15 Step Guideline To Create Your Perfect 2015 Digital Marketing Strategy

1. Get started on Instagram

If you haven’t started an Instagram account for your business, what are you waiting for? The younger generation has flocked to this social media platform with over 200 million monthly active users (according to Expanded Ramblings). Advertisers are getting more of an opportunity to share their content through filtered photos. Instagram is one of the most natural ways to share content for your brand. It is better to be a step ahead of the game than 2 steps behind it.

2. Yahoo! Bing network

The average cost per click on Yahoo! Bing was 10% to 24% lower than on Google AdWords.  A lower cost per click can yield a lower cost per acquisition, which is the exact reason why you should start taking the search network seriously that receives 11.6% of the market share this upcoming year.

If you are in an expensive industry in the pay per click world like the legal profession, insurance industry or medical field, having a lower cost per click can help with a profitable PPC campaign.

3. Facebook lookalike audience

What exactly is a Facebook Lookalike Audience? According to Facebook, Lookalike audiences let you reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they’re similar to a customer list you care about. When you use Custom Audiences, you can choose to create a lookalike audience that targets people who are similar to your Custom Audience list.

Let’s say you have an email marketing database over 5,000 contacts and are in the heating and cooling industry. You can upload this onto Facebook’s advertising platform and target the EXACT demographic similar to your existing customers! This is a neat feature that advertisers should at least test during the upcoming year.

4. Paid promotion on Facebook

Adding just $5.00 in promotion to selected Facebook posts will drastically increase your interaction. You’ll start to notice a major spike in communication when you boost your post for a small budget. With Facebook’s Edgerank Algorithm, the likelihood for a business to appear high in the news feed is less likely. This is why for 2015, you should focus on posts that can yield the best results and boost them for a small budget.

5. Email marketing

If you are a business that only sends out one email blast per month, start doubling this number and send out at least two per month. Nordstrom sends out multiple email blasts EACH DAY! If you have compelling content that would be informative to the subscribers on your email list, tell them about it via email communications.

According to econsultancy.com, email marketing remains the best digital channel for ROI. Start strategizing heavily as to how you will make this for of online marketing work for you business in 2015!

6. Twitter outreach

There has been a lot of frustration amongst marketers over all of the advertising that various social media channels are forcing businesses to partake in. Luckily, Twitter is still a great platform where you can grow your following organically. Start searching for hashtags within your industry and reaching out to users in this fashion. Compliment someone on Twitter about a blog post that they wrote. Begin asking questions related to your hashtag. The result will be more interaction and core following of people who are interested in your content! There is a reason why Twitter has nearly 1 billion registered users! Start reaching your target audience via tweets through the perfect Twitter outreach strategy in 2015.

7. Facebook re-marketing

If you are a social media marketer and have not taken advantage of display advertising on Facebook, you are missing an outstanding opportunity. Not only will this yield one of the highest return on investments for your clients, it will help with brand exposure, lead to better conversion rates and provide a flexible budget which will lead to a more effective strategy.

An apartment community in Columbus implemented beautiful graphics with relevant messaging for one of its apartment communities for Facebook re-marketing. When someone would drop off of their website and visit Facebook, this messaging would follow them around. This resulted in a 33% uptick in conversion for their Polaris Apartments community!

Start seeing an uptick in conversion by implementing a Facebook re-marketing strategy for 2015.

8. Better blogging

We like to refer to blog content as the match that starts the fire. When you write a compelling blog, it has the potential to rank well organically in the search engines. 80% of daily blog visits are new so this is a great driver of new website traffic! Additionally, a blog can serve as content for a Facebook and Twitter post as well as a teaser for an email marketing campaign. By creating better blog content in 2015, your web traffic will increase and your content will become more compelling

9. Google+ game plan

Google+ might not gain you that much interaction on your social media posts. This social media platform plays a crucial role in search engine optimization on the localized level, which makes this a must for marketers in 2015.

The more reviews you get, the more content you post onto your page and the more followers your obtain, the higher the likelihood that you will start ranking well for localized search terms.

10. YouTube videos

Did you know that Google owns YouTube? By implementing videos into your online marketing mix, you can start to get search engine exposure for the videos that you upload onto YouTube! There are a lot of great tricks to obtain more video SEO Exposure. Choosing a proper title tag, uploading a transcript and embedding the YouTube video are just some of the tricks for optimal SEO exposure. Online video should definitely be included in your 2015 digital marketing strategy as this form of rich media can be a game changer in terms of publicity for your company. People will interpret your YouTube videos that you are taking your marketing initiatives very seriously!

11. Compelling graphics

The more compelling your graphics are on various social media channels, the more interaction you will receive. If you have a graphic designer, start sending him or her over your social media calendar so they can help create beautiful imagery. In 2015 you will want to increase engagement and great pictures certainly help. If you don’t have a graphic designer, don’t worry; there are affordable sites that offer stock photography like BigStock.

12. Search engine optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) leads have an average close rate of 14.6%, while outbound leads (such as cold calls or print advertising) have an average close rate of 1.7%. Having your website optimized for SEO is a necessity heading into 2015. By having an SEO strategy in place, you can increase your leads and grow your business for next year.

13. Content contribution

If you want your content to be seen by more eyeballs and gain more exposure, start contributing content to other blogs in similar fields. If you own an apartment community in Nashville, start writing for a local Nashville website that talks about the best activities around town. You will be seen as an expert in your city and this can help drive more traffic to your website. While people might not be looking for an apartment immediately, they will remember that you have invested time and effort into content within the community!

14. Digital PR

You can build off of the content contribution by implementing a Digital PR strategy. If you reach out to various media related websites and send them over a solid pitch, they might just write an article on your company or feature your CEO in a blog post.  The more people talking about your company, Tweeting about your business and mentioning your brand, the better exposure you will receive for the upcoming year.

15. Unique promotion:

Brainstorm a unique promotion that people will actually enjoy that can drive massive publicity for your company in 2015! Whether it is coming up with a user generated jingle contest or a photo upload promotion, entice your great fans on social media to interact with your brand in a clever way. If the promotion is a success, it will be one of the most talked about campaigns for your company in 2015.

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5 Simple Digital Marketing Strategies That Can Help Your Business Grow

Digital marketing is essential in today's world. With both competitors and potential customers constantly online, digital marketing is the only way to stay ahead. When you're a small business owner the online world can seem intimidating. Here is a list of five simple digital marketing strategies that any business owner can implement to help their business grow.

1. Setting a Goal: You're looking for ways to help your small business grow. You might want more customers, more recognition or maybe you're looking to get ahead of the competition. Whatever the case may be, starting with a solid goal in mind greatly increases your chances of success. Digital marketing is a great way for small businesses to prosper, but going into the process blindly can leave you with a jumbled mess. A lot of strategy and precision goes into digital marketing and having a goal helps you know what to focus on.

2. Creating a Marketing Funnel: The most successful businesses have an effective marketing funnel in place. A marketing funnel is when you map out a customer's journey from when a customer is a complete stranger to when they become a lead, and then put certain strategies in place that will encourage them to move through this funnel. Things like lead magnets, calls to action, opt-ins and offers are all effective pieces of a funnel. You can think of a marketing funnel in four parts: Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action.

• Awareness: The potential customer is aware of your product or service. They're still a stranger, but they've come to your website for a reason. They're looking for something they need. At this stage you want to attract the customer by showing them that you have something they're looking for. Use a lead magnet or call-to-action to give the customer a valuable resource related to your product or service (i.e: what they need) in exchange for more information about them like their email address, phone number, profession and current needs. Find out who they are and why they came to your website.
• Interest: They are actively expressing interest in a certain type of your products or services. At this point you've given them some information and they're interested in what you have to say or the services you provide. You've used your lead magnet or CTA in stage one to gather more information about them. At this stage it's a good idea to supply them with further information that is more tailored to their specific needs. Showing them that you not only took the time to get to know them, but also have something that's specific to their needs will show that you're attentive to and care about your customer's wants and needs.
• Desire: They've taken an interest in a specific product or service. Now that you've supplied them with information specific to what they're looking for, they've found a product or service you provide that might be a good fit for them. Invite them to schedule a consultation using an email or a call-to-action. At this stage you want to tell them more about the product or service they're interested in. Show them why they need it and exactly how it will benefit them.
• Action: Taking the next step towards purchasing. This is when you're able to turn your potential customer into a lead. You've given them valuable information, shown them you pay attention to your customer's needs, and shown them that you have something they need that will benefit them. All that's left is discussing things like price, payment and other aspects of your product or service that are relevant to a buyer.

Having an effective marketing funnel won't just get you more leads, it can also help you turn leads into repeat buyers. If the customer has a good experience they might return to purchase from you again or even tell others they know about your business. The elements of a marketing funnel can seem like a lot to put together, but they're simple concepts when broken down. You'll see that numbers 3,4 and 5 help to break down and explain the different aspects of having a marketing funnel in place on your site and how to put together some of the most important pieces of it.

3. Developing a call-to-action: We talked about using a call-to-action in the second step as a part of your marketing funnel, but what is a call-to-action exactly? A call-to-action (CTA) is an image or text that prompts visitors to take action, such as subscribe to a newsletter, view a webinar or request a product demo. CTAs should direct people to landing pages, where you can collect visitors' contact information in exchange for a valuable marketing offer. In that sense, an effective CTA results in more leads and conversions for your website. This path, from a click on a CTA to a landing page, illustrates the much desired process of lead generation. In order to increase visitor-to-lead conversion opportunities, you need to create a lot of calls-to-action, distribute them across your web presence and optimize them. A good CTA should be attention grabbing and help lead a potential customer further into your marketing funnel.

4. Creating an Effective Lead Magnet: A lead magnet can be used alone or along with a CTA. This will also be used either within your marketing funnel or as a way to drive potential customers into your funnel. Supply them with something relevant to your product or service that they want. Use your offers as a way to gather more information about a potential buyer while driving them further into your funnel at the same time. This brings them closer to becoming an actual quality lead who will spend money on your product or service. The idea behind a lead magnet is to trade information. You supply something like a free download of a white paper, but in order to complete the download the individual has to fill out a form that will provide you with more information about them. You'll use the information you gather to interact with them more as they progress through your funnel.

5. Driving Traffic: In order for there to be people to drive into your marketing funnel, there first has to be traffic on your website. There a variety of ways you can drive traffic to your website. Here are a few of the ones I recommend:

• Quality Content: Use content such as blog posts, press releases and articles on authority websites. Insert links to various places on your website within this content to build your brand name through exposure and drive traffic to your website.
• Keyword Strategy: Inserting related keywords into content will help your content and website show up in more search results, this leads to higher volumes of web traffic.
• Website Optimization: Ensuring that your website is optimized and functioning at it's best is essential. People don't want to visit a website that doesn't work properly.
• Social Media: Use engaging social media posts to attract more traffic to your site. Using pictures, video, and other relevant media will help your posts get more engagement.

Main source of article : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-bryan/5-simple-digital-marketin_b_4816425.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in

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10 reasons why you may need a digital channel strategy?

1 You're directionless

I find that companies without a digital strategy (and many that do) don't have clear strategic goals for what they want to achieve online in terms of gaining new customers or building deeper relationships with existing ones. And if you don't have goals you likely don't put enough resources to reach the goals and you don't evaluate through analytic s whether you're achieving those goals.

2  You won't know your online market share

Customer demand for online services may be underestimated if you haven"t researched this.  Perhaps more importantly you won't understand your online marketplace: the dynamics will be different to traditional channels with different types of customer profile and behavior, competitors, propositions and options for marketing communications. See online marketplace methodology post.

3 Existing and start-up competitors will gain market share

If you're not devoting enough resources to digital marketing or you're using an ad-hoc approach with no clearly defined strategies, then your competitors will eat your digital lunch!

4. You don't have a powerful online value proposition

A clearly defined online customer value proposition will help you differentiate your online service encouraging existing and new customers to engage initially and stay loyal.

5. You don't know your online customers well enough

It's often said that digital is the "most measurable medium ever". But Google Analytic s and similar will only tell you volumes not sentiment. You need to use other forms of website user feedback tools to identify your weak points and then address them.

6. You're not integrated ("disintegrated")

It's all too common for digital to be completed in silos whether that's a specialist digital marketer, sitting in IT or a separate digital agency. It's easier that way to package digital marketing into a convenient chunk. But of course it's less effective. Everyone agrees that digital media work best when integrated with traditional media and response channels.

7. Digital doesn't have enough people/budget given its importance

Insufficient resource will be devoted to both planning and executing e-marketing and there is likely to be a lack of specific specialist e-marketing skills which will make it difficult to respond to competitive threats effectively.

8. You're wasting money and time through duplication

Even if you do have sufficient resource it may be wasted. This is particularly the case in larger companies where you see different parts of the marketing organization purchasing different tools or using different agencies for performing similar online marketing tasks.

9. You're not agile enough to catch-up or stay ahead

If you look at the top online brands like Amazon, Dell, Google, Tesco, Zappos, they're all dynamic  - trialing new approaches to gain or keep their online audiences.

10 You're not optimizing

Every company with a website will have analytic s, but many senior managers don't ensure that their teams make or have the time to review and act on them. Once a strategy enables you to get the basics right, then you can progress to continuous improvement of the key aspects like search marketing, site user experience, email and social media marketing. So that's our top 10 problems that can be avoided with a well thought through strategy. What have you found can go right or wrong?

Main Source Article : http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/digital-strategy-development/10-reasons-for-digital-marketing-strategy/

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What is Digital Marketing and What You Need to Know About It Today

What is Digital Marketing? Digital marketing is the engine that drives today’s business, big or small. Effective digital marketing is the marketing that bridges electronic technology with psychology in the marketplace. As we enter the New Year, it’s time to reflect on the year gone by and plan for the next twelve months. For smedio, it’s a time to celebrate our success over the last year and put our heads down for the challenges that lie ahead in year 2015.

2014 was a phenomenal year for the smedio community as we established ourselves as a formidable force in the digital marketing segment. We received a lot of healthy feedback from our users and several new members emphasized the need for us to get down to the basics of digital marketing and marketing in general.

Therefore, we begin the New Year with an introductory post on what is digital marketing. We talk about the underlying principle behind digital marketing, the means, the end and the ongoing evolution from a business as well as marketer’s perspective. We’ll make a conscious effort to stay away from technical jargon and uncover digital marketing in simple and easy to understand terms.

What is Digital Marketing?

I usually refrain from using textbook definitions as I believe they are good to memorize but offer little insights. To me, digital marketing is using techniques which allow a marketer to use the best of both worlds – digital and marketing. While the basic principles of marketing still apply, digital marketing isn’t just another new channel for marketing. On the contrary, it’s a refreshingly new approach to marketing which offers a unique understanding of consumer behavior.

What is NOT Digital Marketing?

To understand what digital marketing techniques are, it’s easier to classify what doesn’t constitute digital marketing. Traditional marketing channels such as print, radio, TV and billboards aren’t forms of digital marketing. These channels have been mighty successful over a long period of time but they aren’t as effective in today’s modern age.

I believe that traditional marketing channels suffer from 2 major limitations – one-way communication and no real time feedback. As a veteran marketer, I’ve always believed that marketing is a 2-way street. Unfortunately, traditional marketing channels aren’t conductive to dialogue between the marketer and the customer. Secondly, the rapid explosion of Internet and social media has meant that ‘real time’ communication is key. Most traditional marketing channels suffer from a lag and there’s no instantaneous communication.

While traditional marketing is all about impressions, digital marketing focuses on the more important aspect of creating an experience for users.

Digital Marketing Channels

In a broader sense, the Internet is the heart of digital marketing. The Internet offers several applications such as web, email, IM, RSS, video which can be leveraged by marketers to launch campaigns. The explosive growth of smartphones and tablets has meant that mobile has emerged as a widely accepted digital marketing channel in recent times.

And last but not the least, social media has been a great ambassador to the cause of digital marketing. While the primary motivation for social networks was in-person interaction, leading social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have transformed into valuable digital marketing tools.

Thanks for Douglas Idugboe to write down fabulous article and all credit goes to Douglas Idugboe.

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Will business consulting companies become a big threat to agencies?

Business consulting companies are scaling back their digital arms by aggressively hiring creative talent and acquiring agencies. Will they displace companies on Madison Avenue?

The digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving, and businesses have to adapt to keep up with the rapid change. Consulting companies in particular have begun to build their own in-house digital practices, offering a full suite of marketing services.

Management consulting giants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), McKinsey, and Accenture and Deloitte are taking more agency and design responsibilities through mergers and acquisitions. For example, in May of this year, McKinsey bought one of Silicon Valley's oldest design firms Lunar, whose revenue reached $8 billion in 2014. Last April, PwC completed its acquisition of 100-year-old management consultancy team Strategy& (formerly known as Booz and Company) to boost its digital practice. PwC also initiated the Experience Center in October 2015, which consists of more than 3,000 experienced creative and digital business experts across the globe. Even Ad Age's agency list has catagorized Deloitte Digital, Accenture Interactive, and PwC Digital as networks similar to WPP, Wieden + Kennedy, and Publicis Groupe. 

Given that more major consulting corporations are choosing to take an in-house approach to hiring creative to generate design strategy, should Madison Avenue be worried?

What does a digital practice do?

Companies working with PwC are accustomed to going through major changes in their business, such as atransformation in company culture or organizational structure. So they need to invest in technology, hire talent, and become more agile by working with cross-functional teams.

That's where digital comes into play, as it helps companies access the universal ecosystem by determining who to work with and how to work with these partners.

"Business transformation requires executive commitment and working with external vendors in new ways," explains Matthew Egol, chief strategy officer of digital services at PwC. "If we use a house metaphor, you need to decide who the architect is, who the general contractor is, and who the sub-contractors are. In many cases, companies cannot depend on a single agency or tech vendor to be the architect, and they cannot reply on their creative agency to do all the integration because there are lots of assembling requirements in the process."

Egol adds that the digital practice at PwC has the ability to provide a wide range of services, from strategy to execution.

On the strategy side, his team focuses on what capabilities companies need to have two or three years from now, how to prioritize tasks, which companies to work with, and what talent they many need throughout in the process. His team also helps companies evaluate select vendors.

Further down the road, Egol's team helps clients execute their digital strategies, which involves agency services. For instance, while working with a CPG manufacturer that wanted to engage with 15,000 retailers around the world, Egol's team helped the brand come up with strategy, design, an operation model, and assisted in executing back-end integration. They also built a website for the brand, which is typically more of an agency service.

Friends or enemies?

Building websites is just a small part of creative services that consulting firms are offering. As creativity's influence is growing beyond the ad industry, digital practices are looking to scale their business by hiring creative talent.

In October of this year, David Krovitz, who served as enterprise innovation consultant for Disney and partner of ad agency PUSH Offices, joined PwC's digital practice as experience director.

And this past August, Fjord, a design consultancy acquired by Accenture in 2013, hired two senior ad executives from agency R/GA: Steve Weinswig as managing director of national strategic accounts and John Jones as senior vice president of design strategy.

As consulting companies are looking to be more creative, Egol uses the word "coopetition" to define the relationship with agencies. This is because when brands executive a strategy, they have the flexibility to choose whether they want to work with the internal design team at PwC or external agencies.

"Our clients are on a journey, and we are on a journey as well. We are helping companies to become more agile, multi-disciplinary, and design oriented in their thinking. If you look at traditional agencies, they work in silos, and their clients work in silos with them. We are looking to break the silos. Compared to agencies, we have talent from different disciplines and are more experience with strategic architectural design capabilities and tactical programs," he says.

"But don't get me wrong. Ad agencies have very creative talent. Our desire is not to displace the creative industry," he adds.

Should agencies feel threatened?

Increased competition due to these acquisitions means that the lifespan of a small agencies and ad tech company are bound to be cut short. But Deacon Webster, owner and chief creative officer at agency, Walrus, does not feel threatened by consulting companies, because he believes that top creative talent will still remain at agencies.

"Certain parts of digital practices may work. But when it comes to creative, it's a strange fad for me, given that traditionally uncreative businesses in the world are looking to suddenly create a creative culture and are expecting that to work," Webster says. 

"For people who have a creative mindset, I don't think McKinsey is a top place to go. Meanwhile, I don't know how these consulting companies can foster the creative culture and continue building creative products," he adds.

Looking at a bigger picture, competition has a profound impact on the ad industry. Webster is concerned that mergers and acquisitions conducted by business consulting companies may lead to industry consolidation, because some agencies want to add financial liquidity to their businesses.

But mergers and acquisitions may deteriorate the quality of ad work. Agencies that are bought by ad holding companies like WPP or Omnicom generally don't do as well as after they are acquired, due to the leadership change and a different company culture.

"All of these things are a big negative," Webster says. "I cannot imagine my business getting acquired by Accenture. I think consolidation will always happen because people need money, but is it a good thing? Absolutely not."

Creative culture may be a big hurdle that prevents ad executives from migrating to consulting firms, but agencies cannot ignore their fierce competitors that have more financial sources, more data, and a more diverse talent pool. How to cultivate a great company culture and retain the best people will remain a big question for everyone on Madison Avenue.

Main source of article : http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2429715/will-business-consulting-companies-become-a-big-threat-to-agencies

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Where does social media fit in the holiday shopping season?

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram may not be able to compete with Amazon for e-commerce, but the platforms' recent slew of offerings show they came to play this holiday season.

It's mid-October, which means that the holiday season is officially unofficially two weeks away.

This period is especially crucial to digital marketers as the Internet and proliferation of mobile devicescontinue to eat away at in-store shopping by making it easier than ever to avoid going to stores with people.

But how does social media fit in?

Recent research from BloomReach shows that nearly half of consumers begin their product shopping searches on Amazon, compared with 34 percent who start on search engines and 21 percent who use retailers' websites.

While no social platform made the list, they're still an important part of the holiday shopping ecosystem, according to Jay Marwaha, chief executive of D.C.-based analytics firm SYNTASA.

"What social media really does is really automate your word-of-mouth influence. Before social media, you would call your friend and say, 'I heard about you buying a car; how is it?'" asks Marwaha. "It's really not a shopping channel, but it's a promoter of wants and needs, and it promotes the searches for wants and needs."

He adds that many people go on social media to influence rather than be influenced, as a way to promote their "consumer activism" and share their experiences with certain brands and products.

But Brian Hoyt, vice president of communications at RetailMeNot, argues that that illustrates his point that social media is more for connecting than commerce.

Hoyt points out that no social media platform made the list of places where shopping starts because their primary benefit for marketers is brand awareness. He calls social's role in shopping "the next great frontier."

"This is the land grab and I think anyone who has a large mobile presence in particular - and social channels certainly do - is trying to find ways to monetize that audience," says Hoyt. "But the Internet has created all these communities of businesses online and you can't always be everything."

Social platforms may be able to compete with Amazon where holiday shopping is concerned, but they're always trying to become as palatable as possible for marketers.

Lately, it seems like the major social players have all come out with - or at least worked on - new or updated offerings, in order to do that in time for the holidays.

Let's break it down by platform:

Facebook

Facebook has had a busy year for ad offerings: auto-play ads, Instant Articles and panoramic mobile ads immediately come to mind.

More recently, Facebook has been testing a newer, faster-loading version of the latter called Canvas.

The social media giant is also testing a mobile shopping section that aggregates products underneath a single tab. If unveiled by the holidays, the shopping tab can be particularly significant to Facebook, as it would keep shoppers within the platform, a move for which Google is known.

Whether or not these two offerings come to fruition, both demonstrate that Facebook recognizes the importance of catering to mobile holiday shoppers. Both would allow consumers to make purchases directly from the app.

Instagram

Earlier this week, Instagram launched an account, @instagramforbusiness, that seems to exist solely to give marketers ideas. The account’s first two posts are hyperlapse videos that show the behind-the-scenes execution of brands’ Instagrams.

Ben & Jerry’s, the guinea pig of @instagramforbusiness, has 572,000 followers, and many of its posts contain links to drive them to the Ben & Jerry's website or those for causes it supports, such as the climate movement and marriage equality.

Creating further engagement, the brand often posts photos taken by its fans.

@instagramforbusiness may not be an offering in the traditional sense of the word, but it does indirectly push marketers toward using the platform, by holding up Ben & Jerry's as a paragon to inspire other advertisers.

Hoyt thinks Instagram was clever to play into what he considers to be social media's sweet spot: sharing and inspiration.

"If I'm a marketer, and I want to be part of a community of marketers and share ideas, that's certainly how I would engage a social channel," says Hoyt, offering the Austin start-ups Facebook group he's in, for example. "That's where we share ideas: what are great vendors to use, what are you doing for the holidays. That's what social channels were built for."

Pinterest

Last week, Pinterest updated its Buyable Pins, the product that allows users to purchase products directly from the platform. Buyable Pins - of which there are more than 60 million from brands such as Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's and crafts retailer Michaels - are now available on new commerce platforms, opening them up to thousands more businesses.

Pinterest has also recently updated its local search capabilities, something the platform naturally lends itself to. This is particularly true during the holidays, since so many people use Pinterest to connect with brands and catalog their favorite products.

The improved localized search creates more relevant results for global users. For example, French and Australian Pinners searching "winter fashion" will see completely different search results, given the differences in language and climate. 

"This builds on other recent improvements made to search which included multi-object typeahead on all platforms as well as verified accounts," says Mike Mayzel, a Pinterest spokesperson. "Verified accounts played a role in helping Pinners find local partners and noteworthy organizations on Pinterest."

Mayzel adds that with the update, users in Brazil, France, Germany and Japan are saving twice as many localized Pins they find in their searches, in addition to spending more time on Pins' source links after clicking through.

Twitter

As of October 8, the microblogging platform offers video monetization at scale for Twitter Amplify. Twitter also launched Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), following Google's product of the same name and Facebook Instant Articles.

Twitter has not only come out with new offerings, but new guides on how to use them. Some of Twitter's blog posts over the last few days include, "New holiday guide: learn how to reach shoppers with Twitter" and "Holiday shoppers and Twitter: data-driven tips to boost your sales."

In Marwaha's opinion, this was necessary because Twitter is at a disadvantage when it comes to social commerce.

The other three platforms are more inherently visual, and don't have the same fast, furious updates. In the time it took me to write this paragraph, five new Tweets appeared in my feed. While procrastinating I read a Vice article entitled, "I Tried to Live Like Gwyneth Paltrow for a Week," during which time I got 51 new Tweets.

"This is just my perception maybe, but Twitter is not seen as being as heavy into the advertising for filling the needs or wants users have," says Marwaha. "It's putting its stake in the ground and saying, 'I'm in the market, too.'"

To sum up

Sure, Amazon is the dominant force in the world of e-commerce. Whether or not social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter can chip away at its holiday shopping share remains to be seen, but between the four of them, there are enough new and upcoming ad offerings that show they're trying.

And while social media may not be the go-to shopping channel, that's not to deny the role it plays in online shopping, whether direct or as part of the research process. 

At the very least, social campaigns are probably a better way to spend your money this holiday season than the cabbage juice you'd have to buy in order to live like Gwyneth Paltrow.

Main Source of Post are : http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2430903/where-does-social-media-fit-in-with-the-holiday-shopping-season

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