Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/290775
48 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 6 APRIL 2014 DANIEL COLEIRO If effectively executed, a well-de- veloped internet marketing strategy can offer powerful opportunities to reach potential customers and measurable results. Many businesses repeat the same mistake of looking at one channel of internet marketing, for example they opt for a Facebook page, or for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) only, instead of opting for a holistic marketing strategy. One has to look at the bigger picture and develop an internet marketing strategy where one make use of all online market- ing channels that are relevant for the business, that is; SEO, Content Mar- keting, Social Media, and PPC. SEO The most important thing to keep in mind about SEO is that it takes time. Obviously this depends on the number of competitors, what com- petitors are doing in terms of SEO, and how vast the market is. These, together with other factors, will de- termine how long it will take to start ranking in the top positions. Content Marketing Content marketing is not a new concept, however it has expanded the field to include blogs on web- sites, videos, and also games. Con- tent marketing does not need to be sales focused, for example if one sell clothes there is no need to write an article about how high quality the products are, instead one can write an article about how to dress for a morning wedding or what is going to be in fashion next summer. This will provide information to custom- ers which will make them feel bet- ter about your company. Another reason why one should invest time in content marketing is because an article or a video that was just pub- lished will be the first impression a prospective client gets of the com- pany. The social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linke- dIn, Pinterest, YouTube and much more. Yes, social media is much more than Facebook. Although in Malta, Facebook is considered to be the most successful social me- dia platform, one must still explore the other platforms as there might be potential clients waiting for you there while you are waiting for them on Facebook. Unlike SEO, Social Media need a little less time for a business to start seeing some ROI. However there are no shortcuts, one still need to invest resources in plan- ning. Another common mistake with Facebook that businesses repeatedly commit is that they monitor the suc- cess of a page with Likes. Although it is important to have a good amount of likes, it is much more important to have people liking your pages be- cause they like it and they like the business. In other words, try to get relevant people to like your page, this will make engagement much easier. If your business is B2B one might consider LinkedIn, this is where CEO's are and where busi- ness owners are constantly spending time looking for people and other businesses to work with. Pay Per Click (PPC) Pay Per Click is probably the most immediate strategy that will gener- ate results quickly. After some opti- misation, one can be on top of Goog- le via ads in a matter of hours. Now that we looked at these vari- ous types of internet marketing strategies, it is time to sit down and think where your business fits best. The most important thing is that although you can study the market and get to know which platforms will work best for your business, the name of the game in internet mar- keting is testing and tweaking. You never know what work best unless you try it – so implement, monitor, and adjust. The best thing about internet marketing strategies is that you can monitor everything, literally. You can monitor your com- petitors, your spending, your reach, your ROI over any period of time and anything else that one would want to know to improve results. Daniel Coleiro Kingswell is a Search Engine Marketing Specialist at Alert eBusiness (Internet Marketing Divi- sion) – www.alertemarketing.com Information Technology Internet marketing strategies Malta records fifth best broadband penetration rate across EU MALTA has the fifth best broad- band penetration rate in the EU as the performance of broadband services in Malta improved and is today better than the EU average in a number of key performance indicators, the Malta Communica- tions Authority said. Standing at 34%, Malta's broad- band penetration rate now ranks fifth in the EU, surpassed only by Germany, France, the Netherlands and Denmark, which recorded the best performing penetration of 40%. A report published by the Euro- pean Commission on the perform- ance of fixed broadband across member states and other European countries has also indicated that Malta fared worse than the EU av- erage with respect to the penetra- tion of connections of at least 30 Mbps. The penetration in Malta stood at 4% whilst that of the EU was 5.4%. In the best performing coun- try in this regard – Belgium, 21% of subscribers enjoyed a connec- tion speed of 30 Mbps or more. When comparing the average speed performance against the ad- vertised speed, the score obtained by the Maltese ISPs is above the EU average and at times exceeded the 100% mark 0 the only country across the EU to manage to exceed this mark. Malta's average speed perform- ance means that ISPs are perform- ing better in terms of fulfilling their promised speeds in their adverts when compared to other EU countries. Furthermore, there are instances in which the actual speed obtained by the subscrib- er, is higher than the advertised speed. Packet loss and latency are two other indicators reported in the study. While speed indicates how fast data travels in the network, packet loss is an indication of how much of that data is lost over the network. Therefore, networks sporting high speeds with low packet losses indicate high per- formance. On the other hand, latency is a measure of delay in communica- tion, which amongst others, is a function of the distance between the two network points in commu- nication. The three indicators, that is speed, packet loss and latency, combined are important factors to consider for applications requiring high speed and real time response such as high quality video services and applications related to finan- cial services. With regard to packet loss, Malta registered an exceptionally low figure when compared to other countries. The report also found that broad- band services in Malta are subject to more latency than those in oth- er Member States. The MCA con- siders that this finding is likely to have been significantly inf luenced by the location of the server against which latency was measured.