Sunday, March 1, 2009

Group Assignment: Post # 1

This week we looked at several Internet Marketing methods. Together with your groupmates, find a specific example of how a company is using each method below:

  • Blog

  • Interactive advertisement

  • Search engine

  • Online partnerships or affiliate marketing

  • RSS feeds

  • Social networking

  • Gadgets
By the way, the examples you find do not all have to come from the same company.

In your group blog, list all the examples you find, together with links to each example. Also provide a description of the effectiveness of each example.

Answer:
  • Blog
    "A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business purposes. Blogs, either used internally to enhance the communication and culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or public relations purposes are called corporate blogs."

    Sample: http://hk.blog.yahoo.com/canon/

How to find out this blog via google?

  • Input keywords "canon" and "blog" in google search engine, the result will be shown as below which placed in Organic Search Engine Optimization.

  • Simply click the 1st link in the list and the screen will be diverted to Canon's Blog.


Canon provide a Canon Blog via Yahoo Blog to facilitate their customer to upload unlimited photos and share experiences. It not only solve the customer's difficulties on photo storage but also develop a platform to discuss the photo taking skill and share the happiness among the customer. Furthermore, Canon can obtain customer's feedback via this blog for further product development and service improvement.
  • Interactive advertisement
Sample: http://advertising.nokia.com/what-we-do/nokia-interactive-solutions

"Interactive advertising uses online or offline interactive media to communicate with consumers and to promote products, brands, services, and public service announcements, corporate or political groups.

In the inaugural issue of the Journal of Interactive Advertising, editors Li and Leckenby (2000) defined Interactive Advertising as the "paid and unpaid presentation and promotion of products, services and ideas by an identified sponsor through mediated means involving mutual action between consumers and producers." This is most commonly performed through the Internet as a medium. Direct response, improved customer loyalty, increased traffic to your mobile site or physical store, brand awareness."
  • Search Engine
Sample: www.google.com

"A Web search engine is a tool designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in newsbooks, databases, or open directories. Unlike Web directories, which are maintained by human editors, search engines operate algorithmically or are a mixture of algorithmic and human input."
  • Online partnerships or affiliate marketing
Sample: www.amazon.com

"Merchants favor affiliate marketing because in most cases it uses a "pay for performance" model, meaning that the merchant does not incur a marketing expense unless results are accrued (excluding any initial setup cost). Some businesses owe much of their success to this marketing technique."
  • RSS feeds
Sample: http://on.cc/rss_index.html

"RSS (abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader", or "aggregator", which can be web-based, desktop-based, mobile device or any computerized Internet-connected device. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's URI (often referred to informally as a "URL" (uniform resource locater), although technically, those two terms are not exactly synonymous) into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds. RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. Although RSS formats have evolved since March 1999, the RSS icon ("") first gained widespread use between 2005 and 2006."
  • Social Networking
Sample: www.facebook.com

"A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services. Social networking has created new ways to communicate and share information. Social networking websites are being used regularly by millions of people, and it now seems that social networking will be an enduring part of everyday life. The main types of social networking services are those which contain directories of some categories (such as former classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and recommender systems linked to trust. There have been some attempts to standardize these services to avoid the need to duplicate entries of friends and interests (see the FOAF standard and the Open Source Initiative), but this has led to some concerns about privacy."
  • Gadgets
Sample: The iPhone is a gadget that was released June 29, 2007.

"A gadget is a small technological object (such as a device or an appliance) that has a particular function, but is often thought of as a novelty. Gadgets are invariably considered to be more unusually or cleverly designed than normal technological objects at the time of their invention. Gadgets are sometimes also referred to as gizmos."

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

2 comments:

  1. Noted your posts !

    These descriptions are all fine but more detail can be added. For example, you should include a specific example of a company that uses each method. You may show a keyword that can be typed into Google and that generates text ads based on the given keyword. You may mention how a specific company (e.g. Swatch, Pizza Hut) is using Facebook to promote itself. A company that lets users subscribe to RSS feeds in order to inform them of any updates may be mentioned too.

    Some screen shots or pictures may also be added to supplement the descriptions.

    Please acknowledge all references and put double-quotes around any statements which are copied directly from external sources.

    Hope this helps !

    ReplyDelete