Digital Communication

 

Digital Marketing:

Social media influencer marketing: Influencer marketing involves promoting goods and services to individuals who have influence over things that others purchase through social media posts (Marketing schools, 2020). This market influences comes from a person’s ability, fame, or notoriety, these persons are known as social media  influencers  (Marketing schools, 2020) . Using a real life example,  Jessica Nkosi a well-known South African actress is the Ambassador of Volvo (SA) and part of her duty as an ambassador is to promote the Volvo brand. So on most pictures she uploads when she goes to work, vacations or shopping she will be either posing next to her Volvo car or inside and caption the picture with the positive experiences she has with the vehicle. Jessica’s fans will become more familiar with the brand and become more likely to purchase it.

 

Chat bots: A chat-bot is a man-made artificial intelligence programming tit can reenact a discussion with a client in characteristic language through messaging apps, websites, mobile apps or through a telephone call (Nigel Graber, 2020). Companies use chat-bots to improve customer service or to advertise , more efficiently. For example Vodacom introduced Tobi, a chat-bot who can assist in customer care 24/7 and can assist a large number of customers at the same time.With the use of Tobi customers don’t have to call Vodacom and wait for almost five minutes in order to speak to a consultant when they have queries. Tobi can be accessed immediately through the My Vodacom app.

 

Visual search:  Visual search displays related items based on the user’s input into a search engine (Topdraw, 2020). Artificial intelligence is being used for the search engines to better analyse image inputs than ever before (Topdraw, 2020) . Artificial intelligence is used to determine the context of an image, with use of search engines in quickly displaying related content and images and enhances a user’s experience by allowing them to access items on the internet without using a text-based search (Topdraw, 2020) . For example, when scrolling online and coming across a house and home advertisement and a sudden interest in the vase occurs. The picture on the advertisement will be attached to the search engine. Then once the search is done, the exact item and related items will be displayed along side the prices, where they can be purchased and the various colours that come with the type of vase. Pinterest, Google, Microsoft, Instagram and Amazon have added this feature (Topdraw, 2020).

Digital Communication:

Video conference: Video conferencing is a live visual link, over the internet or collaboration platform that simulates a face to face conference between two or more individuals who can not meet face to face. This trend became very popular in 2020 (Whitlock, 2021).  For example last year 2020 during lockdown businesses had to close down and employees or management could not meet face to face to do work. So they used platforms such as Zoom and Skype to connect with each other.

 

Virtual events: This type of event refers to an hosted online at a certain date and time (Whitlock, 2021). These events became popular last year 2020 during lockdown. Djs held virtual parties in order to keep their fans entertained during the lockdown. Even in 2021 universities held online orientations for first year students.

 

Reference list

 

Golden Spiral. 2021. 20 Reasons why virtual meetings are better than live, 7 January 2021. [Online].https://goldenspiralmarketing.com/insights/20-reasons-why-virtual-events-are-better-than-live/  [Accessed 2 June 2021]

 

Marketing school. 2020.Influencer Marketing: Exploring the strategy of influencer marketing, 20 November 2020. [Online]. Available at: https://www.marketing-schools.org/types-of-marketing/influencer-marketing/#section-0  [Accessed 2 June 2021].

 

Microsoft. 2020.  The benefits of chatbots, 14 April 2020. [Online]. Available at:https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/microsoft-365/business-insights-ideas/resources/how-chatbots-are-the-future-of-marketing [Accessed 2 June 2021].

 

Topdraw. 2020. Visual search in 2020 & beyond, 21 May 2020. [Online] . Available at: https://www.topdraw.com/insights/visual-search-in-2020-and-beyond/  [Accessed 3 June 2021].