Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Social Media: What's it all about?

Social media has been making a buzz in every part of the globe. People consider it as the next big thing to hit the online world. It is utilized as a powerful tool in online digital marketing, as well as in media, and communications. Those in the know-how would easily pick up what's the buzz all about. But to a newbie or a non-IT person, it can be a bit difficult to grasp.

So what really is Social Media?

Social media, as defined by Wikipedia, is an online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. This technology takes in different forms with a common purpose. And that is to bring people together to create a unique community that allows its members to share and publish information about themselves or their common interests, and to connect or communicate with people outside their communities.

Basically, all activities are centered on people generating relationships online with other human beings. There are diverse tools and applications of social media that users can utilize, depending on the type of information they want to share and the manner users want to interact with others.

So if a user wants to make a personal web page, wants to meet friends and keep up on what they are doing he can go to social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Xing, Hi5, and Bebo. Some users would like to join forums like phpBB and Phorum for online discussions on specific topics and interests. Others join content communities where users share particular kinds of content like bookmarked links (del.icio.us), photos (Flickr, Zoomr, Photobucket), and videos (YouTube), or subscribe to audios and videos thru podcasts like Apple iTunes. There is also another form of social media, the wiki, which allows the users to create or edit the actual site contents. One best known example is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.

Another form of social media are online journals called blogs (Blogger, Live Journal, OpenDiary, TypePad, WordPress), with entries displayed in reverse-chronological order. A blog may contain a photo, video, commentaries, events, or it's more like a personal online diary of an individual, with links to other blogs or web pages that are related to its topic. Also, blog pages give readers the ability to leave comments in an interactive format. Twitter, a combination of a micro-blogging service and a social networking website, enables its users to send updates and read messages or tweets through SMS.

There are still a lot of social media applications that users can avail of that are free. It can be through emailing, instant messaging, wall-postings, or file-sharing, the list can go on... Social media has been here for quite some time and it's not going away. As long as there are human beings in this world, social media will continue to exist. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand what social media is. It is simply about people...

By: Jenette Chiong


Marketing & SEO - Top Blogs Philippines

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Should you blog or not?: Blogging as a means of digital marketing

The term blog or weblog was brought to life in the late nineties and onwards the new millennium. And as we all know, it began as something fun and personal. There's no restriction. You could write about anything and everything under the sun. You could be as carefree as you feel or as scholarly as you prefer. As long as you know you have something on your mind, your blog page is one click away.

We all know how blogging has eventually grown. It became a very powerful tool that people held credibility in its words. Some reporters even base their quotes on the personality's blog page.

Marketing & SEO - Top Blogs Philippines


Bottom line is, the internet has been highly regarded by just about anybody and anything it says creates an impact on people. Especially blogging.

Blogging as a Strategic Marketing Device

Along with the growth of internet users, businesses have immediately ventured on this medium. That doesn't discount blogging.

And why not? It has created an emporium so undeniably strong, you can't help but concede.

Blogging, as said earlier, started off as something personal like a means to expression or a public diary. It primarily functioned as a social media which eventually led to networking and relationship building.

But what actually makes blogging so influential is its editorialized notion. The "human" approach of these 250-500 words articles gives the reader a feeling of being informed instead of being advertised. The marketing campaign is well buried in simple keywords and seemingly drives you to drag that pointer on top of it and click.

You could write about the specification of a certain product of this brand and still get away with advertising. Even the servers tighten up their belts regarding free ads, blogging has a technique of guising up everything into a simple informative piece of text.

Plus, there are those who highly respects the opinionated-ness of some individuals. A communication theory suggests that peers, or anybody a person perceives as their opinion leader, holds more influential power compared to anything.

So why shouldn't you blog? At the end of the day, who knows where the internet would drive us down in the next few years. As printed literacy approaches death, blogging becomes an emporium that's foreseen to take over your conventional newspaper.

BY:Maria Espie Vidal (Lozatech Asia SEO-SMO Director)