Social media is perhaps the most exciting thing that has happened to marketing in the last ten years. They opened new doors of opportunity that traditional media could not even dream of opening. They gave a voice to all participants in the process, and completely changed the narrative and the way of communication from corporate to human.
Yes, platforms 2.0 have given the possibility of two-way communication. Seen through the prism of marketing communications, companies are the ones who send the message, but the end user does not just receive it but also has the opportunity to send a message back and start a whole narrative that can go in favor of the company. Also, it can completely change the tone and bring a problem to the surface.
That is the advantage of Platforms 2.0. What would Platforms 3.0 be? Well, this is where things get interesting.
What to expect in the future of social media?
I came across the concept of Internet 3.0 through a tweet a few days ago, where this concept is explained in great detail, which I will now try to explain to you in layman’s terms.
If the goal of Internet 2.0 was to enable two-way communication, Internet 3.0 aims to have the same possibility but to decentralize the power of communication platforms.
What does decentralization mean? It means that we will not have the power centralized in one company that will regulate the communication channel but each of us will be a “server” in some way. So, there will never be an opportunity for a hacker to break into the system, or for the company to manipulate the network.
I’ll repeat it in layman’s terms – this sounds like a blockchain for social networks, a concept of torrents for FB and Insta.
Why did I turn the conversation to Internet 3.0? Because the world is already ready for it, considering all the controversies related to Facebook and its Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and other daughter satellites, and especially considering the almost all-day downfall of the same.
The conversation involves several things as the security of user privacy, the dependence of businesses on specific networks, and the question of what we do if tomorrow these networks are gone or become irrelevant (RIP MYSPACE).
To answer that, we must first revisit some basic digital marketing literacy concepts that people often forget and some even (quite justifiably) don’t know.
Social media in digital marketing
One of the key divisions of digital marketing is branching into three parts:
owned media (channels and content that are owned by you and over which you have control),
earned media (content that someone shares – users, media, etc., and based on whose narrative you have no control over), and
paid media (or custom paid advertising).
Why is this important in situations like the downfall of social media like FB and its satellite networks? Because if they disappeared for a long time or disappeared completely (you never know), automatically, brands and influencers would not have ownership of their profiles/pages on those networks.
There would be no way to have an earned media moment (there would be no one to share the posts) and would not have access to the paid advertising system.
What’s yours and what’s not yours online?
In this situation, the only thing that would be in the control of brands and influencers would be the real-owned media channels. Channels that they own instead of ones owned by popular social networks. What are those channels? Well, it’s not plural, but rather singular – it’s the company/personal website.
The content you create will always be yours – blog posts, authored videos, photos, designs, or any digital content. Anyone who wants to follow you will always have a way through social media but a website is still yours, not to mention the option to have people subscribe to your new content via email.
Finally, the best takeaway from the whole Facebook debacle is that the mantra of any digital marketing company or individual creating quality content must be that what is being given/shared is something that is truly valuable. Quality content reaches the end user, and it is best to host the content on your site that is under your control.
Filip Ristevski creates a success story with Piksel and builds a digital transformation trend among companies. Together with his team, he helps companies achieve the highest successes and change the world, offering expertise that gives them the tools to start thinking differently from their competition and digitally transform their companies and grow their business using the latest web development strategies, marketing, and technologies.
Filip Ristevski, you have an enviable portfolio and experience. How did you come up with the idea for Piksel? How did you encourage yourself to start the trend of digital companies in Macedonia?
The desire to try something on our own exists in all of us. It just takes a small initial capsule, an idea, faith, and a little luck to make it come true. Piksel, which has three partners in the background, sprouted from a process of creating an idea for a product. Fortunately or not, that start was not successful, so we decided to start with providing digital services until our next product story. It turned out that such a turn was not so unfortunate, so in April, Piksel will celebrate eight years of existence on the market with an already recognizable image of a digital company that unites the service of digital transformation of companies, the two carriers of digital values, development, and marketing.
As a software/website development and digital marketing agency, Piksel aims to help companies grow their business and create lasting partnerships and value on their way to success through digital channels. What does it mean to have a company handed over to you? How do you gain trust?
Starting cooperation is also the beginning of a completely transparent and honest relationship with the client. That alone is the first step towards building trust and partnership, which as a company, we make sure to upgrade in every segment of cooperation. We build trust through positive and negative experiences that we face jointly with the clients giving them full support and appropriate solutions.
Finally, the most important thing for us is the human segment of cooperation and the creation of sincere partnerships that will last for years.
Your experience spans projects from digital monetization, the cinema industry, the banking and finance sector, FMCG, healthcare, and education. Which segment or industry would you distinguish for your team as a favorite and why?
This one is similar to the question – which of your children is your favorite? 😊 Although we work with clients from various fields of activity, we do not have a segment that stands out as a favorite. It is natural that some industries, such as film, FMCG, and all others related to modern trends and technologies, are more interesting for the teams. At the same time, we see all other industries as a challenge and an opportunity to learn something new while helping the client achieve his business goals.
The Piksel team is made of creatives and is expanding quickly. What is crucial for you to be part of the team, what skills do you prefer, and do you organize training for your employees?
It builds on the human aspect I mentioned earlier. The first character trait of our team members is honesty and transparency, as well as indispensable team spirit and energy.
It is a foundation that each of our employees must have to build their expertise and professionalism on.
Regarding the training part, each internal level in the company has to master some training for the employees to be more ready to meet the next level in their development.
In 2018, we saw big headlines announcing that Filip Ristevski received recognition for “Entrepreneur of the Year.” How much did this award motivate you? Did it open new perspectives for you? What are your future challenges?
Ugh, how far 2018 seems from this perspective, ha ha ha. Of course, any award received pleases and motivates, especially when it is unexpected and based on statistical indicators of the company’s growth for that year. The award strengthened Pixel’s recognition in the local market, opening an opportunity to cooperate with even more clients.
But, like all other companies, we “struggled” for most of the last and this year with the challenges brought by the pandemic and the new way of functioning. With this fact in mind, the direction is in the further regulation of internal procedures and further automation of all processes inside the company that should help in smoother functioning daily and thereby provide added value in providing services to customers. At the same time, it needs to facilitate the employees’ work.
It was expected that in 2020 I would receive another task at the end of the year – the annual recap, Piksel in 2020.
And as the year was, so was my completion of this task in the same year – it just wasn’t happening. So here I am in 2021, with a fresh perspective on what happened in the previous 12 months.
I must admit that it’s still unreal that I’m writing a review for 2020. I’m still in my right mind in March when all the madness started. But let’s not jump too much through the timeline, let’s go back to the beginning.
As usual, we started the year with a new round of Piksel memes.
And yes, even in such a year, we enriched the Piksel team with more Piksels. We welcomed to the team Filip – the SEO wizard, Angela – the all-round kick a** account manager, Trajko called Dziki – the copywriter & #hehence master, Ivana – the office manager/organizational guru and two reinforcements from abroad, Kate – the pro account handler & content creator and Nate – the all round design & marketing pro.
And now, back to work…
In 2020, we already started the story with Tikvesh and Bohemian’s conversations. Something that came to us naturally as self-proclaimed bohemians and lovers of good tikveska brandy and exceptional wines.
Before the lockdown happened, we managed to organize an event together with EOS Matrix for the presentation of their “European Payment Habits” survey that EOS has been conducting for 12 years in a row.
On the subject of live events, for well-known reasons, it was the first and last Piksel live event of 2020.
In the first months of the year, our development and web design team was quite busy. We developed a landing page for Bimilk’s new product, Bitolsko fresh milk with vitamin D3, and a very addictive game for the refreshed and upgraded product portfolio of Bimilk – Bitolsko with 10 vitamins. Months later, we’re still playing it. 🙂
Aaaand, this is where the COVID-19 crisis started. Of course, not knowing how to deal with the new situation, we did what we knew best. A new round of memes, this time Quarantine edition, as the most effective medicine in the battle against the virus.
After the phase of creating memes and getting used to the new situation, the real challenges for Piksel in 2020 have begun.
I won’t lie and tell you that we managed easily and that working from home was great for us. At first, it sounded fun, great, we will all work from home… But soon, communication challenges started in the team. To find a way to communicate and be up-to-date with all the new requests from customers, and at the same time learn to function in a world where you can’t see your loved ones, you have to sit at home, and you have to disinfect everything that you order online was not easy.
There were a lot of meetings, a lot of calls, a lot of nerve-racking… Something that, as a team, took time to overcome, but…
With a Piksel team like this, I think anything can be overcome.
After strengthening our team’s communication and finding a way of functioning in the “new normal,” the challenge was to do the same with customers. Let’s find a way to be active and not stop with marketing activities but be careful with the social component and keep in mind all aspects of the situation.
A topic elaborated by Vladimir Ristevski, our CMO, in the interview for Business Info under the title: “If you have a product that responds to the crisis, you must not allow yourself not to advertise.” Take a minute to read it – the information shared in the interview may still be useful to you.
During the quarantine, our design team decided to present “Piksel Quarantine Cosmetics.” Stranger things were happening during the quarantine, don’t judge.
The idea was to make up for the things that we missed the most during the quarantine in an interesting way. The smell of linden trees in spring in Skopje, hugs with your best friends, or the smell of your favorite pub… cosmetics intended for maintaining a healthy body and a healthy spirit.
Sometime in May, we became (again, self-proclaimed) work-from-home experts. We even wrote a whole blog post about it. Like any good written word, we had our critics.
*Part of the Piksel team can relate to this. 🙂
Contributions of Piksel in 2020
Knowing that many businesses are in a difficult and unpredictable situation, we wanted to contribute to their promotion and survival efforts in a quickly digitized world. For this purpose, we have created an e-book with practical tips for the survival of your business. You can still download the free e-book.
This was also the right time to look back and ask our customers what they think of us. Like every digital person in 2020, we decided to put those nice words on social networks. Yes, on all social networks!
We are grateful to have such collaborators and even more satisfied when we receive positive comments on our invested work.
To keep up with the trends, Piksel in 2020 held the Piksel elections in which the Go-green team emerged victorious.
Naturally, during the heightened effects of the crisis caused by Covid-19, it was necessary to pay more attention to prevention to protect public health.
Therefore, with Ohridska Banka, we have encouraged digital habits among the population, such as using contactless payment cards for quick payments, avoiding queues, and using the website, mobile and electronic banking as products that offer complete banking services.
At the start of the new academic year, we presented something fresh. Complete design and development of Skopje East Gate website – the first project of its kind in the country, which incorporates a shopping mall, residential complex, and business park, to introduce new standards of urban living.
Since we are nearing the end of the year, I will summarize it through our work, and it looks like this:
We started the year properly with a toast to our loved ones with the best Macedonian wines of Tikvesh.
We educated and raised awareness about COVID-19 and protection measures with Roche Macedonia.
With InPlayer, we have brought the world of online streaming services to an ever-increasing number of people worldwide.
With Taskforce, we proved that “Macedonian value” has its own special meaning, brought their team closer to the world, and celebrated all their successes.
During the quarantine period, we increased our friendship with the wines of Tikvesh. As expected.
With Sava Insurance, we ensured your pets are always insured with Pet Vet. With Sava Pension Company, we launched a micro-blog so that you are never alone, and we tried to make you Savers with a Plan!
We laughed and played with Oho Productions and their Prespav and 5+ family.
A strong finish for Piksel in 2020
The end of the year was somehow connected with the beginning of the heating season, so the success story with Aircon led to a great promotion and highlighted why Aircon is #1 on the market in Macedonia and globally.
As the year was ending the team that worked tirelessly to create a new website for CityFashion finished the final preparations needed to successfully launch a completely new online web shop that brings together some of the world’s most famous brands in one place.
With the achieved results, in a really short time, it turned out that although we spent a large part of the time at home this past year, we still cannot resist unique pieces of clothing. Especially when they can reach us at our home address. And, of course, style cannot and must not suffer.
But that’s not all. The very end of 2020 also brought us a socially responsible campaign, developed with the European Business Association, for promoting the Circular Economy, its importance, and the importance of recycling and reusing – something that we as a team try to do in our offices, too.
Some of the challenges remained in 2020, while some continued in 2021. I am sure it will not be easy, but it is a challenge that I believe our team will overcome.
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