Succi's 5 Awesome Ads

Awesome Ads 

• McDonalds: Halloween vampire costume made from the famous McDonalds fries/chips and ketchup/tomato sauce. 

McDonald's

• Pepsi: Another Halloween inspired advert. In this one, Pepsi is wearing a 'scary' Coca Cola outfit. Considering the history and enmity between the two brands this advert is hilarious.

Pepsi

• Volkswagen: This creative play on the alphabets and the tag lie 'we're efficient' is simply ingenious. 

Volkswagen

• Folgers: a coffee brand created this powerful demonstration of outdoor marketing. The sight of this alone will impress any coffee lover and ignite word of mouth.

Folgers: Coffee Shop

• World Wild Fund (WWF): At one point or another we have all used our hands to pretend to form an animal. Using this concept, which touches close to home, to send out the message that the animals need our helping hands is great.

World Wide Fund

Succi's Review: MWEB - WHY WHIP OUT YOUR DONGLE?

Advertising makes up a big part of marketing, therefore it would not be appropriate to leave it out of this blog. Platforms such as YouTube have revolutionized the way customers consume adverts and they have also largely influenced the way companies communicate.

WHY WHIP OUT YOUR DONGLE?

Growing up in the dusty streets of Soshanguve, TV adverts formed a large part of my past time activities. I am all grown up now and I am still fascinated by creative advertising, despite what anyone says, I reckon that a good advert can definitely get people to buy a product they don't even need. This brings me to MWEB's new marketing campaign called WHY WHIP OUT YOUR DONGLE?

My review of the TV commercial for this campaign:

When well executed, humor never fails to do the trick, in fact it can never get old or boring. The sexual innuendos in this advert are subtle and funny to say the least. The actors in the Ad are convincingly humorous. Overall, this Ad is an eye catcher.

MWEB's Free Wifi Router for R199 per month

Let me not get carried away with the campaign that I forget to touch on MWEB's  'package', no pun intended.

Personally speaking, the free wifi package is tempting but I am a prepaid girl. Before I discovered Neotel's Wifi dongle with 7 GB for R150 bundles I was using 8ta (now called Telkom Mobile), the 2 GB + 1 GB "promo". I actually spend more than R300 on data bundle per month so I'm actually seriously considering this MWEB offer, that's if there's nothing better out there.

Neotel vs Telkom Mobile/8ta

I haven't used any of MWEB's services so I actually don't have any criticism to level against them.
Neotel and Telkom Mobile are a different story. Let's start with Telkom Mobile; although R150 is reasonable for 3 GB, the fact that you can only access the 1 GB between 12am and 5am leaves a lot to be desired. Moreover, 3 GB is not enough for an entrepreneur with an online business.

My only critique about the Neotel data is that for some odd reason, it seems to block all my domains {www.lagostojozi.co.za, www.positivenetwork.co.za & several others} - which is VERY bad for my business. I've establish that it is NOT my server, firewall or any other aspect from my side because I am able to access the same sites using my 8ta data services. Neotel couldn't help and I still don't know what could be the problem. All I know is the problem is on their end, anyway that's a story for another day.

                                      Watch the MWEB Advert here

Blogger vs Wordpress

 V/S  

If you are contemplating starting your own free blog then you no doubt have Google's Blogger and Wordpress.com on your list. This article is aimed at helping you make an informed choice by highlighting the pros and cons of both Blogger and Wordpress.

Before we go any further it is important to note that Wordpress has two different products, Wordpress.com {a free blog hosting service that allows you to blog for free} and Wordpress.org {a free platform for self-hosted blog}. A self-hosted blog is a blog that has its own domain and host e.g. Succisaid.com would be an example of such if I had chosen to go for a self-hosted services.

Pros

1. It's free
2. It has many free themes, fonts and features.
3. It is user friendly and easy to learn.
4. Your blog has its own free standing site, where it enjoys exclusive viewing.
5. Access to documentation and blogging community.

Cons

1. You will sometimes see adverts on your blog - according to Wordpress this is done in an effort to recover financially from hosting free blogging services.
2. You are NOT allowed to advertise on your Wordpress blog with the exception of ads of a advertising program hosted by Wordpress for blogs that have high traffic. Please not that the criteria for this program is stiff.

Blogger automatically has more benefits than Wordpress based on the fact that Blogger is owned by Google (#enoughsaid).

Pros

1. It's free and easy to use
2. It has a greater search engine optimization value
3. One Google account gives you access to unlimited Google products including Google+, Analytics, Adsense and Adwords.
3. Google loves its own and therefore provides more than enough advice on how to build a successful blog.
4. You can monetarise your blog and earn money however you please including using Google Adsense.
5. Many tools available fr customization and more
6. Google does not place ads without your permission.


Cons
1. There is a "next blog" link at the top of your blog which means readers can easily be tempted to switch to another blog while reading yours
2. Google has very strict rules regarding plagiarism and Adsense terms & conditions.

If you have more pros and cons that I missed kindly paste them on the comment section below.

5 Quick Tips to Improve Your Online Presence

Thought I should quickly share five Tips & Tricks for increasing your online presence, so here goes.

1. Google Place & Google Plus

Considering that I am posting on a Google product (Blogger) it only makes sense to start with Google products: do yourself a huge favour and get a Google Plus page and a Google Places page. Google Pages will ensure that customers find your business premises via a Google search. The great thing is that these services are completely free and Google Places will guarantee you a seat on the first page search results.

2. Build links that lead to your site 

Make strategic online friendships that will eventually lead up to backlinks for your website via articles and features about you r your services/products. A backlink means that someone wrote about you on their website and provided a website link to your website, it is like an online recommendation.

Familiarize yourself with bloggers, similar sites and complementary sites. Do your research about the industry that you are in, you need to know where online your customers prefer to go for industry information and feeds. Know who the influencers are and collect success stories so that you can "copy" what your successful competitors.

3. Research! Research! Research!

Keyword research is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that you get the best organic search results, use Google Adword's Keyword Planner to search how much traffic certain keywords receive monthly.Choose your keywords wisely, try to choose keywords that have low or medium competition and receive above 1000 searches monthly. Only go for keywords that have high competition if you CANNOT do without them.

4. Create a Blog

Google ranks websites with blogs higher because of the constant content updates so make sure that you update your blog regularly. Always ensure that you make your blog posts reader and SEO friendly.

5. Create a section for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about your industry

Google's recent Algorithm looks favorably towards posts that address questions. The more useful information you provide the better. A good example of this is Property 24's article on consequences and problems caused by of illegal property alterations.

Bonus tip: Make sure you have a robot.txt file in your website's directory.

P.S: Feedback on this post is welcome

Welcome to Succi Said

Digital marketing 101: Let's #GetDigital

Make the most of your reading experience by familiarizing yourself with digital marketing jargon. Understanding digital terminologies, abbreviations and definitions will help you know which digital tools you and/or business ventures need and which you need to stay clear of.

Here are a few tips on social media:

Every business or individual has unique social media needs therefore before you create that Facebook, Twitter or Instagram profile you need to understand your social media needs.

#1. Identify your social media needs

First of all, social media is A LOT of work and it can take up much of your time especially for an entrepreneur. NEVER make the mistake of trying to be on all the social media platforms, even the biggest companies globally know not to make this mistake.

Be intentional about which social media platforms you choose, for instance, if you have a graphic design company it would make sense to be on image based social media platforms such as Flickr, Pinterest and Instagram. However if you have airtime & electricity supplies venture it wouldn't make sense to have the above mentioned as it doesn't correlate with your business needs. You would be better off getting a Facebook account as it will allow people to like your page based on their needs, interests or lifestyles.

#2. Consistency is important 

Decided on how many times a week you will update your social media profiles, this can be once a week or more depending on your strategy or preferences. Be consistent so as not to confuse your customers or audience.This is one of the most challenging things for an entrepreneur because your time is already spread thin and so many aspects of your entrepreneurial ventures need your attention.

#3. Get tools to schedule your social media post

As an entrepreneur you have so much to do and so little time because you have to be the jack of all trades and mater of all. Therefore you need to save as much time as possible, that's why you need to utilize the power of online tools. 

I have two tool suggestions for this purpose, Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. When used accordingly, these tools can save you a lot of time and potentially a lot of money.

Hootsuite allows you to schedule your tweets and Facebook posts; this means that you can create a whole week worth of content and schedule it for the week ahead. Talk about thinking ahead. This tool also allows you to manage your social media platforms from one dashboard. Also, note that this tool has a free and paid feature, the free feature allows you up to 3 social media profiles e.g. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as well as 3 analytics reports for those profiles. An analytics report is a document that shows you how popular (or not) your posts were on a certain social media platform over a given period. For instance, a two week analytics report for your Twitter account would show you which of your tweets received retweets, mentions and how many followers you received within the week.

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