A Guide to Social Videos, and Where it Fits in Your e-business




http://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-use-social-video-for-marketing/?utm_source=content%20team&utm_medium=owned%20social&utm_campaign=content%20team%20owned%20social#pagetop


Upon reading the article and viewing the videos; 1. Please provide your thoughts on how you should best incorporate this type of content (video) into your business ideas. Is it for everyone?, Explain 2. Does the ROI for the social media justify the investment made in the website development? Explain. 3. Can you provide one other social video tip for your classmates?

China opens the door for foreign companies to operate online marketplaces While foreign companies could operate their own e-retail sites, they have not previously been allowed to own shopping portals where many merchants sell. China has strictly regulated online marketplaces, putting them into a closely regulated category that has prevented foreign companies from owning multi-merchant web shopping portals that operate in China. But the Chinese government introduced a new policy this week that will provide an opportunity for foreign companies to operate their own online marketplaces in China. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology,which regulates Internet activity in China, has announced that foreign companies now can wholly own an “online data process and e-business transaction” type of business, as long as it is based in Shanghai’s Free Trade Zone, an experiment in freer trade that China launched in 2013. “For the Chinese government, the e-business transaction type of business means online marketplaces,” says Shao Jun, a partner in the Shanghai law firm Yuantai, tells Internet Retailer. While a foreign company can already operate a web site to sell directly to consumers, if it wants to create a platform from which other retailers sell—such as eBay.com or Amazon.com in the United States—the business falls into the more closely regulated “telecom value-added services category,” Shao says. Foreign companies previously have been prohibited from owning more than a 50% stake in such companies. According to a Chinese government web site, in 2010 the Wal-Mart China subsidiary of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. suggested that the Chinese government change the policy by removing online marketplaces from the “telecom value-added services” category. Wal-Mart is No. 4 in the Internet Retailer 2014 Top 500 Guide, which ranks North American retailers by their online sales. Wal-Mart owns a 51% stake in Yhd.com, an online retailer of food and other products that is No. 6 in the 2014 China 500. For foreign retailers that just want to set up an e-commerce site in China, there are no current restrictions based on their not being Chinese companies, according to Shao. For example, Internet Retailer has received a copy of the China business license of U.K. web-only apparel retailer ASOS Plc., No. 22 in the Internet Retailer Europe 500, which shows that it is wholly owned by a foreign company and that it operates in the field of “Internet retail.” Asos began selling online in China in 2013. To get around the strict restrictions on foreign ownership in certain fields, many foreign companies, particularly those in the Internet sector, have set up their operations in China as what are known as “Variable Interest Entities,” Shao says. In this kind of structure, the foreign company has its Chinese management team establish a Chinese company and operate the business in China for the foreign company. The foreign company signs an agreement with the Chinese company to control the business. Amazon.com Inc., for example, may have used this approach to set up Amazon.cn, which is a marketplace on which many retailers sell in China. That online marketplace is operated by a company called Beijing Century Joyo Information Technology Co. and its business license shows it is a Chinese company owned by a Chinese citizen. However, Amazon.com Inc. includes online sales in China in its financial reports. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its structure in China. Amazon ranks No. 1 in the Top 500and Amazon.cn is No. 4 in the2014 China 500. Questions, 1. Should the Government have control & regulations over how e-bu siness is done in the country? Why or why not? Explain. 2. What does this mean for foreign companies to now be allowed to operate in China? 3. Provide your thoughts on how some companies were already doing business in China prior to this announcement.

Here are 7 digital marketing trends social media managers should know Google will rely heavily on social media signals for SEO With the organic online marketing ecosystem growing, it’s no surprise that Google is relying more on social media signals to inform its search engine rankings. For many teams, the duties of people who works on SEO and those who work on social media are separate; however, this is all about to change. The two may still officially belong to separate teams, but social media marketers will need to be more informed on the SEO strategist’s agenda, so that the SEO strategy can assist with content promotion. The SEO strategist will then need to know how to work with social media marketers in order to receive the social signals it needs to make sure their company ranks on top inGoogle’s SERPs. Content marketing will be the solution to Facebook’s algorithm change While there’s no problem in using social media to promote your business, it’s important to know how much promotion is too much. Facebook’s new algorithm for its News Feed calls for timely posts about information that provides value to your social media audience. In other words, sophisticated content marketing is now the way to get engagement on Facebook. The businesses who already have a solid content marketing strategy have an advantage on the shift in Facebook’s new algorithm—they can select content from their blog to feature on the business Page. However, if your business doesn’t have a content marketing strategy or a blog, but wants to maintain a strong Facebook presence, it may be time to create a content marketing strategy for Facebook. Websites need to be more mobile-friendly You’ve probably heard, but everyone needs to make sure their websites are optimized for mobile. According to statista, mobile phone internet user penetration worldwide will be 52.4% in 2015. Which means this year optimizing your website for mobile should be at the top of your 2015 digital marketing to-do list. Social media managers need to be aware of this to ensure the format of any promotions they do (especially those that include driving people to their company websites) are optimized for mobile. On top of that, any images used on social media should also be viewable on mobile for optimized user experience. The new Twitter search engine will push for Tweets to be more optimized Twitter recently released one of its long-standing goals, the new and more powerful Twitter search engine. This new search engine will allow people to search through every Tweet ever published, which means the way you structure your Tweets is more important now than ever in the history of the microblogging social network. Including hashtags, images, and links in your Tweets will make sure that your Tweets show up higher in Twitter’s search engine results. Think of this new search engine as Google: including the right keywords in your Tweets will allow you to be more visible in search queries. Social media data will inform marketing decisions You’ve heard plenty of good reasons to use more social media data in your marketing. But social media data is pretty complex and hard to put into action. A recent survey conducted by Hootsuite found that 60% of global organizations struggle to turn social data into actionable tactics. However, this year is the year that social media marketers shift gears and add another hat to their collection: the social media analyst hat. With this hat on, you can use the social media data collected through your social media tools, and analyze this information to inform marketing and business decisions. For example, social media data can help you create customer personas to boost the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, as well as the kind of language prospects use around your product. A testing culture will be implemented in all digital marketing teams Do you have a team that works on testing landing pages, website layout, online ads and emails every day? If yes, that’s great! If no, then keep reading. Testing new landing pages, different website layouts, online ads, and email copy, allows you to make more out of your existing traffic, increase conversions and improve the user experience. You can conduct A/B tests that compare two versions of a web page to see which performs better. The one that performs the best will be the one implemented. For example, you can do this for social media ads by testing several versions of the call to action used in the ad. Investing in A/B testing can have a massive impact on lead generation, traffic, and revenue. The online experience will shift to a more “human experience” Google and Facebook have made changes to their platforms to push businesses to focus more on the “human experience.” This shift will drive digital marketers to think more about the user experience, their target audience, and the way they market their products and business. For social media marketers, your social media posts will need to be more relevant, provide more value to your audience, and the engagement needs to be more “human.” This year is going to see a lot of change in how people consume marketing online. The trends listed above are just a handful of the trends that social media marketers need to know. The need to stay on top of growing digital marketing trends will allow social media marketers to make sure their efforts on social media will provide the ROI that supports all of the digital marketing efforts for their business. And if you feel like you’re missing out, don’t worry—we’ll be right here to help you catch up on the latest trends in social media. Questions? --- 1. Provide your feedback and thoughts from reading the article. 2. Do you know of any more digital marketing trends that social media marketers need to be aware of? Add them in the comments below.