My Mom????!!!

Surfing on a friend’s facebook profile I found a post from his aunt and I was really surprised (I suppose he was even more surprised!), I started to think on what I would do if my mom had a facebook account, and according to statistics this could be possible!

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An independent Facebook blog published that 45% of the Facebook’s users on US are ages 26 and older, and nearly 25% are over age 34. In fact, the fastest-growing demographic group on Facebook is women ages 55 and older.

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The only difference is that older people uses FB with less frequency, although 5% of users ages 50 and older logged in 30 or more times per month, the majority signed on only from one to four times per month.

But is time to start thinking… are these target customers on Facebook’s goals? Or are they a new problem that facebook needs to face?

Juan Francisco

5 tips for Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is the "in" thing today, so here we have five practical tips for applying it!!

· Offer desirable products or services that spread your message: You can do things like enable visitors to e-mail greeting/post cards from your website or offer free downloads (screensavers, wallpapers, games, etc.) that carry your marketing message. These activities are not very expensive and they can help to increase the your brand’s website traffic.

· Encourage word of mouth recommendations: this advertising is one of the bests because it is almost free. Brands can encourage people to share the message with friends and/or promote the website by making easy to email the webpage, or adding a “tell a friend” tag. Remember that viruses only spread when they are easy to transmit.

· Take advantage of others’ resources: Brands can place text or graphic links on others websites by “affiliate programs”.

· Use existing communication networks: Brands can place their message on existing communications between people to multiply the dispersion.

· Create “popular media”: Companies can place “funny” stuff on the red like videos promoting their brand, or creative websites that will catch people’s attention and cause that the WoM expands its dispersion.

To take advantage of “viral marketing” it is necessary to develop an effective strategy that exploits common motivations and behaviors and is easy to transmit.

Juan Francisco

Marketing Today

I liked this video because it easily explains how complex is marketing today due to the web 2.0 (:

Youtube vs TV

Youtube TV?

Today I was watching a Mexican soup opera on youtube, it was great because I didn’t have to see any commercial and I was able to pause it. Later, I started wondering about how many people was doing the same, some questions started to appear in my mind; Is youtube the “new television”?, How many people has started to watch more online videos than TV?, What will happen with advertising on TV programs? …

I started to search information and a survey made by Nielsen showed that people of all ages said they spent much more time watching traditional TV than online videos. A young group (18 to 24 years old) was the group that accepted to watch more online videos. According to LiveRail 2008 survey, the 53% of young adults social network users spend more time watching online video than TV.

Even though that the percentage of the population that watches more online video than traditional TV isn’t big enough to “destroy” the TV, marketers should be aware of this and pay attention to the media that their prospects use to see their favorite shows. If their target market are young adults, maybe they should start to give more money to online advertising when they allocate their budgets. While they start to do something, people like me keep watching “tv” without receiving any advertising (:

Juan Francisco

Social Media

Social media is a world wide phenomenon. If we want to use it for marketing we need to understand it. This video explains in an easy way the power of social media. Today any individual with internet access can express and share his opinions and thoughts to the world. Marketers need to be able to deal with this, not only handle it; they need to take advantage of it!

According to an emarketer's report, the social networking audience is growing rapidly. It is expected that by 2013 more than one-half of Internet users will be regular social network users. But not only the amount of consumers is growing; the degree of their involvement is increasing too. To take advantage of these trends, Social Networks need to work in an effective advertising model.

Facebook, Myspace and Twitter are popular social networks where companies and celebrities (music, politics, sports...) are creating and using their accounts for free marketing. Starbucks, Lindsay Lohann, and Cristiano Ronaldo are just few examples of "successful” social media users. So, if you don’t have a Facebook account, what are you waiting for? Just see if the social media network, your profile ,and the image that you want to show to the world match (:

Juan Francisco

Global Top Sites

A website is fundamental for the implementation of e-marketing, so it is really important to choose the right site to advertise our product or service. Alexa.com presents us the Global Top sites on the web. Google.com is the first place of the countdown, this could be due to the effectiveness of ther search engine and search options. The second position is the popular Yahoo.com and the third place is for Youtube.com. Other relevant sites on the top 10 are the social networks Myspace and Facebook. Marketers should pay attention to the website's rank to make the best decision for online advertising.

According to alexa.com today's global top 10 sites are these:

1. Google.com
2. Yahoo.com
3. Youtube.com
4. Live.com
5. Facebook.com
6. Msn.com
7. Wikipedia.org
8. Blogger.com
9. MySpace.com
10. Yahoo.co.jp




Juan Francisco