Benefiting from social media marketing in 2014
Idowu Olayiwola, chief executive, Cyberbuddies Limited, a Lagos-based onsite web development company, speaks on how small and medium enterprises can get the best from social media marketing in 2014. Excerpts by OLUYINKA ALAWODE.
In a seminar recently, Olayiwola, who is creator of the social site: ooshay.com, a leading online gift sharing community, highlighted how businesses could plan their social media marketing strategy, sell products/services in all the social zones, research and measure the impact of social media marketing on businesses, and use of the 36 rules of social media marketing and much more.
He says: “Cyberbuddies Limited has put Ooshay Social Media Marketing (SMM) together to respond to the need to help businesses maximise their return on investment (RoI) in social media marketing and to measure social media marketing results against organisational Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
“With Ooshay Social Media Marketing, you will see the impact of your social media marketing efforts on your business. You will increase your sales, spend less time, energy and money in trying to get new customers, engage your customers 24/7 and create brand loyalty by getting more balance in your monetisation attempts and customer satisfaction, and achieve all of these in a year or less.”
Using a recent study conducted by Adobe, he says social media marketing remains the most important marketing area of concern for the upcoming three years, but many businesses are still dealing with the challenges that come with its reality. He says some of the key concerns include generating enough content for consistent storytelling, demonstrating RoI of social media initiatives, allocating resources, both financial and human, integrating social media interactions in a holistic Customer Relationship Management (CRM) approach and re-organising corporate structures to deal with social media and user-generated content.
He highlights the benefits of popular social media sites –
Facebook:
With its 1.18 billion users, of which close to 58 percent are active daily, with an average of 20 minutes per day, Facebook is certainly not disappearing anytime soon.
Twitter:
2014 should be the year of Twitter. Becoming a public company will throw the seven-year-old platform into more limelight. Many bystanders will want to better understand the platform, which should in turn convert many latent users to come back and give the platform another try. Many brands already use Twitter, in particular in the travel and hospitality vertical, i.e. airlines, hotels, destinations, etc. Having more users join this social media should consolidate Twitter as a great customer service platform, not to mention lead generation and research and development.
Google+
Earlier this year, a study published on e-marketer found that Google+ had now over 540 million active users, making it number two worldwide after Facebook.
Ooshay:
Even though sites such as Ooshay have now been around for a while, it is safe to say last year was the year when the sharing economy, or collaborative economy, made big strides in the public marketplace. These new technologies now make it so much easier for people to deal directly with other people, in what some also call the peer-to-peer movement (P2P). Ooshay, gift sharing community, promises to create more mutually beneficial connections before the end of 2014.
Videos are hot!
Videos should continue their upward ascent in the social media marketing toolbox hierarchy, in particular short videos. If pictures tell 1,000 words, videos can tell a million!
He says Cyberbuddies Limited, creator of Ooshay.com, started as an idea to get closer to its clients businesses in order to offer better online solutions. “Our approach is to work under the clients roof to deliver the solutions they require on time. Our vision is to be the first onsite web development company. Our mission is to develop quality IT solutions ensuring timely delivery.”
Olayiwola has a seven-year experience in web design and development. He started the company in 2006, when he realised the need for Brick and Mortar companies in Nigeria to take advantage of the opportunities that abound online. He holds a bachelors degree in computer science. Sope Oyewo, another member of the Cyberbuddies team, has a strong conviction that entrepreneurship in Nigeria is the way to go. Oyewo holds a bachelors degree in mathematics and has been active in the company since it started.
Operations
Explaining how Cyberbuddies Limited operates, he says: “First, the specifications, objectives and requirement of a website is defined. The work starts and a timeline is drawn for the project. The rest of the work follows the project timeline which is usually between two to three weeks plus an extra week for contingencies and testing. Finally, the website is launched to the public for usage. Marketing services might also be considered for increasing traffic on the website.”
Web design and development
We use different packages such as Dreamweaver, Frontpage, PHP/MySQL, ASP/MsSQL, Search Engine Optimisation. We create Discussion Forums and Blogs. The HTML/CSS/JavScript/XML structure of the pages and the graphic content that go with them are paramount to have a professional website. Presentation of the company website in a simple yet detailed way to ensure user friendliness and interactivity is our ultimate goal.
We use conventional and unconventional design layouts to pass the message across. Flash animations are also added where necessary. In some cases, we add features like a simple contact form, Google Adsense, etc. Site search are basic for most websites and we recommend them for most websites.
Content management systems
We make bespoke content management systems and customise others like JOOMLA, DOTNETNUKE, DRUPAL, etc. PHP, ASP, JSP-based content management systems are all available for customised and bespoke applications. We tailor the CMS to suit your business corporate brand identity.
Flash websites
Innovative flash content websites using 2D and 3D designs, directed at displaying product features to customers in an interactive way.
Services
These include web design, development and CMS, flash websites, online marketing, web training, web consulting.
OLUYINKA ALAWODE