Digital Media News

As people continue to move towards the online environment for communication, entertainment and shopping, it is more important than ever for your brand to stand out from your competitors. Advancements in technology mean that there are opportunities that you can use to better your business’ position in the market.

One of the more recent developments is that of ‘live chat’.Also known as “web chat”, it involves the use of real-time, text-based communication via the Internet. It is a viable alternative to long-established practices such as telephone and email support, which can be costly for companies and incur long waiting times for customers.

While live chat is most commonly thought ofas a customer support platform, it has some untapped potential that could make it an effective marketing tool, due to the interactivity it provides and its ease of use. Why?

It doesn't matter if you're an avid tweeter, a Tumblraddict,or a Facebook junkie; there's one thing you can't avoid on the Web: memes. Memes are everywhere and just about anything or anyone can become one. Grumpy Cat, Alex from Target, Overly Attached Girlfriend, Success Kid — all of them started out as normal, everyday people (or animals), but were somehow catapulted into the online spotlight, overnight.

The actual term “meme” comes from the 1976 book ‘The Selfish Gene’ by Richard Dawkins, who defined it as a ‘unit of cultural information passed between people’, but today, memes are most commonly known as those funny pictures with puns and jokes overlaid on top in bold, white lettering.

What is a meme?

A meme is quite simply a concept, behavior, or idea that spreads virally, usually via the Internet. Memes most commonly appear as pictures or videos, but they can also take the form of a link, hashtag, a simple word, phrase, or even an entire website. Memes can also take the form of viral videos, with one of the most famous examples being the "Harlem Shake" memes that took over the Internet in early 2013. (The original video has now received more than 75,000,000 views)

Facebook once came under heavy fire for revealing that it had run a week-long experiment on its network that intentionally manipulated the emotions of users without telling them. The purpose of the experiment was to find out how mood transferred through social groups - would seeing a sad status make people feel sad? What about happy updates?To test this, Facebook experimented with nearly 700,000user accounts, by posting either more negative or more positive updates on their news feeds than normal. They then tracked what all the users posted after they viewed the news feeds.

In a world saturated with marketing messages, people hear a radio commercial and change the station. They see a commercial on TV and fast-forward their DVR. Some people even see an ad on Facebook and subconsciously ignore it (even though we all know that is a silly thing to do). So how do you get consumers to pay attention to your ad? The key is to not make it seem like an ad.

This is where native advertising comes in. As the name implies, it is advertising that feels natural. Almost appearing to be a part of the content, native ads do not scream for the user’s attention. They are part of a website’s organic environment, and provide a great opportunity for brands to curate consumer-centric messages.

The relevancy of native advertising carries across diverse channels, largely owing to the fact that there is nothing flashy about the ads – there are no large fonts, special animations, or innate flourishes. By creating advertisements in this way, marketers hope to provide a much less disruptive advertising experience. Below is a great example of native advertising.

We live in a busy, cluttered world where consumers are bombarded with messages from every business under the sun. Brands interrupt our social media news feeds, our TV programs, our podcasts, videos and our browsing. You can’t walk down the street, take a train or step in a taxi without seeing some kind of marketing.

The problem with this, for businesses, is that consumers start to tune out to the different forms of communication. When this happens, how do brands get heard? The answer is: they need to get creative.

What is ‘augmented reality’?

It’s an image of a real-world environment that has been supplemented by something computer-generated, such as sound, video or special graphics.

Send your hologram to that meeting in New York, rather than going yourself. Experience everything Australia has to offer from the comfort of your living room. Instantly 3D-print that gadget you saw on television and get it delivered by drone messenger.

The age of gigabit connectivity is dawningand these are just a few of the predictions in a report called ‘Killer Apps in the Gigabit Age’, which tries to envisage how the next generation of Internet connections will change our lives.

The report works on the premise that, just as dial-up Internet access brought email into the mainstream and broadband spurred video streaming and social networking; gigabit-speed Internet will introduce us to a new set of technologies that will allow formore meaningful brand experiences.