How to: effectively use online tools.

Posted by Renata Brandão in facebook, games, online tool, twitter

2 comments

Welcome back 21st Century Kid,

So the journey begins again.

Last week I asked you to look around and notice how we are becoming a digital generation. This week I am asking you to realized how this shift has changed the world forever. Due to this technological revolution, our relationship with information, culture, entertainment and business has been transformed irreversibly. With the digital world everything now circulates in a decentralized and frenetic way.

Now everybody talks to everybody at the same time, attention is increasingly scarce, and the ability to reach the public is decreasing. For that reason, searching for new business models has shown to be a much smarter strategy than trying to preserve old ones.

And thus, even without being sure of what the future might brings, change is certainly necessary. But how to effectively gain market and audience insight? How can one use online tools in order to draw attention to its brand?

First things first,

Try to establish a network and foster relationships with people that are already active in social media!

Done? Good, now the complex part…

The truth is that in the same way that this online/digital world is practically infinite, the ways of connecting and effectively approaching the audience are endless. However, or perhaps because of that, I will focus on just three digital – and I must say extremely interesting – ways to do so.

YOUTUBE
With the rise of videos and viral campaigns, YouTube has become an important online tool to attract the market. Partly because videos are the closest to something that we’ve been using for the past 50 years now; and partly because – differently from TV – it is more interactive, and therefore one must remember this when dealing with it:

Be catchy.
Be simple.
Be interactive.

That is the whole point of YouTube. Use it in your advantage!

Have a look at French Connection’s channel YouTique…they nailed it.



TWITTER
Twitter is the new world fever. And Brian K. McDaniel, owner of the webdesign company BKM, is one of the millions who caught the fever. However, differently from many, he knew exactly how to adapt to this new channel and since he joined Twitter in 2009 he gained 15 new clients – in a 6-month period, an average 2 per month –, 20 new projects and a substantial number of job offers. All thanks to this 140-character Social Media. But how did he do it? Basically following these three steps:

1 – STOP MARKETING.
I know this may sound crazy but the truth is that bombarding your followers with self-promotion is not the way in. People tend to ignore and unfollow people/companies with this behavior and without them you wont go anywhere.

2 – START ENGAGING.
Some uses Twitter to gather information, some to share personal thoughts and interact with others and some as a platform. So how to target them all? Simple, what McDaniel does – and advice one to do – is to equally balance the content for all these followers.

“Pay attention to others. Take an interest in their lives, or at least their tweets. The more you engage as a real person with other real people, the more others will do the same with you.”

Brian K. McDaniel

3 – CONTINUE GIVING.
Again according to him, one of the main reasons why he got clients through Twitter is because someone else told of how he had helped them out. “Word of mouth is the best possible way to attract new clients, because they come to you with a foundational level of confidence in you and your services. If someone they trust has convinced them that they can trust you, you do good work and you’re a good person, you’re already well on your way to building a solid relationship.”

Find way to help people and they will recommend you to others.

GAME
This is a trick – consequently not so used – one, but games are one of the best online tools one can use to attract its audience. That because games are in its core engaging, games is loyalty driven tool, it can make money directly or indirectly and works greatly on mobile as well as web, TV, computer, etc and most importantly games is a big growing business.

Use it, explore it...engage people with it.

Anyhow, from Facebook to Twitter there are a thousand ways to effectively gain market and/or audience insight. Which ones to choose is up to you and wow, what a vast world we have there.

Do you have an example of the usage of online tool to attract the audience? Please share with me.