1) Set clear and specific objectives
Typically, social media campaigns are based on one of three objectives:

• Brand Awareness (fans, likes, follows and subscriptions)
• Brand Engagement (comments, shares and user-generated content)
• Monetisation (revenue-focussed and sales driven)

Although this isn’t likely to change anytime soon, social marketers are increasingly realising that brand engagement trumps brand awareness. Remember that ultimately you want your readers to engage with your brand and promote your content in their circles of influence. The holy grail of any social media marketing strategy is the ability to convert fans into influencers and super-fans, who promote your brand and content in their circles of influence, compel others to follow you, and invest their energy, time and money in your brand and company.

2) Research, research, research
Do your homework, find out about your target audience demographic, know what their needs are and be sure to know how, when and with whom they choose to interact and engage with online. No use investing your time and energy in a Pinterest content strategy when that is not where your audience’s attentions are focussed.

3) Think integration from the outset
Too often, we’ve noticed that social media campaigns are conceived in a vacuum, without much thought given as to how campaigns link up with other marketing efforts, how content elements will serve to leverage off one another, or communicate across channels. Make sure you know how all the pieces of your marketing puzzle fit together, and how content drives user engagement across platforms. Simple things like ensuring that Twitter handles and hash tags appear on marketing materials or merchandise, are mentioned on radio or TV broadcasts, or are displayed on screens at your event, is hardly rocket science, yet are often forgotten.

4) Clearly define your content strategy for each channel
In addition to deciding on the what, how and when (don’t forget frequency) of your content strategy, remember that the audience for each of your different channels is likely to be different, so think about what content will work best on each platform and always tailor the content to suit the medium. If you promote the same content across multiple channels at the same time, don’t do it all at the same time… stagger your communication to go out at various different intervals to ensure the widest possible reach.

5) Consistency & Authenticity
Consistency, not only in terms of tone of voice, frequency of interaction, but also in the quality of the content, should be sought at all times. Remember that consumers are growing increasingly sophisticated and discriminatory in how they use social media. Don’t try their patience with ill-conceived, poorly written, badly timed messages. Be authentic, and be accessible. Reach them where they are at.

6) Put monitoring platforms in place
Ensure sufficient time and resources to measure interaction, manage the conversation and maximise fan engagement. Be tactical and practical. A major shortfall with most social media strategies is the lack of thought given to monitoring its impact and reach. Make sure you have social media management and aggregation platforms such as Hootsuite, TweetDeck, etc. in place, or if your budgets allow, consider using Radian6. Allow sufficient time to reply to fans and acknowledge their interactions. That will make them feel special, help to build trust and encourage further interaction, which is worth its weight in gold.

7) Don’t forget about email
One of the biggest trends we’ve witnessed during the past year is the way in which social marketing campaigns have borrowed tried-and-trusted approaches from direct marketing, and in particular, have mirrored email and loyalty programme tactics. Don’t forget about the power of email. Which brings us to our next point…

8) The power is in the list
A database of engaged fans is one of the most valuable assets and powerful tools that any marketer could possess. Your social media marketing strategy should from the outset support the building of such a list through innovative campaign elements that, while delivering immediate value in terms of your present campaign and its objectives, also provide you with information on your most loyal fans and supporters, and help you to build your fan base in the long run.

9) No man is an island… (especially not in social media)
Identify key influencers and media partners that will help to tell your story, increase your brand’s reach and fan engagement, and provide you with additional content pieces or different angles to a story. Why go at it alone when the rewards of working together are so much greater?

The post Key Pointers for your Social Media Strategy appeared first on Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy.

1. Learn improv
Want a future-proof skill, apart from being a data-scientist? Experimentation, resourcefulness, negotiation, context-awareness, audience participation, inviting feedback, and a sense of the absurd are all wrapped up in improvisational theatre/comedy. A weird, but formidable competence that will afford you the luxury of being at ease with whatever comes at you, and being a valuable team player. Put it on your learn-list if you have your sights set on leadership.
APPLIED SKILLS: AGILE DEVELOPMENT

2. Be specific + descriptive
Know how to describe yourself and your offerings. In clear words (and synonyms). Handy not only for the hideous cocktail party “so, what is it that you do?“. But more importantly for the machines. If you tag and describe your content and profiles accurately, you can be found by the search engines. With analytics and keyword research, you also have a sense of how competitive your offering is, and whether you need to refine it further to find a profitable niche.
APPLIED SKILL: SEO + SEM

3. Be fascinating. character wins
Can you stop attention – and hold it -
In a sea of sameness, derivative copy churn and crud; is there something about you/your work that is difficult to replicate? Nothing is too boring when presented by someone who thrills to their subject, observe: quadratic equations + Salman Khan or parasitology + Carl Zimmer (no vampires or zombies needed). Novelty, surprise, shock, celebrity, prizes.. there are numerous ways to captivate briefly, but it’s hard work. What comes naturally (and unusually) to you that you can crank the volume up on? Leave perfect, polished and standardized to the machines, they will beat us at that game any day. It’s an asset to be a little weirdly wonderful, even in your professional dealings, because it draws on the richness of authenticity over increasing automation.
APPLIED SKILLS: CONTENT STRATEGY + ATTENTION ECONOMICS

4. Teach what you’re learning now.
In case you haven’t realised lately, look at how much learning is going on around you online. En masse we’ve left the shore of the known. Cracks are showing in all the reliable institutions that used to offer us authority and guidance. We’re having to figure out how to DIY our health, energy, education, finances, we’re learning from each other. Not waiting around for the authorities to put a seal of approval on it. The best time to share is as you’re learning it yourself, before the Curse of Knowledge sets in! Get on in, do your bit for the progress of our species.
APPLIED SKILL: INFLUENCE + AUTHORITY

5. Be trusted. Earn + collect social proof
Google has conditioned our behaviour by rewarding authority and trust in its algorithms. You get to rank higher in search, if there are more people who hyperlink to you as a worthwhile source. Social proof is the aura of assurance that comes from: testimonials, referrals, word-of-mouth advocacy, followers, likes, ratings. Not all are accurate, or trustworthy, but we’re strongly biased to trust the recommendation of others who have tried something themselves, over the positive spin of the marketing department. Invite feedback and ratings if you want more visibility. With a caveat. The Internet is great at smoking out shady dealings and hollow promises. It means companies in competitive markets need to do better, to earn trust again. What’s not to love?
APPLIED SKILL: TRUST ECONOMICS

6. Give Evidence. Show your Tell
One of the big ‘secrets’ of web (and life) success, we nicked from Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist: Do Good Work, Share it with People. Make SHAREABLES. If your work is currently intangible, find a way to fix the ideas into a video series, a book, infographics. If you want to have influence, you need to have something that can be past hand to hand, click by click.
APPLIED SKILL: PRODUCTION

7. Say thank you (put it in the credits)
The (under-recognised) killer app of our digital age is gratitude. It’s not an easy practise to institute effectively, but its value is disproportionately rewarded. Well worth picking up, Gary Vaynerchuk wrote a whole book on its potency for business now. Skills to pick up will be online reputation management, social CRM and finding ways to surprise your fans. The other dimension of thanks is giving the credit to those that have inspired you, or whose work you’ve built on or remixed. Get over the stubborn myth of original ideas. Our greatest evolutionary advantage as humans comes from our ability to copy what’s working, and adapt it to our own context. Use and create Creative Commons licensed video, music, photos, research, and don’t forget to give attribution to the creator. Help build a strong thank-you economy – a surprising number of us are willing to share our gems, for the long term benefit to reputation, and social proof.
APPLIED SKILL: ORM + SOCIAL CRM

8. Develop superb taste in people
This is the one thing that WILL change your experience online. If you think the internet, particularly social media, is full of trashy uselessness; you most certainly need to refine your people filters. Worse than just being on the receiving end of boring feeds, you are inadvertently sucked in. We develop the aggregate tendencies, habits and limitations of the people we hang out with – that means virtually too. As much as eating junk food, and expecting high quality performance, your brain deserves healthy, nutrient-dense brain snacks. Junk in. Junk out. Be ruthless about whose personal outputs you see daily. Remembering that the most innovative people keep the most diverse networks, so actively choose quality people in fields you wouldn’t ordinarily get to see.
APPLIED SKILL: LIFEHACKING + PRODUCTIVITY

 9. Even if you don’t know – give it a go. make stuff!
Fortune favours the brave. Experiment! Social media has flipped the price and scale of production and distribution into the hands of whomever chooses to get online. Grab the opportunity. There are so many free ways to begin making your own blogs, video, music, podcasts, games, apps. Why not hook up an Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Little Bits? Head over to Instructables.com. Find out how easy it can be to make things with code for free with Codecademy.com. Get tinkering. We don’t expect everyone to become a web mechanic, but we highly recommend moving from the passenger seat, to the drivers’ seat in your online journey.
APPLIED SKILL: BECOME A MAKER!

 10. Develop a clan
No matter the size of your business; we are increasingly sustained on our community, our fan-base, our constituents and those who believe in us,than a faceless market segment. If you are trustworthy and add value to their lives, these are the people who will be your immune system when you’re hit by trolls. Do you have the business asset of 1000 true fans? The participation, feedback, crowdsourcing, co-creation will give you the kind of R&D and creative illuminations that were once only afforded by a deep pockets. There is an art and science to community management. And to the opt-in direct marketing that delights, draws fans closer, and sells product – it IS possible.
APPLIED SKILL: COMMUNITY + CROWDSOURCING + EMAIL & DIRECT MARKETING

11. Why be shy? Give fans a reason to buy from you. When people have bought into your vision, very often, they’re really happy to buy from you. What have you got at the ready to offer to those who want to convert their interest immediately. Enter, e-commerce. Be it for products that you make and distribute, affiliate goods that you get commission from, info products, it’s worth getting over our squeamishness of trade online. There are a lot of important logistical and legal aspects to this, but we’ve found the biggest hurdle to be the psychological hump of contemplating making money in this vast global marketplace. It’s far easier than you think.
APPLIED SKILL: ECOMMERCE + CROWDFUNDING

 12. GRIT is good. be tenacious
It takes time to be great. Even online. The Internet is a great sprawling super-organism, to make an impact in your market, you will almost certainly require disciplined determination. It seems so contrary to the distracted ADD of modern life, but it’s a solid, steady bet for long term success. If you bring all the other lucky 11 to bear, all it will take is the tenacity to keep at it relentlessly. You will become a signal in the noise. This is the Stoic ‘keep eating right and working out’ advice for long-term luck. We’d all love a buy-in, quickie fix, but frankly nothing is as sturdy to build your online force. Just dig in.
APPLIED SKILL:  SLOW-BREWED STRENGTH

 13. Don’t wait for your BIG IDEA!
“Man on hill with mouth open, waiting for roast chicken to fall in, will wait long time”.
Please don’t agonize, forcing your whole being to come together in one blazing epiphany before you get going online. We highly recommend reading Stephen Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From for the assurance that very few of the most important ideas of any age were born out of a singular moment of genius. Start with a hunch, bring some character, let other people refine it with you, make things and get feedback. Even the best things aren’t predictably awesome at their inception. Learn from history, develop a valuable culture, and the commerce will find you.
APPLIED SKILL: PROCRASTINATION KILLER + INNOVATION GENERATION

Click here to view the embedded video.

The post Digital 101: install the mental model first appeared first on Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy.

“The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful.” - Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard

Don’t take anyone’s word for it

[Even (and maybe, particularly) an expert's word for it].

While there are defined practices that will stack the odds in favour of your site/service/stuff being found, even loved and shared, we are in times that confound theorists and baffle business schools. Weird things, that reasonably shouldn’t, work.

Planking, Rebecca Black, lolcats, Chuck Norris, Unicorns and Double Dream Hands ..the Dramatic Prairie Dog. Who saw those coming?

Many are they who promise guaranteed success online [cue those hypnotic innovation-killers] or the next big thing. But really there are only guidelines not rules; tips and hacks not formulae; correlations not causes. Achingly often brands want benchmarks and assurances, to follow the Old Spice route [let it be noted: it's not as though their agency, Wieden + Kennedy haven't tried tons of other ideas that didn't spark or just scared the citizenry] but simply don’t offer any side-budget for the experimental trials.

Imitation precedes Innovation

That said, copying is awesome. As a species, copying and remixing is our evolutionary superpower. And copying just went to a whole new level with the Internet. If we spot something successfully made, that we can appropriate as an idea for our own ends, we do, and progress faster en masse because of it, it is the human way. We retweet, cut+paste, aggregate and amplify what we believe will have popular appeal. BUT to actually evolve we need the weird and uncomfortably new.
Enter those who dare to make unusual, unpopular and downright laughable/trivial/impractical things for which there may be no guaranteed market. Stuff that wouldn’t crack the nod from an MBA or trendhunter on its first run out.

“Dare to be naïve” – Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) Inventor, designer, and futurist (BTW a set of Bucky Balls could do wonders for your geek cred)

Tinker in the 10%

TRY THIS AT HOME:
What absurd ideas and sparks of oh-man-I’d-love-to-do-that-if-only-I-had__________ (time/space/gear/cash/skills to)?  Could you start small, cobble together equipment, get help, ask Google how-to, use open-source resources ..? What would you be willing to give 10% of your time to if there was no pressure for it to work, fizzle or fail almightly? It’s a big ask to get a big brand to tithe just 10% of the marketing budget to exploring the it’s-so-crazy-it-just-might-work ideas that aren’t proven, copied and safe, but history (and often the money) is on the side of those who try. [read deeper: Steven Johnson's "Where Good Ideas Come From" - watch the video snippet below]

Click here to view the embedded video.

Don’t wait, create. Grant your odd hunches a little growing room. They may get you onto a freak list or two, but somehow it’s most often from silly side projects of people who think unusually, that we get to discover what it is we didn’t know that we didn’t know.

You have no idea what the Web-warped world will look like in 5 years time, and nor do we, but nor yet do the best tech pundits, VC firms, demigods of Silicon Valley or Ivy League universities. Thrilling, we’re all making it up as we go along now. Leadership is emerging from those learning, not the learned.

If there is one thing we’re sure is a good bet, it’s to learn new skills and make stuff. A lot of it. Go get your webcraft on.

The post The case for chasing your hare-brained ideas down the rabbit hole appeared first on Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy.

At long last the revenge of the nerds has finally been assured. There are vanishingly few pockets of humanity that remain untouched by code-crafted tools thanks to the open ubiquity of the Internet. Social media is so easy, so addictive and so seductively cheap that it’s become fundamental to communication. And business. We don’t have to convince anyone of why it is important any longer, surely?

(okay, well just in case) “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”  - Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon.com

Well past the basics? Time to level-up

A new level in social media has opened up, but the leap can seemingly only be achieved with the application of one of the most complex structures ever to be explored – the human brain. And not one belonging to a guru either!

It’s time to get far smarter, data-loving and hit the DIY, even though it’s so terribly tempting to entrust thinking (and tweeting) elsewhere. It may be worth your while, because the gains that were made in the early days of social networking will soon be harder-won as consumer behaviour becomes more value-seeking to adapt to the content overload. Not to mention the thickening competition for their attention.

There is so much more to this realm than convincing stubborn laggards that “it’s about the conversation”, of course it is, but there’s a whole new level of sophistication (and scientific method) to apply that can unlock unexpected ways to work, to organise, to lead, to sell and give superb service. That the machines have made us more human and enable us to connect more personally is one of the truly peculiar effects of the Web, social media in particular.

Brain hacking and surprise

How much evidence-based science are you bringing into your marketing plans? Cognitive science has recently yielded powerful insights into popularity and buying behaviour, though it’s unlikely that many brands have changed their engagement strategy because of it. But it’s not a bad idea to reonsider how we THINK people connect and decide by reading the research. Perhaps even better: we can use web analytics to test and gather vital feedback from our own customers and communities to learn and deliver what is of value  for ourselves!

With years of available social media data to plunder from all over the world, strong patterns have emerged that render even mysterious “viral” content available for snipping into its constituent atomic parts - some made friendly & shareable to pass along as an infographic. Are you instituting your own (shareable) research projects?

What’s practically working for the pioneers?

Responsible policy, clear strategic practice and relentless testing and feedback has emerged in the brands (individual and organisational) that are consistently engaging with their communities creatively and profitably online and in the realworld.

3 strategies that appear to work handsomely:

1. There is no right path to success. Relax. We’re all making it up as we go along now. Learn like crazy, many important lessons are not intuitive and best learned through other’s experience, but it’s too early in the game to have prescriptive rules; though there are important cultural norms! If you have a choice, get a good guide who can light the way ahead to unlock your resourcefulness, rather than someone who blinds you with the brilliance of their own success story.
2. Create, co-create, be prolific, be cool with culling/repurposing what isn’t working – and there is likely to a lot. Grow the stuff where attention is converting into the stuff you set out to achieve. (oh, and knowing what you want to achieve when you set out into the Social Web is a remarkably useful way not to burn time and effort).
3. Test and tweak. Find many ways to get feedback on what you’re doing, as realtime as possible. Learn to love your data.

De-fluff the gurus. Get your own geek on

There’s less mystery, more measured experimentation as we move from the “magic” of marketing as it was. More work, more numbers. Much more accountability from a much more measurable medium. But there’s something remarkably hopeful about recovering from our reliance on marketing gurus, priests and purveyors of the secret-sauce remedies.

“I cannot think of any other profession which gets by on such a small corpus of knowledge.” - David Ogilvy [on marketing]

“I have no doubt Ogilvy would have rejoiced at the growth of the behavioral economics establishment. But he would be sickened by our lack of enthusiasm, choosing to rely on the same old level of intuition that he despised. ”  << worth a click through for a continued read; an ode to replacing intuition and fluff with stuff that’s been proven to work, as defined by Rory Sutherland, bearing this good sense into our century.

Be it behavioural economics, web-analytics, anthropology or spotting mathematicians fine-tweaking campaigns, the change will be coming to a marketing department near you. [If not wrought by you as an early egghead-lover].

_______________________________________________________________

THE UNSUBTLE PITCH

Knowing how many spectacularly easy ways (and very entertaining, if you aren’t involved, of course) it can be to waste time , burn budget and crash a company’s reputation through treating the Internet as a cheap shout channel, it may serve your side well to get richer insights, strategies and tool recommendations from someone who actually has their stripes in this space. “You wouldn’t call yourself a web designer just because you can surf the net – so don’t call yourself a social media manager just because you’ve worked out how to tweet or post on a Facebook page.”

Make your decisions based on evidence and get good taste in guides. Credibility counts when you don’t have enough time, or adrenaline to learn it all yourself.

Why not join us for our level-up Social Media Masterclass *? Entrust a day to award-winning strategists Melissa Attree and Mike Sharman to lead you beyond the obvious in social media strategy.
Bold, consistent and planned campaigns that win, are borne of the ability to listen, measure and tweak. Get on it, come join us for the edventure.
 
 
 
* we’re offering real-world classes for the first of this masterclass series, so place matters – beginning in South Africa.

The post Social Media Marketing: saving our souls, with DIY science appeared first on Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy.

1.  Tell us more about 2UPGamers…

• Ashley:  2upGamers is a gaming events company by gamers for gamers I started with a previous ODMaster Hylton Arendse and Glenn Alexander. Our events offer talks from industry professionals Gaming retailer distributers/ publishers/designers/ISP’s (online-gaming) and obviously Gaming!! Getting to test and play the latest games is always a bonus for gamers.

• Hylton:  2upGamers is an initiative that aims to bring local gamers/communities together and provide them with a place to get together with Industry developers, retailers and technology (latest).  2upGamers is a monthly event on the first Friday of every month, we organise a venue and provide the facilities where local gamers and industry can meet chat, get info, involvement and play some games and experience some tech afterwards. We aim to grow he South African gaming community and put South Africa as a talking point to the world gaming industry.

2.  What inspired this concept?

•  Ashley:  The idea for 2upGamers started early on in my ODMA course, chatting to Dave about 27dinners sparked it. Also seeing the results of my ODMA project a blog on gaming gave me the inspiration to do something for the Cape Town Gaming community specifically.

• Hylton:  Well coming from a background where gaming was a part of growing up, gaming evolved into PC games then console games, the social aspects of gaming has grown to online communities where local gamers interact with international players. Most of the gaming industry revolves around more western countries and leaves litte for local South African Gamers who have to follow or read on what is happening abroad. Events like the E3 2011 – Video Games – Electronic Entertainment Expo – IGN are events that we need here in South Africa, the Rage expo in Jo-burg is one such event but regional exclusivity prevents these events from truly becoming South African. 2upGamers aims to provide a platform to developers, retailers and distributors for achieving national exposure to every local community and gamer.

3.  To what extent did the ODMA course play a role in this?

• Ashley:  If it wasn’t for ODMA I probably would never have done this. ODMA gave me the skills and the confidence to take my idea to the next level. You can say that I owe it all to the guys from the ODMA team.

• Hylton:  ODMA has assisted me with being able to market and network the 2upGamers, address issues and identifying social networking possibilities, I focussed on Personal / Self promotion for my ODMA and find this helps with social interaction on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare etc, as well as helping with 1-on-1 interactions.

4.  How did you promote the site?

•  Ashley: Promoting the site was slow going at first, we started with getting gamers interested in the idea at the weekly Cape Town Gamers meet-ups. We then started a Facebook page and Twitter handle, in getting very positive responses from FB and twitter we decided to build the website. So far it’s been amazing, we have a database of over 300 people signed up, 200 likes on FB page and 202 followers on twitter.

• Hylton:  We identified the social networks we needed to target, also listed the most influential people on these and also their involvement in the relevant industry. We marketed to them and also got them to expand our influence. On our opening event on the 4 November we trended in Cape Town (twitter). ODMA help me to identify trends, where strategy and placement and information could be best used to achieve maximum exposure. We continue to expand the brand by involving journalist and bloggers by giving them free entry for example to our events. They in-turn expose their relevant communities and readers to our brand.

5.  Where to from here?

• Ashley:  2upGamers have grown so much over the past 2 months, we have huge responses from all over SA wanting 2up events in their city, so we are planning on going national early 2012 so watch this space.

• Hylton: We are hoping to take 2upGamers to a new level, we want to expand its influence to the entire South African gaming community, hosting monthly events in each major city. The idea is to take and make South African gamers proud and also give a voice to local gamers on an international platform, gamers who already have a voice in multiplayer games and now will be able to interact with the same guys who develop and publish the games they enjoy.

Want to get your GAME ON? Then join and follow all the action here: Facebook, Twitter, 2upGamers

The post Meet the ODMAsters: 2upGamers appeared first on Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy.

When consumers do web searches they are generally looking for information, enlightenment or entertainment. If your website comes up when and where people need it then you have the opportunity to convert them into fans, subscribers, customers or whatever else your goals are.

The first thing to realize about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is that the goal of most search engines is to provide high quality and relvevant results for every search. If your website and content is set up to help them achieve this, then you’ll continue to rank high on a variety of searches. The following video explains how Google Search works:

Click here to view the embedded video.

We’ve put together 5 non-technical ways that you can ensure your site ranks highly:

1. Be Link-Worthy

Have content that is worthwhile linking to, or make your site such a resource that other website will want to send people to your site. Inbound links are the top determinant of ranking in Search. The higher ranked the websites linking to you, the more valuable the links. Social media links count too (e.g. people tweeting about your site or an article on your blog), not really to improve your page-rank, but because search is increasingly real-time and social.

2. Keyword-Rich Copy

Make sure your site contains lots of the kinds of keywords and phrases that people might type in when searching for you. Keywords that appear in your website url, page titles (e.g. the title of a blog post), and that are in special formatting – bold, italic, hyperlinked etc – get higher rankings. Try use a variety keywords and phrases that are particular to your industry, product or topic – specificity is rewarded.

3. Have lots of pages and posts

The larger your website, the more content you have, the more likely you are to be found online. Make sure you link to your own posts and pages from within your site. e.g. if a new blog post mentions something that you’ve already written about previously, link to the previous article. One way of having more pages and posts is to start a blog – which, by the way is one of the top ways to boost the traffic inbound links to your blog (see this Hubspot study for details).

4. Think Multimedia and Social

It’s often easier to get ranked highly using video and images than it is with written content. YouTube is now the world’s second largest Search Engine, and Twitter and Facebook are catching up as a place people search too. Consider also that people use niche sites and aggregators to find info too – for example, TripAdvisor for accomodation. The same rules of SEO apply on these platforms, have great content, use good keywords and get quality links in.

5. Promote your content

Simply having lots of good content on your site is no longer good enough to ensure success and high rankings. Google and other search engines also rely on social media links to determine the reputation of a website on particular topics and keywords. You should be participating in, and promoting your content across as many other social networks, blogs and websites as you can.

5. Make sure your site is Search Spider Friendly

Making websites search engine friendly is one of the most important and time-consuming tasks that a professional in SEO will do for you. The easiest way to get this right for yourself is to start with a good platform, like WordPress (which is considered the AK47 of SEO). Search spiders can’t see like you and I, so they need lots of “meta-data” to help them make sense of your site. Meta-data includes tags on articles, descriptions of links, and descriptions of photos (like captions). A site-map with links to all the pages on your site also helps search spiders understand your website.

So that’s it! These tips do require work, but ultimately they are the most sustainable way to continuously improve your chances of getting found by the right people at the right time online.

The post 5 non-technical ways to rank higher in web searches appeared first on Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy.

The world’s largest social sharing service, AddThis recently shared their own data on how people pass along and access content.

What the graphic above tells you is that you need to try and match the time that you’re posting your content to the time that your audience is most likely to see it. While the AddThis data shows that 9:30am is the most popular time to share data, we would advise testing your own audience because the averages may not apply to your own audience in exactly the same way.

Another interesting point is that despite all the social sharing buttons that make it easy to share content on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, the most popular way is still to copy and paste the URL directly from the address bar. AddThis estimate that 10x more sharing happens in this way than with buttons.

Another large social sharing company, ShareThis, revealed earlier this year that Facebook sharing has overtaken Email as the most popular way to share content online.

However, their research showed that Twitter gets more clicks per shared link (4.8 clicks) than either Facebook (4.3 clicks) or Email (1.7 clicks).

Being data-heads at the ODMA, we highly recommend that you track how your content is being shared. A great tool for both beginners and pros for this is Bit.ly.

Of course, all of this data is only helpful for you if your content is actually worth sharing in the first place. Ogilvy’s Rohit Bhargava has “5 Rules for Social Media Optimization” that are well worth remembering:

1. Create shareable content
2. Make sharing easy
3. Reward engagement
4. Proactively share content
5. Encourage the mashup

And, of course, in the spirit of practicing what we preach: please do pass this post along if you found it valuable.

The post Research: How People Share Links Online appeared first on Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy.

The Banter Boys should be paid to banter. The trio, who wish to remain anonymous (-25 boytjie points, or +?) write posts for their outrageously, well, outrageous blog during down time at work. In Anonymous Banter Boy Number 1’s words: “We have our finger on the pulse.”

Here’s how their operation came to be…

1.  You guys are only the third set of ODMasters to be profiled. How does it feel? 

Banter Boy 2: Why weren’t we first?

2.  What inspired your concept?

Banter Boy 1: We had to put ourselves down for tasks during a working session of ODMA one Tuesday night, like timekeeper or snack-bringer or whatever. We ended up putting ourselves down as in charge of banter.

Banter Boy 2: Banter is a priority.

Banter Boy 3: We figured we were probably very good at it, if not too good.

3.  Where & how do you find so many boytjie videos on a daily basis?

Banter Boy 1: We cannot give away our sources.

Banter Boy 2: Absolutely not.

4.  So how much time do you spend doing your jobs versus searching for banter?

Banter Boy 3: What do you mean, this isn’t my job? No wonder my phone keeps ringing.

Banter Boy 1: It’s literally whenever we have free time. If we have some downtime, we’ll pick out like 3 or 4 videos and stagger them throughout the week. We always have our fingers on the pulse of what is hot. The boyjie stuff filters through us first.

Banter Boy 3: If you want to know what’s going to be on 2oceansvibe, check out Banter Boys first. 2oceansvibe will have it two days later.

5.  How have you promoted and grown the site?

Banter Boy 3: Through our personal capacities, like our own online profiles – Twitter & Facebook.

Banter Boy 2: It has its own Twitter profile.

Banter Boy 3: But the content is there. It promotes itself.

Banter Boy 1: Originally we were concentrating on just getting the content up, now we’re going to concentrate on pushing it and getting it out to influential people.

6.  What are your biggest takeaways from ODMA thus far?

Banter Boy 1: Pizza. I also took two cans of Coke last week.

Banter Boy 3: I took a bottle of water.

7.  Okay, what have you learned?

Banter Boy 1: We’ve tried to take the teachings of each ODMA session and integrate what we’ve learnt into our site – whether it be the user experience, SEO or link building. With Dave Duarte being the Banter Boys Godfather, it goes without saying that this boytjie knows his stuff so we’re consciously trying to up our game with the knowledge that he’s passing on to us. Bottom line: We’ve learnt tons but the fact that we’re integrating ALL the ODMA teachings into a tangible, real-life site is a definite +100 boytjie points to us

Banter Boy 3: We’ve learnt that it’s all about user experience. For example, if you’re using the Tumblr platform, people can’t comment on your posts. If Tumblr were a person, it would’ve just lost 50 boytjie points for that poor UX. Using WordPress, we were able to find a great theme which makes our posts easy to read and comment on. With the growing popularity of our site, we decided to purchase a domain (www.banterboys.co.za) and are in the process of having our site hosted away from WordPress – motivated by what we’ve learnt during the past two months of ODMA.

Banter Boy 2: Learnt an incredible amount but one lesson which sticks outs, in particular, with regard to our site, is link building and its value. In almost every post we put up, we link out to other websites/blogs in the hope that they will link back to us. Obviously this helps us out a lot from an SEO point of view – the more eyeballs on our page, the better! We’re moving quickly up the Google search and our term “boytjie points” has already hit Urban Dictionary. +50 boytjie points for that effort, yes please!

8.  Who are your personal boytjie idols?

Banter Boy 2: Well there can be so many kinds of boytjies, in science, sports, any field. Stephen Hawking is a personal boytjie of mine.

Banter Boy 3: And there goes the interview.

Banter Boy 2: I’m just trying to give an example of the spectrum of boytjieness.

Banter Boy 1: Our ultimate boytjie is Dave Duarte. We’ve got a lot of boytjies but the ultimate is David Duarte. He’s the Banter Boys’ godfather.

Banter Boy 3: He’s the one who actually said “Banter Boys” and gave us the name.

9.  Which of you has the most boytjie points?

Banter Boy 2: We don’t award ourselves boytjie points.

Banter Boy 1: We don’t need any more.

Banter Boy 3: We hand them out of our supply.

Banter Boy 2: We have infinite boytjie points

And for good reason. If you’re looking for a laugh, visit the Banter Boys here, and follow them on Twitter.

The post Meet the ODMAsters: The Banter Boys appeared first on Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy.

1.  What do you do at R-Labs?  

I am a Social Media Facilitator /Trainer in the RLabs Academy. The Academy offers social media training to the community at no charge. The people that we train in the academy have never touched a PC, so it is taking a grassroots approach when introducing them to the interwebs. I am also a member of a two-man team who are responsible for PR & Marketing communications for RLabs.  I am Community Manager for LLiSA (Living Labs in Southern Africa) network. I do some social media consulting.  I am also responsible for the Legacy Program. Legacy is a 48 week program for learners who have completed their schooling but unable to access the job market or further their studies at tertiary institutions.

 2.  What is your greatest accomplishment in this field?  

My greatest accomplishment is when I look at how a person’s life was impacted and positively changed after walking through the doors at RLabs with no hope in their eyes. We offer hope to them using Social Media as a catalyst for change, giving them a digital voice to express themselves. After completing a six month program and seeing hope in their eyes again is priceless!

3.  What lessons has your work life taught you?

The greatest lesson my work life has taught me is that there is more to life than just me and what I want. It’s about leaving a legacy that people can follow…

 4.  If you’re having a bad day do you switch “off” (line)?

I don’t like to say that I am having a bad day. I like to remain positive and I do this by choosing everyday when I open my eyes to have a good day. I am never offline. I don’t even switch off my phone when I sleep and will probably answer if it rings in the middle of the night & assists the caller. 

 5.  If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be?

I would be so honored if someone were to write a biography about me. The title must be: “A son, a husband, a father, a man of God!”

 6.  Who are the people that you “talk” to online? What do they want?

I have friends and family who talk to me online to catch up and to stay in contact. Technology is cool that way.  Then there are also my “online peeps” who I connect with for networking reasons.

Watch The Clinton Liederman from Gangsta to Twitter Story

Click here to view the embedded video.

Follow him on Twitter here.

The post Meet the Faculty: Clinton Liederman appeared first on Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy.

1.  How would you explain what you do to a nine year old?   

I help make grown-ups happier using grown-up versions of mxit and facebook. :) I get to do what you do by spending all day on my phone and computer.

2.  What did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

I genuinely thought I was going to be an astronaut, then a jedi, then a musician, then a graphic designer.

3.  Social Media doesn’t keep office hours, how do you juggle work with family?  How difficult is it to switch off?

I find it incredibly difficult to switch off. I suffer tremendously from FOMO and I’m constantly checking my phone. My wife doesn’t take too kindly to it, but she’s very gracious as she knows it’s my passion.

4.  Who are the people who ‘talk,’ to you online?  What do they want?

They generally want to tell us how awesome we are – that really makes my day. They also tell us when we’ve screwed up – that’s where I get to help out by making things right. 

5.  I’ve heard that you believe in the good break-up…tell us about this.

 I’m a firm believer in honesty being the best policy – as cheesy as that sounds. I reckon that apart from someone being a complete ass, there’s definitely hope for amicable breakups.

6.  If aliens landed in front of you and, in exchange for anything you desire, offered you any position on their planet, what would you want?

Hmmmmmm. Not too sure I’d give up anything I desire. If they had a gun to my head, I’d want to be their Jeremy Clarkson – I reckon that guy has the best job in the world and I reckon the universe.

Follow Giovanni on Twitter here

The post Meet the Faculty: Giovanni Ghignone appeared first on Ogilvy Digital Marketing Academy.