Blogging

: Photo Credit: Caitlinym88

Hello everyone, and welcome to my third blog post, this week I will be talking about “The Echo Chamber and its impact on how people consume media”

Echo Chamber

Firstly for those of you whom may not of hear of the term before“ Echo chamber” In media today “an Echo Chamber is a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by transmission and repetition inside an “enclosed” system, where different or competing views are censored, disallowed or otherwise underrepresented”

Brexit

I am going to use “Brexit” as an example to describe the Echo Chamber, as this summer just gone, that is what engulfed my Facebook/twitter news feed.

To begin I would ask people take a good look at your news feed, what do you see? Unfortunately, with the last thousands of years and more fears of inequality, immigration and the establishment were all there, just not on a social media platform for the entire world to see.

Facebook Analytics

But, nowadays with the use of Facebook analytics by liking and sharing certain ideas interest Facebook will only begin to show you what you like and begin to disregard the opinions of others create an almost unrealistic social media bubble for ourselves.
For example, during the time of Brexit, How many times did you see people support leave in your news feed? By filtering it out, we became even more divided. Our Facebook feeds polarised the debate. When the vote had passed, Protests ensued and the majority of people were shocked with what had happened? After the result I did a lot of searched online through facebook/twitter to give me a better insight to what had just happened (Similar to the USA elections, I imagine polls in the near future will be never believed again.) Back to my point, I assumed everybody I knew was as shocked as I was.

Facebook saw what I “liked”, built a profile for me and kept serving up what I wanted to see. This algorithm is what makes Facebook the addictive monster it is. Brilliant for keeping me in the loop with my interests, disastrous when it comes to politics. (An idea algorithm for business online today, we see less from our friends and more from business we engage with.)

I had to work hard to unearth my long lost friends from school, College and travelling aboard for a year on Facebook who had decided to vote Leave. If I saw their posts, I wouldn’t have tried to change them, but I would have the chance to relate. Why should an algorithm filter out the real views of people I care about? Instead of an active debate, we were stuck in our own echo-chambers, sharing the same point of view, liking it and thinking the job was done.

Social Media Bubble

Last week we were given the fantastic opportunity to have a live Q&A session in Corks Institute of technology with Caleb Gardner organised by Zahid Aslam.

Caleb spoke on how different media outlets overall influence our perception on a given topic.

He raised some interesting points such in relation to echo chamber, Caleb told us how he is a big believer in how the universe creates similar patterns witch relate to similar macro and micro levels within physics for example if you zoom in to a leaf on a tree it creates a very similar patterns like a forest, this is what the universe does. Now, if we were to extract to human behavior Caleb said, people being civil to each other one to one has a lot of insight how we can be civil online. One to millions or millions to millions. We have to find good ways to create good dialogue online.

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Thank you for taking the time to read my blog! Hope you enjoyed it.

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Hi CC Digital Marketing here again, Below is a blog post in relation to a recent Eir Spiders Digital Marketing Workshop I attended.

eir-spider-awards — Photo source: goo.gl/wdXobN

On Tuesday October 4th I attended a fantastic event in the Clarion Hotel Cork, the workshop was held by Eire Spiders whom “design and deliver online strategies which place digital firmly at the heart of our client’s business”.

The workshop helped integrate numerous different aspects in the digital marketing world.

Key speakers and influencers spoke about their own business and gave huge insights into how to grow your S.M.E.

Speakers on the day;

Marie Davis – Head of Marketing Solutions Google. Marie Spoke of how mobile has change the digital Marketing industry forever, “Everything at your fingertips and
more”.

Paul Byrne from tinder Point, referred to Gary Vaynerchuk quote “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” on numerous occasions, which fantastically summarises selling to your customers online, rather than bombarding your audience with constant information, slowly integrate your selling mechanisms. A more beneficial financial approach in the long run.

Going visual with your business “Create, distribute, analyse Repeat”.

Iris Daly – Head of Digital at Eir Business, spoke of the importance of ecommerce and planning a strategy for your business is. Once you have a correct structure in place you can captivate on this, “In the moment experiences for your customer”. An interesting statistic that 68% will click out of your website if it is not loading within 3 seconds! AB Testing and split testing helps overcome these obstacles’. Iris finished with a fitting quote to sum it up, “Your credibility is vital”.

Richard Barrett, Co-Founder of Pundit Arena, spoke of how you can grow build a business and help motivate your employees.

Richard used an example of a Loyalty Card, as many people would use a loyalty card for example with your coffee “get 10 stamps Win a free coffee” an almost old style of marketing but Richard made an interesting point businesses should help the customer by stamping 5 of those empty spaces.
What you are really doing is encouraging the customer to buy more, as they are nearer the free coffee then they were in the first place.

You could even replace this idea with a scratch card, where it is a win/Lose situation again the customer is more enticed because the customer is more likely to win that outcome.

Creating this randomisation helps motivate your employees, to sum it all up Richard exclaimed “You only get a finite amount of opportunity you have to make the most of every opportunity”.

Stephen Ryan Head of Marketing at Corks Redfm and digital marketing lecture in Corks Institute of technology our final spokesperson of the morning.

Stephen produced interesting insights into how story telling has now changed with the revolution of video, “We can control what we watch, we are now creating visuals diary’s.”

With now the ever more increasing growth of technology business can target younger and younger audiences though the use of digital media.

We as businesses now can build relationships using the following building blocks;
1 Paid- A form of purchasing/ using a budget to grow
2 Owned – Unique within the business
3 Earned – For example your material shared online

Three different platforms we have today to grow relationship with our audience.

At the end of the day Stephen exclaimed “Budgets no not matter Story’s do” It is through story’s we create something unique and different from our competitors to help us strive with future success.

Overall key aspects

Digital Marketing leverages electronic devices PC, Tablet and mobile Phone to provide an experience that influences a desired audience to take an action.

Digital Marketing today is the tip of the spear when engaging with a desired audience. It is not simply the channel of delivery, but the way in which an experience comes to life, (as Stephen spoke of with storytelling) across channels such as Paid, owned and earned Media.

Digital is now the first touch point for the consumer and a channel where the consumer has greater control over what they see and when they see it. In a world where the intended target has limitless choices, it’s up to Digital Marketers to understand the customer journey, customer expectations and desired outcomes from a myriad of scenarios.

Eir Spiders 2015 event