With Brand Republic reporting Nickelodeon’s SpongeBob Diner Dash Lite game ‘king of the apps’ over Easter, and Hitwise reporting a drop in UK usage for social networking site Bebo, signs of children’s changing digital behaviours are everywhere, yet how can we predict what will be the ‘next big thing’?
The most popular websites for children are often websites with a commercial end, or sites surrounding TV or films such as Lego, Disney, Cartoon Network and CBeebies.
As they get older, communication and social networking become more appealing. An Ofcom survey found a quarter of 8-12 year olds have a profile on social networking sites despite them being under the minimum age for such sites. LimeWire and Frengo are popular among teenagers, showing the appeal of group messaging, mobiles, sharing music, images and videos.
One thing agencies and brands must be constantly aware of is that children are susceptible to advertising. The youngest can often struggle to distinguish between reality and advertising messages. Teenagers will turn off when brands try too hard to be cool, or fall into stereotyping their age-group.
Marketing or advertising messages that young people can personally relate to, will most likely succeed. The message should be clear, simple and specific. Vague terminology or representation can be a turn-off. Brands that reach out to young people through schools, local events, on the high-street or through celebrities will often hold a lasting impression. They are more likely to remember you if they understand exactly what you do and how you relate to them.
Marketing and advertising to children can be an ethical minefield, but with companies such as McDonald’s spending $2billion a year, it’s big business. Bluhalo’s advice would be to do your homework, know the regulations, ask an expert and assume nothing!
Laura Hannan
Business Development Manager
Twitter @bluhalolaura
Showing posts with label bebo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bebo. Show all posts
Friday, 23 April 2010
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
‘The Customer’s Always Right’
Leaflets, binned. Posters, graffitied. TV, viewed once, missed it – too late.
Digital is the window that shows the same weather everyday. You don’t open a screen and get grey, you don’t open a tab and get storms, you open a new window and get exactly what you want and what you expect sat neatly in front of you.
You’re engaged, because you returned – that’s why you’re here.
And it’s not just you that’s cottoned on to this trend. The web is saturated with those in the know, and is making space for those that are ready to board.
When the dreaded ‘crunch’ word leads companies to cut the newspaper ad, reduce the magazine spend and cut radio out altogether, the digital age continues to flourish.
Money must be spent to get recognition, to repeat, educate and inform. But much more tactical and planned execution must be employed to use this spend wisely. As a company you’ve got to know where to put your money and cash it in quickly. Putting up a website, a microsite, sharing information on social networking sites, blogging, feeds – all these media get read not once, not twice, but hundreds of thousands of times. And ‘technically’ you’re only really investing that once, with top ups along the way. Surely, this is wise investment.
But who started it, the consumers or the companies – are we voting chicken or are we voting egg?
For my money, ‘it tastes like chicken’!
Social networking sites like Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, and sharing spaces like Digg and Del.icio.us are cramming in members, fans and exchanging media like it’s going out of fashion – except it’s not, it’s striding the catwalk like a diva! Just recently we’ve been approached by several global corporates, ‘we need to be on Facebook; we’ve got to get to the consumer market’. They are effectively buying shoppers. But are the shoppers buying them?
Yes, the companies are coming to the consumer, they’re letting them shop online and even receive their purchases online or at least within a reach of the postbox. The consumers may have prompted businesses to increase their investment in digital. But it’s not like the businessses feel ashamed, oh no – they’re feeling pretty ok about it.
Joining a page as a fan gives you affiliation, exclusivity and better still if you ‘buy into’ (in the true sense) the products on offer, as a ‘member’ you get even more rewards.
They’re paying for you to be happy, and you’re saying thanks, and they’re saying thanks back.
So, as a business you’ve got your Facebook page, your MySpace banners, your Twitter – what next, do you sit tight, are you done?
No, and since the customer’s always right, you’ve got more to do. If you really want to be up there, right at the front, stretching like a child in a classroom with their arm waving in the air, then read on.
It’s ok having placements but you need people to know about them. Everyone, and I mean everyone visits a search engine. Some once a day, some ten times a day, some just keep the browser open.
You’ve got your consumer at their desk, you’ve got them typing, but when they click ‘Search’…….er, you’re not at the top of the list. You’re not even on the first page. And even if you’re no maths whizz, you know that no one clicks past the first page.
So there’s work to do, and this must be done alongside the build of your projects. It must be planned concurrently. Get media buy, employ quick campaigns, do seeding. Plant that site, banner or advert firmly in its pot and water it!
Let’s conclude.
Digital is booming and companies and consumers are starting to align in their presence online.
But one of them’s playing catch up.
No one wants to be the one that’s left behind - Because the customer is always right!
Katherine K
Digital Account Manager
Digital is the window that shows the same weather everyday. You don’t open a screen and get grey, you don’t open a tab and get storms, you open a new window and get exactly what you want and what you expect sat neatly in front of you.
You’re engaged, because you returned – that’s why you’re here.
And it’s not just you that’s cottoned on to this trend. The web is saturated with those in the know, and is making space for those that are ready to board.
When the dreaded ‘crunch’ word leads companies to cut the newspaper ad, reduce the magazine spend and cut radio out altogether, the digital age continues to flourish.
Money must be spent to get recognition, to repeat, educate and inform. But much more tactical and planned execution must be employed to use this spend wisely. As a company you’ve got to know where to put your money and cash it in quickly. Putting up a website, a microsite, sharing information on social networking sites, blogging, feeds – all these media get read not once, not twice, but hundreds of thousands of times. And ‘technically’ you’re only really investing that once, with top ups along the way. Surely, this is wise investment.
But who started it, the consumers or the companies – are we voting chicken or are we voting egg?
For my money, ‘it tastes like chicken’!
Social networking sites like Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, and sharing spaces like Digg and Del.icio.us are cramming in members, fans and exchanging media like it’s going out of fashion – except it’s not, it’s striding the catwalk like a diva! Just recently we’ve been approached by several global corporates, ‘we need to be on Facebook; we’ve got to get to the consumer market’. They are effectively buying shoppers. But are the shoppers buying them?
Yes, the companies are coming to the consumer, they’re letting them shop online and even receive their purchases online or at least within a reach of the postbox. The consumers may have prompted businesses to increase their investment in digital. But it’s not like the businessses feel ashamed, oh no – they’re feeling pretty ok about it.
Joining a page as a fan gives you affiliation, exclusivity and better still if you ‘buy into’ (in the true sense) the products on offer, as a ‘member’ you get even more rewards.
They’re paying for you to be happy, and you’re saying thanks, and they’re saying thanks back.
So, as a business you’ve got your Facebook page, your MySpace banners, your Twitter – what next, do you sit tight, are you done?
No, and since the customer’s always right, you’ve got more to do. If you really want to be up there, right at the front, stretching like a child in a classroom with their arm waving in the air, then read on.
It’s ok having placements but you need people to know about them. Everyone, and I mean everyone visits a search engine. Some once a day, some ten times a day, some just keep the browser open.
You’ve got your consumer at their desk, you’ve got them typing, but when they click ‘Search’…….er, you’re not at the top of the list. You’re not even on the first page. And even if you’re no maths whizz, you know that no one clicks past the first page.
So there’s work to do, and this must be done alongside the build of your projects. It must be planned concurrently. Get media buy, employ quick campaigns, do seeding. Plant that site, banner or advert firmly in its pot and water it!
Let’s conclude.
Digital is booming and companies and consumers are starting to align in their presence online.
But one of them’s playing catch up.
No one wants to be the one that’s left behind - Because the customer is always right!
Katherine K
Digital Account Manager
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Ping.fm - site of the month
“Ping is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.” In simple terms, Ping.fm is a tool that allows you to send updates to all of your favourite microblogging sites at the same time.
Ping is currently running a beta version but all the essential features are there, the main benefit being the ability to send updates to other social sites.
So why would you use Ping?
The answer to this question depends upon how much you use social networking sites. Ping is a great way of sending one update that covers all of your social network and microblogging sites. It has a pretty comprehensive list of sites that are covered including:
- Bebo
- Blogger
- Brightkite
- Custom URL
- Facebook
- FriendFeed
- Hi5
- Jaiku
- Identi.ca
- Kwippy
- LinkedIn
- LiveJournal
- Mashable
- MySpace
- Plaxo Pulse
- Plurk
- Pownce
- Tumblr
- Twitter
- Wordpress.com
- Xanga
It can also be used for messenger services such as Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger.
Now unless you are a serious fan of social media, it’s doubtful that you have accounts with anywhere near all of the above. However, you do probably own accounts with a handful of these sites.
With one easy update, you can ensure your contacts at all of these sites keep up to date with what you’re doing and more importantly, keeping them remembering you and what you do.
How is this relevant to business?
Aside from being a nice way to stay in touch with friends, Ping.fm enables you to very easily (a matter of minutes, if not seconds) let all of your contacts know what you’re doing. This doesn’t have to be ‘having a cup of tea’ or ‘upset with the world’ but could be something meaningful that reminds people what you do such as ‘trying out new social media site Ping.fm’ or it could prompt a response, for example ‘know anyone that needs a new website?’ or even to seed a viral campaign or company news article – ‘thinks everyone should read http://www.bluhalo.com/blog/view/152/sports-website-design-its-all-about-engaging-fans’.
If you think this isn’t relevant to your business, then think about your personal business relevance. LinkedIn is known for its ability to open up job opportunities to its members – maybe your next job offer will come from a recommendation from one of your contacts…
Back to business and it’s also worth considering your brand personality. If you’re a B2C brand, it may be worth creating identities for your brand on some of the sites above – Ping can make managing these identities a more streamlined process and assist in retaining consistency across different sites.
One of the best features that Ping offers is the ability to include or exclude certain sites from your updates – great if you fancy a rant but don’t want colleagues to see!
Are there any bad points?
There aren’t many!
There doesn’t appear to be a way to send your updates via text message – only via email, which can cost more if you’re updating via mobile – dependant upon your tariff. The exclusion of certain sites from your updates requires you to learn various triggers such as yourcode@tt to post to twitter. However, it doesn’t take long to learn the triggers you need.
All in all, a very interesting site that could see some serious member numbers once out of beta version, or even before. Due to the fact that it’s currently in Beta you need a code from a member to get in on the action. These are quite easy to find by searching online or email me – I’ve already joined up and can send you the latest code.
Jocelyn Kirby
Ping is currently running a beta version but all the essential features are there, the main benefit being the ability to send updates to other social sites.
So why would you use Ping?
The answer to this question depends upon how much you use social networking sites. Ping is a great way of sending one update that covers all of your social network and microblogging sites. It has a pretty comprehensive list of sites that are covered including:
- Bebo
- Blogger
- Brightkite
- Custom URL
- FriendFeed
- Hi5
- Jaiku
- Identi.ca
- Kwippy
- LiveJournal
- Mashable
- MySpace
- Plaxo Pulse
- Plurk
- Pownce
- Tumblr
- Wordpress.com
- Xanga
It can also be used for messenger services such as Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger.
Now unless you are a serious fan of social media, it’s doubtful that you have accounts with anywhere near all of the above. However, you do probably own accounts with a handful of these sites.
With one easy update, you can ensure your contacts at all of these sites keep up to date with what you’re doing and more importantly, keeping them remembering you and what you do.
How is this relevant to business?
Aside from being a nice way to stay in touch with friends, Ping.fm enables you to very easily (a matter of minutes, if not seconds) let all of your contacts know what you’re doing. This doesn’t have to be ‘having a cup of tea’ or ‘upset with the world’ but could be something meaningful that reminds people what you do such as ‘trying out new social media site Ping.fm’ or it could prompt a response, for example ‘know anyone that needs a new website?’ or even to seed a viral campaign or company news article – ‘thinks everyone should read http://www.bluhalo.com/blog/view/152/sports-website-design-its-all-about-engaging-fans’.
If you think this isn’t relevant to your business, then think about your personal business relevance. LinkedIn is known for its ability to open up job opportunities to its members – maybe your next job offer will come from a recommendation from one of your contacts…
Back to business and it’s also worth considering your brand personality. If you’re a B2C brand, it may be worth creating identities for your brand on some of the sites above – Ping can make managing these identities a more streamlined process and assist in retaining consistency across different sites.
One of the best features that Ping offers is the ability to include or exclude certain sites from your updates – great if you fancy a rant but don’t want colleagues to see!
Are there any bad points?
There aren’t many!
There doesn’t appear to be a way to send your updates via text message – only via email, which can cost more if you’re updating via mobile – dependant upon your tariff. The exclusion of certain sites from your updates requires you to learn various triggers such as yourcode@tt to post to twitter. However, it doesn’t take long to learn the triggers you need.
All in all, a very interesting site that could see some serious member numbers once out of beta version, or even before. Due to the fact that it’s currently in Beta you need a code from a member to get in on the action. These are quite easy to find by searching online or email me – I’ve already joined up and can send you the latest code.
Jocelyn Kirby
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
