What does it mean for brands?

The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is a regulatory body that has been in operation for over 50 years. Its core mandate is to control and regulate advertising content on the media including the Internet.

With advertising being the only way that marketers can reach potential clients, sometimes there can be temptation to give untrue information or misleading details concerning a product or service. This is especially true where markets are shrinking or competition is severe. Such are some of the factors that led to creation of the regulatory body. Its functions include ensuring that all adverts are legal, truthful and accurate. ASA also ensures that the advertisements are within the advertising codes that have been set up.

A number of rules that have been put in place regarding misleading advertisements, betting, content related to child protection and social responsibility. These, together with the repercussions and penalties for non-adherence, are clearly outlined in the Advertising Code which must be complied with by all brands.

There are millions of advertisements that go on air every day through different mediums. In UK alone, it is estimated that over 10 million advertisements are recorded each year. Those that do not go through the formal channels are even more. Out of these, statistics show that close to 50,000 complaints are received regarding the content of the advertisements. The complaints range from lies, misleading instructions, harmful manuals and mature content targeted at children. These are just some of the wrongs that the Advertising Standards Authority is supposed to correct.

Over the years, ASA has built a strong foundation of protecting the public through auditing and health checking the content that is delivered to them through print, audio/visual and the Internet. What this means is that all advertisements formulated to … Read the rest

Facebook has in the recent past clearly placed itself at the core of modern day marketing. It is a powerful tool which if well utilized, can bring unmatched value to any we based business.

To be able to connect with the millions of people that browse the site each day, it is essential to create a Facebook page that will generate traffic to your website. A Facebook page is better placed to create revenue for the business. Creating an attractive website page is not easy. It takes time and plenty of planning so that content can match what the visitors to the site are attracted to.

According to reliable statistics, Facebook is home to 500 million users globally. It is estimated for these 50 million users, each has connection to at least 60 pages. This makes a huge network of users. It is estimated that by the start of 2011, purpose built pages in Facebook had reached 5.3 billion.

Currently, over 65 percent of web based businesses are rely entirely on Facebook for their marketing campaigns. Many of these businesses have active pages on Facebook rather than links to other websites. The pages are much more effective when it comes to giving corporate information and product details.

While there are consultancy firms that can help in setting up attractive Facebook pages for businesses, this is a task that you can do without help. Since your company may not have a budget set aside for the exercise, you need to know the steps of making a page, getting targeted fans to the page and keeping an active online community. What matters most in a page is the relevance of the information provided. Too much information may discourage readers as it is viewed as boring to read.

Details that will be of … Read the rest

The last couple of years have witnessed a tremendous growth of social media. While a decade ago it was viewed as fad, the perception has changed greatly as marketers and organizations see a valuable avenue to reach out to the outside world in an easy and cost effective way.

The emerging of more social websites and their growing membership size shows how influential social media has become. It is an indication that it is not an idea that is dying soon. In the coming years there are predictions of increased reliance in social media for purposes of marketing and information distribution. Some of these changes are already being experienced while others are clearly on the pipeline.

Privacy is slowly being done away with as social media opens up peoples lives through interaction. In the coming years it will be easy to get the true personal profiles of employers and employees on social media. From there, one can tell their interests, likes, dislikes, opinions on various issues and even credentials. More private life data will be available as people upload videos, photos and family information that was previously confidential. This will generally make it easier to do business and socialize among many other things.

It is predicted that the influence of social media will grow threefold in the coming years as more people learn of its benefits and subscribe to various social networks. This will increase the demand and search for information on the popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Baidu and Bing. Blogs and social websites like Twitter and Facebook that have already established themselves as leading social networking sites will be the biggest beneficiaries in this expected boom.

Due to the huge influx of data in social media networks, content management will be the next big headache. The owners … Read the rest