What is fflap?

eBay has long helped students, new moms, and – in today’s economy – the recently redundant generate income online. Now a new tool called fflap is helping these hard-working eBay sellers see more revenue. fflap is the brainchild of Jonathan Yates – entrepreneur and author of Freesourcing: How to Start a Business with No Money. “After a career in field sales, I understood that people buy from people,” Yates explained. “I found it frustrating that eBay didn’t offer more information about its sellers and wanted to bridge the gap between trading platforms and trusted social networks.”

The social shopping-based innovation helps eBay businesses connect with their social networks and has already proved successful. Businesses can offer recent, relevant information interspersed with new offers — encouraging loyal followers and repeat customers.

“Technology continues to evolve how we create, build and maintain relationships, and how we consume information, make decisions and spend money,” said Yates. “It is essential for trading platforms to embrace these developments and offer a fully social service for both sellers and buyers online.”

We’re challenging all small business who use ebay to try fflap to push their sales to the next level.

fflap is a social shopping management solution for eBay sellers around the world. Incorporated in 2010, it is a dynamic tool allowing sellers to harness the power of their social networks. fflap is powered by socialjet a developer social shopping platform from VUME. For more information please visit www.fflap.com.

There are many avenues that can be pursued to increase your online business presence; one highly effective means of accomplishing this end is online media buying. Once you have made the decision to follow this route to increased traffic, the question then becomes where do I advertise my business? This is where an experienced media buying agency comes in.

Invoke Media has been facilitating online media buying purchases for clients over the last 7 years. With your consultation, we will put together an actionable plan that details the goals of your media buying campaign and define the key performance indicators for the campaign. Once the strategic plan has been finalized, the focus of the campaign will turn to the execution and delivery of the media buying campaign in correlation with your business goals. Invoke Media will deliver a measurable and results driven campaign that meets the campaigns key performance indicators set out at the commencement of the campaign.

Contact Invoke Media for a free consultation.

Our goal is to drive targeted traffic to your website using the most cost effective methods available. The goal of your website is to increase exposure within your target market, increase branding, and ultimately to create leads or sales. A blend of internal site optimization, external linking program, and PPC (Pay Per Click) search engines will be used to increase ranking and target potential clients.

Invoke Media�s main Internet Marketing Services:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Social Media Marketing (SMM)
• Pay Per Click (PPC)
• Viral Marketing
• Blogs
• Podcast
• Media Buying

If increased search engine ranking and website traffic are important to your company, contact us today.

Media buyers and planners are again in high demand. According to TalentZoo, the number of media jobs now available is about three times greater than last year. And recruiting industry insiders say demand is high for those with online experience. Things are looking up.

Or are they?

Media buyers may no longer want for work, but another phenomenon now threatens to obstruct our progress: do-it-yourself media campaigns.

Consider, for instance, the recent trend toward viral marketing. Since it started to take off, the Internet media space has managed to garner an amazing amount of attention. That’s great for our industry as a whole, but what of media buyers? Online viral marketing started as just one aspect of a greater campaign — an afterthought marketers threw in to a contest to boost their media buys. But many of today’s viral efforts don’t involve the purchase of online media at all.

General Mills’ recent online film spoof of “The Italian Job” promoting Lucky Charms was distributed directly to U.S. students and 20-somethings, but no online ads promoting the effort have been seen. The Gap also rejected ad placements in lieu of promoting its “Watch Me Change” site entirely by word of mouth. With advertisers now able to execute viral campaigns without corresponding media buys, is there still a place for those who specialize in negotiating ad placements?

The increased blog use for corporate marketing is equally disturbing. Prior to this trend, businesses looked to advertising to help them build a relationship with their customers. Branding campaigns were used to create a positive association with conglomerates and to humanize even the most faceless corporations.

Now companies use blogs to satisfy these intents, generating traffic via their corporate Web sites and word of mouth. No longer must a business rely on online advertising to connect with the public. Blogs can do this and more.

In many ways, online media has become a self-service communications channel. Advertisers, even those with little online experience, are discovering what consumers have known for years: at its core, the Internet is a medium “for the people.” It doesn’t necessitate assistance from the pros. One can develop ad creative using a home software program, launch a site using inexpensive Web design and hosting tools, and promote one’s initiative with blogs, discussion boards, and good old word of mouth — all without traditional advertising agencies, media brokers, or placements experts.

Where does that leave media buyers, whose livelihoods depend on the demand for ad placement expertise? There’s no denying the need for evolution. Today’s buyers and planners must prove their worth by showing versatility and demonstrating expertise in new formats to makes themselves indispensable. Though it’s certainly possible to work without media buyers, they possess a knowledge of the Internet space and its users that professional and amateur advertisers alike would be remiss not to exploit. Having access to DIY online advertising is one thing. Making it work is quite another.

At the same time, it’s highly unlikely traditional Internet advertising will suffer extinction any time soon. Techniques may be maturing to better serve consumers’ changing wants and needs, but until the Internet adopts a pervasive fee-based content model there will be a place for in-site advertising. And advertisers will need to reach the consumers sites attract.

Modern media buyers aren’t just buyers; they’re planners and strategists, too. This makes us even more valuable than ever before. But we can’t breathe a sigh of relief now that economists say we’re back in demand. We must stay on our toes. The last thing we want is for the next DIY campaign to be of the job-search variety.

Original story

1. The billboard in ‘dry state’

2. The billboard, after it’s rained.