Search Marketing Training – even larger companies were hungry for expertise. That feeling at the end of the training, when these clients were making huge strategic shifts thanks to our training, is what still drives us into learning, growing and remaining the best in the industry.

Early 2010 – Google Analytics Becomes Profitable

Google Analytics was this free little thing we used to love killing time on. I figured nobody important used it, and Google would kill the product soon. Then thanks to a push from Google Singapore we decided to get Certified, and suddenly large companies like StarHub were calling us in for Consulting work on this platform!

That relationship has been one of the most fulfilling projects of our career. For over 3 years, we managed, grew and helped the adoption of that tool to hundreds of marketers. And that was the start of a great reputation in the market for Google Analytics & us. Today, we’re trying to push the same spirit forward with new, huge clients and the impending launch of Google Analytics Premium.

Mid 2010 – A Successful Year 1

I’ll be honest. Despite being well into our mid 20s, Dave and I hadn’t even seen a $30k/year paycheque until that point. We were happy being young scrappers, and it never occurred to us that we could be making money. But when wrapped up our first year and tallied up the numbers, the final revenue was 5X of what we were making before Happy Marketer.

Things are very different today – we’re much larger in revenue, size and people. But that first feeling of little pieces of successes never really goes away. We’ve still got that Google Doc with our revenue numbers shared between us

Late 2010 – International Trainings Start Up

Thanks to a partnership with an established agency, 2010 become a Roaming Tour for us with clients in Malaysia & Thailand. Suddenly the number of companies we touched rapidly scaled from tens to hundreds.

It was also a tough period of growth for us. Until that point, we were relatively new trainers relying purely on our domain knowledge. But when we had to take days of trainings at a stretch, we started paying attention to energy management, learning styles and the deeper issues of teaching digital marketing.

Late 2010 – Enterprise SEO Makes Us Happy!

This was a period where we truly felt like experts. With our earlier training engagements, we’d gone into companies and guided their strategies. But with our new SEO projects at InSing.com and StarHub.com, we truly felt like we were pulling the guts of their business and putting them back together ourselves.

And the teams at those companies were truly kick-ass. Amazingly savvy, smart and very mature in their industries. Even though we did great work on the SEO side for both those companies, and the results brought in benefits for years to come, I still feel like we learnt more from working with them.

Mid 2011 – Capped off an even bigger Year 2!

After a tiring sprint at the end of our Year 2, we found ourselves with the largest client list we’d ever had. I don’t know if it was luck or strategy that helped us add some huge brand names to our client list – Phillip Capital, JobStreet, NUS, Ministry of Health, CooperVision & more!

This was also the point when Dave and I were getting exhausted. Neither of us was a salesperson, and we really felt the lack of a couple of areas of expertise – Business Development on the business side, and Social Media on the delivery side. Unknown to most people, we were working hard to persuade one of our closest friends to join us …

Late 2011 – Prantik Joins & Drives Growth!

After a 4 month courting, we finally managed to get Prantik to leave his previous agency and join us as the third partner. And the difference was immediate! We were energised, meeting new people and felt like a complete management team ready to scale up.

Yet again, we experienced rapid growth as we threw caution to the wind and took on every single project we could win.

Early 2012 – Education Grows Beyond Our Imagination!

While we had done small projects for education institutions earlier, we added an unprecedented number of Universities, Schools & MBA Institutes to our rolodex in 2012. With prestigious names like NTU, NUS, SUTD, NAFA and several other institutes, for a while we started feeling like teachers!

As work grew, so did our fatigue. So, we made a decision to invest all our savings back into the business and hire the smartest folks we could find. For the three years prior, we tried hiring in Singapore – but as we hit a critical point in our growth, we realized that without funding, juicy margins and a competitive hiring landscape, we needed to go International with our hires …

Mid 2012 – India Office & Management!

We finally took the plunge – after a 6 month incorporation process, we decided to start up a branch in Bangalore. We also decided to grow our management team by hiring two very smart managers in Sanchit & Siljith. The Bangalore office has been a tiring but important lesson, and it’s been heartening to see that team grow to double digits within a year.

While hiring in India wasn’t easy by any measure, we suddenly found that our increased profile made it easy to hire in both Singapore and Bangalore. Suddenly buoyed by an excess of smart young people & energy, we turned our eyes to a new target – Travel & Hospitality.

Early 2013 – Travel & Hospitality Explodes!

If 2011-12 was the year of Education, 2012-13 turned out to be the year of Travel & Hospitality. With challenging, rewarding new projects with Tiger Airways (11+ countries), Far East Hospitality (18+ properties), DirectRooms (197,000+ hotels) and several other Hospitality Brands (Park Hotel Group, Hong Kong Disneyland, Naumi Hotel, The L Hotel) in our kitty – we focused on growing our Marketing Analytics, Facebook/Social Media & Web Video practices.

And these clients have helped us see a totally different side of digital marketing – fast moving, mature, conversion focused web giants who push our team to the limits and force us to grow beyond beyond being good regionally. As we push ourselves to global best standards, we’ve been focussing on sharing our expertise with the world.

Mid 2013 – Happiness & Marketing, Shared!

As we wrap up our 4th year and kick off the 5th year, we find that the part that makes us happiest is the fact that we’re able to share our thoughts, ideas and experiences with the marketing community at large.

A Facebook Fan base of close to 8,000. A YouTube channel with 31,000 views. A newsletter delivered to 5,500 inboxes each month. A Blog with over 150 posts in these 4 years. And keynotes & conference talks given to 4,000+ marketers across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia & Thailand.

At the risk of getting Sappy

It was jittery excitement on 17th June 2009, when Dave and I went down to ACRA to register a little company called Happy Marketer. And it’s jittery excitement as we look forward to the next 4 years of growth, clients, awesome new people, investments and who knows what.

There are two groups that I’d like to thank here. First, our clients. For all the companies mentioned in this article (and many more we didn’t get a chance to), thank you. Working with you guys has been stress, pain, frustration and tiring. And totally awesome. You’ve driven us, asked us the right questions, encouraged us at the end of tough days and made us grow from nothing to a proud team of 20.

And most of all – the Happy Marketers. These weird, cuckoo, bizzare individuals who’ve somehow chosen to love the company, live the culture and taught the founders how to be happy no matter what. Sanchit, Su Ann, Siljith, Priya, Khyathi, Yilin, Kanchan, Kok Kit, Anshu, Fay, Dass, Ancy, Dipali, Larissa, Aneza, Radhika, Sapna, Siyun, Michelle, Joey & Carlo – you guys have made these 4 years worth it. And your contributions will make the next 4 years magnitudes better.

Thank you for reading this long, unnecessary rant. I wish each of you the struggles, sweat, pain, frustration …. and intense, irreplacable, joyous HAPPINESS that we’ve felt these last few years.

best,
Rachit, Managing Partner
(On behalf of David, Prantik and all the Happy Marketers!)

So to help kick start the digital conversation, here is a simple 50 slide deck with 82 intelligent questions that you may want to ask the speakers or your fellow participants. Go ahead slide, download, print and share it with your friends and colleagues.

“Ask and you shall receive; Seek and you shall find; Knock and the door will be opened for you”

In my last blogpost, I talked about Singapore’s Tryst with Facebook, highlighting the popularity of the social network in the Little Red Dot island. Singaporeans spend the most amount of time per month on Facebook and it is now common for many of us to even wake up to Facebook notifications and start the day by “Liking”, “Commenting” & “Sharing”.

So, what are all the Singaporeans doing on Facebook? What do they love the most? Who are the top Singaporean brands on Facebook & what are they doing? Slide through the below presentation to learn more.

Look out for a couple of Trivia questions in deck. Submit your answers on Twitter (check out the appropriate hashtags mentioned on the respective trivia slides) or in the comments section below. One lucky winner who gets all the answers right, stands a chance to win a couple of movie tickets. Have fun!

Advertising on Twitter just got better!

After Twitter announced New Targeting Options for Promoted Tweets, they have now rolled out ‘Keyword Targeting’ option as well! Recently, Twitter announced this newest feature on their ad platform and released it all across the market where it serves Twitter ads. This targeting option will enable advertisers to reach users based on the keywords in their recent tweets and the tweets with which users recently engaged.

Here is what Twitter quoted:

“This is an important new capability – especially for those advertisers looking for signals of intent because it lets marketers reach users at the right moment, in the right context.”

Let’s say a user tweets about how the weather is perfect for a chilled beer with his friends and so it happens that a nearby pub has ‘Happy Hours’ that evening.

That pub / restaurant could run a geo-targeted campaign using keywords like ‘beer’ with a tweet containing details to Happy Hours. That way, the person who wants to have a beer with his friends might notice the ‘Happy Hours’ Promoted Tweet in his timeline and go for it!

All in all the Keyword Targeting options are quite simple and easy to understand and use. The set-up is not that different from the setup process for search. All you need to do is:

• Add the keywords that you want to target
• Choose either one ‘phrase match’ or ‘unordered keyword match’
• Select other targeting options like gender, location and device

In a trail with a few companies like Everything Everywhere, Microsoft Japan, and Walgreens, keyword based ads received higher than average engagement. GoPro saw engagement rates as high as 11% with keywords based targeting.

What is still not so clear…

• What exactly would be the “right moment”? Once a person tweets, for how long would the targeting remain?
• After one updates a 140 character tweet, how long will it stay in a person’s mind? Would the targeted tweet make sense? Would it look stale given the nature of Tweets coming in everyday? I.e 9100 tweets every second!

What if the person tweets…

“I would rather have a cold coffee than a chilled beer”

In this case, the Promoted Tweet not just targets the wrong person but also might annoy the user since his preference is clearly not ‘chilled beer’!

The Last Word

Advertisers & marketers need to consider what role ‘Keyword Targeting’ will play in overall social media / Twitter strategy of a brand. It may result in good engagement numbers but will it eventually result in sales? To start with, it’s better to use ‘keyword targeting’ ads for branding or creating affinity towards a product or service.

It’ll be interesting to see how advertisers use this targeting option especially since Twitter ads are finally open to all US businesses. Twitter advertising revenue is expected to reach $1.3 billion by 2015!

Here is more on ‘How Advertising on Twitter Works’

Have you tried out Twitter Advertising? Let us know your thoughts on the service in the comments.

Image Source: advertising.twitter.com, fastcodesign.com & techcrunch.com

As per the latest search engine updates, many SEO tactics and tricks are outdated and can hurt your search engine rankings. As per the latest updates, search engines mainly look for quality and not for quantity. Here are some of the outdated SEO tactics which should be avoided in 2013.

• Search Engine Submissions
• Article and Directory Submissions
• Navigation and Footer Links
• Press Release Submissions
• Blog and Forum Submissions

Search Engine Submissions:-

 In late 90’s and 2000’s, we used to submit websites to various search engines to let search engines know about our website and get indexed.

According to the latest Google updates, Search Engine Submissions are not only useless but might hurt your rankings.

Alternative for Search Engines Submissions:

Now a day’s, most of the search engines crawls your website through links. It may be any types of links like links from other websites which are already indexed by search engines, internal links etc.

Try adding Facebook posts, tweets, comments, pictures with a link navigating to website on various social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Stumble upon etc. It is one of the fastest ways for search engines to crawl your website.

You can create Facebook event page and invite friends / fans etc. and share it through different mediums LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Plus etc.

Article and Directory Submissions

Article & Directory Submissions are one of the oldest methods of ranking a site. But now with the latest search engines updates you might not achieve that.

We used to submit in large number of directories and Articles submissions websites in unrelated categories and try achieving the highest ranking results in SERPs but now we will spam if we do so.

Now a days, search engines looks at quality and not at quantity submissions, as they are focussing more on the content than the number of links. So focus more on your content rather than submitting to many submissions websites

Reciprocal links in Directory Submissions:

This is like two ways link exchange used before Google Panda updates, where two websites exchanges links

Alternative for Article and Directory Submissions

• Create Infographics and submit, as pictures are more effective.
• Try avoiding more links in the article content.
• Article / Bookmarking submission can be done on few high Page Rank article directories and we also can syndicate through social media channels.

Navigation and Footer Links

Usually navigation links are placed in header, footer. Alternatively, site a navigation menu with anchor text, which helps the visitors to easily navigate to respective pages easily.

Earlier, search engines have given more importance to anchor text in navigation and footer links where many used to give duplicate links within their top global navigation in their footer, but with different anchor text. But now you won’t get any results and may be spamming as well. If your on-page is not properly optimized then there is no use in doing link building, content marketing social media etc.

Always go for a simple navigation, footer links rather than a complex one. According to the latest Google Panda updates, a complex navigation links can lead to over optimization.

Recommendation

• Always go for a simple navigation and footer links structures.
• Don’t stuff keywords in anchor text.

Press Release Submissions

Previously when we distributed press releases, search engines would give more importance to links in the press release content and as a result many websites and business would submit poor quality press releases to get backlinks.

According to Matt Cutts – Head of webspam at Google, the links from PR Content won’t help unless you have a good content.

PR is not really going to work out unless you have a newsworthy content. Essentially, the point is that if you have a worthy story (read value) or something really interesting to say, there is nothing like a quick Press Release service that can help you.

When you submit your press release in various unrelated websites, there are no contextual linking patterns or social signals that are triggering any notable recommendation to your site.

Why No to Press Releases

• Not a Link Building Tool
• Can create Duplicate Content issues while submitting in many websites if not newsworthy
• Doesn’t have any SEO Value

Alternative Ways

Instead of going for press releases, we can look for guest blogging!

Blog and Forum Submissions

Earlier, submitting the same content on various blogging and forum sites was one of the link building strategies but now if you do it, you might spam or create duplicate content issues.

Some people think submitting the same content to different sites with keywords and links stuffed in can bring them ranking, but it is not according to latest Google updates.

Alternative:

Submit Blogs with rich content only to few good websites and participate in forums which you think are really relevant.

• You can also promote through LinkedIn and can participate in Q & A, LinkedIn related groups, Quora, Stack overflow
• You can prepare Power Point Presentation and share it on SlideShare & various other sites

Instead of promoting your business or website through these outdated links building techniques, promote it through social media like Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo etc.

Search Engines now give more importance to social media since backlinks through these mediums have a good value!

It’s high time that we replace our old link building tactics which led us into spamming, penalizing and come up with the latest ways of promoting our services or product through  quality content marketing and social media marketing.

What comes to your mind when someone talks about social media? Facebook or Twitter? But how many of us would really consider LinkedIn as our marketing tool? Well, LinkedIn is the largest professional network & is a powerful tool for businesses. In this blog, you will know how to use this platform to generate more business from the web.

Before we start, let’s take you through a couple of stats. Did you know that LinkedIn has around 225 million users and its reach expands to over 200 countries and territories! LinkedIn has evolved & has created a world of opportunities for many businesses. It’s a great lead generation tool if you use it in a right way!

So how do you get more business from LinkedIn?

Be Precise and Add Websites and other contact details – If you don’t tell people who you are or what you do you, it will confuse them. So be very accurate with your name, headlines and what you or your services are all about. Another thing that helps is adding website/ blog details and your presence on other social media sites. You can add three links to LinkedIn. You will be surprised at the connectivity boost on every page, if you offer anything free on there.

Creativity is best and ask to connect –  Most LinkedIn profiles are  not as exciting to visit but if you want to be different put up a video to welcome people to your page, an interesting video with the right blend of your services and clients praising you for choosing you. Also, in the video ask people to connect with you, tell them on a personal level how you would love to be part of their network and how you would love them to be part of yours because when people connect with you on LinkedIn, it increases your reputation as a brand by itself. It’s best when people are talking about you on LinkedIn.

Answer Questions and converse in Groups – The best way to connect to people is answering their questions. Even if you spend 15 minutes a day answering user queries and questions related to your industry, it will help you increase the credibility of your brand.

Create an event and introduce others – Although LinkedIn shut down ‘LinkedIn Events’ app, you can use other apps like Meetup and Eventbrite & leverage your LinkedIn network for the promotion. Posting an event link as status update & within the groups that you have joined, starting a discussion around the topic of your event and sending a message to people who would benefit from your event are a few ways to spread the word.

Recommend and therefore create leads on LinkedIn – When somebody has a great product and great service to add to it, one must always recommend because the more  recommendations that brand has, the more people will connect and buy that particular model so by helping others with leads you indirectly help yourself.

It does not matter what business you have as long as it involves customers, investors, sponsors, affiliates, staff, business and more, LinkedIn is the best place for you.

Now that we have learned about the “qualities” necessary to be successful on LinkedIn, we will now see how we can benefit from LinkedIn use various profiles:

 As somebody looking for a job/sponsor:

 You search the profile or company that you are looking for & check out the results. Proceeding that you will find CEO, HR and other people working in that company, you will also find out what you guys have in common and strike a note there.

 As somebody looking for affiliates /customers:

 You will have to search for your target audience who like similar brands and influence them. Once you do that, you will have to choose the potential buyer from the group and influence connections of those particular buyers. You will also have to get in touch with people who consult your customers for recommendations to buy the product and eventually find people who will help you make your product stand out.

As somebody looking for an employee:

 On LinkedIn, you will find enormous amounts of recruiters who are constantly getting people in touch with companies and employees. Find them and do reference checks with previous employers.  There are also many people looking for jobs so you can view their profiles directly. Look out for their resumes and other social media pages to see how they present themselves to the world.

As somebody looking for information:

You will find all your answers on LinkedIn.  When you ask these questions pass them on to to relevant contact who can possibly answer them. Ask brands, people to render their expertise providing deeper level of product information. These experts will then call you and with personal experience you can judge if good or bad. It is always good to find other experts in your area of work.

As somebody looking for a business partner:

You must find suppliers, people who are in need of you, people looking out to start a joint venture. The profile of such people may not disclose everything so depending on what they say about themselves is what will make you want to choose them.

Their profiles can either tell you about them, their contact and other people you can verify from, additional information not mentioned and the information that was so useful that even you wouldn’t have thought about asking for: If you have this data, they’re good sources.

LinkedIn is an effective way of carrying out business through networks and reputation. It is meant for professional people who need other professional services and vice versa; it is a chamber of commerce that adds to ones bank of work experience and reputation. So these are a few ways to generate more business from LinkedIn.

Have you ever thought to yourself, “What goes into a good Facebook page?”, “How do I get more people to talk about my page?” or “We’re talking about drinks here there is only so much we can say!”. Well let’s take a look at some of the top Facebook beverage pages. Coming in first and third respectively on SocialBakers Top 100 Facebook Brands, Coca-Cola and Red Bull are great examples of what a good Facebook page is.

Here are some of the criteria of a successful Facebook page that we’re going to look into:

• Reflecting brand image
• Regularity in content
• Consistency in theme
• Innovation in ways of engagement
• Responding to fans

Let’s start with Coca-Cola. Garnering a whopping 62 415 120 amount of fans and counting and 751 906 people talking about them, they managed to climb themselves to the top of the ladder. But let’s talk about what they did exactly to achieve this amount of fame.

Well they worked along the lines of what it stands for, a drink that allows people to feel happy or relaxed. Their team often comes up with graphics that revolve around things that are related to Coca-Cola, for example, the colour red, the bottle and even the bottle cap. They use what they have and work with it. Graphics after all are meant to be catchy and simple. Their graphics are actually relatively simple, but it is the creativity of the graphic that gets the message across. Your audience doesn’t want to be held back by having to take time to figure out what your graphic is about. It needs to be simple so that they can take a quick look and understand it.

And as for Red Bull, their brand image is that they are the energy drink for all kinds of sport activities. This is reflected by their content where Red Bull constantly posts about the various sports that they are engaged in whether it’s cycling, running, snowboarding, etc.

Regularity in Content

Constant updating is always the key to keep yourself engaged with your audience. By introducing fresh content on a regular basis, it keeps your audience wanting to come back often to see what’s new in store for them. By establishing the fact that you update regularly, your audience will know for sure that they will come back for something new and not come back to see the same old stuff.

We can take a lesson from Coca-Cola in learning to update your Facebook page often, don’t keep your audience waiting, keep them up to date with whatever information or just a simple graphic pertaining to their favourite beverage. Keep in mind to appeal to all your audiences. For Coca-Cola, they have audiences of all ages and therefore their content has to be able to entertain all their audience. Also for whatever content you put in, keep it related to your product, no matter what. They also try and incorporate their corporate colours in all their content.

All the activities that Red Bull takes part in actually creates hype for the company and leads people to check out their page. But that’s not enough, getting them there is one thing but you’ve got to give them a reason to stay there. So what has Red Bull done? Like Coca-Cola, they keep their content fresh and updated. They feature different people participating in the array of activities they stand for since they promote that their drink is what gives them the energy to do these activities. They don’t just feature one or two of their sports, they always make it a point to feature all of them regularly. This way they are not neglecting any of their audiences who may be a fan of them for different reasons.

Consistency in theme

Coke goes about their motto of happiness in everyday life. They’re commonly seen asking their fans how they are doing that very day and also constantly involving a smile in their graphics.

Now we all know that aside from the drink, Red Bull is known for advertising it’s brand using outstanding activities. It’s also most commonly known for being the organizers of the Red Bull Flugtag that has taken place every year in over 35 cities since 1992.

With 37 162 539 fans in total and the variety of extreme sports that they advertise, the visuals that they include in their posts on Facebook are always interesting. Now we understand why they have 409 193 people talking about them. They manage to capture the audiences’ attention and that’s what people look for because you don’t want someone to come to your page, take a quick look, scroll through and leave. You want them to stay, take a good look at what you have and then share, like or comment on them.

Innovation in ways of engagement

One great way to interact with your audience is to create applications to get them engaging with your page! Applications allow your audience to be drawn in and stay on your page. Aside from coming to your page to know more about/check up on your product, applications are there to allow them to interact more other than the usual routine people do when they visit pages.

Coca-Cola has many apps such as Where Will Happiness Strike Next (WWHSN), Copa Coca Cola and many more. And Red Bull has Flugtag Flight Lab 2, Red Bull Kart Fighter World Tour and more!

Another way to interact with your audience is through campaigns and contests! Let’s face it, people like to win stuff so what more than to hold regular contests on your Facebook page! Campaigns and contests help to get your fans involved in your page and participate to win attractive prizes. If you want to know how to kick start your very own contest on your page, check out Fay’s article for some tips!

Both Coca-Cola and Red Bull have their fair share of contests featured on their page so stay tuned!

And lastly, what a great way to engage with fans through events!

Coca-Cola hosts events all around the world, this means that each and every fan is noticed and has a chance to attend an event by their favourite beverage.

And as for Red Bull, they too host a lot of events and also take part as sponsors. Red Bull has established themselves in the racing industry by being the sponsor of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.

Responding to fans

One key point in having a successful Facebook page is to respond to your fans. Although it’s a harder tasks for larger brands because comments come in 24/7 however just by taking time to reply to some, it will make your audience feel noticed. It only takes a few seconds! Coca-Cola and Red Bull are a bit lacking in that however, this is still something to take note of!

While there is a high chance that these pages are popular due to the popularity of the brand itself, their social media efforts count as well.  Through this I hope we can learn a thing or two and understand why these two brands have earned their spots at being ranked #1 and #3 overall on Facebook pages.

There are a number of companies on social media and each one is fighting for attention. So in this crowded marketplace, how does your page get noticed by users? The answer is remarkable content! In other words, you make your content to prompt your fans and followers to ‘remark’ i.e. like/ favourite, share/retweet, comment/reply. Every one of these gives you a double win! Firstly, such content is easily and quickly spread on social media sites like Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook along with other sites, thereby increasing your ‘PTA’ (People Talking About) and brand visibility. Secondly, remarkable content increases credibility of your page and thus, your company.

As we get to how to create remarkable content, let’s first have a look at some impressive statistics from Huffington Post:

• 1 million websites have integrated with Facebook
• 23% of users check Facebook 5 times or more daily
• 34% marketers have generated leads on Twitter
• 80% of users prefer to connect with brands on Facebook
• Google +1 button is used 5 million times a day

Variety Is the Spice of Life

To keep things simple, update content that you can create rapidly and that people can effectively spread online.

Text Updates: Although images work better than just status updates, you might want to experiment with short text updates. Remember KISS? Don’t get me wrong! I meant ‘Keep It Short & Simple’ so try to keep your posts under an 80 character brick wall. They receive 23% of a higher response than the longer ones. Asking questions is a great way to kick-start discussions and increase engagement & participation from your fans & followers.

Images: Attachments are not bad in this case! Pictures top the list of content that people enjoy and share the most. They receive 40% higher engagement from the users. With the new Facebook graph search, it is recommended to create high quality creatives of the right dimensions. There are lots of free tools available in the market which will help you create really cool infographics or even better, get your graphic designer to make a customized one for you

Link Posts: Most of the companies include links in their posts and unfortunately this is the most ineffective form of posting and it receives the least engagement. Many of us would want our fans and followers to visit our website or the source of information, however it appears that they are not too keen on leaving their Facebook or Twitter account. Many of us have heard of the benefits of shortened urls but in many cases, users don’t trust them and would rather like to see where they are heading.

Video Content: Videos can be used by brands for testimonials, product demonstration, events, contests and promotions. They are capable of generating deeper level of engagement with the fans adding more value to your brand. There is recently introduced Vine app which let’s you share interesting 6 second videos on Twitter. Since it’s only available on iOS and not android market, very few brands have explored it. Also, using videos to begin a conversation with your customer has proved to be quite effective in many cases like Dell.

Infographics: They are basically a graphical representation of data, info or ideas. Infographics have been around from years but lately you can see marketers using it all over the web for promoting their brands and products. Since the attention span of the users is decreasing, infographics is a useful tool.

Make sure your content is either:

Humorous – Make your audience laugh or smile?

Controversial – Yes, this works but don’t hurt anybody’s sentiments. Refrain from publishing false content or even content from sources that are not trustworthy.

Highly informative – Ideally your social media pages should have a good mix of entertaining and informative content.

Relevant to your brand – Everyone is hungry for more likes and share but wait! Have you checked if it is even remotely related to your brand? If not, ask yourself this question, “Where is MY brand on MY social media sites?” “How can I customize my social media content to reflect my brand?”

You can also look through this slide deck to find out more about strategies for effective wall posts.

Moving Beyond the Ad Spends

Today, you have a chance to move beyond ad spends. Create remarkable content, publish it and market it on various social media platforms. Users react to every industry differently so measure what works for your company and what doesn’t! Using tools social analytic tools like SocialBakers can also help you find out what works best for your brand and what does not. There is no right or wrong in social media. It’s all about experimenting and finding out the right fit for your brand. Hence, experiment, innovate and learn from your experiences in order to be successful on social media!

Google recently came up with a new tool called Google Tag Manager for Tag management which is easy to implement, free and reliable. It gives greater flexibility to marketers in tracking and marketing optimization tags. One can sign up here for Google Tag Manager.

Structure of Google Tag Manager

Given below is the structure of Google Tag Manager:

• Account
• Container
• Tags
• Rules
• Macros
• Container Versions
• Users & Settings

Account

Generally one account is needed per company. All kinds of tags can be managed from account by creating different containers. Click on “New Account” button as shown in the screenshot below to create a new account. To create additional containers into an existing account, one can click on “Accounts List”.

Container

A container contains all kind of tags for specific website/account. Containers should be named after the website name. One can click on the “New Container” button to create new container as shown in the image below.

Tags

After creating a container, one should start creating tags for the website. GTM provides different types of template for tags and it also allows users to use custom tags. Given below are the different type of tags:

• AdWords Conversion Tracking
• DoubleClick Floodlight Counter
• DoubleClick Floodlight Sales
• Google Analytics
• GDN Remarketing
• Custom Image Tags
• Custom HTML Tags

Rules

In order to create a new rule for a container, one can go to into the container and click on the “New Rule” button as shown in image below.

For creating a rule, one can enter Rule Name and specify the condition as shown below. From the image, you can see that I am creating a rule for AdWords conversion code and specifying that the rule is valid only on the thank you page of the site.

Macros

They are basically rules  that are based on specific dynamic conditions to pass value from one tag to another tag during run time. JavaScript, Variables and Dom Attribute, URL and Data layer are different types of macros.

Container Versions

After adding tags into a container, we have to publish the tags manually. After publishing tags you will be redirected to a page that includes all tags with their version and rules as shown in the image below. It is a best way to stay organized when it comes to tag management.

Users & Settings

Using Users & Settings, we can add users to accounts and give access to all containers or to the specific containers in an account. There are four types of user access settings:

• No Access
• View Only
• View and Edit
• View, Edit, Delete and Publish

Hope you guys have a better idea about the Google Tag Manager interface and how it works, and what are its components. In my next blog post I am going to walk you through the steps for implementing  Google Tag Manager. If GTM interests you, you can also consider signing-up for our Google Analytics training wherein GTM and other important topics are covered in detail. If you have any suggestions or queries then you can post them as comments. I would love to know your feedback!

Marketing is going the “digital” way and hence apart from being creative, marketers also need to stay up-to-date with technology. Technology has opened up many new platforms for marketing and also tools for measuring the impact of marketing campaigns. Data is now gaining more and more importance because it helps to track performance. Therefore, the modern day marketer is not just creative, but also analytical. A successful marketer in this age is multifaceted, with one foot planted in art and the other in science and can shift effortlessly between these two mindsets.

This infographic shown below was put together by folks at Pardot to help highlight the tremendous assets marketers can bring to the table if they are able to find a balance between art and science!