Sometimes we may not realize the activity that we are engaging could be define as marketing. For thing such as deciding holiday photos to post on Instagram, what clothes we wear to our work meeting. Every thought and action we put into curating our personal image and brand is a form of marketing.

However, with those who not in professional training for marketing will be disadvantage compare to those who have more qualify education. Because marketing courses are usually relevant in many careers, even those that don’t seem to have much to do with marketing. Having marketing skills can help you find success in your chosen profession and maximize your opportunities.

The key for success in marketing is never stop learning specially for technological skills that teach in marketing course. A course in marketing will give you the skills you need to use these tools, gather data through different sources such as survey, social media so that marketer can act accordingly and give their best to reach a broader and yet more targeted audiences.

Also marketing course will gives learn some insight to the strategies that they need to evaluate the reason behind people might want to buy the product or service. It make more sense of how people of different ages, genders, cultures, backgrounds and budgets might respond to certain products. Thus, these skills prepare marketer to think more critically in every aspect of evaluating the product from customer pint of view. This is crucial because knowing what customer want will make marketer performance more efficient and increasing more sales.

Without a doubt, as technology continues improve day by day, so does it affect the digital marketing in the marketplace. Hence many marketer has discovered the benefits that digital marketing brings. Therefore, despite the costs of taking marketing course, the profits that you reap marketer from this effort will also make every extra dollar worth the expense.

Buying fake flower in black market has come very trendy across the social media platforms. That is because the black market is easy to find and you can buy as many followers as you like.   

Often, fake followers can be recognised by simply looking through their post or a clearly fake profile image, the interaction between them and other users. For example: Most fake account Instagram are quite lazy as they don’t post much, so it’s easy to pinpoint them amongst real users.

These day, fake follower services have been are utilise by celebrities. Notice that big star such as Kim Kardashian is one example of someone who buying fake followers. Kim Kardashian is extremely popular and considered a celebrity who does not hide her private life from her fans. Her Instagram account has over seventy million followers. However, back in 2014, Kardashian instantly lost over one million followers when Instagram decided to purge the fake accounts on the platform. Celebrities buying fake followers so that they could capture everyone attention. In another word, we could say that it is a competition between them, because more followers they have the popularity they will be against other celebrities. So more followers mean they can win the game against another.

Not only celebrity or influencer buying fake followers. Normal people also use this service, because it is a door for them to enter Showbiz.

In china celebrity such as “Hu Yi Tian” or “Lin Yi” are two examples of someone who were popular on Weibo and Tiktok and were invited to cast in web dramas. After the success of their web dramas they have sign up with the entertainment labels and have more opportunities in participating in TV series and live shows which currently they become more well-known and their popularity are increase. In fact, getting popular online would make it easier for normal people to enter the showbiz as the company see they already have huge amount of fans base, which the company recognised that it easier for them to invest money on someone who already have many fans.

Indeed, fake followers have play such an important role in people life. So beside, all the negative impacts it create, we can look at it in another perspective.

Internet of thing make life become very efficient to households. Which explain why many Australian householders are gaining access to it. Internet of things mean any devices that are connected to the Internet such as fridges, window blinds, locks, computers.

Besides all the positive results which Internet of thing can give us. Do we really think there will not be any risk exposures that we might face?

Using GPS in a smart phones, users can get spy without them even knowing and even if the location has been switch off. Researchers from Northeastern University in Boston said  in conducting to their test they were able to track people driving through Boston, Waltham, Massachusetts, and London. Traditional locators, like GPS were turned off so the researchers used other sensors (Schlesinger, 2018).

Furthermore, users can be hacked through their social media account. A former software engineer at Yahoo Ruiz found guilty on hacking thousands of accounts to hunt for sexual images and videos, which he currently facing serious consequences. Ruiz admitted to taking advantage of his work at Yahoo to access the personal accounts of about 6,000 users that are younger women, his personal friends and work colleagues. He used hacked Yahoo accounts to access Facebook, Gmail, iCloud, DropBox, and online services of the victims in search for their private and personal records and stored them in a hard drive in his home.

Australian Privacy Act has significant limitations in protecting consumers, as the definition of “personal information” is very narrow. The Act doesn’t even apply to many Australian companies, as they do not meet thresholds such as having A$3 million in annual turnover. This show IoT users are very vulnerable and they need to be extra cautious when using the devices as they might not be covered by the Australian law.

This week topic is about mobile payment. For now, mobile payments is increasing with a massive numbers,  its reaches $1.3 trillion worldwide by 2017, a growth of over 400% since 2012.  Part of this growth comes from transfer services like Western Union with mobile payment systems offered by conventional banks and companies like Dwolla. Places like Kenya have been M-PESA, which is mobile payment for the substitution of cash. Also, people use PayPal from a mobile device to make purchases from an on-line commerce site (Sherman, 2017).

As the world is increasing with the mobile payment, Australia also follow the trend. There are two common forms of mobile payment which people can use at retail stores: Apple pay and Wechat pay.

From my research, Apple pay has been release around the end of October 2016 in Australia. But it’s not a huge platform of mobile payment until 2018, people start adopting this fast and convenient way.  Apple Pay is a digital wallet that can securely store back card, which you just simply use your ‘wallet’ to make payments without needing a physical card in the pocket. Apple Pay lets you use your phone’s Near-Field Communication (NFC) chip to connect to an EFTPOS machine and make the transaction all in a matter of seconds(Hurwood, 2019). It is only require customers to enter pin if the amount of purchase is over $100. Not only that Apple Pay also allow customers to jump online to make purchases. By simply log into your Apple Pay account, rather than the need to enter their banking information again and again at their point of purchase.

Very convenient isn’t it ?. That’s why it make many Aussie fell in love with it. Personably, right from the beginning when its release I have been becoming a huge fan. For me I would not want to carry my wallet or card around since mobile phone is always with me. It is achieving two things with one action.

The only downside of Apple pay is that it is not collaborate with Westpac bank. So Westpac users cannot get the taste of Apple pay.

The other common form of mobile payment in Australia is WeChat pay.

It is especially design for Chinese users who are students of tourist in Australia. Australia have expand their boundary and offer Wechat pay because numbers of tourist and international students are increasing more and more every year. Noted that foreigner can also use it, but they require to have the Chinese bank. To explain Wechat Pay it is a payment solution completely integrated inside the social and messaging application of WeChat. To make payment, users simple scan the shop QR code and enter the amount they need to pay. That way the payment has been establish and users are all good to go (Graziani, 2017).

Like Apple pay, Wechat pay also has downside that is make restrictions on banks. Let’s hope the service are more open up, upgrade and allow more banks in the future. So more people can try it out!

This week inspiration is drawn from a great piece of reading “Interact with me on my terms: a four segment Facebook engagement framework for marketers”. The article provides a good background of information about the key segments of Facebook users, which help marketers in their way of finding successful marketing strategies to target their consumers.

I found the article is very beneficial for users especially who desire to set up their advertising page on Facebook. Advising users to pay very careful attention before putting their money out. Noted by Needleman and Marshall 2014, Facebook advertising continue to become increasingly expensive, whereby negative result also continue to goes up. From the real life example, General Motors decide to drop out of Facebook advertising due of the loss of $10 million for ineffective marketing. Hence, this will trigger marketers to question themselves “ is the investment worth?”.

Writer recognise the importance of brand page that require create emotional ties and social bonding over along time with their online community which in hand will achieve more brand commitment. Given these values, marketer will need to identify what segment of consumers they are targeting so that they could adopt the right strategies. Facebook marketers need to recognise 4 segment frameworks include: attention seekers, devotees, entertainment chasers, connection seekers.

Writer recognise the importance of brand page that require create emotional ties and social bonding over along time with their online community which in hand will achieve more brand commitment. Given these values, marketer will need to identify what segment of consumers they are targeting so that they could adopt the right strategies. Facebook recognise there are 4 segment frameworks include: attention seekers, devotees, entertainment chasers, connection seekers.

The first identify segment is entertainment chasers, their motivation for using Facebook is escape from their boredom by finding and consuming burst of entertaining content. It is recommend that the marketers need to combine entertainment with advertisement by having: quiz, video or games to spark the interest within entertainment chasers. The next segment is attention seeker, they are motivate by Facebook because it able to let them tell every story to the followers. They think of themselves as everyday celebrities of their circle. Marketers who targeting this segment can perhaps gain consumers attention by providing faster or exclusive brand information, new products, exclusive deals.  

Devotees are motivated by finding relief from their friends support on Facebook on whatever might stress them out. This segment is ideal brand ambassadors as they spend large amount of time on Facebook and has strong connection to their Facebook social network. Marketers would serve by tapping these individual to create post their own related content on the brand community or their own wall. Lastly, connection seeker is driven to connect with others and create their strong social group. Brand marketers might need to create space for consumer to consumer rather than consumer to brand interaction ( Smith et al, 2012).

Although Facebook has more active users and it is a great platform for marketing.

However, in my perspective I think using twitter would probably achieve better result. For example: Twitter has younger based users than Facebook ( Stephanie Miaki, 2019). These users interest in new contents and trending topic (sport, news, product and services updates). In contrast, Facebook users are there to keep connected with their family and friends. According to Adweek “Twitter ads id perform much higher than Facebook” (Larry kim, 2018). Average CTR of twitter is 1-3% while Facebook has 0.119% where twitter ads are in stream, rather than push off to the side. But of course, it all up to marketers to think and judge which social media is a better option for them.

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.