New startup?

Considering that I'm someone with so many ideas, but always get cold feet when it comes to execution, I'm always on the lookout for success stories and facts about growing businesses.

This time, Evan Carmichael wrote an article worth sharing, about not needing a lot of money to grow your business.
He specifically tackled the cost of a logo, and even though I'm a designer myself, he dazzled me with some facts that I never knew existed!

In his words:

You might look at big companies like Pepsi, BBC, and BP spending millions of dollars to get their logos designed and think, how can I compete? You don’t need to have deep pockets to create a meaningful logo. Here are a few examples: Google: $0. Google founder Sergey Brin designed it himself. It has been through a few changes over the years but the original concept remains the same. Coca-Cola: $0. The original logo was designed by the company’s bookkeeper, Frank Mason Robinson, in 1885. It’s now one of the most recognized logos in the world. Nike: $35. Created by University of Oregon student Carolyn Davidson in 1971. Nike founder Phil Knight was teaching accounting and noticed Davidson’s work on an assignment so he hired her.  Twitter: $15. Twitter’s original logo was purchased from iStockPhoto, a crowdsourcing design website. Their ‘fail whale’ graphic was also purchased through iStockPhoto. It's never about how many resources you have. It's about how resourceful you are. So… will you still blame it on the money, now that you have these examples? I know I for one am speechless!

Content Marketing is taking over the Marketing Industry

Let me start with the bottom line:
If you are narrow minded to "traditional" marketing techniques, your chances of succeeding with your brand promotion are also narrow.

In 2014, Content is critical to creating successful campaigns and promoting your business.

Facts:

- 27,000 pieces of content are shared each day.
- 90% of brands market with content.
- 75% of marketers think branded content is more effective than printed advertising, direct mailing and PR.























Is it clear now why are we moving towards content marketing?

More than 350 million people read blogs.
Blogs give websites more indexed pages and indexed links, which means they help the websites show up in search engine results.
So blogs are the most valuable content type of marketing. 

So if you're wondering why a website is not enough anymore, why do most brands blog an awful lot, that's because they get 5 times more traffic than brands that don't blog and report 97% more leads.


Think about it:
What do you see most on your Facebook or Twitter feed?
Shared links, right? but not just any links... what is shared is content from reputable sources. and you find yourself sharing some of that content too, don't you often do that? Because you listen to recommendations from friends.

99% of people are sharing via multiple platforms of social media, which results in a purchase.

Not only do marketers use social media to distribute content, but actually users prefer to connect with brands on Facebook.
If you look closely on people's behaviours (including yours) they spend more than 80% of their time online where content can be shared.

Do they follow brands because they love advertising?
Hell no!
They do it because the content is interesting. They prefer to know a company via articles over ads.
They prefer a company who's interested in building a relationship with them rather than giving them full-text content. If they were to read, they read from a brand they are interested in and therefore they feel more positive about it.

What does this tell us?
People want to be in control of the content they wish to receive:
86% of people skip TV commercials
44% of direct mail is never opened and 91% of people unsubscribe from them.

Coming to know this, would you still spend a fortune on TV commercials and traditional media?

Here's a simple example:
If you're planning a trip to Paris, are you more likely to check commercials of hotels in magazines (or even online) or do you check forums and blogs where people rate the hotels and share their reviews?

Switch to content already!

Marketers are spending nearly 1/3 of their budgets on content marketing, and they say they will increase their content marketing spending in the next year, baring in mind that it costs almost 60% less than traditional marketing.

And make your content interesting!

90% of the information assimilated by the brain are visual. Aren't you more interested in articles with images or video? In fact people respond better to images than plain text, and 3 times more to video.
How many videos do you watch daily on your smart phone? At least once a day, right? Even my mom shares with me a video daily.
Why do we invest so much in a website design? Because it gives the brand or company more credibility.


Finally, it's OK to be traditional in 2014, as long as traditional means content marketing.

All the stats in this article are from @NewsCred who power content for the world's leading brands.

Sociatag

I often read about new blogs and applications, but this one seems to be picking up and growing really fast!
I'm talking about Sociatag.
As described on menaopportunities.info, it's a startup that offers an innovative solution to offline marketing via social networks.
You can connect and share your experiences in exhibitions, workshops, seminars with your friends.

So how does it work?

you install societal "boxes" and brand them following your brand's guidelines.
These boxes can be linked to Facebook, twitter, Foursquare and LinkedIn.
This way, you can follow Facebook posts, check-ins, pictures, tweets, or even follow companies, join groups, bookmark job postings or simply share posts with your network, etc...

Now here comes to nice part:
- Rating boxes are available to get direct feedback from users.
- More and more social networks are being added.
- You can conduct promotions on Sociatag to drive footfall to your business. It offers loyalty programs, treasure hunt and gift vouchers promotions, etc...














The navigation is clear and simple: Taga will welcome you to Sociatag and take you through the process.

I know that no matter how much I tell you about it, it won't be clear unless you try it yourself, or watch the below video:

Most importantly, I want to express my pride of Wassim Al Hakim, the young and dynamic Lebanese guy who founded Sociatag, which I'm sure will reach for the stars!

I hope you find this post as interesting and useful as I did myself.
& I would certainly LOVE to know your feedback on Sociatag.

Cheers!