Posts Tagged ‘Australia’
So you think you’ve finished your studies? You may have graduated years ago, but let me tell you, in today’s economy, school is never out.
If you don’t have it already, you need to develop a philosophy of life-long learning. Things are changing much too fast to rely simply on what you learned at uni or TAFE.
For example, whether you’re a small or a large business, you can’t stick your head in the sand and ignore trends like social media. That means not only mastering existing tools, but staying abreast of emerging tools, as well.
It’s pretty clear that most businesses should have a Facebook page and a Twitter account. But when it comes to using some of the newer social media tools for your business, how do you pick a winner? You need to look at factors such as the take-up rate, how it integrates with other tools, and whether it offers something that is not only different, but hopefully useful, as well.
Google+ is one on the cusp (though, supported by and integrated with the raft of Google tools, it’s a pretty safe bet that it will be there for the long haul).
The location-based tool Foursquare, used by more than 15 million people who check in at locations and share their visits with friends, has had a lot of publicity and has attracted venture capital investment. But how important is it to people to become the ‘mayor’ of frequently visited spots? Are people using it mainly to make their friends jealous about where they can afford to go on a holiday?
A tool that I think ticks more of the boxes is Pinterest, an online pinboard service that, in the words of CBS Moneywatch, “attracts people who need to organize the chaos of Internet-age information overload.”
Pinterest describes itself as a social network meant to connect everyone in the world through the things that they find interesting.
The site lets you create and curate multiple pinboards in any category you can create, as well as following others’ pinboards. It falls somewhere between window shopping and actual collecting. You can log on through Twitter or Facebook, so you can tell your friends and customers about your boards.
At the same time, In contrast to Facebook, Pinterest pinners may end up choosing to follow people they don’t know purely based on the photos they curate, creating seemingly random new networks.
Read the full article on Smarter Business Ideas
- Tags: Australia, content, digital content, e-marketing, internet content, Journalism, Marketing, online marketing, Ray Welling, SMARTER BUSINESS IDEAS, social media, social networks
Posted in Australia, Journalism, Marketing, Ray Welling, Technology, Writing, e-marketing, social media
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By Ray Welling
In the competition between digital natives – Gen Y, which has grown up with online technology and digital immigrants – those of us who can remember typewriters and phones with cords attached – for primacy online, it seems that the digital natives have gained the upper hand.
Think Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, and a billion dollar online empire by the time he reached his mid-20s) vs. Rupert Murdoch (MySpace, phone hacking scandals, declining dead tree media empire). Or Natalie Tran (24-year old Australian vlogger with 156,000 Twitter followers, more than 400 million YouTube views and a cozy career in the making) against say, Tony Abbott (50-something Australian politician with 56,000 Twitter followers but no YouTube channel).
If you read the media reports on what’s hot on the web, there appears to be a strong relationship between a lack of history and Internet success.
But it’s not that simple.
It can be useful to have a long-term view of the online world, which only a seasoned digital immigrant can have. If you can combine that with knowledge of traditional, pre-Internet business principles, you can look past current fads and build a business model that’s sustainable.
For example, the current obsession with whatever is the latest online application exploding in the public consciousness ignores the fragile nature of web success.
With all the current talk of community-building and developing personal relationships, you’d think the concept was invented by Facebook. Digital natives may be too young to remember, but digital immigrants will recall that when MySpace burst on the scene, it was seen as the long-term future of social media. That is, until Facebook came along.
Early digital immigrants can go back even further and remember GeoCities, an online community where people could create personal pages and create a following of fans, which was all the buzz way back in the 20th century.
And consider the power and ubiquity of the Google empire. It may be hard for digital natives to fathom a time pre-Google, but digital immigrants can remember when Yahoo! was seen as the impregnable leader in search (As an aside, it used its cash reserves to buy GeoCities back in 1999), a crown it took from the equally-invulnerable Alta Vista.
Read the full story on Smarter Business Ideas
- Tags: advertising, Australia, content, digital content, e-marketing, Internet, internet content, Journalism, Marketing, Ray Welling, SMARTER BUSINESS IDEAS, social media, Video, video content, YouTube
Posted in Australia, Journalism, Marketing, Media companies, Technology, Video, e-marketing, social media
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Ray has started a new gig, writing a column/blog for Smarter Business Ideas, a magazine and website for small businesses who use Telstra services. Here’s an excerpt from his first post:
With both his kids following their father down the difficult path of a ‘creative’, Ray Welling offers the next generation some sound business advice that they probably won’t listen to.
When I was at high school, the adults in my life told me I could be anything I wanted when I grew up. By “anything”, they meant a doctor, a lawyer, a professor or a business tycoon.
Instead, I chose to go down a creative path and studied journalism. For this I blame Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman and their representations of crusading journos Woodward and Bernstein bringing down President Nixon.
After graduating from uni I spent months looking for a job, and ended up taking one as a technical writer for a management consulting firm – not at all what I had imagined to start my career, but at least I was using my writing skills.
Since then, I’ve had a series of creative and not-so-creative jobs, in a variety of industries, always related in some way to writing, and now I run my own consultancy. I’ve never regretted my career choice, but I sometimes reflect that life would have been easier if I’d just become a more traditional desk jockey in a more lucrative field.
Fast forward to 2012, and the sins of the father have been revisited upon the children. Both of my kids have just finished uni, with creative-type degrees, and they’re now trying to find a role that fits with their passion and what they’ve studied.
So from the perspective of someone who has worked in the creative space for a generation, what advice do I have for my Gen Y kids as they start their careers? In the spirit of “Sh*t My Dad Says” (but with less profanity), here are my words of wisdom:
• Regardless of what you read about successful people, a creative, stimulating job that starts at 9 a.m. and finishes at 5 p.m. is probably non-existent – at least I haven’t discovered it yet.
• Chances are you will feel caged in by a ‘normal’ job and will want do your own thing. But though you may hate working for The Man, it pays the bills….
Read the full story
- Tags: Australia, business, content, e-marketing, eduction, Marketing, Ray Welling, small business, social media
Posted in Australia, Journalism, Marketing, Writing, e-marketing, social media
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From Ray’s NETT blog:
Despite working with new technology every day (or maybe because of it!), I like to collect old wares, and my idea of a good weekend includes some time spent trawling through antique and vintage shops.
A recent acquisition was a set of books on ‘modern business’ produced by the Alexander Hamilton Institute back in the 1950s. I was, of course, drawn to the volume on marketing. On leafing through it, I was surprised by how relevant much of the information still was, after nearly 60 years and several seismic shifts in marketing and selling.
Here are a few snippets from the book (with my annotations):
“Marketing concerns itself with all those business activities which begin in the producer’s shipping room and continue until the goods finally come to rest in the hands of the ultimate user.” (This is a timeless reminder as many people equate marketing with just the advertising and promotional aspects of the process. This broad spectrum definition is today even broader as digital and social media marketing extend the process past the delivery of goods and into an ongoing lifetime relationship with customers.)
“The satisfying of human wants depends to no small degree upon the personal and subjective wants and desires of individual consumers.” (This is increasingly relevant as we have moved from the age of mass marketing, which was gearing up when that book was written, to today’s trend toward mass customisation.)
“The basic law of marketing is the ‘law of convention and revolt’. A new mode of life may be created or established, but it will last only until a new style is introduced, often by quick substitution.” (When that was written they were talking about seasonal changes in fashion; now a style can go in and out with days. It’s not strictly a business marketing example, but how long did the planking craze take over public consciousness – was it a couple of weeks, or even less?)
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Tourism Queensland’s Island Reef Job campaign has struck a chord with economically battered people everywhere. Well-executed across a variety of social media, including Facebook, Twitter and the Web, the campaign, soliciting job applications for an Island Caretaker for the Great Barrier Reef, was expected to generate 400,000 website visits by the end of February. More than 200,000 people visited the first day of the campaign and as of last weekend more than 2.5 million visitors had checked out the site.
The campaign is one of the few Australian initiatives to garner extensive overseas media attention.
As the job description says, the six-month, A$150,000 gig is ”a live-in position with flexible working hours and key responsibilities include exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef to discover what the area has to offer. You’ll be required to report back on your adventures to Tourism Queensland headquarters in Brisbane (and the rest of the world) via weekly blogs, photo diary, video updates and ongoing media interviews. On offer is a unique opportunity to help promote the wondrous Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.”
You have until 22 February to apply, so start working on that application!
When Australians were trying to decide how to spend the Federal Government’s Christmas economic stimulus, it’s clear that their first stop was online.
Google search enquiries in Australia during the Christmas and new year period grew by more than 50% in some categories when compared to the same period in 2007/08, B&T has reported.
Searches for banks and financial institutions rose by a massive 74% from November 2007 to November 2008 and credit card searches achieved a 24% spike in December 2008 from the same period in 2007.
Google recorded growth of 36% in searches overall for shopping and Christmas-related categories in December compared to the same period in 2007 year, with food and drink searches growing by 48 per cent. Searches for apparel were also up by 46% on last year, followed by photo and video equipment searches (42%), mass merchants and department stores (41%) and computers and electronics (34%).
Real estate-related searches rose by 41% in December, while travel-related searches were up by more than 36% and automotive “deals” achieved 24% growth over 2007.
Google Australia general manager Karim Temsamani told B&T that brands need to be wary about not having an online presence. “The worst thing for a brand is to be talked about from a word of mouth perspective or to have an ad on TV or other media, and then for the consumer to go online to find that product and it’s not there.”
Google also revealed that search volumes for January are up 20% on last year.
Gotta love the power of social networks! After my post yesterday analysing a list of international social media marketing examples and wondering whether anyone had done something like this for Australian businesses, the compiler of the original list, Peter Kim, has worked his contacts to find one. Here it is: Steven Noble’s Australian Social Media Case Studies. Many thanks, Peter, and good on you, Steven, who is an analyst for Forrester. I will have a closer look and post more about this later, but wanted to get this link up ASAP.
Australian search advertising should total $869.7 million in 2008, making it the fastest growing segment in the local digital media advertising industry, according to the Australia Search Advertising Market 2008-2012 report released today by Frost & Sullivan.
Keyword sponsorships continue to lead demand accounting for 51% of total revenue ($443 million), followed by online directories ($264 million) and contextual searches ($163 million).
The study identifies that 75% of advertisers are now spending more than 10% of their total media budget on search related activities. This compares with 65% 12 months ago.
However, the key benefits of search advertising, including increased leads, conversions/sales and high return on investment, were all down on last year’s results. A total of 59% of brands that used search ads said it resulted in increased leads, down from 66% last year, while 44% said it increased conversions/leads compared to 49% last year. Only 25% of the advertisers surveyed said search advertising achieved a high return on investment, down from 31% last year.
Frost and Sullivan suggests advertisers will turn to search ads in the economic downturn because of its cost effectiveness.
Online advertising growth in Australia continued to power along in the third quarter, although things are expected to slow down this quarter, according to the IAB’s latest Online Advertising Expenditure Report, released today.
The B&T newsletter reports that online advertising has experienced a 30% growth year-on-year, with advertisers spending a record $450 million in Q3, $100 million ahead of the same period last year.
While growth is expected to soften in Q4 in response to the global economic crisis, the IAB is still anticipating a 20% year-on-year growth.
While all three categories - general display, classifieds, and search and directories - reported strong growth, search and directories dominated, accounting for $212 million of total spend for the quarter, 33% ahead of the same period last year.
The finance, computer and communications, and motor vehicle sectors represented 52% of display ads. Recruitment dominated spend in classifieds, followed by real estate and automotive.
Quotes from it are plastered all over our site - it’s The Cluetrain Manifesto, the revolutionary (this word is vastly over-used, but appropriate in this case) tome about how the new media have changed the way companies do business. Now, for those of you who are too busy to pick up a book and are chained to your computer, Australian blogger Michael Specht has summarised the books 95 theses in an online PowerPoint presentation. Go and save this in your favourites! Good on you, Michael.
- Tags: Australia, blog, Cluetrain Manifesto, e-marketing, markets are conversations, Michael Specht, online advertising, online marketing, PowerPoint
Posted in Australia, Marketing, Technology
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From today’s B&T newsletter:
Telstra’s online and mobile sites are stealing revenue from traditional print and TV sectors, the company has
claimed, with the tough economic conditions aiding its growth while traditional media suffers.
The telco has said its BigPond sites have recorded more than 50% growth in total advertising revenue since the beginning of the year, including strong growth in the September quarter.
While Telstra would not reveal a dollar value of the revenue increase, network advertising GM Chris Taylor
confirmed claims that its online and mobile ads are “bucking the trend reported by traditional print and television sectors, which are watching their revenues shrink”.
Justin Milne, managing director of Telstra Media Group said the growth reflects confidence among advertisers that online and mobile advertising offered advantages over traditional advertising formats.
Inspired by Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out service (http://helpareporter.com/), we’re starting a similar service aimed at Australian writers and reporters. The idea is that everybody is an expert in something, and that social media networks on the Internet can help connect writers with sources for their stories, books and other writing projects. If you’re a writer based in Australia, please join our Facebook group and forward your requests (see ‘Guidelines for reporters/writers’ on the Discussion Board for how to structure your requests) to ray.welling@gmail.com. Meanwhile, anyone who has an interest in being a source (you may be a PR representative or just an interesting person!) can sign up to receive periodic emails that will go out looking for people to help out with a writing project.