When It Goes Wrong On Twitter, It Goes REALLY Wrong

If you learned anything from Brazil’s epic thrashing in the world cup last week, Webwindows suggests it be, when it goes wrong on Twitter, it goes really wrong.

Webwindows Watched in Shock as Germany Annihilated the Home Team

Webwindows is a web marketing firm which offers a range of key services that make sure you walk away with the right marketing strategy for your business. Part of that job description means we follow current events with a dedication you could only call single-minded

Just like the rest of the world, we watched with a sense of disbelief, when Germany thrashed Brazil 7-1 in the world cup semi-final last week. It was quite simply a car crash of epic proportions, and of course, it all blew up on Twitter.

The Match Racked Up a Record 35.6 Million Tweets

Let this be a lesson in how Twitter reacts when you fail at what you do. According to the Guardian, following Brazil’s fierce beating by the German team, Tweeters took to the social media site in their millions to weigh in on the most shocking result ever witnessed in the world of football. The match was the most discussed sporting event ever on Twitter- it racked up a phenomenal 35.6 million Tweets.

Twitter wasn’t the only social media site users chose to air their disbelief, though, as it triggered the highest level of conversation EVER seen on Facebook for any World Cup game (as of the time of writing). Specifically, more than 66 million users had 200 million interactions about the biggest humiliation in Brazil’s football history; Brazil dominated over a quarter of that global conversation on the site.

More Popular Than Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé and Barack Obama

It gets even worse for Brazil though, as data from Twitter went on to reveal that because of the rate that Germany was scoring goals - five goals in an astonishing 18 minutes – the match racked up a record number of tweets per minute. The peak came when Sami Khedira racked up Germany’s fifth (we still can’t believe it) goal – which saw 580,166 tweets posted per minute.

This means that Khedira’s goal was more popular than Miley Cyrus’ infamous MTV VMA’s performance last year- which crested 360,000 tweets per minute, Beyoncé’s 2013 Super Bowl halftime show (268,000) and US President Barack Obama’s Democratic National Convention acceptance speech, which topped at 52, 756 tweets per minute.

Twitter Can Make or Break You!

If you learn anything from this, it should be that when it comes to online marketing, Twitter can make or break you. If you epically screw up, you can be sure that within a few seconds, the whole world will know about it and, all of a sudden, all that effort you’ve put into your web marketing strategy means nothing at all. 

Don’t Let People Ask you Anything on Twitter!

If you want to craft an effective social media advertising strategy, WebWindows suggests you learn from Robin Thicke’s mistake and don’t give people license to ask you anything!

Welcome to WebWindows

Over the past ten years, WebWindows has evolved to become one of the leading web marketing firms in the industry, offering our unique range of key services to businesses of every size, to ensure that they walk away from us with the effective web marketing strategy they need to take their business to the next level.

Of course, we’ve stood on the front lines and witnessed the rise of social media. In the modern wold, where hundreds of millions, even billions, are on Facebook and Twitter, and where the nature of these sites allow you to target your audience with pin point precession, marketing has never been easier. But only if you do it right.

He Really Blurred the Lines

You may wonder why we’re turning our attention to Robin Thicke. The man’s an American pop star, and until recently he wasn’t exactly a very famous one. What could we all possibly learn from him?

Well quite a lot. Thicke reached worldwide fame last year when he released his song ‘Blurred Lines.’ Dealing with controversial issues (i.e. date rape), it was condemned by practically everybody, with Thicke becoming, according to various news sources, the ‘poster boy of misogyny.’ But what does it have to do with your online marketing campaign?

‘#AskThicke’…. Why He’s a Monumental Misogynist!

Last week Thicke went ahead with his latest online promotional campaign. The problem, was that the campaign was billed as a chance to ask Thicke anything on Twitter with the hashtag ‘#AskThicke.’

Obviously, people who see him as the ‘poster boy of misogyny’ ripped him apart. According to The Independent, particularly negative tweets included “if one of your songs played in a forest and no one was around to hear it would it still be sexist and gross?,” and "when you're not busy objectifying women, making light of rape and justifying sexual violence, how do you like to relax?” They’re only the tip of the iceberg.

Ask Anything Q&A’s Are Horrible Ideas!

This isn’t the first time WebWindows has seen an ‘ask anything’ twitter Q&A session go horrifically wrong. We don’t know why people are still doing it, but if you are, don’t! You will leave yourself open to trolls, just accept that and move on!

Take a Cue from the Blair Witch Project and Get Creative!

WebWindows suggests that when you’re putting together your web marketing campaign you take your cue from the Blair Witch Project and get creative!

WebWindows: Home of Effective Creative Web Marketing

WebWindows is the home of effective, creative web marketing. Over the past decade we have helped craft first rate web marketing strategies for businesses of all sizes with our unique range of key services.

If we’ve learned anything in those ten years it’s that if you want your web marketing strategy to be effective, it needs to capture people’s attention. Boring ads often go unnoticed, as such, proving ineffective, which is why you need to get creative!

 We All Remember the Blair Witch Project

If you want an example of how to do creative marketing right, look at the Blair Witch Project; often regarded by industry experts as the first ever ‘viral’ online marketing campaign.

Of course, they had far less to work with than you do. A film shot in the days before YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and with a scant budget of $22,000, it ended up reaping a colossal $250 million in revenue, thanks in no small part to a killer online marketing campaign.

They Created the Legend of the Blair Witch

Essentially, the Blair Witch Project’s advertising team got unbelievably creative. Through an incredible combination of “found footage,” cleverly planted rumours on online message boards (it was the late 90’s), and the initiation of a low budget ad campaign, they created a legend. That legend made people curious and brought them to the box office.

It was absolute genius. They managed to craft one of the most memorable online marketing campaigns in history, and they did it by thinking of their product, thinking about its unique selling point and using that through the power of the internet to build unprecedented hype.

WebWindows Suggests You Think outside the Box

That’s why you should take your cue from the Blair Witch Project when crafting your web marketing campaign. They taught the world that it doesn’t matter what you have to work with, as long as you think outside the box!

Webwindows Explains Why Contextual Advertising Offers Great Targeting.

This week Webwindows turns its attention to contextual advertising, and explains to you why it offers prime targeting for your ad campaign.

Webwindows: Leaders in Web Marketing

Webwindows is an industry expert when it comes to web marketing. For the past ten years, we have been offering top notch web marketing expertise to businesses of all sizes, and the diversity of the Webwindows team, means that no other agency offers the range of services you get with us.

That success has been built on the experience of said team. Through trial and error, we have figured out the best ways to ensure that your ad campaign has the desired effect. That is why we know that contextual ads work.

Contextual Advertising Gives People Easy Access to What They Need

Basically contextual ads (i.e. banner ads) work on the principle of showcasing advertisements to readers, which work in tandem with the content they are already reading. For example. If a reader is perusing a travel guide to France on a website that utilises contextual advertising, the content could be accompanied by ads about flight deals to France.

Logically, this would lead the viewer to click on the banner for more information and this is why they work – because contextual advertising analyses the content a reader is looking at, and presents them with ads that are highly relevant to said content. Give people easy access to what they need, and they’ll click out of sheer convenience.

How Can You Contextualise a Web Advert?

So the benefits are obvious, but how should you go about contextual advertising? In our experience, we’ve found that there are three options generally available:

1. Keyword Contextual Advertising: This method allows the advertiser to craft their own contextual category, by allowing them to select key words which define the pages they want their contextual ads to appear.
   
2. Category Contextual Advertising: With this method advertisers can target ads on webpages that divide into one or more of the 300+ categories, as defined by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).
   
3. Keyword/category contextual combination: Essentially, a hybrid of the first two. Note, it only works on pages which contain the selected keywords, and have been classified as one of the selected categories.

It’s Obvious Why Contextual Advertising Offers Great Targeting

Therefore it’s clear to see why contextual advertising offers great targeting. You are showing the consumer what they want to see, and giving them easy access to it, with a combination of specific keywords and categories. Giving the consumer what they want is the most effective advertising method there is, because it’s very hard to say no when what you want is presented to you on a silver platter!

Advertise with the Sunday Times for Surprisingly Good Value

Webwindows have found that if you choose to advertise with the Sunday Times, you get surprisingly good value. It really is one of the best UK newspapers for your investment.

Webwindows: Crafting Effective Web Marketing Campaigns

Here at Webwindows we’re experts at marketing. Over the last ten years we have dedicated our team of professional experts to crafting effective web marketing campaigns for businesses of every possible size and type under the sun.

Essentially, we know what works and we’ve found that a smart advertising campaign presented in the right newspaper is extremely effective in communicating your message to your target audience. Newspapers are trusted sources of information by their readers, and as such, a reader will trust your advertisement exactly because they trust they have built up a relationship of trust with their publication of choice.

There are Distinct Advantages to Advertising with the Sunday Times

Saying that, the effectiveness of newspaper-based advertising strategy is entirely dependent on which publication you choose. The Sunday Times would therefore seem to be a bad choice, since it only prints once a week.

However there are distinct advantages to advertising in the Sunday Times. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), it has one of the country’s highest circulation figures, 840,000 per week, and a readership of 2.5 million people. Therefore one weekly issue reaches more readers of print than the Sunday Telegraph, the Observer and the Independent on Sunday combined.

Reach those Lucrative ABC1 Readers

It also has the ability to circulate your advertisement to more ABC1 readers than any other Sunday publication in this country. ABC1 refers to the most lucrative readership in the country, which typical includes the business community, c-suite executives, wealthy young professionals and university graduates. Studies have shown that a significant chunk of the newspapers audience falls into this category, earning over £75,000, per household, per year.

Furthermore, studies conducted by News 3.0 Initiative have concluded that Sunday Times readers still believe that printed media provides the optimum experience, and that readers are more likely to respond when adverts are placed in the relevant sections of the publication. Essentially, readers of the Sunday Times still value it as a trusted news source.

The Sunday Times is a Valuable Newspaper to Advertise With

There you are. Despite the fact that the Sunday Times is only printed once a week, it is a valuable paper to advertise with, as you are able to benefit from the publications formidable readership, as well as the trust that readership puts into the Sunday Times as a credible news source. 

Webwindows Begs You Not to Do What British Gas Did on Twitter

If you want to use Twitter to promote your ad campaign, great, but you need to use common sense. That’s why this week Webwindows begs you not to do what British Gas did on Twitter.

Twitter: A Double Edged Sword

We specialise in advising you about the wonderful world or web marketing here at Webwindows. In our ten years in the game, we couldn’t fail to notice just how powerful Twitter has grown as an advertising platform. With half a billion users, one carefully crafted Tweet can bring your ad campaign to hundreds of millions.

Twitter’s strength is also its weakness. If you happen to miscalculate your Twitter promotion it has the ability to anger those same millions, turn them against you, prompt them to create a campaign to hijack your ad campaign and render it practically impotent.

What not to do on Twitter: The British Gas Edition

If you don’t believe us, remember what happened to British Gas when they made this fatal mistake. By the time the trolls had finished with them, their ad campaign had been disgraced; it had made the headlines in practically every online British publication and ruined their page one on Google. It drove away customers in droves.

So what did they do? Well, as most energy companies have been lately, they decided to raise their prices. Naturally, annoyed customers who were looking for any chance to vent their frustrations.

Then they initiated a Q&A session on Twitter with the hashtag #AskBG. It was like lighting a match next to a powdered keg, as the company’s many frustrated customers gleefully took the opportunity to high-jack the hashtag to ask just why their energy company raised prices so high. Then British Gas made it worse by promoting the campaign on Facebook; the only social networking site with more users than Twitter.

Webwindows Asks: What Should You Take Away from This “Terrible PR Stunt?”

Here’s where Webwindows makes its case. Don’t be like British Gas. They’re a big company, they can handle bad press. Most companies can’t. A campaign like this that angers so many customers has the potential to ruin a smaller firm. If you take anything away from this terrible PR stunt, let it be that you need to know your audience inside out. 

Webwindows are also on twitter - Webwindows twitter.

Online Sales Set For Record Heights

The Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IABUK) reported  last week that online sales are set to reach a record high, as UK consumers spend more online than ever before. At Webwindows, we find this further shows how profitable an online advertising strategy can be.

E-Commerce, Online Advertising: A Marriage of Convenience

The advantages to online advertising are clear, however they’re never clearer than they are in e-commerce. One single truth that has shaped consumers since the dawn of time is that they like convenience. E-commerce provides said consumer with the ultimate convenience, as they only need to click a few links to act on the interest spurred on by the online advert they have just witnessed.

Furthermore there is clear evidence to suggest that online advertising is set to be more effective than ever before, as ad spend in this country is set to reach a record £20+ billion next year, as a result of large growth margins expected in emerging mediums such as mobile advertising and video on demand advertising. Finally, digital advertising is expected to reach more people than ever next year, as a record number of people spend record numbers of hours online, with tablet use growing particularly strongly amongst several sectors of the UK public.

Record Online Spending set to Spur E-Commerce to Milestone £107 Billion Revenue

This is compounded by the fact that IABUK has now found that the average UK household is set to spend over £4,000 online this year, which will aid this country’s e-commerce industry to measure a record breaking £107 billion in profit, according to research collated by IMRG and Barclaycard.

In 2013, this sector grew by a staggering 124% in comparison with the year before, and it’s also important to note that in the lucrative online music market, 79% is now bought over the internet. Other areas of e-commerce that are set to boom include airline tickets, concerts and cinema tickets, amongst many.

WebWindows on the Profitability of Online Advertising for E-Commerce

At WebWindows we recognise that many companies are adopting an e-commerce element, and as well they should, considering the profit this sector is set to record. The rise of this sector means it is more vital than ever to include an online element in your ad campaign, as UK consumers move completely towards digital platforms.