#interactive stratergy

The beginning of 1990’s saw the start in quick changing technologies. When I was a kid I saw the change in hardline phones to codeless mobile phone which are bigger and heavy than what we see now. Today in this age of advancing technologies we can connect to people in different corners of the world with just a tap on the screen. Technology is literally on your fingertips. Internet is one of the biggest example of a fast paced evolution of technology which has played an important role in this turnabout. Fax to emails, written letters to text messaging and  land lines to free internet calls everything changed so fast setting a never ending trend to the evolution of technology.

 When we look at text messaging alone it have seen a new light since the introduction of smartphones. Where in the olden days we were restricted to certain characters per text message but now we can write an entire plot of a movie in a single text message. Introduction of internet based messaging apps in smartphones have led to a new era in messaging. Apps like ‘whatsapp’ where we can send text, images, videos, contact information and location have enabled people to have more freedom over internet. There are other apps over different OS such BBM (Black Berry Messenger) in Black Berry and iMessage in iPhone. But whatsapp which was originally made for android and is one of its first messaging app to have gained so much popularity. This app has become a trendsetter which later got introduced to all mobile platforms such as iOS, windows, Symbian and even java based phones. Even though there are so many other apps; whatsapp has survived all that challenges and still continuing its service remaining as one of the major messaging app which has been used worldwide. It has become part of the day to day life for many. Families who live away from each other form groups to talk to one another. I have been on various whatsapp groups which makes it easier to stay in touch with a wide number of people in one place. Recently I saw a laptop service center personnel use whatsapp to send pictures of a damaged part to his colleague to check if the part was available rather than carrying my the laptop all the way to service center and checking for it. This saves me a lot of time and money. We could also send recorded videos to each other using whatsapp. It also has a feature where you can record you audio and send it over. Whatsapp has set a trend among the young and old in the last two to three years.  

Interactive media is the integration of digital media like graphics, animated images, electronic text and sound into a structured digital environment that allows people to interact with the data for appropriate purpose. In this ever changing world, the trends in interactive media keeps improvising as per the needs of technology. People all over the globe now has access to the internet which makes it challenging and also gives opportunities to create an exciting array of content for consumers. Having a very clear understanding of the upcoming trends and defining the content goals within an organisation is very important.

One of the major trend in content strategy is the competition to gain consumers attention. Each day there are around 92,000 new articles posted on the internet. It's not just from publishers; Word Press users produce about 35.8 million new posts each month. While developing content strategy it is important to realize the type of business it is created for and the target audience of that particular business. It is also important to understand what kind of product a business sells and the marketability of the product. For instance, is the product a think product or a feel product. Think products is where the consumer takes a personal effort to think or consider before buying the product whereas a feel product is where the customer takes an impulsive decision because of what they feel at the moment.

The rapid growth of digital innovation and the various platforms to work with makes it even more exciting and challenging. As the mediums to work on increases companies experiment with content in each of these mediums to reach their target audience. For instance PopTopia is a mobile game which has a mobile attachment called Pop Dangle which emits the smell of popcorn as u play, Sephora's mobile app has content that speaks to their core customer base and is in line with their other online and social media content.

There are several content marketing tactics that are used nowadays. It is said that 92% of business marketers use social media as one of their largest means of content strategy. Below is a graph of 13 content marketing tactics that a B2B marketer use :

 Going by the saying "Fishing where the fish are", business marketers target their existing and potential users on social media. A survey in the last year shows that LinkedIn is the top rated social media site that business organizations use.

Social media makes it easier to push content and access it faster than ever. Social media allows you to leverage existing networks to increase the reach of your content and it provides a testing ground for broad marketing campaigns. Social media platforms also allows you to share the content at optimal times, test and see what resonates your audience, gather insights from your audience. However creating and maintaining the quality of content becomes critical. As content marketing through social media platform increases the media buyers will have to allocate more funds towards content promotion. Companies have also come up with in-house social media experts who are entrusted to advise on the social media planning and execution. Image based content is believed to have a higher engagement on social media. On Facebook images receive 50% more interaction than text based posts. With technological developments, cheaper solutions and the increasing popularity of mobile and other wireless connections, social media is on the finger tips of every single person. This makes it a quicker and easier way to use social media as one of the major content strategy to market their brands.