Page 65 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

stumped AIDS researchers for years. Surprisingly, the gamers were able to solve it
within 10 days. It’s reported that the competitive nature of the game drove the
teams forward. CBS News reported that one researcher called it the value of “citi-
zen science.”

If your company is thinking about creating a social game, you’ll want to make
sure to take a broad approach and see what’s being done online. These games can
be short or long term. You don’t have to commit yourself to something untried.

Choosing localized marketing

Many Internet marketers are excited about the opportunities they have to reach
around the globe for new consumers. What many have overlooked is the opportu-
nity to reach into their local communities to get more customers. As Adam Metz
says in his book The Social Customer (McGraw-Hill), these customers “didn’t exist
at the turn of the twenty-first century.”

Tools are now available to help small businesses and local sites of large businesses
engage their fans. For example, Facebook has developed several types of advertis-
ing deals that help owners reward their customers for visiting the store often in
the context of offers. (We cover these types of rewards in Chapter 8.)

Companies like BlitzLocal, shown in Figure 2-12, at (https://localblitz.com/),
have sprung up to assist business owners in finding their local Facebook fans.
Dennis Yu, co-founder and CEO of BlitzLocal, said, “It’s quality, not quantity that
counts” when it comes to fan numbers.

Creating an app for that

According to App Annie, the total number of mobile app downloads increased
from 178 billion in 2017 to 194 billion in 2018. Furthermore, total app usage increased
by 50 percent between 2016 and 2018 globally. Without a doubt, apps are big busi-
ness and getting bigger every year. Social media marketers have an enormous
opportunity to brand an app that is seen every day by their customers. Talk about
product placement! Marketers can help their customers and proudly display their
logo while they do it. But not all apps are a hit. It takes careful planning and
research to create an app that resonates with customers. Apps can typically be
categorized in one of the following eight categories:

» Social networking

» News
» Lifestyle

CHAPTER 2 Discovering Your SMM Competitors 49