Create the Best User Experience

August 17th, 2011 | Posted in Blog | Comments Off
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Consider these user experience best practices when developing your social media strategy and save yourself a lot of time and energy, while keeping your customers feeling engaged and in control.

Take a Bottom-Up Approach

Considering that your social media strategy needs to translate across an array of devices, start with the device that presents the most limitations – mobile.  What sense is there in designing a web app with all the bells and whistles, only to realize down the road that your plan will not work on a 2×5 smartphone screen?  Keeping in mind that simplicity is key, aim to make a great experience on the mobile screen first and then translate it for the web and other devices.  Not only will this approach be much easier but it will save time and spare your team the headache of “scaling down”.

Include the Newcomers to the Scene

Thanks to standards for things such as images and video, even with the mobile device variety and various versions that exist today, it’s easy to keep things looking good across the majority of devices without eating up your technical resources. Be sure to optimize your images and videos for multiple mobile outputs instead of one universal output, so that newer devices with upgraded technology can be fully utilized. Also, make use of the latest tablet and smartphone touchscreens which support richly connected apps with direct links to other apps such as phone dialing and geo-tracking by pre-filling them with user data.

Give Users Control

Users want to know where they are, where they came from, and where they can go at all times. With all the content sharing between apps this needs to be given serious consideration.  You can easily ensure that users are taken to the right piece of content by giving each piece of content is own unique URL.  Once they have arrived, let them know they have landed in the right place by presenting a prominent title, an optimized image and an uninterrupted banner-free post.  Since users begin to think about the share-worthiness of your content after only reading a few sentences, keep your call-to-action (CTA) buttons bright, prominent and always above the fold.

Let Fishnet Media help you put these user experience best practices into practice to ensure the success of your social media strategy.  Contact us today!

Take Advantage of Viral Marketing

August 14th, 2011 | Posted in Blog | Comments Off
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Viral marketing has always been a cost-effective way to spread the word about your brand. With the broad adoption of social media, viral marketing strategies are more accessible and more effective than ever. In fact, according to a recent MIT study, brands can increase the number of people who install their Facebook apps by 400% through a combination of private and newsfeed messaging.

Now that we have your attention, let’s differentiate between the strategies. “Passive” apps allow users to broadcast messages through automatic posts to a newsfeed – allowing them to share their thoughts and opinions to a broad audience. “Active-personalized” apps combine the passive broadcasts with prompts to send personalized direct messages to friends.

So how do you determine which viral strategy is the most effective for your business and your marketing goals? Passive features are better for spreading product awareness widely and for quick adoption (3.17 days to first adoption, compared to 4.77 days for personalized messages). Active-personalized messages, on the other hand, increase the frequency and duration of use and are therefore better for building a loyal customer base and making a product stickier.

When done right these viral strategies are up to 10 times more effective than banner ads in converting users and around twice as effective as email advertising. Let Fishnet Media help you create and implement a cost-effective viral marketing strategy that is tailored to your marketing goals! Contact us today.