With summer now in session, it is the perfect time to revise your college marketing plans before school starts back up. Targeting students can be easy but at the same time it can be very tricky when the minds of college students can easily be drawn into other interests. An article at MediaPost successfully gives some insight into how you can enliven your marketing plan to keep the Gen Y demographic engaged.

Making up 30% of the Internet’s users, the Gen Y demographic is flooding online channels of communication, particularly social networks. What better way than to reach to them through social media and new media marketing? If you get their email through on-campus promotions during the first week of school, take the extra step to add them on FaceBook and Twitter. Use a blog to share student deals and write about the benefits of what you are trying to sell to them. Connecting to them through these channels will give them more of a personal connection and will also give opportunity for customers to recommend your business to their friends.

Make sure your company’s message that you are sending out through these channels are targeted towards this demographic of consumers. Also make certain that it is well defined and consistently carried throughout online and offline marketing strategies. It is also a good idea to make sure that all of your marketing representatives who visit the campuses that you “hone” in on are carrying out the same message to these students and the coveted Gen Y demographic.

Now, more individuals than ever before, are participating in the blogging community. As social media networks are rising in popularity, retailers must recognize the importance of connecting with these communities. These groups of bloggers help to create the content of these brands, and in a sense contribute to the future of their image. As a retail business, it is necessary to effectively get engaged with the bloggers, by listening to what they have to say. From adult to youth bloggers, many different aspects can be touched about your business than can help you fine-tune and alter your business practices. At the same time, many aspects may be touched about your business that either are not true or you don’t want portrayed to the online community.

It is important to participate in ongoing dialogues, to help generate good content and a trusted image amongst consumers. Through these you can create a larger conversation to extend the content, especially if it is of good quality, or even to steer it in a positive direction. By keeping customers updated on the latest online or in-store promos, special events, or campaigns through your blog, you can really make money off of creating a retail blog. You take that further step in reaching a whole community of bloggers and you really can increase online exposure and build raptor with your customers. Use your blog to discuss retail trends, marketing ideas, merchandising tips, and other facets of your business or industry to help promote and strengthen your brand.

As a retail business, you want to make sure the content is good and effective, so being proactive in the blogging community is a must. What others say about your brand impacts your business more than what you say about your brand; especially in user generated content circles. You want people to promote your business by blogging about you, your products, and your company without the common sales pitch. While, most retail businesses don’t have the time to comment on blogs and write articles you can find new media and social marketing companies that can integrate these techniques into your online retail marketing practices. These tactics will help deliver traffic to your website as your retail blog will serve as a communication engine, pumping out content to receive higher search engine rankings. It isn’t easy enough for the average, non-tech business owner through, or their staff, so it is best to hand this task over to a company who has the tools to help drive online success for your business.

In a recent study by Marketing Sherpa, reproduced in the Marketing Pilgrim, it appears that viral video is taking off, albeit a little slower than expected. Almost 30% of marketers polled reported great results from their viral video campaigns. Only two forms of promotion received a better reception; micro sites developed for a specific product or launch with the “cool factor”, and online games or puzzles. It seems that the downside of this poll is that if you put out a dull video no-one will watch it.

Given that two thirds of the people who responded to this poll reported that they were planning on a video marketing campaign this year, the message is clear. Do an interesting guerrilla video and take advantage of the window of opportunity that video presents.

Ikea is getting in on the craze of consumer generated content and viral marketing by gathering home made videos of people coming up with innovative ways of making a bed. The winning entry walks off with $5,000, but what does Ikea get out of the deal? A lot more than $5,000. People are undoubtedly going to come up with strange and unusual videos that will spread like wildfire and promote the IKEA brand all over the internet. So why are more companies not doing this? Beats me. Every company that brands its products and wants to be well known should be using blogs and video optimization as a matter of course.

According to the Consumer Internet Barometer, shoppers are becoming increasingly accustomed to incentives like free shipping and free return postage. Over 90% of shoppers said that free shipping would incent them to buy, while 65% mentioned that if they had a special incentive availble online that was not available in brick and mortar locations, then they also would be more likely to make their purchases online. Return postage was also mentioned as a prime motivator.

What does that mean for your e-tail business? Are you offering these kinds of incentives? How are you telling your clients? Are you using viral marketing? If you have a blog with subscribers, you can inform your buyers via email or RSS, that you are offering a special or incentive . They in turn will tell their friends and people in their sphere of influence. You announce a great promotion. Spread the news using subscriptions and RSS. Even better, do a video product release, and spread your message or promotion using video optimization.

It looks like Firefox is getting involved in delivering Fan Based TV commercials to select local markets in the US. The ads will be done by advocates of the browser, of which I am one, and will focus on spreading the message that the user experience on Firefox is superior to that of other browsers, notably Internet Explorer. Obviously this is a smart move by Mozilla, as they will undoubtedly increase market share by embracing new marketing methods. Retailers should pay attention to what is going on here. Video and video optimization is here to stay. US households have the bandwidth and they want to see and share videos that they find interesting. It is the purest form of viral marketing around. All retailers need is an expert in the field to make sure they are taking advantage of this competitive edge. Triangle Direct Media is that company.