Internet Buzz in Nigeria, Africa and Worldwide for the week

Developing Nigerian Web Industry: Challengies and Opportunities

This paper is written to point out the challenges of the Nigerian web industry, and also outlined the potential of the market with steps on how to realize the potential. Looking into how the Nigerian web industry has evolved the current market structure and potential of each of the segment.

Etisalat Launches Easynet, a cheap internet connection in Nigeria

As the internet market in Nigeria grows, the competition among telecom companies has been very aggressive recently. Etisalat entered the market just last year and adding to the ever increasing internet packages offered by various telecom operators. Before this, Etisalat offered internet connection through Pay-as-you-go model. The new products now offer three bundle internet plans in 30 days circle.

Interview with Nweke (Mrs.) Executive Director (Operations) Digital Sense Africa(DSA)

We had this interview shortly before the event, highlighting all what the forum was all about, what people should expect and the players in the industry expected at the event.

ATCON Technology Exhibition

Professionals in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Nigeria, say no modern economy can exist without fundamental ICT infrastructure, as these are tools for national and economic development.

Digital Sense Africa, Forum Event

This event was also held in Lagos. You can read the tweet-stream on the link above.

Most visited Nigerian Site for October

We also reported the ranking for Nigerian sites for last month during the course of the week.

Nigerian Internet Market Structure

A featured article from our whitepaper title; Collaboration and Competition: Developing the Nigerian Web Industry.

Twitter Testing Out New Tweet Notifications To Keep Users Engaged

Twitter has a problem: A number of users tweet, then lose interest. It needs a way to reengage them in the site. And on Wednesday it’s starting to test one way: Notifications.

Search Til You Drop: Google Launches Hosted Commerce Search For Retailers

Searching retail sites can be frustrating at times. While many retailers try to present product search in a visually appealing way, search can often be slow or difficult to refine. Tonight, Google is making a huge play in retail space with the launch of Commerce Search, a hosted enterprise search product to power online retail stores and e-commerce websites.

Google Lets You Customize and Curate the News

Google News is already a handy resource for staying informed on breaking news stories, but they’ve just become a news source that’s more dialed into your specific needs. Google News custom sections, launched today, empowers you to build your own section in their online newspaper rack.

Google Friend Connect Becomes Friend Connect With Benefits

A battle has been brewing for months now: Google and Facebook both want to be the social layer that sits on top of every site on the Internet. So far, at least in mindshare, Facebook has been winning this battle with Facebook Connect. Google’s offering, Friend Connect, is the sibling that gets no respect. But that could change starting today with some new features and functionality.

MYTH BUSTED: Internet Use Doesn’t Lead to Isolation

Imagine this: once a happy child with a lot of friends, little Jack has started spending many hours per day on social networking sites such as Facebook, which has turned him into a pale asocial freak. Oh, if only he’d never touched that cursed box we call the computer, he’d be a healthy young man now!

Failed Online Navigation Software Maker Sues Google, Yahoo And More Over Patent

Bone-headed patent lawsuit number 573482: a company called WebMap Technologies is suing a host of technology companies over an online map patent that was issued over 5 years ago, reports Law360 (requires registration).

Eventbrite Gets A $6.5 Million Infusion From Sequoia Capital

Popular online event site Eventbrite has raised $6.5 million in funding, according to an SEC filing. The company has confirmed the funding, and says Sequoia Capital is the new investor. Sequoia partner Roelof Botha joins the board of directors. Both Roelof and Sequoia backed Eventbrite CEO Kevin Hartz’s previous startup, Xoom.

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Corporate Web Strategy: Setting up the implementation team

In my last post I discussed about what corporate strategies was and how to get started defining one. Title for today simply wants to focus on how to form a team that will deliver a fulfilling web strategy.

The Team

Snap shot of those who should be on the team;

• The CEO or COO
• The CIO or top IT personality in the organization
• Customer Support personnel
• Sales & Marketing
• External consultant (Web designs, Developer and Strategist)

That’s the ideal fulcrum of people you should make members of the team, now let’s look at their respective roles in the building process. Remember, less is better, don’t let too many people be in the team so as not to slow-down the process.

CEO or COO

The CEO is the engine room of the company, with keen understanding of the business role, the role of company in the industry and the future of the company. In case the CEO is not available, the COO or vice-president can stand in. These other people are members of the Management and will be able to voice the importance of the web project and be able to allocate resources according to the company’s budget and strategies. Even though the CEO may have an idea of the importance of the web campaign, he should further be educated by the consultant or the IT person on the strategic roles of the web. The CEO will be more concern about the ROI of this campaign hence making sure that overzealousness is curtailed in the process. I have seen in some companies in my course of consulting with clients that, some CEO may have read, heard and seen some positive effect of the web (and IT), they just want it implemented ASAP, hence given less room for thorough implementation and strategies. So, thorough briefing or education is very important.

CIO or IT Personality

In most organizations, there are separate department for IT and a figure-head in form of manager or CIO. IT personalities are generally informed to a large extent as to what is happening on the internet, the service providers, competent vendors and experience as to how to implement the web strategies. Their roles are very important so that you don’t over pay for services to be rendered by the external consultants.

I have seen some companies making the web building process a sole responsibility of the IT department to their detriment. Most IT persons don’t know rudiments about the business, and mostly placed in the support department. So they just implement the website just the way they think other people do it with the company’s operations in mind.

Customer Support Personnel

The web has evolved from just another brochure for marketing to customer service. With the advent of web 2.0 and its child social media, web sites are now responsive giving the customer service department a better way to help customers faster. The customer service personnel should be in the team to tell their story, how customers respond, which method they like to be served and the trends.

Sales & Marketing

As Newton once said “Everything remains at the staff of rest until a force is applied”, in business nothing really happens until a sale is made! The sale is what brings in the money, while the marketing is worth expose to people what you have to offer! The input of these departments is very important because it is the ultimate thing that will affect the bottom line which will make the CEO happen and every other staff members and investors.

The sales and marketing persons explains the method they have been using, how they have performed so far, what they want change, what is hot in the market and ways to make them reach the customers better. If all their comments are well taken note of and integrated into the web strategies, the success of the web campaign is inevitable.

External consultant (Web designs, Developer and Strategist)

Getting an expert in these areas is very important, if your IT department are not web savvy, you must consult an external person to help you in this process.

Talking about the web consultants, you need to understand that, the web is vast and in most cases one person doesn’t know it all. Firms generally consultant with a web designer or developer who are basically tech people and may not be able to maximize the potential of the web. Yea, well they will provide their service to your liking but I will like to add that the impact of a strategist is the void currently needed to be filled in your next web campaign (in case you don’t have one). The role of the strategist is simply to create a bridge between the business process and the web technology at hand for optimum return. This will make sure that, all efforts are geared towards serving the customer and at the same time getting good return on your expenditure.

Summary

I will summary the works of each team members as; CEO brings the business needs, challenges and focus to the ground, while the customer services & sales and marketing personnels brings the business process, customer needs and their ideas to fore, the web designer/developer create the web pages and application while web strategist link the business need with what the designer/developer is doing for effective return and monitoring.

Do you have a web team? What are they comprised of and how have they performed so far? Drop comment below…

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Online Advertisement do you need it?

I will like to discuss online advertising with you and how it can help your business. Online advertising is summed up by Wikipedia as “a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for the expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers”.

I will like us to stress these two words promotion and marketing. You guess definitely have something to promote or market before considering bringing it online. I will simply call this a process of trying to grab from the already scarce attention of internet users. Before I dive more into this topic let me bring these basic facts to your notice;

Advantages of Online Advertisement

• Online advertisment can be targeted to your actual customers (more than other medium)
• Online advertisement can be customized to meet you intended product or keywords
• Online advertisement is measurable (if it’s not working, you can simply stop it!)
• Cost effectiveness; online advertisement mostly allows you to pay for predetermined success by way of action performed by users or visit to your site.
• Immediate action: think about placing ad on your TV and someone sees it but before they logon to the internet they had forgotten your web address or product, how can you get them back? With online advertisement, you get them to link to you right from advert.
• Online advertising is the future: it has been reported that internet ads revenue beats their counterpart in the mainstream.

While the internet continues its growth, everyone will surely join the bandwagon. Currently in Nigeria there are about 11million people on the internet as the usage keep exploding day-by-day.

Online advertisement is surely the way to go, going by its result-oriented nature. Small businesses (and large ones too) should consider using this medium. While careful planning is very important before choosing one (irrespective of the media), these are the current top advertising sites: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook and a host of others. I will suggest that you contact an expert in this area so as to guide you through the process.

We will be looking into choosing the right advertisement platform for your ads in my next post here.

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Top Web Development Companies in Nigeria

I will be reviewing on this page, top web development companies in Nigeria, we would look into applications they have developed, how long they have been in the business and their general influence on the web space in Nigeria. Don’t mind if I start from the big guns, I think we should appreciate the impact they have had on the industry.

Sidmach Technologies

They developed Waeconline.org.ng, jamb.org.ng Nigeria‘s first online examination registration websites. I will say these projects opened a new chapter in the web industry in Nigeria!

Looking at Sidmach’s portfolio, they have more government related projects than Taviatech.

They have offices in Lagos, Abuja and Portharcourt.

Taviatech

“Tavia Technologies Limited is an experienced technology company offering Web, Wireless & Business Intelligence services. We have consistently provided first class services to our valued customers in the Telecommunication, Banking, Oil & Gas, Law Firms, Insurance, Real Estate, Non-Profit, Recreational, Manufacturing Industries and other sectors. “

Taviatech has been in the business for 10 years and have deployed high-end solutions including Interswitch e-payment system (website), MTN, Access Bank, FCMB, Starcomms portal and other great solutions. Their office is located at Motor ways centre in Ikeja, Lagos.

This is just the beginning as more companies will be featured here. We will also look at individual designers that are world-class from Nigeria.

Stay tuned!

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Corporate Web Strategies; getting started, defining your goal

This is the first of the installment on Corporate Web Strategies. We would be looking into, how to develop effective strategies for your online success. With this you will have a guideline through which you pursue your online campaigns. You may want to ask, what is a corporate web strategy? Well not to worry we will dive into it right here then you can go on from there to define one for your company.

Corporate Web Strategies is simply a defined, analyzed and understood method by which you pursue your online spending and campaign toward allocating effectively for your web efforts and getting adequate return.  Defining a web strategy at this point in time has never been as important as now, when all companies are cost conscious, when all other media are not measurable! Am sure you would have seen other companies launch their own websites, blog, Facebook page, twitter account etc. these are good and welcome! Then you now think your company deserves one, yea it surely does! It is possible to do this is ad-hoc manner (like most people do) or to have a well understood, proactive and effective plan to make sure that you are not just doing it for doing sake but you are getting value from it.

Goal, what do you want to achieve?

I want to believe you have a solution you provide to your client/customer, you have a set target you want to meet this year in terms of profitability, right? Those are your business goals. Now coming to the web, why do you want to have a website? Is it to educate your clients about what we do? Or for our suppliers’ to track their transactions with you? Or to have an e-commerce platform whereby clients need to come to your office will reduce and to expand beyond your geographical location? These are business needs and should be the bedrock from which all your development spending, ads spending and social media campaign emanates from! While defining the goals you need to also know your customers wants, their level of internet-savvy and all other things.

Having defined the goal, you now look at your budget if it really can cater for it. It is possible that you have budgeted the amount you want to spend on that for the year, if so you may consider doing necessary adjustment or wait till better time you will have enough funding. But first you need to consider the impact of waiting or doing it now! Your competitors might already have been getting your clients lately and that seem to be affecting your revenue, this means that you don’t have much time to wait, now is the time!

Having a goal is very important here and it shows that you are not just following the crowd and getting lost in the buzz till you can’t find a business justification for your effort. The goal also make sure that, your online campaign have something to do with your business model, and that it only builds on it rather than building itself for building sake.

In the next installment, I will be discussing “how to align you web strategies with your corporate strategies”

Corporate Web Strategies, topics to be discussed;

• Getting started, defining your goal
• How to align your web strategies with your corporate strategies
• Setting up the implementation team
• Social media strategies, fishing where the fishes are and not letting off the hook;
• Selecting the right web service provider
• Delivery checklist, have they developed what you wanted?
• Prelaunch checklist, how can we get to know you have a site?
• Launching your website, serving the food to the world
• Marketing and publicity do you need one?
• Measuring success, how have we feared?
• Thinking forward, where do we go from here?

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Trust Economy: How to build a ready market for your product and services.

The way the world is moving is toward an economy where people need intelligence, trusted advice to make decision. As you know, people have less time and high demand is on the little they have. To make your company, product and service stand out in this trust economy, you must build relationship. The key here is relationship! As many people you have trusted relationship with, the better your chance of success.

New Definition of ROI

You need to know that the definition for ROI as you were taught in the class has changed. It used to be “Return on Investment” now it means “Return on Influence”. The larger your influence, the better for your business and personality.

Trust Economy; The people, the currency

Trust economy is the economy where people make sound decision to go for your product and services based on their knowledge about what you offer them. This they get through recommendation from their “Trusted” network. Human-over-Ip is the protocol for the trust economy. Am sure we all are familiar with the general HTTP protocol. Yeah! That is the protocol of the internet, but it’s high time we recognized that; friendship, Social, business and every other activities we engage in real life has move over the internet, so the protocol as change! In our normal economy, we have law-backed-paper as money. This age things have changed, like I said earlier, people do not have much time; they have targets to meet and places to go. So for you to be able to get their attention you must have value that is much more than their targets. So, attention in this current age is the current for the Trust Economy.

For people to stop by and read your blog, to buy your product, come to your company, they must sense some value and sensing value is influenced by various things in this age. The most important of all are the people they trust, people they know and people who are in-touch with them.

The Magic Wand: Getting your clients/customers when you need them

It’s old-fashion to rush-to-market your product and service to people. They are concerned about their time and hard-earned money. People mostly don’t want to take another time to test your product. They want a product they know or someone they trust advise them to go for. You know, Celebrities and big figures around are used to advertise product, well the celebrity is being paid for the service and might not have tested the product. So the trust is not there any longer. People have tried over and over again and they are just tired of it. They buy product recommended by their friend than any other solid, classic advert. As you know, their friend is not being paid for the advice and the friend is talking from experience, hence the Trust level is very high.

For you to effectively get your clients when you need them, you need to have built relationship over time. They want to know you as human, they want to be sure that you have feelings; they want to know how much you care. So, when you meet the next person in the seminar, get interested in things they like most and discuss with them. Let them have a feel of your “human-hood”! Having connected with them, show them you care, give them related information to what you represent, be helpful on questions asked.

How are you building trust?

Note: this article has appeared on my old blog on my personal site.But as been updated.

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What is your business model?

Studying web business for couple of years and seeing some start-ups thriving for a while then disappear! I realized that the web is nothing different from the traditional business which operate base on the same rule; if the total money generated is much more than the cost of providing your service or selling the product then you make profit. If this continues over time, you become a successful company!

I will be exploring with you in this article, “Web business model” which I think is critical to your success in building your own online empire like Google, Yahoo, Facebook etc. Let’s define what it really means, “a business model is the method of doing business by which a company can sustain itself — that is, generate revenue. The business model spells-out how a company makes money by specifying where it is positioned in the value chain.” As defined by MICHAEL RAPPA, note the emphasis as we will be talking more on these.

Before I go further, I want you to understand that, “What makes a business successful is its ability to provide value for its customer/client and being able to sustain their happiness with your service for as long as you want to remain in business.”  You may want to ask, what does Google sale? Or what service does Yahoo provide? You may still want to probe further to ask “How the hell does Facebook make money?” If you reflect on these and look critically, you may be able to answer these questions yourself. Now let me ask, why do you go to Google? Well your answer to that question is what gives Google its market capitalization of over $140billion.

So back to you, what value do you provide through your site and how much money can you make from it? I have seen people start “me too” businesses by creating exactly the services of these successful companies! Do you make more money than you spend? If yes, fine! Then all you need is to expand and see how much of the money you can make by reaching more customers! I have worked with couple of start-ups and most time I hear words like… I have spent so much money on this site! I receive good comment from my site, which is good for me! I love this thing and will continue to it! I am not against any of these, but if you cannot continue like this and be successful! Our concern here is sustainability and growth!

Understanding the Internet Currency

Well, you might think the currency spent on the internet is dollars, you are absolutely WRONG! The ultimate currency spent online is ATTENTION! The web is called attention economy! Yahoo, Google and Facebook are the world’s most visited website and obviously among the most successful (except for Facebook which is still in its infancy). Google commands far more than 69% advert revenue on the internet! For you to build a business on the internet, people must know about it because you created for them! Facebook generated a lot of hypes and it has compensated for it with good service which the public have been yearning for; privacy and simplicity!

Business models you can choose from

• Brokerage: this model is based on bringing the buyer and the seller to common place to bring about transaction from which the broker gets commission or percentage. Think of it like the normal brokerage services. The Internet facilitates this model effectively. Example: ebay.com
• Advertising: this model is where your revenue comes from placing advertisement on your site from second or third-party. Requires you to generate huge traffic. The content you offer on the site could be free but while they (visitors) enjoy your freebies you make money via ads. Example, yahoo.com, Nairaland.com, Google.com
• Infomediary: as its name implies, information intermediary! They are based on generating information from a given set to other group of people. Nielsen, Doubleclick (now Google).
• Merchant: These are more like the traditional brick & mortar with online presence. They produce/list various products from which they make profit from its listing price. E.g buyright.biz etc.
• Manufacturer (Direct): thinking about removing the middle man, this does it right! This model facilitates from factory-to-customer’s home. You have access to the end user of your service and sell to them at an affordable price which helps you lower your operating cost.
• Affiliate: this model is simply pay-per-performance. When you generate a sale for your affiliated site, you receive agreed percentage for the sale. While you can join existing one and build a site on the model, you can also create it around your products and services. Like the common link/banner exchange and the famous Amazon affiliate. Site that offers this model includes Omoobridal.com, Amazon.com,clickbank.com etc.
• Community: this is ultimately based on your user loyalty; make them gravitate towards your site each time they come online. Nairaland.com successfully used this model, in year 2005-06 I was personally addicted to it. The emerging communities are the social networks around, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr etc. You can also create community for a common interest; be it open-source and charge for support service. Joomla, Red Hat and Wordpress are living examples.
• Subscription: You can create a special area for your site members, or have them per to gain access to your classified resources. This could be periodic; daily charge, monthly or annual fee. They are also called premium services; some dating (roommate.com) and social network (classmates.com) offer these services even though there are many free sites. Also consulting firm like McKinsey, they have both free and paid subscription.
• Utility: you can make your money via pay-pay use. Am sure you are currently paying for your web hosting in this format. ISP, Web Hosting.

Web 2.0 Business model

There have been arguments over the Internet on sustainability of the web model being used by web 2.0 sites, though most still fall back to the models mentioned above but their effect and hype are getting attention from every corner. As pointed out by Ken Yarmosh there are at least two models employed by web 2.0 site; Technology based and Network Effect. As he argued, even though both models are closely related and their successes are tied together, their approach to it is the distinguishing factor, looking at the way each model is pursued.

A technology based model lays more emphasis on Innovation, and product distinction in the market. This quest made it inevitable for them to enter into the heart of their users thereby creating an extreme network effect that now brings amount (based on market acceptability) the huge profit. Skype created its novel product and now it’s widely use and compete with Network carrier at some fronts. Twitter as the newest baby, made its API widely available, this makes it possible to use the service without ever going to twitter.com more than once (for signup). Though twitter is still in search of a magic wand to turn its technology into profit, as people continues to use it, its founders will be more open for ideas and a possible acquisition.

Network effect on the other hand is driven by hype and media, this raises the market expectation so high that, it keeps the founders out-of-the-box. Facebook was able to compensate for the market expectation by being innovative and expanding its borders. Facebook Connect is very good technology which will define and shape the future of socialization and identity recognition across the web.

I’m sure you can attest to the fact that Twitter is a Technology base model while Facebook is Network Effect based.

In Nigeria, we have over 20 social networking sites most of which copied features employed by Facebook and the likes. Some of the things that have kept them in the hide-out are the fact that they have not really come out with a sustainable business model. You should not be surprised if you see them fade-out one after the other. Other Web businesses are doing quite well, nairahost.com, Nairaland.com, 2deal4real.com, buyrigh.biz and a host of others.

To remain competitive in the web business, you need to fashion out a sustainable business model. See it as if you are starting a normal business and not just a hobby. Am sure if you want to start selling cloths, you sure will not sell below your cost price. It is very important that you choose a business model that fits your person and expertise. Innovation cannot be left out of this, even if you copy a model, let us see a personal touch of creativity and we can predict if you will be seen for long.

*Note: you can mix the models as you deem fit for your business. Just make sure you continue to serve your customer/users interest and don’t miss out on the ATTENTION.

I need you to say honestly, what is your business model? Drop it below…

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Understanding Facebook Ads: How to get the best out of Facebook ads!

Contents

• Current Nigerian Stats on Facebook
• How it works
• Getting started
• Keys to measure
• Looking back: how far has it worked?

I have been taking a close look at how Facebook ads is becoming popular in Nigeria and how much people are willing to spend to place ads on Facebook. As a strategist in the industry, and with the experiments I have performed with this platform, I will like to share with you how you can get good ROI (Return On Investment) for your Facebook Ads.

Current Nigerian Statistics on Facebook

Stats on current users From Nigeria:

13+ (Male & Female): 625,400

18+ (male & female): 607,420

20+ (male & Female): 556,960

All : 625, 400

How it works

Facebook Ad uses the profile information and demographic (IP Mapping) information of its users to display ads. Facebook currently have 3 slots for the top match ads while the rest can be view in the “Mores ads” page. The 3 slots or top match are basically for the current logged-in user. For example, if out of 100,000 logged in users only 20,000 match the criteria; they are the only ones to see it.

You also need to know that the pricing or bidding rate will determine if your ads are displayed at a particular point in time. Say: same ads with same criteria; ad A bids for $0.20 CPM while B bids for $0.19 CPM , C bids for $0.18 and D bids for $0.15 CPM. A,B and C will show before ad D.

Getting Started

Remember; whatever you do not measure you can’t really tell if it’s performing or not. Hence, before you place an ad, kindly define your measurement keys. Google analytics is good for this. With this you will be able to track how many people are being referred to your site by your advertisement on Facebook. I will advise that you create your landing page for effective tracking. Say, you are advertising an event, you should link directly to the form for RSVP or if you are selling a product, you can link to the product information page with a “call for action on it.” Your landing page must be able to let the visitor understand what you offer and take action immediately. Generally people link to their home page. If you advertising for  various products then this is good.

Facebook has by default 25 characters for the ads title and 135 characters for the ads message. If your ads needs a picture, fine upload it, else you are good to go! Remember your ads message is as good as your marketing/sales pitch, be straight to the point. Call for action immediately!  Like a recent ad on Facebook for Car Tracking products in Nigeria with a title of:  Locate. Control. Secure. This calls your action, as in what am I locating? What am I Controlling and Securing? Then you see the ad message and follow the link.

Keys to Measure

Like I said earlier, measuring is key to knowing whether your ad is performing or not. It helps you know whether the ad campaign is really worth it. If it does, then you can intensify your campaign or reduce or even stop it.

Let us look at the keys one after the other:

• Date: The date this ad started
• Imp.: Total impressions as at time of study
• Clicks: Number of times people have clicked on the ad
• CTR: Click Through Rate. What is the percentage of the clicks to the display times?
• Avg. CPC ($): Average Cost Per Click. Amount changed per clicks.
• Avg. CPM: Average Cost Per Impression ($). How much charged per impression or display of the ads.
• Spent: How much you have spent so far for the ads/impression.

When you take a close look at this, you can be sure of how the ad is performing.

Measuring performance on your site

The above is for your Facebook Ad stats. You also need to check your stats on your site, if you use Google Analytics, you can simply check your referring sites to check for the traffic coming through Facebook.

Looking back: How far has it worked?

Well you are the only one to know how far your ad has performed based on your expectation.  If it has driven enough traffic to your site, then good else you may take a second look at the way you write the ads literature. You also need to know that; though some may not click on your ad immediately, they will store it in their memories and they can then go to your site at a different time.

The bottom line is to plan, measure and not expect too much. Always seek advice if you are not sure or need better understanding.

FAQS

I placed an ad on Facebook but I can’t see it, why?

If you are the owner of the ad, Facebook may not display the ad to you. Tell me, why do you want to pay to view what you did? Why not just check from the preview.

Someone placed ad on Facebook for me but I can’t see it, why?

Like I said above, your profile information might not match exactly the criteria used for the ads or put another way at that point in time. Also, the ad is displayed to quite a number of people each time. Like 100,000+ may login at same time so, it’s a game of probability.

Does this Facebook ad work at all, are they not just eating my money?

Well, internet as in Life is a game of trust! As it general referred to, it’s a “Trust Economy” we are operating online. So if you doubt, don’t waste you time, just move on, else get someone who understands it to guide you. It sure works!

If you are staying far away and you really want to be sure, ask your guide or consultant to send you snapshots of the performance.

What time will my ad start incase I want to specify time?

Unlike Google, Facebook uses ONLY US time to display its ad. So you need to minus your country of residence’s time from that of the US to get the accurate time. Also, note that Facebook ads runs round the clock.

I sure believe you have understood this piece, please share with us your challenge or result so far.

If you need a guide on how to go about placing ad on Facebook or other sites, you can contact us no: info@webtrendsng.com or hotline Possicon on +234-802-792-4441

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Planning Your online advert and Return on Influence (ROI)

I believe many of us understand ROI to be “Return on Investment”, but in the web sphere of today, your ability to bond with your client and make them remain your client is the most important thing that will bring value from the ads you place. You ability to make your brand persistent and have influence on your client is the utmost thing you should drive toward. This is simply called “Return on Influence”! After you have successfully build a persistent brand, your customer/client become advocates for your products and services. We will be looking into how to define you online advertisement strategies to increase the value you get after the process.

Defining your objective

Objective and purpose as in life and business also applies to online advert. You need to effectively brainstorm on objective for your advertisement before embarking on one.

It could be;

- To raise awareness about your company
- To promote a product launch
- To make customer switch brand
- To build confidence in your organization
- To educate customers on where to get your product
- Support a special marketing event such as sale or exhibition

The above objectives give you a plan to work towards, allows you to set the right budget, it allows you also to set your target audience and where to get them.

Locate your target audience

For your advert to be effective, getting it across to your target audience is the ultimate. Below is the information that will guide you at defining your target audience.

· Who buys your product?

· Who influences the purchasing decision?

· How many potential buyers are there?

· What are the characteristics of these people (Age, Sex, income etc)

· What does research tell you about their attitudes toward your company and your products?

· What is the role of advertising in reaching the target market?

By knowing your target market, you can effectively planning toward the best way to get to them.

Selecting best way to communicate (Adsense, Local sites, Social networks, Banners).

Having recognized your audience, the next step is to choose right media that will pass your message across to them. Major advertising media are: Google, Facebook, and Yahoo. Remember this is based on the user base of these Media.

Google Adsense: This is intelligence ads system that generates ads base on the content of the web page being displayed. With this media you have a better change of reaching your target audience. Google Adsense also gives you room to set budget on your advert. You can select the keyword that relates with your ad campaign. So when any of these keywords are search for or it is present on the web page of Google ad networks, you ad will be displayed. You can also specify if you want to base your charges when people click on your ad or impression (hits) on the ads.

Facebook Ads: Facebook ads is gaining momentum each day. It’s highly targeted in the sense that, it locates who to display base on their profile information. For example: if you want your ads to be displayed to only those who are between the ages of 18-25 years, you can easily get it across. This also includes sorting the users by country. So, if you want to target Nigerians you can easily get it across to them. The social nature of Facebook ad also makes it a choice. You can create Facebook page them make your ads social, this simply means creating a word of mouth model around your ads.

Yahoo Ads: Yahoo remains the most visited website in the world; its ad model also is a good option. Giving you a budgeted system to set your spending on advert per and month.

Measuring performance

Measurement gives you a sound base to judge your campaign, whether you are meeting your target or not. If for instance you want to convert at least 3% of people who comes to your website to customer, having set this before the campaign you can now check to see if you have met that target.

Making it sustainable (make payment easy, thank customers, seek feedback)

While designing your ads campaign you need to take into account the users’ experience, you need to make getting the product or service you advertise accessible. Landing page as its call is where visitors are linked to when they click your ads on your ad platform. You should make sure you have forms to collect their contact information (with their permission though). This will enable you communicate with them further.

Build a community of customer: the earlier we understand that the rule has changed the better. Our advert is not necessary the magic wand to get customers coming, it is the relationship we build with them that will further make them come back and refer more of their friends to you.

Your online ads are strategic to your online success. Careful planning is important as well as being able to bond your client with you for a lasting relationship.

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Facebook Terms of Use Review

Facebook recently reviewed its Terms of Use, which brought about arguement and disagreement from the community. The dissent from around the web has made Facebook revert to its old terms. Well, this could be said to be the power of community.

The new term said thus:

“You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof. You represent and warrant that you have all rights and permissions to grant the foregoing licenses.”

The old term (now current) says :

By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

The wording I think is too formal and could make a lot of people confused translation to give it. Facebook Founder, Mark Zuckerberg wrote two blog posts here and here to clearify their stand on the issue and He has promised to keep the Trust that people have for Facebook. You can also join the Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

Many people rarely read the term of use, when they get freaky about any website they just click on. Some argued that Facebook is surpose to alert users of its new terms but, Facebook stated clearly that it’s the users’ responsibility to always check the terms for update. But, surprisingly, I got alerted on my Facebook page about the revert to old term. Good! But kind of late.

People have trust in Facebook, and that has to a large extent made it the largest Social Networking site on the internet. Obviously, Facebook is bigger than some major countries, about 175 millions user would have made it sixth biggest Country had it been a Nation state.

Next time you visit, any site, read through its Term of Use. It is the guiding principle to what the company can do to your data and how you can protect yourself.

Do you have any issue understanding term of use? Drop comment below.

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