Salmat Pre-Shop® News | December 2008

Welcome to the December issue of Salmat Digital's Pre-Shop® News.

I hope the run up to Christmas is going well. Based on the 2.6 million searches on Lasoo.com.au in the past 30 days, there is a wide variety of things people are looking to buy this year; however the winner has to be Nintendo with the Wii, the DS and every derivative of these two gaming platforms being standouts.

Best wishes for the festive season, and look out for the next issue of Pre-Shop™ News in January.

Kind regards

Paul Marshall
Executive Director
Salmat Digital

To blog or not to blog

By now, most Internet users are at least familiar with the idea of a blog. Many of us read blogs as part of our daily media consumption, and a growing number of us either have or are thinking about starting our own.

When blogs first entered the mainstream of the Internet several years ago, the perception existed that your average blog was nothing more than an online diary for anyone wanting to share the personal details of their life with the world. Today, however, many businesses are incorporating blogging into their online communication strategy, with some exceptional results.

Blogging offers a personalised way of engaging with your customers and also gives the impression of corporate transparency, which can only help to promote brand loyalty. One of the most successful corporate blogs is that of Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems. Schwartz started his blog back in 2004 to offer his opinion on industry issues, the goings-on in his company and anything else that took his fancy. He has even been known to respond on his blog to commenters requiring support with hardware troubleshooting issues.

The result? As one comment declares: “This blog amazed me enough to want to reply, to communicate, and that’s the first step in making me a customer... today you’ve made one person more likely to become a customer.”

Other benefits of blogging include higher search engine rankings, the capability to develop online and offline word-of-mouth and the possibility of developing a reputation of thought leadership in your industry.

If you are interested in entering the world of blogging, there are many free web tools, including Wordpress. You can also check out Technorati to find some of the web’s best blogs on a range of topics.


Staying in touch with your customers

Blogging is just one way of engaging your customers online. Previous issues of Pre-Shop™ News have already touched on the concept of Web 2.0, which is basically a shorthand way of describing the current web environment. The tendency at the moment is towards a business/consumer dialogue, rather than a monologue directed at the consumer from the business. The end result is that consumers feel a certain sense of ownership of and involvement in that brand, and are therefore more invested in its products and services.

The most obvious way of starting a conversation with your customers is through email newsletters and updates. Obviously, your customers need to “opt in” to receive emails from you so it is important to include the ability to capture email addresses on your website.

Many brands are moving beyond the email newsletter to take advantage of the new forms of social media to engage consumers. Networking site Facebook offers an inexpensive and highly effective marketing opportunity – if used correctly. Brand “fan” pages have been springing up on Facebook over the past year, giving consumers loyal to that brand an opportunity to interact with each other and the company itself. One of the most effective examples of this is the group for Victoria’s Secret, which boasts over 50,000 members. Even Lasoo has its own Facebook group, with a more modest tally of around 2000 fans.

What’s next after Facebook? Early adopters are already talking Twitter, which allows you to stay in touch with your contacts through short messages of 140 words or less. Some businesses have already recognised the marketing potential of this technology, such as Telstra, which is currently harnessing it as an online helpdesk. Read about that here.

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Sound bites…

Roughly two-thirds of online females say they will spend more time online looking for bargains this Christmas.


- SheSpeaks


Over 75% of mums in the US who have their own blog publish product reviews.


- Mom Central Consulting