What Google’s Autocomplete says about men, women, models, the world and many other things
After reading Mashable’s article on what Google Autocomplete thinks about Super Bowl advertisers, I thought I’d check out what Autocomplete has to say about a few other things. Some like the reputations of Muslims and Pakistanis were sad to learn about while others like Tom Cruise being an idiot and men liking My Little Pony were quite amusing.
Overall though, it really is quite interesting to see what perceptions people hold about different topics and other people; so Im sharing a few of those below. Check them out and see if you would ask the same questions or if autocomplete surprises you:
Why I jumped on the Facebook advertising bandwagon
With over a billion people liking millions of pages on Facebook, it was only a matter of time before the Facebook newsfeed would start getting overwhelmed. Surely with the amount of content we “like” now, it’s not possible to show snippets from all of those sources in our newsfeed. Facebook also acknowledges this and as a matter of fact, is continuously going to work on making newsfeed content more relevant. So what does that mean for the online marketer? Well, it means you’ve gotta come up with some great contextual content, content that will be shared organically, to stay on your fans’ newsfeed. While this is possible, it’s not going to be easy to do. Quoting Facebook from their paper titled Generating Business Results on Facebook:
“People are connecting to more Pages and individuals every day. And each day, more brands and organizations are posting on Facebook. As a result, we expect organic distribution of an individual Page’s posts to gradually decline over time as we continually work to make sure people have a meaningful experience on the site. Your post has a better chance of appearing organically to your fans and their friends if it’s relevant to them and if their friends interact with it …”
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How to build an epic agency-client relationship
Ever had the below conversation with your digital agency:
This isn’t what I wanted. You always do this!
Well if you would have clearly explained what you wanted this wouldn’t have happened. I’m not a mind reader y’know
Why are you always late! I can never trust you
Hey don’t blame me. You were the one who kept asking for more. And these things take time. It’s your own fault
Sounds exactly like a relationship doesn’t it? That’s because it is. Both agencies and clients have had the above conversation (albeit worded differently) at some point in time. In my line of work I get to deal with countless digital agencies. And over that course of time, I’ve learnt a great deal on how to maintain an “Epic” relationship with them.
So here are my top 4 tips to keep that honeymoon period going with your respective agencies
1. Clearly establish your goal(s) and know what you want to achieve through the campaign
I see many brands just going into the meeting room expecting the agency to help them define what makes a winning outcome. Agencies are great at being creative and they can whip up a winning concept for your next campaign. But they need guidance. They need to know what it is you see at the finish line and you can’t expect them to know or discover it by themselves. Let there be no mistake about the fact that while your knowledge may be limited in the digital domain, there is (or should be) no one who knows your product or service better than you. So if you’re even slightly unsure of your goal, I say stop and take a moment. Evaluate what your goal is and figure out how you’re going assess whether its being achieved or not. Only when you have done this is the time to call in the agency to do its magic.
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Western Union- social media is there to help not to just say “We heard ya!”
So recently the folks over at Western Union gave away a fund transfer I made to my laywer, to some guy who either produced a falsified ID or no ID at all. On reporting to WU, I was told to wait 3 weeks for them to get to the bottom of this. I even got a call from one of their reps saying they are on it which led me to believe these guys will come through. Over 6 weeks later I get a call from their rep saying they cant do anything and the best I can do is file a report with the authorities – and that is all!!!
Needless to say I was ticked off on losing such an amount and took my frustration over to twitter. And all I heard from them were sweet nothings: “We’re sorry for your trouble”,”We understand your frustration”,”Please DM us your info so that we can contact you”. But no good came of it. It was clear they wanted to take the conversation off-line and just shut me up without really helping me out.
But then I thought, maybe im overreacting; maybe WU doesnt do this regularly. So I thought I’d check out what other people’s experiences were like. And lo and behold, I wasn’t the only one. In the past month alone I saw over 25 cases of unsatisfied people posting their concern on twitter. Thats almost 1 unsatisfied person a day!
One of the easiest ways to engage people who like your brand
Friends, fans, followers…lend me your ears!
Getting people to follow you is one thing. Getting them to engage with your brand is a totally different story. That’s why many brands can get online followings easily. But when they really dive deep into their engagement statistics they realize they don’t even have a 5% engagement rate!
It’s because consumers, including me are fickle. They are loyal to you until you provide them value. Many times this value is provided in the form of promotions and prizes; which is great as long as you run the promotion. But as soon as your promotion is done, so is the conversation with your followers. Result – your engagement rates plummet.
So how do you ensure that you keep the conversation going?
What I’m about to say will sound extremely simple and it really is. But I find it being constantly overlooked – Connect with your consumers on topics because of which they followed you in the first place. Other than seasonal promotions, consumers want to follow you because you provide them with specific information. And when you provide it they feel enlightened. When you don’t provide it or provide it in a blatant sales or marketing oriented manner, they lose interest quickly. This is easily proven. Think about all the times when you’ve put up a simple 10% discount promotion for example. Now think about when you shared news/pictures/videos of new products of your brand or industry. Which one has garnered a more long lasting engagement rate for you? In most cases, it should be the latter. That’s because it’s a topic of interest for your consumers. While the promotion can draw “fans to the stands” it suffers in a way because it is for a limited time. When it’s over no one cares about it. That isn’t the case with quality info about your product and industry . When you post such information you get multiple avenues to catch the consumers’ attention and get them talking. For those who never knew about the topic indicate interest by liking/sharing your conversation while those who are familiar with the topic in question jump in to provide their feedback. And this can continue to happen at any time because such information hardly expires.
There are many other strategies to engage your consumers that complement the above. But what Ive mentioned is a low hanging fruit. Extremely easy to implement and practice because it requires you to talk about something you should (as a company) know lots about.
So get out there and try it out. Im sure you won’t be disappointed
