Who’s Watching You? Waseem Saddique Investigates How Businesses Use Social Media

Social media usage for business is often perceived to involve promoting products or services in a bid to generate as much consumer attention as possible in order to drive traffic to a particular website and improve sales. However, did you know that businesses also use social media for gathering Intel?

Waseem Saddique comments: “ In a recent survey conducted by jobs board ‘CareerBuilder’, it was discovered that 37% of businesses use social media to pre-screen potential employees. Suddenly that Facebook photo of you roaming around the streets with a cone on your head may not seem as funny.”

Within that 37%, a further 65% refer to Facebook as their primary source of information for assessing the suitability of a prospective job candidate for a vacancy within their business.

Social media has opened so many doors for business leaders, not just in terms of online marketing in order to promote the products and/or services of their company, but social media also allows businesses to gather vital information on consumers, effectively spy on business rivals and determine the employability of potential job candidates.

The Social Selection Process

What do employers look for on social media sites when pre-assessing job candidates?

Waseem Saddique comments: “The survey conducted by CareerBuilder reveals a number of interesting facts.”

·         12% of HR Managers use social networking sites to identify reasons NOT to hire an individual

·         34% of business leaders stated that they had discovered something on a social media site that influenced them not to employ someone

·         Hiring managers are put off potential job candidates who refer badly to a previous employer

·         A minority of business leaders also said they would not consider a candidate if an individual does not ‘write’ well on a social media page

What do businesses look for on social media sites when promoting a product or service?

Waseem Saddique states: “In short everything. The plan is to get into your life and social media offers them that opportunity. The majority of social media users are far from cautious when posting information. This allows businesses to gather all the Intel they need in order to construct a successful online marketing campaign that targets the desired audience.”

Spending habits, hobbies, interests, daily activities and a whole host of other topics are commented upon by consumers in their billions as they share life interactively on a worldwide platform. For businesses the world is made a smaller place in terms of gathering essential information that allows them to understand their consumers.

Business Wars and Social Media   

However, it’s not just consumers that are targeted by businesses,  such a thing exists, known in the corporate world, as the Social War of business. Waseem Saddique states: “This is effectively a business head-to-head where rivals track what their competitors are up to, via social media.”

Sometimes it’s not pretty, whilst the majority of businesses ‘play fair’ in sharing ideas and recommending services, there are a small minority of companies that use social networking to slander rival organisations.

In conclusion it’s worth noting then that social media has more of an impact on your life than you may realise. So before you post that that comment or picture that you’re probably thinking about posting as you’re reading this, ask yourself, who’s watching and is it appropriate? It could define your future!

Waseem Saddique Marketing Services – Samba Nation on the Brink of Social Media Milestone

Following research conducted by comScore, identifying that social media penetration in Brazil has reached almost 100%, Waseem Saddique Marketing Services provides a review of the Brazilian population’s embrace of social media.

Social media has become a craze in Brazil and interaction across social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social networking sites, is positively booming. At present 97% of Brazil’s Internet users have a presence on a social networking site, putting the samba nation on the threshold of achieving a monumental milestone.

Why Brazil?

This may strike many as surprising, but the internet and social media are relatively new concepts in Brazil and it’s only in very recent years that the nation has truly embraced both the web and social media on such a wide-scale.

The change in attitude towards social networking sites in Brazil has been rapid and dramatic, with the number of Brazilians using social media surging in recent times. Social media platforms have become incredibly popular among Brazilian people for a number of reasons.

Here are the facts:

1. The majority of Brazilians take to social media sites in order to research products and services before committing to a purchase – Waseem Saddique states “In a study conducted by ‘Oh! Panel’ they uncovered that approximately  61.4% of the Brazilian population will turn to social media in order to access information about products or services before deciding to buy.”

The study that Waseem Saddique refers to also unveiled that approximately 81% of Brazilian people use social media to find new products and/or services and a further 75% use it to track down special discounts.

2. The Brazilian population is heavily engaged with Facebook – On average, recent figures show, a Brazilian visitor to Facebook will interact on the site, in a variety of ways, for around 4.8 hours. Compared to 2010 this is a staggering increase, when a visitor would only spend an average of 37 minutes on Facebook.

As recently as 2011, Brazil was recognised as the number 4 country in the world in terms of its Facebook users with 36.1 million taking to the site. Furthermore, Facebook’s marketing share of display advertising in Brazil exceeded that of media giant, Google.

3. The decision making process of the majority of Brazilians will be influenced by posts they have viewed on social media – Waseem Saddique comments: “The ‘Oh! Panel’ survey uncovered that a staggering 79% of Brazilians put more trust in posts on social media sites about products than they do in the endorsement of a product expert.

Brazil is now recognised as one of the fastest growing social media markets on the planet. The use of the internet in Brazil has grown from virtually nothing to a stage where about 88% of Brazil’s urban  population are now online.

A number of marketing experts predict that the trend will continue, as Brazil looks to make sure that internet technology does not merely benefit the rich, but that less affluent members of Brazilian society will also have access to the social media craze.

Waseem Saddique concludes: “Work is ongoing to ensure that all sectors of Brazilian society are given the opportunity to embrace social media and it won’t be long before 100% social media penetration in Brazil becomes a reality.”  

The Social Savvy Solution: Waseem Saddique Marketing Services Announces Record Number of Businesses Using Social Media.

As the number of internet users on a global scale rises to 2 billion, Waseem Saddique Marketing, a Birmingham based marketing consultancy, announces a record number of businesses are turning to Social Media to enhance their internet marketing campaigns.

According to a report released by Forbes, a record 81% of businesses worldwide are now utilising Social Media as a form of online marketing. Due to this surge, Waseem Saddique Marketing has revealed growing interest in the use of its marketing consultancy services.

Waseem Saddique, CEO of Waseem Saddique Marketing Services, commented: “Businesses are becoming far more aware of the impact of Social Media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and LinkedIn and they are looking to maximise the potential of such sites to increase customer bases and become more interactive with their consumers.”

Many of the businesses represented by the 81% figure now employ staff dedicated solely to providing that social savvy solution. Waseem Saddique Marketing is pleased to report increased use of their service as businesses make contact in need of advice and guidance on using Social Media to enhance online marketing strategies.

Social Media has become a widespread phenomenon, with a distinctive allure and the capability to reach out to audiences through laptops, smartphones, tablets and a whole host of other means. Basically, there is no escaping the reality that it has become an integral part of society that many cannot do without.

This latest announcement from Waseem Saddique Marketing Services comes as no surprise as businesses do battle to keep themselves ahead of competitors and in the sight of target audiences.

Waseem Saddique states: “Many businesses have turned to Social Media because of the reach it provides and the simplicity of being able to interact with potential customers. Social Media sites also allow for fresh and innovative approaches to online marketing campaigns.”

Further factors behind businesses increasing their use of Social Media have been revealed by SocialStatistics.com

One in every nine people on Earth is on Facebook (this number is calculated by dividing the planet’s 6.94 billion people by Facebook’s 750 million users).

People spend 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.

Each Facebook user spends, on average, 15 hours and 33 minutes a month on the site.

More than 250 million people access Facebook through their mobile devices.

More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook.

30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook each month.

300,000 users helped translate Facebook into 70 languages.

People on Facebook install 20 million “Apps” every day.

YouTube has 490 million unique users who visit every month (correct as of February 2011).

YouTube generates 92 billion page views per month (these YouTube stats don’t include videos viewed on phones and embedded in websites).

Users on YouTube spend a total of 2.9 billion hours per month (326,294 years).

Wikipedia hosts 17 million articles.

Wikipedia authors total over 91,000 contributors.

People upload 3,000 images to Flickr (the photo sharing social media site) every minute.

Flickr hosts over 5 billion images.

190 million average Tweets per day occur on Twitter (correct as of May 2011).

Twitter is handling 1.6 billion queries per day.

Twitter is adding nearly 500,000 users a day.

Google+ has more than 25 million users.

Google+ was the fastest social network to reach 10 million users at 16 days (Twitter took 780 days and Facebook 852 days).

How to Simplify your Online Marketing – A 3 Step Guide from Waseem Saddique Marketing Services

Waseem Saddique Marketing Services offers expert guidance to clients around the world when it comes to online marketing strategies. This article provides a three step guide on simplifying online marketing campaigns in order to stand out in a competitive market.

     1.    Make the consumer the centre of your attention 

In order to improve your brand it’s a good idea to move away from metrics and strategies that have no real impact on developing your online brand. Too many brands make attempts to justify the money they spend on online marketing by trying to apply some kind of statistical data. Things like click through rate (CTR), view through or Facebook likes, whilst they look good, they are not wholly relevant to building an online brand or reputation.

Waseem Saddique, CEO of Waseem Saddique Marketing Services, comments: “Before the days of online marketing, brands didn’t worry about measuring the impact of full page advertising spreads via the printed media by attributing the success to statistics.” 

It’s all too common nowadays for a business to focus on advertising that delivers results in terms of numbers whilst losing sight of generating advertising that stimulates the interests of consumers. In order for consumers to be attracted to a brand by a unique online marketing campaign, they need choice, control and relevance applied to their experience.

Give the audience what it wants by making online campaigns mysterious and intriguing make the experience relevant to the website page encouraging visitors to click, view and interact. Allow interaction with your website to be instigated by your audience, give them the control in terms of how much they want to engage with your site. As some marketing experts put it ‘instead of real-time bidding (RTB), how about applying real-time relevance’?

2. Remember, ‘content is king’

Whilst flashy images, fancy videos and eye-catching colours may ‘WOW’ the consumer, ultimately it’s the words on your website that sell. Indeed, writing styles have had to adapt in order to meet the demands of an online audience, however, content still has a major impact on the ‘decision-making process.’

However, it’s important to remember that content needs to remain focused on where consumer attention is focused. Don’t dive into a full blown sales pitch about how great your company is or make your copy too pushy. Instead create copy that is suitable for current media platforms such as mobile phones, tablets and other forms of mobile media because current consumer attention is focused on information that they consume whilst on the move.

Waseem Saddique states: “Bring your content to life through advertising technology that gets your words and images alongside an established brand, as this will enhance the content experience and will make a lasting impression upon consumers.”

3. Above all, simplify the strategy

Rather than developing an online marketing strategy for the mobile phone, a separate strategy for tablets and another for the standard desktop, focus on one specific platform, then revise that strategy to correspond with other strategies. This will create brand consistency and help to eliminate overreaching by trying to do everything at once.

Brands are now able to respond directly to how consumers interact with a whole host of devices. In an age where consumers swipe, expand and share adverts or interesting brand content, it’s no longer viable to revert back to traditional approaches to online marketing.

Brands need to flaunt their assets through fresh, fun and invigorating new concepts that capture the imagination and leave lasting impressions that are unique to devices, contexts and formats.  

Promote your business with effective article marketing

Waseem Saddique discusses the value of effective article marketing.

When used correctly, articles can add real value to any marketing campaign. Communicating the unique selling points of a business, via article marketing, has proven to be a tried and tested method that has stood the test of time and is still widely used to generate leads and promote businesses.

Such is the value of article marketing that companies are making massive use of article submission sites and witnessing tremendous results in terms of the returns they are seeing in respect of lead generation and lead quality.

Waseem Saddique offers six article marketing strategies that offer fantastic potential for 

growing your business:

1. Utilise article submission services – In order to do this, manual submission is perhaps the most popular technique. The majority of internet marketing specialists would advise that this is cost effective and swift. Most article submission sites are free to join and you stay in complete control as you can submit at a time that suits you and you can write your own articles.

2. Mass submission of articles – This is also a popular technique amongst businesses. With this scenario, businesses tend to write one article and produce several versions of the same article (known as spun articles). However, this is probably better used when employing a service to distribute articles on your behalf.

3. Minimalist submission – Very few businesses submit articles to only 1-2 directories, however, those that do, tend to benefit as they are very selective as to which article submission sites they choose to use. Selective article marketing saves time and money and if done correctly can really drive traffic to your website.

4. Submission to the top ten article sites – Most marketing gurus would recommend this option as it offers a middle ground to mass submission and minimalist submission. It is merely a case of selecting the best article submission sites based on page rankings and distributing your articles to those sites.

5. Produce more articles and generate more sales leads – If you are a product selling company, it is worth producing 20 or so articles per day and distributing them to the best article directories on the market. By doing this, not only are you hitting a mass market, but by using the best directories the ‘quality’ of your leads will greatly improve. After all it’s easy to produce a lot of articles and distribute them to thousands of directories. This will always produce sales leads, but quality will always count over quantity.

6. Maximum return – In order to guarantee the maximum return from your articles, do something unique. Use them to evaluate the success of your marketing campaign as article marketing can help to inspire other ideas such as the creation of ebooks or generating marketing videos. With article marketing techniques the possibilities are endless.