International Business and Technology Blog

Why Instagram?

Instagram is huge! With over 1 billion active users monthly, it is the second largest social media platform worldwide. Only Facebook is bigger. But that could change, as Instagram's rise shows no sign of slacking. Why is that important for businesses? Because in today's world businesses need to reach their clients and prospective clients on the platforms of their choice. And Instagram is a great choice for businesses.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a constant preoccupation of the online literati and given its importance in driving the internet, it is essential to keep up to date with the latest trends and concerns. The new Holy Grail of SEO is Search Engine Co-Optimization (SEC-O), promising huge rewards for combined organic and paid search. SEO guidelines and statements are regularly issued by the owners themselves, Google, Bing and their brethren. The debates, reactions and pontifications can be lively as researchers, practitioners and non-believers, exchange their opinions. ClickZ conferences are a great well-informed forum, and the recent New York event was no exception. Amongst the many soothsayers, Bill Hunt, President of Back Azimuth Consulting added his weight to the SEC-O debate “integrating, measuring, and optimizing PPC and SEO keyword data and insights to maximize their collective potential for traffic and conversions”. A bit of a mouth-full but worth unpicking.

Domain registration is one of the first steps you need to take when creating localized websites for your export markets. South America is not an exception, but which domains should you register?

New to China and wondering how to get brand recognition? One of the fastest and most cost-efficient ways of building brand awareness in China, particularly for B2B companies, is to use SINA Weibo. The name Weibo means microblog in Chinese and the app is sometimes likened to a Chinese version of Twitter. But that comparison undermines one of its key attributes: from an online marketing perspective Weibo is more like Facebook. Weibo allows companies to post content to specific targeted audiences in China. It gives you a segmented audience base to grow page likes, create social buzz and to drive traffic to your website. This is the main reason why Chinese businesses are increasingly using Weibo for their online marketing and why savvy non-Chinese companies are joining in. 

The only way is up!  But, don’t hold on. Get video centric now! Globally, IP video traffic is expected to grow threefold between 2016 and 2021, a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 26% and representing 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2021. Read that twice and contemplate. Successful businesses are driving the internet video explosion. Reports on the ‘state of video’ abound, from those that carry the bytes (example Cisco, see below) to those that are involved in every stage of the video conception to consumption boom. And video marketing, the fastest growing trend of our digital era, is a main driver of this growth. Large corporations have long understood and profited from the video cool aid, and now it is the turn of mid-size businesses, driving up those exponential video statistics. Fully 9.6/10 professional marketers say they are using video for business development purposes, with 63% of all businesses already on-board. Are you?

Online global social media business development is here. Jump on board! Social media presents a host of new opportunities for online savvy businesses to grow their sales, brand and business. That growth is not confined in any geographic or national sense; the only limitation is access to the internet.

Social media is proving to be the ultimate route for business globalization. This is the paradigm shift that has been understood, harnessed and embraced by the accolade-winning unicorns that operate globally (think Uber, Airbnb…) currently numbering some >200 companies with a combined market valuation of >$650billion. Their record breaking business growth (speed, size, scope…) and leadership demonstrate that social media platforms represent the greatest rising tide upon which successful businesses can float their respective international boats.

The social media online phenomenon now has  unparalleled scale, in which billions of netizens communicate and much, much mullah (dollars, euros, renminbi, yen, pounds, …) is transacted. And know this: those numbers are only going one way and that is up.

Social media, that is websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking, is at the least an oversized noisy teenager that you can't ignore, or more probably a robust mid-twenties adult to engage with fully. Either way, every business must now know that you ignore social media at your peril.

Successful companies are using social media channels to engage with their target business and consumer audiences and collecting serious money. Just look at the top 100 companies in the Fortune Global ranking: 93% have Facebook pages (updated weekly), 79% have a YouTube channel (average 2 million views of their corporate content) and a Twitter profile. How is your business doing?

Domain names, specifically internet Top Level Domains (TLDs), are increasingly an integral part of all business strategies and global brand development. Businesses spend many millions on domain names. There are many egregious valuations to demonstrate this phenomena including the amounts paid for: fund.com ($10M) , hotels.com ($11M), privatejet.com ($30M), insurance.com ($36M) and lasvegas.com ($90M). TLDs have a recognized quantifiable commercial value. Take fb.com ($8.5M) which was purchased by Facebook to redirect to facebook.com; iCloud.com ($6M) purchased by Apple for the same reason. And what about your company, your brands and your country code domain names?

In the past few months, Google has introduced two major changes to their Google Keyword Planner available via Google AdWords. The tool is frequently used by SEO (search engine optimization) experts not only for paid advertising, but also to research and analyze keywords for organic search. Google Keyword Planner provides estimates of average monthly searches of individual keywords. The tool can focus results on specific geographic areas, and is therefore very helpful in multilingual search engine optimization.

Apple makes a lot of things look easy and intuitive. Their global online presence and marketing is a great example, we give them A++. Looks easy, but does your company get anywhere close? In our ongoing review of best practices for global online website presence and marketing, we dive into some of Apple's 100+ websites. Successful website and online marketing internationalization requires a range of skill sets and competences, made all the more complex by the inevitable geographic dispersion. Nevertheless there are companies that are extremely good at this, like Apple. In fact, Apple is so good that its online stores are the main driver for the >$200Billion net cash stockpile, most of that earned outside the US.