Category Archives: 2017

Reviewing the NZ 2017 Election Online Efforts

The now-thankfully-behind-us 2017 NZ Elections were the first elections where political advertising on the Internet could be funded by NZ electoral allocations — money provided by the Government to fund such advertising in the lead-up to general elections.

For decades, NZ public funding of electoral advertising has been legislatively restricted to paying for “broadcast” advertisements — defined in law as radio and television advertising (and the production thereof).

In a dramatic turnaround, a mere thirty years after the Internet arrived in New Zealand via CompuServe, the politicians in mid-March 2017 saw fit to allow electoral funding to encompass Internet advertising as well.

As the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Act notes, public monies may now be applied to fund radio and television and also:
all or part of the publishing costs incurred in relation to the publication of election advertisements on the Internet during the election period; and all or part of production costs, whenever incurred, in relation to election advertisements published on the Internet

Allocations to the four major parties for the 2017 Election were as follows:

NZ National Party $1.37 million
NZ Labour Party $1.10 million
NZ Green Party $530,656
NZ First $420,102

So which of these worthy bodies spent up large on the Internet?

The official answer will have to wait upon the filing of returns by the various party organisations, but we have done our own highly unofficial evaluation and have concluded that the NZ Labour Party was the organisation that devoted most effort (and money) to the World Wide Web.

YouTube
The NZ Labour Party’s Internet initiatives were most evident on YouTube, with 30 videos posted since early August 2017, cumulatively attracting 2,112,006 views. A single video, the “Let’s Do This” 15 second commercial, attracted more than half of those views (1,131,477). Given the Party’s small channel subscriber base (2,242) such viewership numbers are only possible with paid promotion.

In comparison, over the same period the NZ National Party also posted 30 videos. Their cumulative total: 78,441 views. The NZ National Party would have spent a little bit on paid promotion — one video (“Keep NZ Moving Forward”) managed 31,990 views whilst a second (the “Let’s Tax This” attack video) chalked up a total of 16,225 views across two iterations. YouTube has clearly not been a priority medium for National — their channel has no subscribers at all.

The NZ Green Party, with rather less public funds at their disposal, have devoted only limited attention to YouTube. Over the August/September period, they posted just 12 videos, attracting a total of 4,924 views.

And NZ First? There were no new videos on their channel in this election cycle.

Facebook
The NZ Labour Party was also very active on Facebook, encouraging plenty of engagement. The party’s post that attracted the most interaction: a video on 15 September entitled “Setting the record straight on National’s scaremongering about tax”, which attracted 363,976 video views, 7062 likes, 3802 shares and 1573 comments.

The NZ National Party was much less in evidence on Facebook. The party’s most engaging post, on 12 September, was a static image reporting the results of the Newshub Reid Research poll for that day (which showed National nearly 10 points ahead). That post attracted 11,279 likes, 1,690 shares and 1,827 comments.

And the NZ Green Party’s most engaging post during the lead up to the election: a video entitled “it’s time to legalise cannabis”, which attracted 182,938 views, 2416 likes, 3720 shares and 253 comments.

NZ First was rather more active on Facebook, perhaps in keeping with the demographics of its core supporters. The party’s most popular post in the lead up to the election: an image of the party’s “Had Enough?” billboard, posted on September 7, which has attracted 1391 likes, 297 shares and 164 comments.

Instagram
Finally, we took a quick look at Instagram. The NZ Labour Party had only half a dozen posts on this network over the August/September period, of which the most popular was an August 21 image of Jacinda Ardern greeting Helen Clark, which attracted 950 likes and 32 comments.

The NZ National Party was much more in evidence on Instagram, with some 90 posts over the August/September period, although all attracted low levels of engagement (which suggests organic reach rather than paid promotion). The most popular National post: a photo posted on 16 August of Bill English alongside the freshly-knighted Sir John Key, which attracted 269 likes and 5 comments.

The NZ Green Party was also very active on Instagram, as you might perhaps expect given their target audience. Their most engaging post: a video uploaded on September 8 which featured party leader James Shaw speaking to university students about climate change, which attracted 1050 views and two comments.

NZ First had a low-key presence on Instagram, posting around a dozen images over the August/September period to the “winstonpetersnzfirst” account. Most popular post: Winston Peters paying a visit to his old school, Whananaki School, on September 7 (84 likes, 5 comments).

In Summary
This certainly wasn’t the first election to be contested with the assistance of social media, but it was the first where Internet advertising was publicly funded. In our view, only the NZ Labour Party really devoted significant resource to the medium this time round. We expect to see rather more effort spent online in the future.

Revised & Updated: Social Media Marketing online training course

We’ve just revised and updated our Social Media Marketing online training course for 2018. Here are the details:

The Principles & Practice of Social Media Marketing

Now that social media is the place where most Kiwis spend a large amount of time online, there is a very real need for NZ businesses to learn how to make more effective use of Social Media Marketing to reach existing and prospective customers.

Here are a few of the reasons why NZ businesses need to know more about Social Media Marketing:

Two out of three Kiwi Internet users visit social network sites every day. If you’re not active in their favourite forum, will they think of you when they decide to purchase the types of goods or services that you sell?
Through those sites, they talk about what they need to buy and they ask their friends for recommendations. Are you listening?
They follow brands and organisations on the social networks, so that they can be in the know about what’s new, what’s hot and what special deals are available. If they care enough about your brand to follow you on Facebook or Instagram or the like, what are you doing for them?
They share stuff with their friends — the good, the bad and the ugly. If you’re being talked about and you don’t know what is being said about you and your products & services (and customer service successes and failures) in social media, you won’t have a chance to respond and fix any problems before they go toxic.

To help meet the needs of Kiwi businesses, we have revised and updated our well-established (since 2010) online training course which covers both the principles and practices of Social Media Marketing in New Zealand.

This is a thirteen-part online training course providing a comprehensive introduction to Social Media Marketing, from the Basics to comprehensive information on the leading social media networks relevant to New Zealand marketers.

This online training course is conducted on a web-based e-learning software platform, enabling course participants to proceed at their own pace, accessing materials online. This particular online training course provides content in a variety of multimedia forms, including videos, slideshows, flash-based presentations and PDF files. No special software is required to participate.

Course lessons will be provided in thirteen parts, for participants to access in accordance with their own timetables. Interaction with the course tutor is enabled through the platform software tools (with telephone backup if required).

Feedback from previous Social Media Marketing online training course Participants

“this was the best professional development course I have done in many years” – Mark R, senior Agency Exec responsible for social media
“thought the information within was outstanding” – Ed P, General Manager
“What I loved was that I started with a fairly rudimentary understanding of social media but have learned a lot – including where to find more information as I need it.” – Fiona W, Marketing Manager
“I found it relevant, informative, topical, insightful and a bloody good read. It’s never evangelical, too techy, patronising, assumes that you know too much or too little about digital and has a warm sense of humour in the communication throughout which helped faciliate the learning process for me.” — Adrienne B, new media senior executive
“Thanks for pointing me in the direction of this course! It’s been extremely enlightening” — Shayne P, design agency director
“Rapt with what I have seen of the course” — Julia R, fashion editor
“I’m really enjoying the course – learning a lot – and I know the two friends I persuaded to join us are also loving it.” — Lavinia C, designer
“Am thoroughly enjoying the content!” – Kara B, magazine co-ordinator
“I completed the first lesson today and found it really interesting and love the interaction already! I am so looking forward to the second lesson already …” — Annette B, public relations director
“I was already engaging with social media and have been doing so for about 6 years or so. Remembering the days when all of my friends were on Bebo and MySpace and seeing how this has now shifted so dramatically. But, did I know how to use social media in a marketing and business sense? No, I simply did not. This course was a great way to show me how to do that.” — Sheryl K, online marketer

COURSE CREATION AND TUTORING
This course has been created and is tutored by Michael Carney.

WHO SHOULD TAKE THE COURSE
Any Business Owner, Marketing, Advertising, PR or Communications professional who, while they may have a fair knowledge of what social media options are out there, don’t know how to use them effectively (and have a perfectly reasonable fear of doing the wrong thing in a very public arena).

WHAT YOU SHOULD LEARN AS A RESULT OF THE COURSE:

The principles of effective marketing in social media
Which social networks are strongest in New Zealand, who uses them and what works best on each network
What social media can do for your (or your clients’) business
The best tools and techniques for monitoring social networks
How to really understand and engage with the consumer
How to create relevant, informative, killer content for your social media programme
How to define and measure meaningful numbers to determine the success (or otherwise) of your social media activities
Answering those questions that (if you’re not prepared) could kill your career
How to watch for, and adapt to, the Next Big Thing in Social Media (whatever that is)

COURSE CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION:
WHY SOCIAL MEDIA SILENCE IS DEADLY

In which we put Social Media in context in the modern world; discuss the reality that the medium is a runaway success (regardless of whether marketers choose to participate or not); deal with marketers’ biggest fears about the medium; and discuss the key principles of effective marketing in social media.

LESSON ONE: THE BASICS
I’VE JUST ARRIVED FROM OUTER SPACE. TELL ME ABOUT THESE “SOCIAL NETWORKS”.

For those a little fuzzy on the basics: we introduce the concept of social networks; talk about the main players; show you how to check out and claim your digital identity at key online sites and services; and (if you’re not already there) invite you to sign yourself up to the primary social sites.

Lesson Two: Facebook

In Lesson Two, we examine what really works on Facebook for NZ businesses. We spell out the characteristics of successful Facebook posts and identify 20 different posting formats that get noticed and get shared.

We look at:

What you should talk about most of the time on Facebook (hint: it’s not endlessly flogging the products that you sell)
The 10 most important factors that consumers look for when deciding whether or not to buy from you (and how you can improve each aspect)
The four most important services you can provide that will have consumers recommending you to their friends
What you need to know about the new Facebook Marketplace (before it gets swamped)
What Facebook Remarketing is all about (and why it can almost miraculously improve your online business)

Then we review the types of posts worth sharing, accompanied by a wide range of examples, including:

Plenty of stories from local and international businesses who are using Facebook effectively
The hotel chain that has twice as many people talking about it as the chain has followers
The radio station that has truly mastered the art of Facebook
Examples of posts that really tug at the heartstrings
The Facebook page that had 247,756 Facebook likes but managed to get 775,600 people talking and 160,000 people sharing
Practical posts that get people sharing

And many many more.

Lesson Three: Online Video

Video is central to Facebook’s vision for the future of the platform. In 2014 CEO Mark Zuckerberg was quoted as saying “In five years most of Facebook will be video”. we’re not quite there yet, but 2019 isn’t very far away at all — and already online video is becoming dominant.

One of the reasons why video is so important for business: after watching a video, 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online.

In this lesson, we discuss exactly what you need to know about online video (especially on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube), including:

How much more likely people are to watch live video (compared to video which is not live)
The dramatically-increased performance of Facebook video posts compared with photo posts
The perceived benefits (and barriers) of live-streaming video and how live streaming is currently being used by businesses
Success secrets of online video – including the exploding watermelon video that reached more than 10 million people

Along the way, we explore:

11 steps to creating an effective video content strategy
Essential tips and techniques from the YouTube Creator Playbook
Video marketing tips from the experts
30 practical tips to help you create the best live-streamed videos
The surprising legal ramifications of live content streaming (what you don’t know could cost you bigtime)

Lesson Four: Instagram

Despite the newfound popularity of social video, images continue to be a vital part of the Social Web. In Lesson Four, find out what you need to know about Instagram, including:

What we know about Kiwi Instagram users
How leading brands are winning with this image-based network
How to use Instagram to its full potential
Smart visual content strategies
What you should include in your Instagram profile
Creative ideas for using Instagram for marketing
The importance of hashtags (but how NOT to overuse them)
Using Instagram for instant feedback (for better or for worse)
How often you should post to Instagram (and what NOT to post)
The vital intelligence you can gain, just by tracking Instagram usage
Five tips for amazing visual content

Lesson Five: Social Media Advertising

As the social networks limit organic reach — the numbers of your followers who might see your social media posts just because they follow your page — organisations have turned to advertising to communicate their messages. In this lesson we examine how to make the most of your advertising options across various social media networks — and how to really take advantage of the enhanced targeting opportunities that social media provides.

We also explore:

how to take best advantage of Carousel Ads, Lead Ads and other Facebook and Instagram options
Facebook’s Canvas, full-screen mobile ad experience
using Calls to Action more effectively
how leading advertisers are using social media
using your existing customer and prospect lists to develop custom audiences

Lesson Six: Pinterest

If your target audience is female, you really should include Pinterest as one of your social media marketing tools. Here’s how Pinterest describes itself:

Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard. Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

In this lesson, we explore:

The latest local and international statistics
How marketers are using Pinterest
Pinterest’s Business Pages
Pinterest case studies, best practices and inspirational guides
What you simply must know about Pinterest’s Secret Boards
how you can make the most of rich pins on Pinterest

Lesson Seven: Google Plus

Google Plus is strategically important, even though it really isn’t much of a social network (and has, not unreasonably, been described as a ghost town). Still, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it. In this lesson, we cover:

Google Plus stats and demographics
Why Google Plus is so important for SEO — and for your online credibility
The implications of Google blending Google Plus with Google Shopping
Why Google Plus matters more than ever for local businesses
The controversial Google Plus sharing policies

Lesson Eight: LinkedIn

It’s the world’s leading network for business professionals — and if you don’t know how to use LinkedIn effectively, to conduct research, get introduced to warm prospects and to close sales, you could be leaving a lot of potential B2B revenue on the table. In this lesson, we share the latest developments and strategies for LinkedIn, including:

the marketing implications of Microsoft’s US$26.2 Billion purchase of LinkedIn
the importance of LinkedIn social selling
the three simple secrets of effective LinkedIn prospecting
what you need to know to close more sales through LinkedIn
five ways in which you (if you’re not careful) can ruin your LinkedIn profile
getting the most out of LinkedIn’s sponsored content options
why your organisation should have LinkedIn guidelines for employees

Plus Action Steps for each section.

Lesson Nine: Community Management and Influencer Marketing

Great! You have an enthusiastic following on your chosen social network. But how do you engage effectively with these followers? And how do you reach out to influencers — those who have significant communities of their own?

In this lesson we explore strategies, techniques and best practice, including:

taking full advantage of Facebook Groups
Influencer marketing strategies that work
the vital importance of customer service through social media
tips and wisdom from leading community managers
foibles and failures to avoid
identifying and connecting with Kiwi influencers

Lesson Ten: Twitter

Twitter has come under fire recently, with several potential buyers of the struggling social network operator seemingly turning up their noses and declining to bid. Even so, Twitter can still be a powerful marketing medium if you use it correctly.

In Lesson Ten, we bring you up to speed with Twitter, including:

what Twitter includes (and no longer includes) in its 140-character message limit
7 tips for maximizing Twitter as a marketing and engagement tool
the best brands on Twitter (and why they’re so successful)
Twitter’s new people tagging and multiple photo sharing options
Twitter tools that will boost your productivity
Twitter and video: what you need to know

Lesson Eleven: Tools & Tips

Next, we take a look at the latest tools that will help you manage your social media needs effectively.

In this lesson, you’ll learn:

what you can and should measure as you use social media to market your products and services
the top tools recommended by leading social media experts
smart strategies for best engagement with your followers
new social media trends to watch for

Lesson Twelve: Monitoring

DON’T SAY A THING. JUST LISTEN FIRST (EVEN FOR JUST 10 MINUTES A DAY), THEN THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE HEARING. MAYBE THEN YOU CAN TALK.

We know you want to get your teeth into Social Media fast, but you need to start by just listening. And yes, you can do it for just ten minutes a day (if you’re very focussed). In this lesson, we show you where and how to listen (and where to find the mostly-free tools to do so); what to listen for; who to listen to (identifying opinion leaders); and we talk about how things can go wrong and how to react to problems when they arise. In this lesson, we also cover NZ’s Harmful Digital Communications Act and why it’s so essential to monitor your social media properties on a daily basis. Your homework will involve listening, listening, listening.

Lesson Thirteen: Metrics & ROI

OVERCOMING THOSE QUESTIONS THAT KILL MARKETING CAREERS

Social Media in its early stages avoided those awkward issues about Return on Investment and whether it really delivered value for the time and money involved. Now times are tougher, the budgets are tighter and CFOs are asking the hard questions. In this lessons we look at the metrics that are nice to have but more importantly at the ones that matter. We also identify strategies you can follow to develop useful, meaningful measures that satisfy the C-suite. You can guess what your homework is.

CONCLUSION:
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE, AND WHO’S DRIVING?

Social Media (it seemed) arrived faster than a speeding bullet. What’s next for the medium, how do you tell, and what can you do to prepare? We look at the trends and offer some advice.

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TIMING

The next course begins on Monday 30 December, 2019.

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INVESTMENT

This thirteen-part online training course is available for $697. However we offer an Early Bird Discount of $100 — pay just $597 for bookings received by Monday 23 December, 2019.

Bookings are confirmed on receipt of payment, which can be by bank deposit or credit card. We can raise an invoice in advance if you need it.

To reserve your place in this course, please pay by credit card through PayPal by clicking here:

If you would prefer to pay by bank deposit, or require an invoice, please send an email to [email protected] with your requirements.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

You’ll receive our emailed confirmation of your booking. Then on the first day of the course we’ll follow up with details of your Login and Password, along with an Enrolment Key for the Social Media Marketing online training course.

If you have any questions, or would like more information, please email us at [email protected]

Facebook Hits 2 Billion Members

Facebook just hit another major milestone – 2 billion members – less than five years after reaching 1 billion in October 2012.

In New Zealand, we contribute just 3.1 million of those members — not bad in the context of our population size, but a mere drop in the social network ocean.

So — have you mastered Facebook Marketing, now that the social giant’s presence is so significant and influential?

If not, check out our online training courses:

The Complete Facebook Marketing course: ratecard value $597, with Early Bird Discount $497

Facebook Accelerator course: ratecard value $497, with Early Bird Discount $397

Principles & Practice of Social Media Marketing course: ratecard value $697, with Early Bird Discount $597

Click on any of the links for more details about each course and to book.

The Challenge For Kiwi Marketers

Today’s marketers clearly have a problem. And it’s one that’s facing businesses all around the world. The old marketing solutions simply aren’t enough anymore. Sure, consumers still watch TV, listen to the radio and read newspapers and magazines — but not as much, not as often, and certainly not with their full attention on the advertising messages that populate those spaces.

Most Kiwis, according to the World Internet Project NZ (2015), use the Internet:

All this connectivity comes at a price, of course. However, thankfully, more than half of us are now on an Internet plan that includes unlimited data.

We have the access — and we’re making heavy use of it. Today’s consumers are spending more and more time in the digital space.

Roy Morgan Research reveals that we now spend almost half of our media consumption time online …

… and the biannual World Internet Project NZ data reveals that two-thirds of us (in this instance, “us” means Kiwi Internet users) visit social media networks at least daily.

In other words, where once the best place for marketers to find Kiwis in large numbers watching TV, listening to radio or reading newspapers or magazines, nowadays online in general (and social media in particular) is where we mostly choose to spend our time.

So how many of us can be found hanging out on Social Media networks in a typical month?

Nielsen New Zealand to the rescue:

That’s a whole lot of cat pictures!

Another study, by New Zealand On Air, reveals that there’s still quite a digital divide between Kiwis Under 40 and older generations:

Source: NZOnAir Audience Report 2016

The most notable intergenerational differences?

If you’re under 40, you’re:

significantly more likely to be watching online video (typically via YouTube and Facebook) than traditional (linear) TV
reading newspapers (whether in print or online) at around half the numbers of your older counterparts
five times as likely to listen to music online through applications like Spotify
four times as likely to subscribe to video on demand offerings such as Netflix, Lightbox or Neon

Oh, and if you’re Under 55, you’re virtually guaranteed to have a smartphone …

All that consumer attention switching to digital devices rather explains why NZ advertisers are following suit, with the inevitable result that Digital Advertising now attracts more dollars than any other New Zealand medium.

So if you’re one of those 47% of small businesses who still aren’t online (according to a recent MYOB “State of the Digital Nation” Special Report), or if you consider that you have only a limited understanding of Digital Marketing and how you can promote your business through digital activities, then we recommend you check out our NZ Digital Marketing 101 online training course.

NZ Digital Marketing 101 online training course

We’ve drawn on our (gulp!) 30 years of online experience to introduce our first ongoing course, DIGITAL MARKETING 101, to take participants from a standing start (knowing very little about Digital Marketing) through to more advanced topics building on earlier lessons.

DIGITAL MARKETING 101 runs weekly across six months, and covers:

Introduction to digital marketing
The basics of Digital Marketing and what you need to know to promote your organisation and your brand online. In this lesson, we cover Digital Marketing Options available in the NZ marketplace and discuss which are the most important (based on your target market and your brand objectives).
Developing a web presence
In Lesson Two we discuss the various ways in which you can build your presence online (we assume that, like most NZ businesses, you’re operating on a shoestring so mostly we talk about free or low-cost options). We also look at the key online elements you should claim to ensure that you own your brand identity online.
Claiming your Google My Business page
In Lesson Three we cover the strategic importance of your Google My Business page — it’s how you tell Google your key information — and exactly what you need to do to claim that page.
Understanding the customer journey
The customer journey (also Customer Journey Experience, Customer Engagement Cycle) refers to the stages customers travel through in their relationship with a specific brand (as defined by DJS Research). In this lesson, we step you through what you need to know to map out your brand’s customer journey and market accordingly.
Creating a digital marketing calendar
As you market online, you’ll quickly realise that you constantly need to create fresh content, to feed your web pages, your emails, your social media posts, press releases and other online information — Google loves fresh and so do your customers. But what can you talk about (you can’t only talk about yourself, as you’ll soon discover). In this lesson, we talk about how to create a digital marketing calendar (and what to talk about).
Secrets of effective outsourcing
If you don’t already have existing arrangements with marketing suppliers, don’t miss Lesson Six. In this lesson, we talk about where you can turn for effective (and cost-efficient) marketing assistance, how to choose reliable suppliers and exactly what you should outsource to propel your business forward.
Mastering email marketing
It’s the oldest digital marketing tool of all, but it’s still the most effective for most target audiences. In this lesson we talk about email marketing strategies and best practices, and the tools you should use to promote your business as effectively as possible through email.
Lead generation principles
Generally speaking, as a business marketing online, you either want online buyers, online followers or online leads (those prospects who will convert into buyers later). In this lesson, we listen to highly-experienced digital marketers and draw on their collective wisdom to understand the best ways to generate leads (and turn them into buyers, consistently and efficiently).
Search engine optimisation (SEO)
Turns out that there’s quite a science to being found online (and an industry has grown up around the challenges of what’s now known as Search Engine Optimisation). In essence, if you want your prospects to find your web pages, those pages need to contain content that prospects are looking for. In Lesson Nine, we explore the How, What, When, Where & Why of SEO.
Pay per click search advertising
Not every page can be Number One on Google. So if you want to hit the top of the search engine rankings (especially for the most popular search phrases), sometimes you have to pay. In this lesson, we talk in detail about AdWords and other Pay Per Click advertising tools.
Social media marketing explained
Once upon a time — up until about 2012 — if you had a Facebook page and posted content to that page, all of your followers would see it. Sorry, not any more. In this lesson we explore exactly what you need to do to build an effective presence in social media.
Creating effective Facebook posts
What really works on Facebook these days? We spell out the characteristics of successful Facebook posts and identify 20 different posting formats that get noticed and get shared. Then we review the types of posts worth sharing, accompanied by a wide range of examples.
Conversion optimisation
In Lesson Eight, we talked about Lead Generation. In this lesson, we focus on what you need to do to convert those leads into sales. Every little improvement turns into extra dollars, so it’s definitely worth the effort optimising your conversion rates.
What you need to know about Content Marketing
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action. It’s particularly relevant to B2B marketers, but it’s important for B2C as well. In this lesson we explore the principles of content marketing, including Creation, Curation and Content Pillars.
Finding Kiwi influencers to promote your products
Influencer Marketing has come from nowhere to become a hot buzzword these days, as more and more businesses turn to “influencers” — those who have already developed their own followers, especially in social media — and sponsor posts to promote their products. In this lesson, we explore the Dos & Don’ts of Influencer Marketing, and how to find Kiwi Influencers.
What you need to know when writing for the web
Writing online copy has become more important than ever — but there are processes to follow, and structures and formats that are forced on us by the various digital media channels. This lesson covers the key facts that you need to know when writing for the web, including the seven deadly sins you need to avoid.
Mastering Visual Marketing
Images and visual concepts are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text, according to 3M Corporation research. Add in our seven-second attention span (shorter than goldfish now) and it’s quickly obvious why visual marketing has become so important online. In this lesson, we explore how you can use visuals to multiply the effectiveness of your online content (and free and low-cost tools you can use).
The basics of video marketing
Online Video is no longer an “up-and-coming” marketing tactic — it’s here, and it’s a powerful way to communicate your brand story, explain your value proposition, and build relationships with your customers and prospects. This lesson introduces you to the basic principles and explores some of the available tools.
Moving to Mobile First
In his book “The Third Screen“, Chuck Martin points out that “the world gone mobile is not a simple story of technological change, it is a story of fundamental shifts in consumer behaviour that are forever changing the practice of marketing and how you should view its application with your business”. In this lesson, we talk about why “Mobile First” — ensuring that your content looks good on mobile devices, even before you see how it looks on a desktop device — is now essential.
The principles of selling online
More than half of New Zealand (58%) now buys products online! Seven out of ten Kiwi internet users aged 25-44 purchase online — and 94% of NZ web users who research products online (even if they eventually buy the products offline). In this lesson, we introduce you to the principles and practices of effective ecommerce.
Mastering Google Analytics
It’s free, and it’s packed full with information that can transform your digital marketing efforts. We’re talking Google Analytics, and a great many online marketers use the free Analytics service to track the performance of their digital marketing. In this lesson, you’ll discover exactly what you can learn from Google Analytics and how to master it (even if you hate maths and stats).
Considering native advertising
The technology known as Adblocking can cause havoc for digital marketers, with ads stripped from web pages before users can see them. Native advertising — ads that mimic the editorial format of the pages on which they appear — is one of the more powerful ways to combat Adblocking. Of course, it’s not new. In the old days, we would have called it Advertorial. But these days it’s more prevalent, and more valuable, than ever.
Marketing through messaging apps
Messaging Apps, also known as Dark Social, have gone from strength to strength in recent years, with Facebook’s own Messenger and WhatsApp leading the way. In this lesson, we explore Messaging Apps and tell you what you need to know to use them effectively for marketing purposes.
The new importance of consumer reviews
The customer has gone from being always right to now always having an opinion — and, through social media and specialist sites such as TripAdvisor, Yelp and even Trade Me, now having a direct and powerful influence on their peers. Look no further than Amazon.com, where one-star and two-star reviews can quickly kill a product. In this lesson, we look at customer input, how you should monitor it and what you can do about negative ratings.
When to use marketing automation
Marketing Automation — software tools designed to handle repetitive tasks such as emails and web actions — can improve your efficiency and even (if used effectively) enable you to take actions that would otherwise not be possible. In this lesson, we explore the capabilities of marketing automation platforms and consider if and how you might use them in your business.
Key new marketing technologies
In this lesson, we peek into the digital marketing technologies of today and tomorrow, including such topics as programmatic advertising, voice search, chatbots & Artificial Intelligence. The digital tools are getting smarter and smarter, and you need to keep track of what’s possible (and what’s inevitable).

Please note: all materials are online and can be accessed anytime 24/7, so you don’t have to make yourself available at a specific time to take this course.

At the end of DIGITAL MARKETING 101, you’ll be given the opportunity to move on to DIGITAL MARKETING 201, which covers even more advanced topics.

WHO SHOULD TAKE THIS COURSE

Any NZ marketer or business owner who needs to understand and master Digital Marketing.

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WHAT CUSTOMERS ARE SAYING ABOUT OUR COURSES

Here’s a sampling of the feedback we’ve received from those who’ve taken our courses:

Thanks for an informative and interesting [Facebook Accelerator] course. Your presentation held a good balance of theoretical and practical information and was clear and simple enough for a non IT Facebook novice like me to follow. There are many ideas that I have gained that I will attempt to incorporate in the overall marketing plan my team is currently developing for our brand. Facebook can offer so much more than I thought as a medium for communicating with our current and prospective customers. Julie D

I found this course fantastic, i started off knowing very little about facebook (just how to run my own personal page) to now having a thorough understanding of ALL the things you can (and there is a lot). The course format was great and allowed knowledge to be built up over time. Course length was great and this will definetly be something i come back to constantly as we develop our facebook pages more within my company. Aleisha H

I have really enjoyed the course and the way it was structured. It was informative and interesting – liked the way you incorporated slide-shows, video, statistics and different forms of media to provide information. Lisa C

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COURSE CREATION AND TUTORING
This course has been created and is tutored by Michael Carney.

Michael is a veteran marketer with an insatiable passion for whatever’s new, different, exciting or interesting in the world of communications (and especially in the digital space). Michael has been in the marketing game since 1971, online since 1987 — and can be variously described as a digital marketing trainer, adman, media director, strategist, researcher, copywriter, consultant, playwright and dad.

He is probably best known for his many years as Media Director of a number of leading NZ advertising agencies, including MDA Mackay King (now Saatchi & Saatchi) and HKM Rialto (since merged with Colenso BBDO). More recently he worked in strategic roles with MediaCom New Zealand and Grey Worldwide and was Strategic Planning Director for the Media Counsel before setting up Netmarketing Courses.

Michael is also the author of “Trade Me Success Secrets: How To Buy and Sell Effectively on NZ’s Favourite Auction Site”, now in its second edition.

Michael was chairman of the NZ Marketing Association’s Network of Digital Marketers from 2009 until March 2013.

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TIMING

This course begins on Wednesday 01 January, 2020.

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INVESTMENT

This ongoing online training course is available for $397 per month (and you can cancel at any point). However we offer an EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT of $100 per month — pay just $297 per month for bookings received by the end of Wednesday 25 December, 2019.

Bookings are confirmed on receipt of payment. We can raise an invoice in advance if you need it.

To reserve your place in this course, please pay by credit card through PayPal by clicking here:

Your credit card will be billed monthly by PayPal for six months.

If you require an invoice, please send an email to [email protected] with your requirements.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

If you have any questions, or would like more information, please email us at [email protected]

7 Facebook Advertising Tips for 2017

Facebook advertising continues to evolve, so it’s important to keep track of the latest trends and developments.

If you’re planning to advertise on Facebook this year, here are seven key considerations:

1 Make it Video

According to statistics quoted by Social Media Today, video on Facebook accounts for just 0.9% of all posts but 7.15% of all reach on the network. And that number is growing.

The popularity of video is driven by a number of factors, including:

Facebook’s algorithmic encouragement of video posts (Facebook is more likely to show your followers video content)
the spread of unlimited broadband (more than half of Kiwi households are now on unlimited data plans), so we now have the capacity for lots of video content
generational preferences (Gen Y and Gen Z prefer pictures and video to text)
limited attention spans, now less than a goldfish
scroll speeds on mobile — as we swipe through post after post on Facebook, moving pictures are far more likely to catch our eyes

In other words: if you can, go video, your posts are far more likely to be effective.

PS Check out our Online Video Marketing course if you need help with the medium

2 Use High Contrast Images

The AdEspresso blog suggests:

Ad images are the first touching point between people and your offer. And there’s a lot at stake. It’s either love at first sight or a sorry attempt to gain potential buyers’ attention. If your ad image catches people’s attention, they’ll read through your ad copy as well. It is incredibly important that your ad visuals manage to catch attention in crowded news feeds.

One of the best pieces of advice about Facebook ad design that I’ve ever heard is this: Use a high level of contrast.

Utilize contrasting colors and bold fonts, mix positive and negative space, and spice up your ad with complementary colors.

A high-contrast example:

3 Use an image of a smiling woman

Yes, apparently, according to Kim Garst:

This little trick has proven itself again and again; images of happy, smiling women lead to the highest click-through rates. Facebook also suggests showing people using your products rather than just images of your products:

“Remember that your ad may show in someone’s News Feed, and it should feel like it belongs there. Your image is competing for people’s attention with stories from their friends and family.”

Here’s an advertisement that follows Kim’s advice:

Our own view: if she’s relevant to your product and your target audience, sure, use a smiling woman in your advertisement. Otherwise, don’t.

4 Choose Your Target Location Carefully

Moz warns us to proceed with care when choosing a target location on Facebook:

Let’s say you want to target people who live in Wellington. You might type “Wellington” into the Locations box, leave it at the default 40-kilometre radius, and keep moving.

But, if you did that, you might miss the small drop down menu above the map that says “Everyone in this location.”

See it now? Well, if you click on that drop down, you’ll find out that Facebook’s Locations targeting gets way more granular:

That’s right — not only can you target actual residents whose home is in the selected area, but you can target people currently visiting Wellington who live more than 100 miles away, and people recently in Wellington.

As an example, a 40-kilometre radius for Wellington shows 310,000 audience members for “Everyone in this location,” but only 290,000 audience members for “People who live in this location.”

In other words, 20,000 people, 6% of the default audience, are irrelevant if you’re only trying to reach Wellington residents — which means you could have been wasting at least 6% of your ad budget.

5 Optimise your Ad Specifications

The ideal Facebook Advertisement specifications in 2017, for a single-image ad, according to Buffer, are:

Text: 90 characters
Image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels

If the post contains a link to a website, ideal link specifications are:

Link Headline: 25 characters
Link Description: 30 characters

The recommended image size ensures that your image always looks high-quality. The recommended text length is how many characters of advert copy could be displayed on smaller screens (the vast majority of your audience will see your Facebook ads on mobile devices).

Your image should include a minimal amount of text, ideally less than 20%, otherwise Facebook will restrict delivery.

6 Add a call-to-action button

These days, Facebook enables you to include a call-to-action button as part of your advertisement.

It’s a familiar sight to Facebook users, and they are now well conditioned to clicking such buttons, so make sure you take advantage of the option.

You have ten different possibilities:

Choose the one that is right for you.

7 Track your ads to see which are the most effective

As Kim Garst notes:

There is nothing more frustrating than paying for ads and then having no idea if they are working. Conversion tracking solves this problem by allowing you to know exactly which ads led to conversions.

For more on this, see Facebook’s help article on Conversion Tracking and Optimization.

LEARN MORE

There are, of course, plenty of other tips that we offer to help guide your Facebook activities and 2017 beyond. We recommend that you check out our Complete Facebook Marketing course (for those new to Facebook marketing) or our Facebook Accelerator course (for more experienced Facebook marketers).

How to Get Found on Google in 2017

Let’s face it — getting found in the search engines in 2017 feels like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. Just when you think you’ve identified an approach that will satisfy the great algorithmic idols, along comes another quaintly-named but terrifyingly-lethal update that stamps out all your gains.

Now, however, assistance comes from a highly unexpected source: the Gplex itself. In an article released a few days ago, Google tackles the issue of snippets — the words underneath your link in search results that describe your webpage — and recommends some best practices.

Before buying a book, people like to get a snapshot of how they’re about to spend a few hours reading. They’ll take a look at the synopsis, the preface, or even the prologue just to get a sense about whether they’ll like the book.

Search result snippets are much the same; they help people decide whether or not it makes sense to invest the time reading the page the snippet belongs to.

The more descriptive and relevant a search result snippet is, the more likely that people will click through and be satisfied with the page they land on. Historically, snippets came from 3 places:

1 The content of the page
2 The meta description
3 DMOZ listings

The content of the page is an obvious choice for result snippets, and the content that can be extracted is often the most relevant to people’s queries. However, there are times when the content itself isn’t the best source for a snippet. For instance, when someone searches for a publishing company for their book, the relevant homepages in the result set may contain only a few images describing the businesses and a logo, and maybe some links, none of which are particularly useful for a snippet.

The logical fallback in cases when the content of a page doesn’t have much textual content for a search result snippet is the meta description. This should be short blurbs that describe accurately and precisely the content in a few words [think Executive Summaries for each page].

Finally, when a page doesn’t have much textual content for snippet generation and the meta description is missing, unrelated to the page, or low quality, our fallback was DMOZ, also known as The Open Directory Project. With DMOZ now closed, we’ve stopped using its listings for snippeting, so it’s a lot more important that webmasters provide good meta descriptions, if adding more content to the page is not an option.

What makes a good meta description?
Good meta descriptions are short blurbs that describe accurately the content of the page. They are like a pitch that convince the user that the page is exactly what they’re looking for. For more tips, we have a handy help center article on the topic. Remember to make sure that both your desktop and your mobile pages include both a title and a meta description.

What are the most common problems with meta descriptions?
Because meta descriptions are usually visible only to search engines and other software, webmasters sometimes forget about them, leaving them completely empty. It’s also common, for the same reason, that the same meta description is used across multiple (and sometimes many) pages. On the flip side, it’s also relatively common that the description is completely off-topic, low quality, or outright spammy. These issues tarnish our users’ search experience, so we prefer to ignore such meta descriptions.

Is there a character limit for meta descriptions?
There’s no limit on how long a meta description can be, but the search result snippets are truncated as needed, typically to fit the device width.

Another Google article provides even more specific advice:

You can help improve the quality of the snippet displayed for your pages by following the general guidelines below.

The description attribute within the <meta> tag is a good way to provide a concise, human-readable summary of each page’s content. Google will sometimes use the meta description of a page in search results snippets, if we think it gives users a more accurate description than would be possible purely from the on-page content. Accurate meta descriptions can help improve your clickthrough; here are some guidelines for properly using the meta description.

Make sure that every page on your site has a meta description. The HTML suggestions page in Search Console lists pages where Google has detected missing or problematic meta descriptions.

Differentiate the descriptions for different pages. Identical or similar descriptions on every page of a site aren’t helpful when individual pages appear in the web results. In these cases we’re less likely to display the boilerplate text. Wherever possible, create descriptions that accurately describe the specific page. Use site-level descriptions on the main home page or other aggregation pages, and use page-level descriptions everywhere else.

If you don’t have time to create a description for every single page, try to prioritize your content: At the very least, create a description for the critical URLs like your home page and popular pages.

Include clearly tagged facts in the description. The meta description doesn’t just have to be in sentence format; it’s also a great place to include structured data about the page. For example, news or blog postings can list the author, date of publication, or byline information. This can give potential visitors very relevant information that might not be displayed in the snippet otherwise.

Similarly, product pages might have the key bits of information—price, age, manufacturer—scattered throughout a page. A good meta description can bring all this data together. For example, the following meta description provides detailed information about a book.

<meta name=”Description” content=”Author: A.N. Author,
Illustrator: P. Picture, Category: Books, Price: $17.99,
Length: 784 pages”>

In this example, information is clearly tagged and separated.

Programmatically generate descriptions. For some sites, like news media sources, generating an accurate and unique description for each page is easy: since each article is hand-written, it takes minimal effort to also add a one-sentence description.

For larger database-driven sites, like product aggregators, hand-written descriptions can be impossible. In the latter case, however, programmatic generation of the descriptions can be appropriate and are encouraged. Good descriptions are human-readable and diverse, as we talked about in the first point above. The page-specific data we mentioned in the second point is a good candidate for programmatic generation.

Keep in mind that meta descriptions comprised of long strings of keywords don’t give users a clear idea of the page’s content, and are less likely to be displayed in place of a regular snippet.

Use quality descriptions. Finally, make sure your descriptions are truly descriptive. Because the meta descriptions aren’t displayed in the pages the user sees, it’s easy to let this content slide.

High-quality descriptions can be displayed in Google’s search results, and can go a long way to improving the quality and quantity of your search traffic.

Oh, and here’s a (dated but still mostly relevant) video explaining even further:

Work your way through as many of the above steps as possible. You’ll be amazed how well it improves your search results.

Writing for the Web – new online training course

It has been apparent for some time that effective writing has become an absolutely core competency when communicating online. We’ve moved away from the pseudo-words beloved of text messaging and are now at a stage where true wordcraft is vital to communication.

Not just any writing, however. Different media require different approaches. The headline that might have looked wonderful in the newspaper probably won’t fit within the constraints of Facebook or Instagram character counts.

And the few seconds that represent the average time-on-site for typical web browsers means that we simply don’t have the luxury of indulging in long paragraphs.

Yes, writing for the web requires a whole different approach — and you can either learn that the hard way, by discovering it for yourself, or learn from us.

A couple of years ago, in response to this need, we developed a popular half day workshop to take marketers through the requirements of writing for the web.

Now, in response to demand from New Zealand businesses, we have repurposed that workshop as a full-blown online training course, complete with content that’s been refreshed and updated to reflect today’s needs.

Writing for the Web – online training course

Here’s what the course covers:

Introduction

Why writing for the web requires different approaches to writing for traditional media (and how this course takes you through the key elements you need to know).

Lesson One: Understanding the Essentials

1. WHO
Who are You Writing To? Before you create a single sentence, you need to understand your target consumers — otherwise your words may be wasted.

In this part of Lesson One, we cover:

Profiling your ideal customers
Determining their motivations and attitudes
Reviewing their media habits
Understanding their preferred communications formats
Determining their needs & wants
Identifying their concerns, goals & challenges
Shaping your solutions accordingly

2. WHAT
What are you writing about? Take a closer look at your self and your organisation, so that your communications reflect exactly who you are. We review:

Understanding your brand personality
Staying true to your brand values
The importance of authenticity and credibility

3. WHERE
Where should you promote your products and services? Not all digital media are alike. For every Trade Me that has more than 700,000 visitors a day, there are a million websites that have 1 visitor or less. Don’t waste your time putting your content where no-one will see it. Instead, take a look at this section of the course, where we discuss:

Selecting the most appropriate digital media vehicles
Reviewing the performance of your own digital assets
Evaluating traditional media website offerings
Determining the most appropriate social media options

4. WHEN
When are consumers most likely to be exposed to your messages? With consumers bombarded by messages all day every day, you need to know exactly when your followers are online and most likely to see what you’ve written.

In this section, we show you:

What you should know about your email open rates, by day and by time
How to identify when your Facebook followers are online
How to determine the most appropriate times to use messaging apps

5. HOW
What format(s) should you use for your messages? Not every format is equally popular. We explore which formats are right for your followers, and identify:

Average shares by content type
The most popular content formats
the importance of pictures
The runaway popularity of video

Lesson Two: The Content Formula

What should you talk about online? Too many organisations are too busy talking about themselves to even notice that their followers just aren’t bothering with them anymore.

In Lesson Two, we share:

The content sweet spot
The seven attributes of effective content
Google’s Zero Moment of Truth formula and why it matters to marketers
The new importance of listening
Seven consumer comment types and what they mean

Lesson Three: Keywords & SEO

How can you make your writing insanely popular? The answer, as you’ve probably guessed from the title of this lesson, is Keywords.

But not just any keywords. There’s an Art and a Science to effective keyword usage, and in Lesson Three, we’re going to tell you:

What you need to know about keyword search patterns
The importance of longtail keywords
The hotlist of buyer keywords
The essential knowledge that you can learn from the Google Keywords Planner
Best practices for optimising your content for search engines
Headline length, keyword density, using alternative wording and other key strategies to get noticed by Google

Lesson Four: Consumer Psychology

A good working knowledge of psychology — and in particular of the relevant human characteristics that can enhance your communications — will stand you in very good stead when it comes to writing for the web.

In this lesson, we are going to take a look at some key psychological insights and triggers that will help you to write more effective content, including:

Understanding ELMR, which stands for Emotion, Logic, Motivation and Reward
Professor Cialdini’s Theory of Influence and how you can use its six key elements in your marketing messages
Why People Buy (and the implications for your copy)
13 Key Psychological Triggers which you should consider using

Lesson Five: Seducing Your Digital Visitors

How can you best lure visitors to your content? In this Lesson, we discuss the gentle practice of luring interested prospects to you, which involves:

Crafting an effective description
Teasing your story
Capturing the essence of your offering
Placing keyword phrases as effectively as possible
Avoiding duplication
Developing unique descriptions
Using SEO plug-ins

Lesson Six: Sharing

How can you get people to share your content?

In this lesson we explore the types of content that people love — and love to share. You’ll learn about:

Why people share
The 20 types of sharing styles that are most effective in social media
Finding and using hash tags effectively
How you can help your content travel

Lesson Seven: Content Structure

How can you best plan out your content so that you don’t end up staring at a blank page and wondering what to write about?

In Lesson Seven, we cover:

How to create an effective content calendar
Optimal sizes and word lengths, by medium
Most popular lengths for blog & social media posts
What you need to know about email subject lines

Lesson Eight: Online Advertising

What should you know about online advertising now that it’s become New Zealand’s most popular advertising medium?

All these and more:

How to create an effective AdWords advertisement
The secrets of dynamic ads
What you need to know about Facebook advertising
All about Pinterest Promoted Pins
Video advertising explored and explained

Lesson Nine: Content Curation

Much of your online activity can, and often should, involve sharing other people’s content. So how do you find and share that content?

In Lesson Nine, we reveal:

Curation tools you can use
Where to find trending topics
How best to share

Epilogue

We close with a warning, as we reveal the seven deadly sins of writing for the web.

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WHO WILL BENEFIT FROM THIS COURSE?
Every organisation and every person who needs to prepare online content, whether for your website, for your blog, for social media or for video.

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WHAT CUSTOMERS ARE SAYING ABOUT OUR COURSES

Here’s a sampling of the feedback we’ve received from those who’ve taken our courses:

Thanks for an informative and interesting [Facebook Accelerator] course. Your presentation held a good balance of theoretical and practical information and was clear and simple enough for a non IT Facebook novice like me to follow. There are many ideas that I have gained that I will attempt to incorporate in the overall marketing plan my team is currently developing for our brand. Facebook can offer so much more than I thought as a medium for communicating with our current and prospective customers. Julie D

I found this course fantastic, i started off knowing very little about facebook (just how to run my own personal page) to now having a thorough understanding of ALL the things you can (and there is a lot). The course format was great and allowed knowledge to be built up over time. Course length was great and this will definetly be something i come back to constantly as we develop our facebook pages more within my company. Aleisha H

I have really enjoyed the course and the way it was structured. It was informative and interesting – liked the way you incorporated slide-shows, video, statistics and different forms of media to provide information. Lisa C

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TIMING

This course begins on Wednesday 01 January, 2020.

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INVESTMENT

This nine-part online training course is available for $597. However we offer an EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT of $100 — pay just $497 for bookings received by the end of Wednesday 25 December, 2019.

Bookings are confirmed on receipt of payment, which can be by bank deposit or credit card. We can raise an invoice in advance if you need it.

To reserve your place in this course, please pay by credit card through PayPal by clicking here.

If you would prefer to pay by bank deposit, or require an invoice, please send an email to [email protected] with your requirements.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Hottest Facebook Categories: NZ April 2017

As we do from time to time, we’ve taken a deep dive into our database of 24,836 New Zealand Facebook pages to see what we can learn.

This time, we’ve sliced and diced by category to determine which are the most popular Kiwi categories on Facebook.

CAVEAT

There are a couple of cautions we wish to issue before we get into the details, however, just so you know why some of your favourite categories aren’t represented in these top 20 lists.

Firstly, you should know that before we started any number-crunching we removed most of the top 50 “most liked” NZ Facebook pages. That’s because those pages, typically NZ variants of international brands such as McDonald’s, KFC, Walt Disney, Nivea, Nissan, Cadbury and even Facebook itself, are displaying cumulative global likes rather than merely local numbers. As a result, total likes are somewhat out of alignment with local performances. It’s great that Facebook has 186 million likes, but such numbers tend to skew the averages.

For example, if we leave the global data in place, the average New Zealand Facebook page is rated as having 39,037 followers — a number that’s only surpassed by the top 500 or so Kiwi Facebook pages (out of our nearly 25,000 total).

Once we’ve stripped out most of the global pages, however, we arrive at a far more realistic and attainable average of 5,075 likes.

In the last seven days, just 146 people were talking about the average NZ Facebook page, an engagement percentage of 2.88%.

CAUTION: STATISTICAL ANOMALIES MAY LIE AHEAD

Secondly, we did want to point out the statistical dangers involved once we drill down into individual categories.

For this report, we have separated our database into the 700 different categories that Facebook offers (all of which are self-selected choices when a business creates a page).

As a result, more than a third of the available categories feature only one or two businesses — which, as you would imagine, means that the success or failure of the category depends on the performance of individual Facebook pages.

So, for example, if we look at the category “automotive storage facility“, that category tops the list of best performing Facebook pages in terms of engagement.

That category, however, represents a single business: Storage King Riccarton, which had a blinder of a pre-Easter promotion (requiring likes and comments to win a box of Easter treats).

So, with those warnings in place, let’s take a look at some numbers.

1 Facebook Likes

Firstly, let’s look at the categories that have attracted the most overall likes:

NZ FACEBOOK PAGES BY CATEGORY: AVERAGE LIKES APRIL 2017

The top category, “Society/Culture Website”, is again skewed by a single page, for Oh! Baby — but, in this case, the page’s performance is steady across multiple posts and reflects effective use of Facebook. Take a look at the Oh! Baby page and see what you can learn for yourself.

2 Facebook Talks

Our second view of our category averages is by talks — the average number of people talking about pages in the category over the last seven days.

Results are very similar to likes:

NZ FACEBOOK PAGES BY CATEGORY: AVERAGE TALKS APRIL 2017

3 Facebook Engagement

Finally, if we examine the Facebook page categories by Engagement (which we define as the number of talks compared to the total number of likes, expressed as a percentage), we see quite a different picture:

NZ FACEBOOK PAGES BY CATEGORY: MOST ENGAGEMENT APRIL 2017

Again, as we noted above, the results will be skewed by individual page performances (and we don’t have time to dig much deeper right now). Still, the results give us an interesting perspective when we consider that:

dry cleaners are more interesting than government organizations
car dealers get a better rap than the public service
dog walkers are more popular than psychics (who should have seen that coming

(Of course, if you’d like to know more about social media, and how to perform as well as some of these marketers, check out our courses):

Here are the current courses (click on the links for more details about each course):

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING COURSES

Facebook Accelerator Programme

So you have a few hundred (or a few thousand) followers on Facebook but now you want to know how to get to the next level? Our Facebook Accelerator seven-part online course will lead you through the steps necessary to supercharge your Facebook presence and get Kiwi consumers engaging with you and your brands.

For more details of the Facebook Accelerator programme, please click here.

The Principles & Practice of Social Media Marketing

This is a thirteen-part eCourse providing a comprehensive introduction to Social Media Marketing, from the Basics to detailed instructions on how to build and run a Social Media Marketing programme.

For more details of the Social Media Marketing online course, please click here.

The Complete Facebook Marketing Course

For those who wish to master Facebook Marketing in its entirety, we’ve created a ten-week online training programme which will take you from absolute beginner on Facebook to highly effective Facebook communicator.

For more details of the Complete Facebook Marketing programme, please click here.

How to Prepare an Effective Social Media Brief

Even if you don’t intend to become directly involved in social media yourself, you may still need to understand the principles, practices and opportunities of social media — for example, if you need to brief someone about running a social media campaign. This programme is designed to provide you with the insights necessary to prepare an effective brief.

For more details of the How to Prepare an Effective Social Media Brief programme, please click here.

How to Use LinkedIn Effectively – For Your Business And Your Career

This is a seven-part online training eCourse providing a comprehensive introduction to LinkedIn, from the basics to detailed instructions on how to use LinkedIn to promote your organisation, build your personal reputation, find a job, recruit prospective employees and even make sales.

For more details of the How to Use LinkedIn Effectively programme, please click here.

ONLINE VIDEO MARKETING COURSE

Online Video is no longer an “up-and-coming” marketing tactic — it’s here, and it’s a powerful way to communicate your brand story, explain your value proposition, and build relationships with your customers and prospects.

Remember the old cliche that a picture is worth a thousand words? According to an estimate by Dr James McQuivey of Forrester Research, one minute of video is equal to 1.8 million words.

So let’s cut to the chase. It’s well past time for you to upskill yourself in online video marketing. That’s why we’re launching our newest short course on the topic.

For more details of the Online Video Marketing course, please click here.

The Continuing Devolution of LinkedIn

We’ve seen it happen with Facebook, so we really shouldn’t be too surprised as LinkedIn continues to move in the same direction: the steady erosion of once-free offerings, all aimed at improving the social network’s bottom line.

B2B marketers have been spoiled for many years by the free availability of information on LinkedIn that allows the more astute among us to research prospects and competitors and to promote ourselves and our organisations using the professional social network.

Over time, however, we’ve seen a number of free products fall by the wayside as LinkedIn has refocused itself to concentrate on those products that actually make money for the company.

We can’t actually blame them — it’s their sandbox, after all — but it can be intensely frustrating, especially when core capabilities, those that organisations have relied upon heavily, are arbitrarily removed or placed beyond paywalls.

Take, for example,Tags, once a simple way to filter and organise your connections on LinkedIn (e.g. tagging customers, prospects and suppliers so that you could sort them easily).

Earlier this year, LinkedIn announced that “we’re removing the Relationship Section of your profile, which allowed you to add Reminders, Notes and Tags to your connections. If you want to download your existing Notes and Tags, you’ll have the option to do so through May 31, 2017.”

Brutal, for those who relied on the tagging system to make sense of their hundreds or thousands of connections.

There is a (paid) alternative: “if you are looking for similar functionalities, consider our Sales Navigator or Recruiter Lite products that allow you to transfer and view your existing notes and tags”.

But Wait, There’s Less

Late February/early March 2017 saw even more change, with the release (for most) of a whole new look for LinkedIn. We’ll let Fatima Williams describe what she calls “The Day of Disaster“:

Yes, I got switched to the new interface and it won’t let me do anything. You hide everything . I can’t see images they are so tiny, my eyes are fine.

The stickers to make work a little fun while sending messages is removed. I can’t see candidates who are outside my network. I know I can’t connect with them but if I don’t see them how am I to even connect with them???

The hope’s of one finding a job by anybody is now gone. Don’t tell me try premium — been there, done that No Thank you!

Should I start an online petition to get them to get us back to the old interface so I can help those candidates out of my reach!

” The new interface is of no use to poor unemployed job seekers who have no hope and cannot afford the premium membership. Forget the premium members who are now asked to pay for features they lost. Your customers/users (job-seekers) are the source of your revenue“ – Fatima Williams

A few other comments from some of the 1356 mostly-disgruntled LinkedIn users who responded to the post:

Less functional and certainly not user friendly! please back to previous one – Didier Bassleer
Innovation shall not mean regression. We are humans and have our habits of humans. Previous visual was friendly enough to find our way easily and get what we were needing quickly.-Patrick LR Le Guirriec
The new one is only cosmetic, less organized and less functional. – Marco Koelink
The removal of the ability to view one’s news feed in reverse chronological order (i.e., ‘recent first’) was a devastating loss. Extremely useful for tracking one’s news from login to login; a user could “pick up where he/she left off”, but now it’s gone. Too bad – Jim Kracht
I’m OK with the new design. It’s the removal of functionality that bothers me. Just like FB, they now tell me what they think I want to see in my news feed – Denny Russell
How about posting suggestions here for other platforms we can each explore, evaluate, and migrate over to if they seem better? I acknowledge the scope of my network on here is broad, and that any competing platforms are likely to need our support to power up to an equivalent reach. But holding onto the tail of a dying dinosaur is perilous. And with Microsoft’s inevitable strangling of service in pursuit of forced extraction of profits, they have signaled the slow death of this beast. So what else is out there for us to explore? – Erik Van Lennep
I agree this latest version is one of the worst they have put out over the past 8 years – Shane Null
Is anybody at LinkedIn listening to the Voice Of the Customers? So much efforts fostering the sharing of professional content and so little walking the talking… – Sergio Berna
YES. The new LinkedIn stinks! I used to log on and get notifications telling me when someone had replied to my posts. Now I no longer do. Nor is there any other way to easily find my way back to the conversations I’ve been involved in in the forums. So I hardly bother logging on at all anymore. – Andrew Horn
Leave it to Microsoft to take away the networking component of a networking site. – Ronald Regnier

Heartfelt pain, right there (although many LinkedIn members won’t actually know what Fatima and the other correspondents are talking about, because they simply don’t use LinkedIn that much).

So what can be done?

Well, LinkedIn is simply going to continue to change (especially as new owners Microsoft start to implement their own plans).

You can either (A) turn your back on LinkedIn (except as a CV-replicating tool); or (B) learn how to master the new, “improved” LinkedIn.

If Plan B sounds like you, we can help, with a couple of options:

1 IN-PERSON WORKSHOPS

For larger organisations, we’ve developed a couple of hands-on Workshops for you and your teams:

LinkedIn Masterclass, half-day sessions designed to help participants re-work and develop their LinkedIn presence to really sell themselves and their organisation
Using LinkedIn as a Sales Tool, a two-hour workshop specifically designed to help B2B sales-people use LinkedIn to sell

If you’re interested in in-person Workshops, email us at michael (AT) netmarketingcourses.co.nz or phone 021 1492 403.

2 ONLINE TRAINING COURSE

Alternatively, you should certainly consider our online training course “How to use LinkedIn Effectively“, updated to reflect the latest changes:

LinkedIn operates the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with (as of January 2017) more than 467 million members in over 200 countries and territories.

New Zealand now boasts more than 1,540,000 LinkedIn members, according to the latest LinkedIn data. Yet far too many of those members simply don’t know how to use LinkedIn effectively to promote themselves or their organisations.

In response to this need, we’ve developed a course that will show you how to use LinkedIn to best advantage, taking account of the developments being rolled out regularly by the LinkedIn team.

About the Course

This is a seven-part online training course providing a comprehensive introduction to LinkedIn, from the Basics to detailed instructions on how to use LinkedIn to promote your organisation, build your personal reputation and even make sales.

Course lessons will be provided in seven parts, for participants to access in accordance with their own timetables. Interaction with the course tutor is enabled through the platform software tools (with telephone backup if required).

Feedback from those who have previously taken one of our courses:

“this was the best professional development course I have done in many years” – Mark R, senior Agency Exec responsible for social media
“thought the information within was outstanding” – Ed P, General Manager
“What I loved was that I started with a fairly rudimentary understanding of social media but have learned a lot – including where to find more information as I need it.” – Fiona W, Marketing Manager
“I found it relevant, informative, topical, insightful and a bloody good read. It’s never evangelical, too techy, patronising, assumes that you know too much or too little about digital and has a warm sense of humour in the communication throughout which helped faciliate the learning process for me.” — Adrienne B, new media senior executive
“Am thoroughly enjoying the content!” – Kara B, magazine co-ordinator
“I completed the first lesson today and found it really interesting and love the interaction already! I am so looking forward to the second lesson already …” — Annette B, public relations director

COURSE CREATION AND TUTORING
This “How to use LinkedIn Effectively” programme has been created and is tutored by Michael Carney. Michael has been in the marketing game since 1971, online since 1987 and keeps tabs on a wide range of trends and developments, locally and around the world. He is the author of “Trade Me Success Secrets” (now in its Second Edition) and a regular magazine columnist. Michael is also the creator of a number of online training courses, covering social media, eCommerce and other aspects of digital marketing.

WHO SHOULD TAKE THE “HOW TO USE LINKEDIN EFFECTIVELY” COURSE

Any business professional who wants to master LinkedIn, whether to further their own career or to develop their business presence on the world’s leading Social B2B network.

COURSE CONTENTS

Lesson One: How To Set Yourself Up Effectively On LinkedIn

You’re probably one of the hundreds of millions who already have a profile on LinkedIn — but is it just a transplanted CV? We show you how to turn your basic profile into a living, selling document that:

showcases your unique talents and experience to best advantage
reinforces your personal brand with a compelling headline that’s the first thing any visitor will see
highlights your achievements, not just your history
provides a platform for your future success

Lesson One also covers:

The most effective ways to ask for recommendations and endorsements
How to use the principle of Reciprocity to sharpen your profile
Trojan Horse Marketing and how it can really work for you
How to claim your name on LinkedIn (and why it matters)
How to optimize your profile for SEO
How to use LinkedIn’s Mobile Apps and how you can ensure that your profile stands out on every platform
The power of an effective profile summary
How to re-shape your profile to make it sizzle (and show off your best bits)

Lesson Two: How To Use LinkedIn For Business

Once you have your own personal profile up and sizzling, it’s time to turn your attention to your organisation (especially if you operate in the B2B space). LinkedIn has now surpassed Twitter as the most popular social medium for distributing B2B content, with 83% of B2B marketers using LinkedIn to promote their organisations. So where do you begin? We start with Company Pages (which were recently redesigned to make it easier for LinkedIn users to find, follow and engage with companies of interest).

Topics covered in Lesson Two include:

How to use LinkedIn Banner Images to showcase your company brand and really bring your page to life
How to attract keen followers to your company pages (and what that does for your organisation’s visibility on LinkedIn)
What you can now say about your organisation
How to harness social proof to best effect
Why you must make your updates valuable, relevant and interesting (and what that really means)

Lesson Three: How To Use LinkedIn To Find A Job

You’ve probably heard that LinkedIn is very useful when you’re looking for a new job — but where do you start?

In Lesson Three, we talk about:

How to use LinkedIn to get the word out that you’re in the market
How to polish your LinkedIn profile even further, to highlight your best (and most employable) characteristics
How to find out where people with your skillset are working
How to check if a company is still hiring
How to identify new recruits (and perhaps pick their brains)
How to find out who’s who in your target industry
How to network shamelessly to future-proof your career
How to build your personal brand
How to enhance your Resume with LinkedIn Testimonials
How to find (and capitalise on) inside connections at potential employers
How to search the hidden job market for opportunities
How to use LinkedIn to prepare for your job interview

Lesson Four: How To Use LinkedIn To Generate Business

Can you actually use LinkedIn to create business? Yes, indeed you can, and we’ll show you how. Along the way, we’ll talk about:

How to use LinkedIn to find business opportunities
How to Use LinkedIn Groups to build relationships with prospects and attract new leads
How to decide who you should connect with (and who doesn’t make the cut)
The power of a clear Call To Action
LinkedIn Special Offers (and where it’s appropriate to make them)
How LinkedIn’s Advanced People Search feature can be your very best prospecting friend
How to use LinkedIn for sales success

Lesson Five: How To Use LinkedIn’s Paid Offerings

You’ve probably noticed that, whilst many of LinkedIn’s offerings are free, you are occasionally encouraged to buy some stuff there. Reportedly, around 2% of LinkedIn members have paid-for subscriptions. So should you dip into your pocket?

In Lesson Six, we evaluate the pros and cons of:

LinkedIn paid advertising — how it works, what you can expect to pay and what results to aim for
The surprising response rates of LinkedIn InMails (and when using them is worthwhile)
How to use LinkedIn’s Profile Organizer
The LinkedIn paid account options and what they provide

Lesson Six: How To Use LinkedIn To Promote Your Business

So far we’ve looked at how to use LinkedIn to make sales and build your reputation. But LinkedIn is also an ideal vehicle for promoting your organisation to other businesses.

In Lesson Six we’ll look at the promotional potential of LinkedIn, including:

How (and how often) to craft status updates that will appeal to your target customers and clients
Best practices for sending out mass messages and invitations (without being a pest)
How to use Groups to build your authority and keep in regular touch with your prospects
How to connect from LinkedIn to the rest of the web, using widgets and plugins and other automated operations
How to share useful articles and resources without overdoing it
How to add videos and presentations to LinkedIn
How to use the right tools to manage your LinkedIn content to avoid getting overwhelmed

Lesson Seven: How To Use LinkedIn For Recruiting

We’ve already covered using LinkedIn to find a new job. In Lesson Seven we look at the flip side of the coin — how to use LinkedIn to find the most appropriate candidates for vacancies within your organisation.

In this lesson, we consider:

why LinkedIn is a fertile ground within which to find perhaps 80% of your prospective employees
How to use LinkedIn to tap into the most effective recruiting source of all
The crowd-sourced accuracy of LinkedIn profiles
LinkedIn’s job-posting facilities (and whether you should use them)
Soliciting introductions: the appropriate protocols
How to use LinkedIn to search and compare

TIMING

The next “How To Use LinkedIn Effectively” course begins on Monday 30 December, 2019.

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INVESTMENT

This seven-part online training course is available for $497. However we offer an Early Bird Discount of $100 — the course is just $397 for bookings made and payment received by Monday 23 December, 2019.

Bookings are confirmed on receipt of payment, which can be by bank deposit or credit card. We can raise an invoice in advance if you need it.

To reserve your place in our “How To Use LinkedIn Effectively” course, please pay by credit card through PayPal by clicking here.

If you would prefer to pay by bank deposit, or require an invoice, please send an email to [email protected] with your requirements.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

If you have any questions, or would like more information, please email us at [email protected]

NZ Politicians Finally Discover The Information Superhighway

For decades, NZ electoral allocations — money provided by the Government to fund political advertising in the lead-up to general elections — have been legislatively restricted to paying for “broadcast” advertisements — defined in law as radio and television advertising (and the production thereof).

In a dramatic turnaround, a mere thirty years after the Internet arrived in New Zealand via CompuSerce, the politicians last week (March 15) saw fit to allow electoral funding to encompass Internet advertising as well.

As the Broadcasting (Election Programmes and Election Advertising) Amendment Bill (approved by 108 votes to 12 and now just awaiting Royal Assent to become law) notes, public monies may now be applied to fund radio and television and also:

all or part of the publishing costs incurred in relation to the publication of election advertisements on the Internet during the election period; and all or part of production costs, whenever incurred, in relation to election advertisements published on the Internet

Politicians (and their advertising agencies) should now brace themselves. Inevitably, they can expect to be inundated by approaches from any and every New Zealand digital medium, now that there’s a bucket of money just waiting to be spent.

(If that’s you, may we recommend you familiarise yourself with some of our online training courses, which will help you to understand the most effective ways to use digital media).

Opening & Closing Broadcasts Gone
The revised legislation also removes the compulsion on Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand to screen opening and closing broadcasts.

Finally.

As Chris Hipkins (Labour—Rimutaka) noted during the debate about the legislation:

“When the rule around opening and closing broadcasts for election campaigns was introduced, there were two TV channels in New Zealand—only the two. If you were sitting at home watching TV and the opening and closing broadcasts were broadcast on both of those channels, as they were back in those days, you had no choice other than to watch them or turn off the TV. The reality now is that that is simply not the medium any more. People can be watching live-streamed content on Netflix, they can be using MY SKY or any other type of device, they could be watching all sorts of other things, or they could be accessing content via social media.

“The idea that we have these opening and closing broadcasts, which are expensive to produce because they are quite long-form and very few people watch them, and the idea that we should lock that into law and lock political parties into spending some of their broadcast allocation to do that simply does not make sense. It is not good for the broadcasters either. Let us be really frank about this. TVNZ had 25 percent fewer viewers in the timeslot that it set aside for the opening and closing broadcasts at the last election campaign [in 2014] than it would normally have had during that timeslot.”

Welcome to the 21st Century, esteemed leaders. Glad you could join us.