Brandboosting

How mobile can you get?

2012-02-28T10:03:00.018Z

With smartphone sales outpacing PCs for the first time in Q4 2011, the predictions that most internet access will be via a mobile device before 2015 seem to be on track. It’s a new and rapidly growing means of commerce and very soon every company will need a mobile site or possibly lose business to their sharper competitors.

Here are five of the most recent stats that highlight this growth:

1. Nearly half (46%) of UK internet users accessed internet services on their mobile phone in October 2011

2. Over half of smartphone users in the UK access the mobile internet daily

3. During Q2 2011 visits to e-commerce sites from mobile devices accounted for 7% of overall traffic, up from an average of 1.4% in Q1 2010

4. UK mobile shoppers are buying more and are now making 3.3% of e-commerce purchases from mobile devices. This is an increase from 0.4% at the beginning of 2010

5. 8% of UK adults buy through their mobile phones, while 21% intend to buy in the future

Mobile websites need to be more than responsive.

The explosion in smartphone use for internet surfing is just part of the trend to use a mushrooming range of devices to access the web. We’re either in the lounge browsing through a 50” HD LCD TV via a game console, in the bedroom on a widescreen 15.6” laptop, in the office looking at a 19” flat screen, in the café on a 9.7” iPad or on the train with the 3.5” smartphone.

This has led to the growth of an area of web development called responsive design – an approach that offers a cost-effective method of building websites where they get automatically repurposed to provide the best UX on whichever device they are being viewed on.

Responsive design works fine for all but smartphones because of their very small screens and their slower G3 internet connection speeds - so in the smartphone world responsive needs to be replaced with context design, where the functionality is far more critical than the look.

Around half of smartphone users interviewed by Compuware last year said they would give up waiting for a website to load on their phone after five seconds. How does your website perform? Even if your website does load quickly, what do mobile visitors find? Is the text clear (even in low light)? Is the navigation easy? Is the website thumb-friendly?

Things to incorporate when building a mobile website:

Quick to load
Thumb-friendly (big buttons)
Single-column display (no side-scrolling)
Click to call telephone number
No Flash and limited graphics
Clear display in any light

Are you ready for the mobile revolution?

Smartphones are only going to get smarter, far more powerful and play an even bigger and wider role in our lives. So not having a mobile website now could leave you struggling to catch up with your business contemporaries as the mobile revolution gathers momentum. But don’t take our word for it; just see what’s happening now in the mobile world or could be coming soon….

Augmented Reality is here and is one of the most exciting advances - combining a live view of an object or place with current data generated by the smartphone, easily achieved through apps. This data is usually viewed as an overlay to the live view seen through the smartphone’s camera lens to enhance what the camera is showing. For example (a simple utopian one): you enter a shop and upload the shop app to your phone so that every item you point it at displays loads of information about the item. Also, you may soon be able to do away with the audio headset when you go touring a museum, just use an app on your smartphone to get the same service. Here’s a great example that takes a press ad to a whole new interactive level.

Other advances in smartphone applications are likely to include:

Health monitoring systems
Universal remotes for controlling home entertainment, security, heating, appliances etc.
Universal keys for homes, businesses and cars
Traffic monitoring and route planning – say goodbye to satnavs
Environmental sensors to monitor weather conditions and pollution

We may even be able to have mobile voting through secure election booths

These, of course, all presuppose that we overcome the issues of phone data security and information backup.

Another interesting advance is in the development of chemical sensors for smartphones which could be used to discover explosives, drugs, gas leaks etc. This app shows how specialist areas can benefit from the potential of smartphones. These are likely to be hardware apps and be plug-and-play (just slotted in like a memory card).

There no doubt that the smartphone is going to become more central to everyone’s life, especially when mobile payment services take off.

The rise of mobile payment systems.

You’ve probably heard about the recent launch of the Barclays’ phone app that allows a registered Barclays’ bank account holder to pay money to any other bank account holder (once registered with Barclays) through their smartphone. This system called ‘Pingit’ is part of a number of developments in mobile phone payment systems and 2012 is expected to see real advances.

The main focus in contactless mobile payments (and has been for years) is in a subset of the long established RFID (Radio Frequency ID) technology called NFC (Near Field Communication). RFID has been around for years and has been used for the London Transport Oyster card contactless ticket system since 2003.

Currently Japan leads in m-payment with 47 million Japanese having already adopted tap-and-go phones that use an RFID subset similar to NFC called FeliCa.

Adoption of NFC as the standard for mobile payments has been a slow process as it requires everyone from the merchants, banks, processing houses and phone makers to agree on it. Although the move to phone payments may be slow it is gathering traction - with transport companies, unsurprisingly, at the forefront. Arriva buses has a mobile app for this purpose while the First Group are heading in this direction too.

A new mobile wallet service has just been launched based on NFC technology that looks like it could move the whole process forward quite rapidly. Leaving the biggest drag on the momentum likely to be the limited range of NFC enabled smartphones, although they are starting to appear with a degree of regularity.

Whether 2012 is going to be the year for mobile payments is still open to conjecture, but we are seeing an increase across the board in new mobile payment systems and the resolve from banks, phone manufacturers and a number of influential merchants to bring products and services to the market seems to indicate that it won’t be long before the early morning latte is paid for through the phone.

The world is definitely going mobile and having a mobile website is just the first step on the journey.

Measuring social media effectiveness

2012-02-03T10:38:00.001Z

The 2011 Chief Marketers Annual Survey highlights the difficulties organisations have in determining the effectiveness of their social media activity, with just 13% stating that their social media measurement was very effective. Unsurprising, 60% of those polled in the survey said that their top metrics were the easiest ones to measure - the numbers of fans, followers, friends and likes they get.

For most businesses though, just having a large following or fan base is of little value, so it is important to focus on what and how you’re going to measure. Making sure you’ve got the basic tools in place to help the measurement process is simple enough; from having an inviting ‘LIKE’ page on Facebook to ensuring you’ve placed all the appropriate share buttons and comment functions on your blog and other content.

As a start point most companies gauge how much extra traffic their separate social marketing activities is driving to their main website or specialist microsites or landing pages. This is easily evaluated if Google Analytics (or another website analysis programme) is installed on the website or web pages.

The more involved social measurement systems (the ones that come at a heavy price) are really only worthwhile if you’re going to develop a large social community – which is not easy to do unless you’re a mainstream B2C business. Even City FTSE 100 giants like GlaxoSmithKline and BAE Systems number their followers in thousands rather than tens of thousands.

Measuring social media really isn’t about numbers it’s all about interactions and engagement with customers and potential customers. If your content is doing its job there will be engagement that can be measured (we’re probably not talking big numbers here – even with a few thousand fans/followers). This engagement needs to evaluated and used to determine future growth activity, initially look for:

FEEDBACK
MENTIONS
COMMENTS
PARTICIPATION
CONTRIBUTIONS
SHARING

All the analytics are fairly easy carry out, if a little labour intensive. Most channels provide a level of measurement and these are what the big ones offer.

Twitter provides mentions and retweets through its Activity function
Facebook provides its detailed ‘Insights’ stats and its ‘talking about’ function
LinkedIn provides its own company page stats
Youtube offers analytics for your video uploads through its own ‘Insights’ API
Flickr offers stats at a low annual price that show stuff like your most popular images, number of views, where viewers came from etc.

Blog comments are obvious but the main blogging platforms also allow for more detailed metrics:

Blogger includes its own stats
Wordpress offers plug-ins for stats
Tumblr allows you to use Google Analytics

Just because your blog doesn’t receive many comments doesn’t mean it’s not getting a good number of reads. It’s useful to find out what articles are getting the most views, what are the main referring sites and other stats that can help you to move forward and, perhaps, show where the emphasis of future activity should be.

Here are three simple-to-use free tools that might help you fill in the gaps in your own metrics:

socialmention.com This programme scours the internet looking for words you specify within a range of user-chooser social channels. Their scores are based on four metrics: strength (amount your brand is being discussed in social media), Sentiment (weighting between positive and negative comments – very unreliable when automated), passion (the number of mentions from individuals) and reach (the range of your influence). Not thought to be the most accurate programme though.

klout.com Klout measures online influence using data from the social networks you list that Klout monitors and then provides a score based on a number of factors. They say “We measure your influence based on your ability to drive action in social networks.”

peerindex.com is similar to Klout but uses a different scoring system based on three factors Audience, Authority and Activity.

If you find your social marketing activity is being successful and you decide to measure more involved metrics like ADVOCACY, LOYALTY, TRUST and INFLUENCE you might want to explore some of the more exotic social measurement software and this list of links we discovered online gives access to nearly 200 wide ranging tools. We’ve not checked them all but it does contain some of the big brands like Omniture, Alterian and Radian.

Social marketing – getting the content right

2012-02-03T10:36:00.002Z

Before you can have content you need a content strategy. We mentioned content structure etc. in the planning process, but we need to expand on this a little. (We did a detailed article on content strategy a little while back which you can find here).

OK, so you’ve defined the audiences you want to engage with, you know which channels to reach them with and how frequently; now you need to focus on how you’re going to do it.

To begin with, review your chosen social media channels and see if there is content you plan to produce that can be repurposed across some of the other channels. For example, newsletters, blogs and online PR articles provide a great opportunity to adapt, edit and basically use the same material to reach your audiences through their preferred means of receiving it. Six blog articles can make one weighty newsletter as well as being repurposed into six press releases - a great saving on time and effort.

At this stage you also need to see if you have any existing content that fits your plans and that’s adaptable, such as demonstration videos, case studies, training material etc. If so use it.

The critical factors for success

The most important aspects of content are relevancy and tone of voice. The first creates the interest in what you’re saying while the second creates the interest in you.

To offer relevancy you need to consistently and frequently produce engaging content that focuses on providing added value by appealing to your audience’s core interests - usually through being educational, informational or entertaining. Where possible include real evidence via research facts, quotes from leading experts or statistical data. These will all add real credence to what you’re saying and add a high level of shareability to your content.

Getting the tone of voice right helps build rapport with your audience, which in turn keeps the audience interested in you and your business. So it’s not just what you say, it’s also the way that you say it.

Although you are representing an organisation you have to be yourself… friendly, warm and inviting. You need to write like you’re talking to someone, someone you want to build a relationship with.

This approach applies to all content, written or broadcast, with the possible exception of PR w the style frequently has to be more formal (using the passive voice) as opposed to the more natural active voice.

Remember to invite comments and opinions on your content to expand the interactions with your audiences.

Part four - Measuring social media effectiveness

Social marketing and SEO

2012-02-03T10:33:00.002Z

Many aspects of “traditional” website SEO (anchor text optimisation, using correct naming conventions, backlink development, alt tagging of images etc.), as well as online press release submissions and other content distribution activities, still play an important role in getting improved page positions) but the overwhelming significance of social interactions in developing SEO strength can not be denied. Content that gets shared, reviewed, mentioned and commented on has a growing influence in the search world. So, surprise, surprise, the basis for success is the engagement that quality material, information and data gains.

Here are six simple, non-technical things to consider when developing social content that will benefit the SEO:

Use ‘keywords’ in the content that you want to be searched for. All too often content is developed without due consideration to search. Remember, the headline and the first paragraph carry the most SEO weight so get the important words/phrases in here – big and bold is best. With videos, podcasts and images the SEO benefits come from the descriptions and tags used.
It is one thing having quality content, it’s another making it easily shareable. So consider using ‘punchy’, exciting headlines, titles and descriptions, which are also ‘twitable’ – bearing in mind the previous point. No matter how dry the subject is, it can still have a ‘tabloid’ banner.
Ensure all the appropriate share buttons are added to the content to make it easier to share.
Keep the content coming. Maintaining high value SEO needs a frequent flow of quality content. As soon the foot comes off the shareable material pedal the SEO benefits will slow. It’s also worth pointing out that Google considers pages that are frequently updated to be more important then those left dormant for a while. It also favours newer pages (but older domains).
If you are on LinkedIn read our 2-part blog post for more information.
Adding content links to your Facebook posts and tweets will also help the sharing process. Remember though, you may have 140 characters to tweet with, but to get the retweets you had better stick to 120.
Maximise you social media profiles (these are permanent). Make sure you connect all your social media platforms to each other via your profiles and utilize any sharing options that these channels use (ie LinkedIn accepts twitter feeds).

Part three - Getting content right

Social Media in 2012 - Step one - Planning

2012-02-03T10:29:00.003Z

Online search has rapidly become the default mode for sourcing products, services and suppliers – even amongst the most entrenched B2B companies. Therefore, a highly visible online presence is a necessity, but a website alone won’t usually provide the high level of visibility needed to stand out. So having an effective social marketing plan built around the website (better defined as an online communication hub) is a prerequisite for 2012.

How the social media landscape develops in 2012 is open to wide conjecture with mobile and video being pushed by many leading exponents as the big growth areas for this year - which is no real surprise given the amount of supporting research available.

While much of the B2B sector has a grasp of the social marketing basics (and are committing to the established trinity of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) many companies still need to fully appreciate the importance of frequent blogging for developing regular, quality, distributable content - the key condition for engagement.

Due to the growing influence of visual material it is also important to explore the options for creating corporate YouTube channels and Flickr accounts. While having a mobile website, developed for the growing number of mobile users will become a necessity too.

Social media planning

Start with analysis which, fortunately, can be a pretty simple process. Review what your customers, prospects and competitors are doing in the social world, as well as what your industry is doing via your trade mags and associations. See what engagement there is and what topics and channels get the most support and interest, not forgetting that blogs are a key component of social marketing.

If you’ve got a large customer database (too big to contact personally) you can even carry out a simple free email survey through Survey Monkey to garner more information and views.

From the results of the analysis you can start to properly plan, but you need to understand that social marketing from this point on is a time-consuming process and will require sustained effort to build success. There will be testing, trialling and the adapting of ideas and approaches along the way, so you should allow at least 12 months to gauge the effectiveness of your efforts. If you are not prepared to do this then, perhaps, social marketing is not for you.

If you’ve got the time, the resources and skills (or the budget) you can move onto the next phase, designing your programme. This needs to done with measurement in mind. What are going to be the KPIs? How are they going to be defined? How will they fit in with your overall business goals?

Choose your social media team and define roles and responsibilities

Write your social media policy – this is very important and should state who can say what, where and when – it could be costly if not done correctly

Select your target audiences and the social channels to reach them

Secure your social media channels (It’s critical to consider your branding at this stage and to choose your usernames carefully). Then fully complete all details and profiles accurately and consistently across these platforms

Set your measurement criteria, (Facebook posts, newsletter downloads, increased website traffic, Twitter retweets, online sales etc.)

Define your approach, your content structure and your engagement style and plan three months ahead for larger pieces of content like blogs, newsletters, opinion pieces, white papers etc

Schedule, plan and, importantly, allocate time allowances against each activity

Plan to evaluate and review all activity on a very regular basis, and if necessary change approaches and/or channels depending on results.

Part Two - Social Marketing & SEO

Social Media in 2012 – getting off on the right foot

2012-02-01T16:59:00.041Z

Social media planning

If you’ve got a large customer database (too big to contact personally) you can even carry out a simple free email survey through Survey Monkey to garner more information and views.

Choose your social media team and define roles and responsibilities

Write your social media policy – this is very important and should state who can say what, where and when – it could be costly if not done correctly

Select your target audiences and the social channels to reach them

Set your measurement criteria, (Facebook posts, newsletter downloads, increased website traffic, Twitter retweets, online sales etc.)

Define your approach, your content structure and your engagement style and plan three months ahead for larger pieces of content like blogs, newsletters, opinion pieces, white papers etc

Schedule, plan and, importantly, allocate time allowances against each activity

Plan to evaluate and review all activity on a very regular basis, and if necessary change approaches and/or channels depending on results

Social marketing and SEO

Here are six simple, non-technical things to consider when developing social content that will benefit the SEO:

Use ‘keywords’ in the content that you want to be searched for. All too often content is developed without due consideration to search. Remember, the headline and the first paragraph carry the most SEO weight so get the important words/phrases in here – big and bold is best. With videos, podcasts and images the SEO benefits come from the descriptions and tags used.
It is one thing having quality content, it’s another making it easily shareable. So consider using ‘punchy’, exciting headlines, titles and descriptions, which are also ‘twitable’ – bearing in mind the previous point. No matter how dry the subject is, it can still have a ‘tabloid’ banner.
Ensure all the appropriate share buttons are added to the content to make it easier to share.
Keep the content coming. Maintaining high value SEO needs a frequent flow of quality content. As soon the foot comes off the shareable material pedal the SEO benefits will slow. It’s also worth pointing out that Google considers pages that are frequently updated to be more important then those left dormant for a while. It also favours newer pages (but older domains).
If you are on LinkedIn read our 2-part blog post for more information.
Adding content links to your Facebook posts and tweets will also help the sharing process. Remember though, you may have 140 characters to tweet with, but to get the retweets you had better stick to 120.
Maximise you social media profiles (these are permanent). Make sure you connect all your social media platforms to each other via your profiles and utilize any sharing options that these channels use (ie LinkedIn accepts twitter feeds).

Social marketing – getting the content right

OK, so you’ve defined the audiences you want to engage with, you know which channels to reach them with and how frequently; now you need to focus on how you’re going to do it.

At this stage you also need to see if you have any existing content that fits your plans and that’s adaptable, such as demonstration videos, case studies, training material etc. If so use it.

The critical factors for success

The most important aspects of content are relevancy and tone of voice. The first creates the interest in what you’re saying while the second creates the interest in you.

Remember to invite comments and opinions on your content to expand the interactions with your audiences.

Measuring social media effectiveness

FEEDBACK
MENTIONS
COMMENTS
PARTICIPATION
CONTRIBUTIONS
SHARING

All the analytics are fairly easy carry out, if a little labour intensive. Most channels provide a level of measurement and these are what the big ones offer.

Twitter provides mentions and retweets through its Activity function
Facebook provides its detailed ‘Insights’ stats and its ‘talking about’ function
LinkedIn provides its own company page stats
Youtube offers analytics for your video uploads through its own ‘Insights’ API
Flickr offers stats at a low annual price that show stuff like your most popular images, number of views, where viewers came from etc.

Blog comments are obvious but the main blogging platforms also allow for more detailed metrics:

Blogger includes its own stats
Wordpress offers plug-ins for stats
Tumblr allows you to use Google Analytics

Here are three simple-to-use free tools that might help you fill in the gaps in your own metrics:

peerindex.com is similar to Klout but uses a different scoring system based on three factors Audience, Authority and Activity.

Never mind the quality feel the width

2011-11-10T11:51:00.015Z

Social media - how do you gauge its real value?

The rapid growth of social media and its equally rapid adoption by business has left more than a few i’s undotted and t’s uncrossed in terms of measuring value and defining success.

Unfortunately, standard marketing KPIs don’t really cut the mustard when it comes to the complexity of online engagement with customers, prospects and influencers.

With a lack of any clear standards or consistent guidelines many organisations barely go beyond measuring basic social media numbers, and these numbers only have real value when measured against well-defined goals and objectives. And setting these can be quite an involved process in its own right, as this chart from the Altimeter Group shows by highlighting the differing ROI criteria within a larger business hierarchy.

KEY:

CSAT = customer satisfaction
WOM = word of mouth
RTs = Twitter retweets

The issue for smaller B2Bs, when attempting to determine their social media metrics, is that the available online research, information and data is wholly or predominately focused on the needs and budgets of larger consumer facing organisations with case studies and other reports focusing on the activities of the likes of the Ford Motor Company, Coca Cola, Starbucks etc. That said, there is still merit to be had from reading these reports, you just need to ignore the numbers and probably a lot of the more involved metrics. One recent report that sets out some clear processes in a succinct way is A Framework For Social Analytics, again from the Altimeter Group. And if you’re only going to read one document on the subject read this one.

It goes into some detail and outlines four main steps you need to take when undertaking social media analysis.

The following extract is taken from the report and details the four steps.

Step 1 (Strategy): Align Your Social Strategy with Business Objectives.
The first - and often most overlooked - step in social media measurement is to determine what you’re trying to accomplish and how you will approach it. This means starting with core business objectives, such as corporate priorities, business unit/product objectives, or Management By Objective (MBOs). Then lay out the business strategies that support these objectives - before you start to develop or assess any social strategies.

Step 2 (Metrics): Determine How You Will Measure Success.
Metrics development should follow the same process. First, determine how you will measure success from a business perspective - whether it is to drive brand/product awareness, source competitive insights, improve search engine placement, contain call center costs, generate leads, or simply learn - before you approach it from a social perspective.

Step 3 (Organization): Evaluate Your Organization’s Readiness to Measure Social Media.
This is one of the most critical elements of social media measurement strategy. Assess your resources, the level of domain, analytical and tool expertise needed, and the current state of internal collaboration. Many companies lack sufficiently trained staff for social media measurement and delegate it to overcommitted and under-prepared employees - a recipe for failure.

Step 4 (Technology): Choose Tools in Light of Strategy, Metrics, and Organization.
Once you know what you’re trying to accomplish, how you’ll measure success, and what resources you have available, you’re ready for tool selection. This is still a very new industry, so be aware that tools are as yet immature and change quickly. There is no single best tool for every objective or every business.

Although this Altimeter report has been produced with input from large businesses the basic premises should work for most size of business, but as it states in the report, and I paraphrase...

There is no magic bullet and no definitive set of metrics for social media.
Your challenge is to use the this report, your own experience, and the internal resources at your disposal to develop the metrics that best describe and measure value for your business.

How to approach B2B social media marketing.

2011-10-03T14:57:00.003+01:00

Part Seven - FEWER EXPERTS, MORE EXPERTISE

Social Media networks are new and continually changing, so can anybody claim the title of expert? A discussion at the LinkedIn E-Marketing Association Network titled “Is there such a thing as a social media expert?” has caused a storm of opinion.

Many social media marketers lack the kind of experience brought to the table by established and reputed marketing and communications professionals who can rightly claim to be experts in areas such as formulating marketing strategies, promoting brand development and producing creative content. Some new marketers assert that we are playing a whole new ball game where the disciplines of the past are irrelevant. This may be a sincerely held belief or a way of covering up for personal inexperience, but either way, it’s a flawed argument.

Communicating business messages through social networks is a very different process to promoting via traditional media, but the skills of experienced marketers are not obsolete. Flexibility and the capacity to know both audience and medium are still at the heart of the market. Social networks are approached in specific ways and it’s frequently said that success is achieved through joining the conversation and that the hard sell doesn’t work. True; but professionals in traditional marketing are experienced in communicating information as well as promotion and sales support. Generic advertising and public relations campaigns at their best can demonstrate sophisticated and subtle ways of presenting messages that resonate well within the social network environment.

Social networks cannot be viewed in isolation because the fact is that social and traditional marketing work very well together. A survey conducted in the US by business development specialists RSW/US revealed that 67% of marketing decision makers believed that “digital agencies need to evolve and offer more traditional services to maintain relevancy” and only 25% of respondents used an agency that was exclusively focused on digital, social or SEO activities.

This is a mature response to the communications environment. Target audiences will continue to react to established methods of marketing and communication in addition to the information and interactive projects that companies put out on the social networks.

Sometimes innovations can eclipse what has gone before but this is not the case with digital marketing. For those in marketing and PR, it provides the means of enhancing approaches to target audiences and giving new insights into their expectations. It offers exciting challenges and opportunities for established marketing expertise.

How to approach B2B social media marketing.

2011-09-27T09:38:00.005+01:00

Part six - making a business success of LinkedIn (building activity).

Doing the business

The main networking strength of LinkedIn is via people joining and contributing to the group discussions and forums on a regular basis. It's all about finding ways to broadcast your experience, knowledge and professionalism and getting closely involved with your various business communities (groups) and building and developing relationships.

LinkedIn offers a number of free apps (in the personal profile page under add sections) that you need to explore to see if any will benefit your business. Two that many find useful are:

Huddle Workspaces: providing private, secure online workspaces which offer project, collaboration and sharing tools for working with your connections.

Google Presentation: where you can upload a PowerPoint presentation or use Google’s online application to embed a presentation on your profile.

Another useful tool is LinkedIn Signal, (top menu, under ‘News’) this allows you to search and track relevant keywords and status updates from LinkedIn members using Twitter. This service offers a wide selection of search criteria to make it a very useful tool. It also offers the chance to see what's trending within your search parameters.

You may also want to explore the Answers section (under the ‘More’ heading in the top menu). Providing authorative answers and advice within your business areas to the professional questions posted here can be another way of developing worthwhile and profitable relationships as well as raising your profile in the community.

Another useful feature is LinkedIn Today (top menu under ‘News’). This is provided as a newssheet - pulling stories from the industries that you specify. The stories are weighted for prominence by the number of LinkedIn members who share them, including a list of these people. This makes it a great tool for researching and finding people interested in the same business topics as you.

Searching for People on LinkedIn provides an Advanced Search function which allows you to set a whole host of search criteria to find the people you may want to get to know. You can even email them directly using the internal LinkedIn email system. This feature comes at a cost though – with a range of options under the upgrade facility.

You may find that your business sector is not well served by groups and you may wish to start your own. This is easy enough to do, just look under Groups in the top menu. But remember, you will need to devote time to promoting and managing it. It may be worthwhile seeking out recommendations for your personal page, as these can provide you with added credibility.

LinkedIn also offers a highly focused ad service similar to Google Adwords but its value will be very dependent on a wide range of factors.

Finally, there are loads more great features within LinkedIn, all of which can be used to achieve specific aims:

• If it’s traffic to your website you are after, there are LinkedIn ads.

• You can update your company pages on a regular basis with new promotions, announcements and events and make sure you broadcast details to your groups.

• You can recommend and refer members you have previously worked with and in turn you can receive recommendations, all of which helps to build the reputation and network for both you and your business.

• LinkedIn also provides a Jobs Board on every company page – allowing you to post jobs directly on the website, which can provide useful savings on recruitment costs.

LinkedIn is a great facility and could well be a great support for your business. If you would like further advice on how to gain maximum benefits for your specific needs, please contact Brandboost.

Change the Face of Publicity with Twitter

2011-09-20T12:34:00.007+01:00

As Burberry live-tweeted their collection before it even hit the runway yesterday at London Fashion Week, another Rubicon for Social Media was crossed. Companies and individuals are no longer wondering how to use Social Media as a separate channel; it is now embraced as a significant addition to an existing publicity arsenal.

Full article from The Guardian here

Now companies have learnt how to use Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the available and myriad digital channels, they are rapidly becoming the sharpest tools in the box. New ways of adapting corporate messages, new audiences to get the message across to and new creative ideas springing up mean that there are still fantastic opportunities to get their message over.

As Jess Cartner-Morley says, “it was not long ago that high street stores smuggled spies into catwalk shows in order to glean clues as to what might be in stores in six months' time, this is quite a turnaround.”

Yesterday, fashionistas across the world were glued to their Twitter accounts as Burberry trended and became the third most popular subject on Twitter.

Now, that is a way of reaching a target market that is low-cost, global and instant. To find out more about how creativity and an inspirational choice of channel can work for you, we can help.

How to approach B2B social media marketing.

2011-09-16T09:53:00.010+01:00

Part five - making a business success of LinkedIn (getting started).

With over 100 million users, LinkedIn is by far the most significant business focused social networking community. Basic membership is free for now and this will provide a really good range of services for most users.

The basis of LinkedIn’s success is that it provides opportunities to easily…

• Connect with like-minded professionals in all relevant industries

• Get involved in industry discussions

• Share industry, business and company content

• Generate sales leads

There are two parts to setting up accounts for business, the staff pages and the company pages.

TIP: When getting your staff to join it’s essential to set guidelines so all corporate details are displayed consistently on their personal pages. This importantly means all staff must use their company email addresses. Also devise a guidance policy for staff when representing your company on LinkedIn, so they maintain a professional perspective at all times.

You need to have at least one personal page set up before you can start a company page and setting up staff accounts is simple enough – just follow the instructions and ensure the individual profiles are fully completed, making them relevant, interesting (not just CVs), accurate and grammatically correct. Good, clear, headshot photographs are also important. And it's worthwhile linking the company twitter feed to each individual’s page, along with the corporate website and blog.

Don't forget to click on the add sections tool on your profile page where you can find additional functions such as languages, courses, voluntary causes and much more.

The next steps are pretty simple too:

• Link up with existing customers/suppliers (search by name or company)

• If relevant, search for old work colleagues, school mates, college or uni friends, club members etc.

• Join groups that are relevant for your business using the group search function

Setting up the company pages

Once you have an individual LinkedIn membership you can create company pages. To start, access your personal page and then click on ‘companies’ in the top menu section. The page that appears has the option to 'Add a Company' on the top right beneath the search box. Click on this link and follow the instructions.

Once this is done the staff will probably need to edit their own individual profiles and re-input the company name. During this process a drop down menu of company names will appear – click on the correct one to get added to the employee listing.

Next complete the company overview, it's important to consider and include relevant keyword search terms in the overview as they will help your business to be found through the LinkedIn search engine.

Another important aspect of company pages is the option to publicise your products and services. Use it. You can then periodically promote news, offers and events etc., which can be broadcast to your groups and contacts on a regular basis.

To be continued...

How to approach B2B social media marketing.

2011-06-16T13:23:00.011+01:00

Part four - making a B2B success of Facebook and Twitter.

If your customers and prospects are getting into social media you should be too.

Facebook is rapidly becoming very business friendly and real advantages can be gained if you adopt the right philosophy and approach. After all, Facebook and Twitter can provide very effective forms of business networking - just without the fried breakfast.

What you need to do to get on the path to success is create quality content; this is what you promote to get the ball rolling and to keep it rolling. The information, the stats, the facts, the news, the updates etc. - creating the stuff that will appeal to the people you want to get to know. Producing relevant and timely blogs, white papers, opinion pieces, thought leadership articles, product reviews, demonstration videos, tips and tricks etc. – are all excellent ways to start the process. They become the substance that you use to attract the people you want to attract. They are the basis of a process called friend seeding.

You need to remember it is the immediacy of both Facebook and Twitter and their functionality of streaming questions, comments, opinions and answers quickly and easily that makes them different. It sets them apart from a website or a blog. So don’t turn on the tap if you are not prepared to keep it turned on.

Once you’ve got your content development plan underway, you need to get your corporate Facebook and Twitter accounts sorted. Twitter is simple enough; you just need to design your page in your corporate style and you’re ready to go. Facebook is a little more involved. It is now possible to do whatever can be done with a website, with a Facebook page. What is more, you can show different content depending on whether people have liked your page or not. These developments give rise to some excellent opportunities for innovative marketing techniques. Many companies are now successfully promoting quality content through the Facebook ‘web’ page using the ‘like us’ button as the access point.

To get the friend seeding underway, your content has to be promoted to your target audience via PR releases to relevant trade journals (both printed and digital), and specialist sections in the online newswires – ensuring that the online releases are written for Search Engine Optimisation using your required keywords. This is to ensure that your story can be found via organic search in the main search engines. You should also email your customers and prospects with the details and the link back to your Facebook and Twitter pages. Your trade advertising can carry the social media links as should your web and blog pages.

It is important that you keep your engagement on the networks regular and focused, by promoting your content on Facebook via Twitter as necessary. It’s also imperative that you get involved in all relevant discussions/comments through your Facebook Wall and Twitter pages. You should seek out and join groups on Facebook that are applicable to your business. Use your knowledge and experience, wherever possible, to promote yourself and your business to your audience

You can also search for industry news on the web and add links and comments about it to your Facebook and Twitter accounts, engaging with your followers (customers/prospects included) as much as possible.

If you are very successful with these social media channels you can even form your own group on Facebook to which you can invite the followers you want to join. This group could be used for researching ideas, focus testing products or for more specialised areas of your business.

You should have a schedule for your Facebook and Twitter engagements, make them regular and often and keep the comments, tweets etc. focused, relevant and interesting. That way you’ll keep your followers and fans.

Always look upon your fans and followers as both prospective customers and friends and in this way you’ll have a great chance of turning some of them into loyal customers too.

Next time: making the most of LinkedIn.

Part three - building the distribution network continued: article marketing.

How to approach B2B social media marketing.

2011-04-06T16:02:00.011+01:00

Part three - building the distribution network continued: article marketing.

The least salubrious of content distribution services, article marketing
has, over the years, been a great way to get backlinks and good SEO
but it has recently been badly hit by Google’s clamp down (via its algorithm
update, codenamed Panda) on what it perceives as duplicate content providers
(content farms). Many of the leading article directories have suffered badly.
Ezinearticles.com, for example, reportedly lost over 35% of its traffic in just
a few days (following Google’s algorithm shift); its all important Page Rank
(PR) dropped too.

This algorithm update has cast an even bigger shadow over the worth of article marketing as a simple way of gathering large numbers of SEO friendly backlinks.

Many article marketing sites have seen this Google change coming and have been insisting on original content for a while – creating a major headache for businesses expecting to push the same story to as many article sites as possible and then sitting back while reaping the backlinks.

Undoubtedly the value of article marketing has been reduced but it might still retain some SEO worth if you stick with the major directories – the ones that insist on fresh content and that don’t litter their pages with ads. But you must be prepared to devote the time and effort to produce unique content for each one if you want to be successful.

As a word of caution many businesses, including large numbers of independent affiliate marketers and multi-level marketers (MLMs), use specialist software called ‘article spinners’ to automatically rephrase content to make it ‘unique’. This allows them to target swathes of directories with ‘all new’ content quickly and easily. The downside of these pieces of software is that they usually produce rubbish results - and content that’s been ‘spun’ a lot ends up as complete gibberish. Avoid! There’s still only one way of producing quality content.

If you want to proceed with article marketing here are five of the more popular directories. There are loads more, many are a bit dubious.

Ezinearticles.com is the biggest in terms of daily page views, receiving over a massive 10 million with 27% of the visits coming from the USA (8% from the UK). Ezinearticles offers an extensive selection of categories which is unsurprising as it has over 23million pages. According to Alexa the site has a global traffic rank of 103 it also as a Google Page Rank of 6.

Hubpages.com receives nearly 6 million daily page views with approximately 25% of its traffic coming from both the USA and India (7% from the UK). Hubpages offers wide selection of article categories supporting over 7 million pages. Its Alexa global traffic rank is 185 and its Google Page Rank is 6.

Squidoo.com is just below Hubpages on daily page views at a little over 5.9 million with 35% of its visitors coming from the USA (6.5% from the UK). It has a good selection of categories and over 7.5 million pages. Its Alexa global traffic rank is 186 and its Goggle Page Rank is 7.

Articlebase.com gets over 3.6 million daily page views with the majority of its traffic coming from Asia. Again, it has a good selection of categories supporting nearly 19 million pages. It has an Alexa global traffic rank of 296 and a Google Page Rank of 6.

Articlealley.com receives daily page views of around 450,000 with over 40% of traffic coming from India, 15% from the USA and nearly 6% from the UK. It has a limited number of categories and has around 2.2 million pages. It has an Alexa global traffic rank of 2472 and a Google Page Rank of 5.

In part four we’ll be looking at using Twitter and Facebook for business.

Part two building the distribution network.

How to approach B2B social media marketing.

2011-03-04T15:40:00.016Z

Part two - building the distribution network.

In the first part of this series we laid the foundations for B2B social media marketing by developing the newsletter, blog and PR article framework. Once this content is strategised and planned, you need to consider how you are going to reach out to gain a relevant readership and to maximise the SEO benefits.

In this second part we focus on one area of broadcasting content; PR story distribution, which offers both ‘paid-for’ and free options. You need to do your own research to decide which providers and options are best for you and your business. For the purposes of this article we are going to outline a few of the larger reputable PR newswires that offer a free distribution service.

The main negative of free services is the lack of archiving; therefore you generally can’t build long term ‘link-juice’ for gaining ongoing SEO strength. It’s therefore important to have fresh content sent at least monthly. The newswires usually allow you to upload just one PR story a week (as part of their free offer), which, to be fair, is usually enough for the majority of smaller B2B organisations.

For those not familiar with newswires, you will find they have editorial policies that influence their decisions about whether or not to accept material. Obviously any obscene or inflammatory submissions will be immediately rejected, but so will anything that’s seen as blatant advertising (the reason that many releases are rejected) or a dodgy “get rich quick” type promotion. Incorrectly formatted pieces will also not get through, so it’s important to check what’s required to avoid frustration. For instance, headings normally require capitalisation on the first letter of each word, but not capital letters throughout.

Also, newswires are interested in news rather than information articles, so won’t accept material like advice on how to do things. Releases therefore need to be phrased in newsworthy terms e.g. a new product or service is introduced, a corporate development is announced or an important conference/company event takes place.

An important SEO tip: place your PR articles on your website first and wait until they get cached by the search engines before you upload them to the newswires (hopefully a week should be long enough for this). The main newswires receive a huge number of daily uploads and many of these sites get indexed by the major search engines quite a few times a day, whereas a normal website gets indexed far less frequently. Here’s the important bit; whichever site gets the article indexed first is seen by the search engines as the originator of the content and gains the primary SEO benefit, the same content that’s indexed later is marked as duplicate content and only gets secondary benefits. So to gain maximum benefit you need to be in first place.

Five of the top PR newswires offering free distribution:

prlog.org/uk is a US based newswire with an extensive worldwide readership. It’s got an impressive Alexa global traffic rank of about 850 with around 600 for the UK. It achieves massive daily page views that exceed 750,000. PRlog has a very simple user interface offering a good range of business categories overall while the UK site also provides the option for county based searches as well as a search by ‘tag’ facility.

i-newswire.com is USA based, but predominately visited from the Asian continent with USA and western Europe traffic accounting for about 30 % of its visitors. The website is ranked around 9,000 in the world and approximately the same in the UK according to the Alexa global traffic rank. It receives around 73,000 page views a day. I-newswire has a classy website with good functionality and a well structured categorisation system.

onlineprnews.com is another US based site but with over 45% of its visitors coming from the Indian sub-continent. About 30% of the audience is from the USA and the UK. According to Alexa it has a global traffic rank of around 8,500 with a UK rank of 6,000. This is a quality website with a wide range of distribution categories and receives over 35,000 daily page views.

clickpress.com is UK based and has a similar style and profile as pressbox.co.uk, with an Alexa global traffic rank of around 13,000 with 8,000 for the UK and gets approximately 30,000 daily page views. The site is very plain and simple and has limited distribution categories.

pressbox.co.uk is Canadian based. Like most of these sites Pressbox is heavily used by visitors from the Asian continent and is ranked around 11,700 on the Alexa global traffic rank system and about 5,300 in the UK. The site has approximately 29,000 page views per day. Again this is a very basic website with limited categories (very similar, if not identical to) clickpress.com.

These are just a few of the better know sites that will gain you good coverage. We keep an evolving list of newswire sites that offer a free service; it totals around 80 to 90 sites. If you would like a copy of this list please contact us and we’ll send you a spreadsheet.

PR newswires are relatively simple to set-up and use (once you understand their rules), but article distribution sites can be a bit pricklier. Find out more in part three - Continuing to build the distribution network.

Part three - building the distribution network continued: article marketing.

How to approach B2B social media marketing.

2011-02-14T09:07:00.007Z

Part one - laying the foundations.

The basis for building effective social media activity is usually through blogging. And a great place to begin blogging is with a newsletter.

Here’s the logic; successful social media programmes require an in-depth strategy and some real planning, so developing an editorial programme of six to eight articles for a newsletter is a great way to get some simple discipline in place and to get the process underway – it’s far less daunting than sitting down and plotting a social media campaign. If you’re only planning one blog a month then one effective editorial meeting can provide you with six months worth of content ideas and, as the laboured old mantra goes, ‘content is king’. Therefore, spending time getting the content ideas sorted early on – focussing on your audience’s interests and not your sales goals – is the way to build a solid foundation for growth.

The content needs to be built on your experiences and know-how, allowing you to share your knowledge, tips, viewpoints and opinions in an interesting and personal way.

Try to keep the blog content to about 350-450 words – most people have a limited attention span these days (I blame the Internet). Short paras and bulleted text also helps to keep the readers reading as will relevant imagery (especially infographics, graphs and charts). And remember to use the less formal but far friendlier ‘active voice’ when writing. In other words, write like you speak.

Once the blog articles are finished it should be fairly easy to quickly truncate the text for the newsletter and then provide links from the newsletter stories to the full blog articles.

The newsletter is devised primarily as an e-mail product for sending to customers and prospects alike. If you’re B2B you don’t need to worry about opt-in issues, you just need to adhere to the ICO guidelines and include an unsubscribe button and your full postal address details. The newsletter can also sit on your website with links to your external blog articles.

It’s also important when writing articles to keep in mind the keywords you want to include for their SEO benefits. Don’t overuse them but blend them neatly into the headline and the first text para at least.

Adapting a blog article for PR distribution should only require a limited amount of rewriting.

So, if planned and executed successfully, you should have a well written newsletter, a range of six to eight blog articles and the same number of PR stories. Not a bad start.

You can easily set up your blog using one of these good free platforms – Wordpress, Blogger, or Tumblr. An external platform offers better SEO benefits than a blog page on your website. You may need assistance if you have a strong brand identity to maintain.

Next time in Part two – building the distribution network.

"We need a Social Media plan"

2010-12-23T16:44:00.005Z

Words to strike fear into the heart of many a marketing manager.

The rapid infiltration of social media marketing into the frozen far-flung corners of the B2B and B2C worlds has left more than a few companies ‘caught-short’. And the burgeoning growth of new social media channels, applications and tools means getting on top of this erupting volcano (without getting your feet, as well as your fingers, burnt) is a little bit more than an up-hill struggle.

A year or so back it was safe to say that an occasional blog, a Facebook page, a bit of tweeting and a profile on LinkedIn would satisfy many companies. Not now though.

As content marketing takes off in 2011, a fast-moving production line of quality blogs, PR stories, articles, tweets, videos, photos, podcasts, profiles, reviews, views, comments, information etc., etc. will be required to satisfy the hunger for ongoing online success.

What was once a fairly simple exercise has now become a complex set of interconnected and evolving procedures. You now need to continually define the right mix and balance of social media processes while appreciating their interrelations from the SEO perspective. You will also need a good grasp of all the likely cost implications – so you can manage the budget as well as the programme.

Gone are the DIY days. To be effective, social media marketing requires a continual dedicated focus to keep the high-yield content flowing in all the right directions and to stay on top of all the advances in the social media and SEO world.

Five, four, three, two, one…

This is why we are introducing our range of five social media packages to provide companies of all persuasions with an extensive choice of social media plans that are all fully itemised, scheduled and costed. Importantly, also included is in-depth reporting of all these activities for easy analysis and review.

Named after the five layers of the Earth’s atmosphere, our programmes have been developed to offer a high degree of content generation – the most critical factor of successful social media campaigning – as well as offering a high degree of flexibility to allow for more focused targeting. This is achieved by dividing the programmes into primary activities (blogging, Facebook, Twitter etc.) and secondary activities such as social content listings, social bookmarking etc.). The secondary activities can then be easily adapted or changed to suit specific company or industry needs – providing a near bespoke service at keen off-the-shelf pricing.

To view our comprehensive social media packages click here.

E-Marketing Trends 2011

2010-12-20T09:45:00.006Z

OUR TAKE ON KEY E-MARKETING TRENDS FOR 2011

Having distilled what the great and the good of online marketing are saying and combining it with our own knowledge and experience we reckon these will be the main areas of interest and growth in 2011.

Content and Analysis: quality content (and loads of it) will remain the crucial tool for communication, engaging through different touch-points – websites, social media, e-marketing and apps. Marketers will need to meet the challenges of increasing volumes when dealing with behavioural segmentation, ensuring their messages retain individual relevance. Key SEO criteria will have increased leverage on the creation of all communicated material.

With so much emphasis on the new media, it is suggested that referring to articles, blog posts and podcasts will be a growing feature of sales calls for many service-based industries. Analytics will be increasingly used in measuring the sales process from first click to sale.

Social media: Channel integration between social media and e-mail marketing will increase with email marketing connecting with social media via “click to share” and “like” buttons – endorsement via referral has always been recognised as extremely powerful, which is why PR continually targets influencers as well as decision makers.

Commentators emphasise how important it is for companies to be active on all the main social media platforms and to have their messages passed round the blogosphere to maintain SEO. Therefore social media takes on a more important role in the SEO strategy.

Mobile Marketing: There will be a foreseeable increase in the use of mobile devices. 80% of the US population is predicted to have a mobile in 2011. Mobiles are becoming more advanced, cheaper and lighter. The device market is shifting in favour of smartphones, which are driving mobile Internet growth. Social networks are the primary way that mobile users now exchange information with location based services (Facebook places, Foursquare) having a boom time.

An increasing use of tablets with their larger screens will boost the potential of interaction with websites, building on the smartphone’s capabilities. eMarketer Digital Intelligence forecasts that 20 million Apple iPad units will be sold in 2011, an increase of 127% over 2011. The scope of delivery for tablets is also becoming more diverse. For instance, the Samsung Galaxy Tab is able to make phone calls and send text messages.

Online/offline: LinkShare survey findings show that 68% of UK marketing professionals believe that digital budgets will increase in 2011 in spite of the rise in VAT.

There will be growing convergence between online and offline marketing leading to no separate digital discipline - the two will be run within the same strategy and be closely coordinated. E-marketing and social media could increasingly be the lead players in this, with printed and broadcast promotion eventually reflecting rather than driving online and social media campaigns. Could “As seen on Facebook” become an updated version of the adage “As seen on TV”? We shall see.

Online Video: People are watching increasing amounts of online video material and the upward trend is unstoppable. While short user generated videos will continue to gain an audience, MediaPost predicts increased competition from high quality original long form productions. Quality video designed for transmission to mobile phones will also see a huge increase. The Third Bi-annual Report of Web TV Enterprise (September 2010) showed that TV advertisers are increasingly targeting users through video content on the web and that this area “is fast becoming an integral part of their media plans and overall strategy.” These findings indicate that, while online video will remain a very cost effective, expectations for content and professional delivery are likely to grow.

That’s just an outline of likely developments. How these five areas progress and inter-react with each other is another story, which we’ll be commenting on regularly throughout the year.

We are Brandboost, to read more about what we do and how we can help your cross-media marketing, click here.

GROWING IMPORTANCE OF CASE STUDIES – HOW ONLINE MARKETING ADDS VALUE

2010-10-29T11:00:00.002+01:00

If you are looking for a product or service supplier, the chances are that reading a good case study about them may influence your purchasing decision. After all, what they did well for a business with a similar requirement could also work for you.

We help many of our clients to use case studies effectively in their PR programmes, showcasing their skills and the quality of their people in target publications and websites. They are an excellent way to get across key aspects of a client’s working practices and can spread the publicity benefit widely. For example, we have produced articles about successful building projects that reflected positively on the contribution of all concerned; clients, main contractors, sub contractors, project managers and specialist personnel. An in-depth appraisal of a project or application story can also tick a range of boxes covering commercial, technological, social and environmental aspects that a project provides.

Well-structured topical case studies can command prominent positioning and comprehensive coverage, especially when timed for an editorial feature subject or current issue being covered by a publication. Editors like them because they deal with what their readers want to learn about – best practice at work, problem solving, logistics, successful scheduling and budgeting etc.

There is nothing new about producing case studies for the press, TV or radio, but lately their potential has grown with the development of the online environment. This provides them with a wider audience, a long shelf-life through web archiving and, with the skilful use of search engine optimised key words and phrases, a means of capturing and holding a web researcher’s interest. Because case studies can deal with problem solving topics that have a continual interest, they can remain useful vehicles for PR for years to come.

With these developments, the importance of case studies has moved from tactical to strategic. Their retention on website archives provides historical support on which future corporate reputation building can be founded. Additionally, they can expand from providing individual articles or broadcasts to triggering a range of complementary activities through targeted email campaigns, online video and social networking communications. In the collaborative way mentioned earlier, these added benefits of publicity and exposure can affect others involved in a project, so they have the potential of enhancing a PR client’s business relationships as well.

Case studies can require extensive liaison and preparation, but this is well worthwhile. For presenting a company at work and meeting its challenges successfully, they just can’t be beaten.

Does the food industry need to stand together for the consumers’ sake? A marketer's view.

2010-09-09T16:39:00.006+01:00

The Food Industry has survived the worst economic downturn that many can remember in much better shape than most other business sectors. A combination of tight management control, product innovations, entrepreneurship and smart marketing has helped it to successfully ride out the storm.

But more difficult times could lie ahead, ignited by the Government’s recent proposal to review the viability of the Foods Standards Agency (FSA) and fuelled by GM food and nanotechnology as they clamber up the agenda.

The FSA grew to be seen as a champion of consumer rights following its fight with the food industry over the traffic light labelling proposals. Abolishing this organisation now will only help agitate the growing and vociferous bands of food campaigners, ably assisted by certain media.

Just look at these comments from this Guardian article under this heading: “Food Standards Agency to be abolished by health secretary Victory for food manufacturers as health groups accuse Andrew Lansley of caving in to big business”

Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum, said it was "crazy" to dismember the FSA. "It had a hugely important role in improving the quality of foodstuffs in Britain and it was vital to have at the centre of government a body that championed healthy food. This appears just the old Conservative party being the political wing of business," Fry said.

Tom MacMillan of the Food Ethics Council, said: "The agency was set up to earn public trust after a succession of food scares. Its wobbles, like the latest row over GM foods, have come when that commitment has wavered. Any departments absorbing the FSA's role should heed that lesson carefully, doing even more to invite scrutiny and banish the slightest whiff of secrecy, or the new government could face another BSE."

Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, the organic food standard-bearer, which had several run-ins with the first FSA chair Lord Krebs on the issue, said: "Many NGOs campaigning on food thought for a long time the food industry has an unhealthy degree of influence over the Department of Health so the great risk is the corporate vested interests of the food industry will have too strong an influence on future policy."

Consumer perceptions

Ignoring consumer groups is a dangerous precedent in the internet age. And the amount of blame that is laid at the door of the food industry for the nation’s weight and health problems during the HFSS (High Fat, Salt, Sugar) debate highlights how effective these groups can be when they get the bit between their teeth.

It’s an issue that’s difficult to combat collectively as a business sector because of the diversity of food companies involved, with their individual ethics and credos leading to a wide range of opposing opinions and views on issues affecting the industry. While the success of some food companies is built on low-fat, reduced salt and no sugar products; others, like Kelloggs, are battling consumer groups over their HFSS content.

Many flourishing, modern, food businesses have developed innovative products that bypass the major problems afflicting the older, more traditional, food conglomerates by focusing on more indulgent, niche and less cost-conscious markets; therefore avoiding the lower-cost, mass production processes. However, the whole industry has been dragged in by the media and tainted in many people’s eyes by the negativity surrounding the FSA and food labelling. Winning back these disaffected consumers may be costly.

There are important lessons to be learnt from the HFSS situation which could be used to benefit the whole food industry when the debate over GM foods and nanotechnology really hots up.

Where are we going with GM and nanofoods?

If Professor John Beddington, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Government Office for Science, is right we only have twenty years to avert a global catastrophic food problem and that we must urgently embrace GM and nanotechnology to avoid it. His ‘Perfect Storm’ speech last year painted a gloomy picture for the future.

There is plenty of support for his viewpoint (here’s one example) and just as much opposing it. According to many, GM products will grow in hostile environments, require less water, need less herbicides and insecticides and produce bigger yields – wow, a real panacea for a growing global population. However, you don’t have to look far to find a totally different perspective. As this line from an article by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho highlights, “It is the Day of the Triffids - not the genetically modified plants themselves as alluded to in John Wyndham’s novel - but “super weeds that can’t be killed”, created by the planting of genetically modified HT crops”.

Nanotechnology is just as controversial, only with more secrecy involved. You only need to check out this blog, which details a few of the more interesting New Scientist nanofood stories and some of the issues involved with it, to grasp the dilemma. With such a huge variety of opinions being peddled (from well-researched to complete twaddle), it’s no wonder consumers can’t gain a clear perspective on these important and growing issues.

In the years ahead it may not be possible to have food production without some reliance on either GM produce or nanotechnology. It’s therefore important that these subjects, involving novel food development, are rationally debated now. There needs to be a way to channel, manage, organise and categorise a free flow of ideas, opinions, facts and figures so people can more easily gain a more rationale insight on the developments and their possible implications.

Replacing the FSA?

This is where the food industry can really make an impact. By working together they can create and fund an independent agency whose remit to do exacting as stated previously (…to channel, manage, organise and categorise a free flow of ideas, opinions, facts and figures so people can more easily gain a more rationale insight on the developments…). To encourage open debate and objectivity on GM foods, nanotechnology and the other key issues facing the sector should be its prime objective. Rather than letting the consumer groups and others expound their viewpoint alone, the food industry (through this independent agency) can help ensure that all the facts and statistics are brought to the fore, that questions are answered accurately and that there is a fair voice for all.

This agency would need to be a totally separate body to guarantee impartiality and allay consumer fears and media scepticism – which means being run completely autonomously with no input from the organisations that provide the funding.

Its directive would be to become a hub for information, knowledge and advice as well as providing a forum for open debate - offering consumers, journalists etc., valuable and unbiased assistance. Therefore allowing them to research and reach their own conclusions on their topics of interest without being directed one way or another.

By paying only a small annual fee each to support this resource, the food companies collectively gain excellent opportunities to garner positive media coverage and an avenue to build and develop consumer trust though honestly acknowledging all the opinions, positions and problems associated with novel food development and by allowing all independent voices to express their views.

A major plus point of this approach is that individual companies do not have to declare their stance on any topic, such as GM foods – alleviating a major concern for many in the industry.

To ensure independence this resource cannot afford to be linked to an association like the FDF, which has to serve the needs of the food industry and has to take a very standard industry position on the subject of GM food.

The food industry could take a leaf out of the FSA’s book, who even webcast live their management meetings, in their bid to be totally open in their dealings with the public. This independent agency, funded by the food industry, could provide a valuable service to consumers, by offering clarity and impartiality on controversial industry topics. In this way the food industry would benefit from improved consumer trust and a more positive media profile.

Keith Rouse

Mobile Marketing

2010-07-30T11:55:00.005+01:00

Is this the smart of something big?

Our analytic reports, from our predominately B2B client websites, show an escalating increase in mobile device visits, with this change being fairly consistent across the diverse industry sectors of our clients. Although still a small percentage of the overall visits, smart phones et al are beginning to become an important factor in website design and functionality.

The chart below shows the type of devices recently used for viewing just one of our client’s websites.

You don’t need to be a genius to see how the iPhone is rapidly evolving the internet marketing landscape. With phone tariffs now offering unlimited, low-cost, 3G usage and nearly universal internet accessibility, the smart phone is providing instant gratification for those 24 hour business people in a hurry… checking e-mail, researching products and staying ahead of the game.

Research by Gartner sees mobile devices overtaking PCs as the most common internet access device by 2013. That’s some motoring!

And what the iPhone has started Google’s Android is likely to take to another level. With its renowned OS and low-pricing structure, Android phones are starting to make massive strides in replacing the more expensive iPhone, as the smart phone for the masses.

Just look at this quote: “Android's share of the UK mobile contract market has grown from 3% in Q1 2010 to reach 13.2% in Q2 2010, GfK Retail and Technology's latest figures have revealed. During this period, while contract market sales grew by less than 1%, sales of Android phones increased by a staggering 350%.”

If your online marketing campaigns do not already incorporate mobile strategies you could be missing out. Major retailers and many other consumer organisations have already got their ‘mobile’ websites (.mobi) structured for a better smart phone experience. And it seems logical that B2B business should follow suit as this phenomenal growth is set to continue across all sectors.

Unfortunately, there could be an issue with .mobi domain names as there has been a lot of speculative investment (mainly in the Far East) in the .mobi domains for years and you might find your .mobi address has been taken. We have found this an issue for a few of our clients. In fact, someone in China has been cyber squatting on one of our client’s .mobi URLs since these domains were launched in 2006. I wish I could get my hands on their fortune cookies!

Good luck.

Marketing seminar in High Wycombe - Tell us the topic

2010-07-16T10:40:00.006+01:00

Marketing Seminar

In the near future, we are planning to hold a seminar in High Wycombe on current marketing trends and we are canvassing key local companies on the topics that would be of most interest to them.

From the following 5 choices, I would very much appreciate if you could highlight the subject that that you feel is most relevant to your business and email back to this address. This places no obligation on you to attend, but is solely to assist in our evaluation of business community requirements. Thank you very much for your help.

Email marketing

Social media for business

Mobile marketing

Tying on and off line campaigns together

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GETTING TO KNOW YOU - PR AND SOCIAL MEDIA

2010-07-09T10:15:00.000+01:00

The McCann Erickson UK Social Media Survey last year showed that over 65% of marketers sampled admitted that they did not have adequate knowledge about how to use social media correctly. Over 67% also thought that social media was mainly used by young people under 25 years old. But, according to Nielsen, the biggest age group using Twitter is from 35 to 49, most of whom access Twitter.com from work.

(See http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/twitters-tweet-smell-of-success/print/)

Social networks are still new to the communications scene and the social media environment is constantly evolving. We will often have to rethink our ideas to keep pace with new developments. The amazing thing is the speed with which a concept can become a reality. Unlike traditional media, there is no need to access printing presses or broadcasting studios. Given web skills and entrepreneurial spirit behind it, the social media network whose time has come can just take off.

Not only that, but the social networks can be the launching pad for brilliant ideas. Justin Halpern has made it big through a Twitter account featuring the witty expletive-peppered sayings of his 74 year-old father, who lives with him in San Diego (who said that social networks were just for the young). Take a look at http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays and it’s easy to see why this idea has blossomed into a bestselling book and is soon to be a CBS TV sitcom starring William Shatner.

When you’ve stopped laughing, we can go on...

PR has been around a long time and so social media networks can assess its value from past experience. So, when Facebook came in for media criticism following a recent series of privacy breaches, PR professionals were on hand to advise. Traditional broadcast media and newspapers play an essential role in this kind of damage limitation exercise. Social networks are big name brands with reputations to support, so the testimonial value of the media is important to them.

One of the great benefits of social networks is that they can provide the opportunity for the general public to become investigative reporters and critical reviewers. People can post what they feel about a brand, a public service or anything else and start a conversation. This is a very exciting challenge for PR professionals.

After all, personal referral is powerful stuff, otherwise why would brands pay fortunes to celebrities for their personal product endorsements? In some cases celebrities may have professional expertise, such as athletes with sports equipment, but in others their opinion is of no more or less value than that of the man or woman in the street (or in this case, on the Net).

The public can be a valuable source of information for businesses. They may pick up on something, either positive or negative, that management is unaware of or does not prioritise enough. They can help to drive changes by showing what they as the public require, which is a very democratic way of doing things.

Get people on your side and you’re onto a winner, and businesses that are open, honest and offer quality will get the positive response on the social networks that they deserve. PR professionals have the communication skills to help their clients present themselves in the way that social network users will appreciate. Importantly, they also have measurement tools such as Google Analytics to assess the effectiveness of what they are doing and make changes if needed to their strategies.

So, PR and the social media are getting to know each other and together we’re going through a communications revolution in which the end result is hard to predict. This is a nightmare for control freaks but, for the rest of us, it feels pretty good.

Further information about the Social Media Survey can be found on the CIPR (Chartered Institute of Public Relations) website www.cipr.co.uk/content/news-opinion/news/pr-industry-news/social-media-index-uk-businesses

Marketing Analytics & the Psychology of Behaviour

2010-06-02T17:01:00.000+01:00

Your website is your supermarket. People visit it, browse the pages, choose to purchase or to leave. Everybody wants a simple, well signposted experience where they can visit, find what they want, check out and leave. People do not want complex. People do not have time for complex.

The signs in supermarkets are very, very clear. Bread, Cheese, Cleaning Products. The signs are as simple as they can possibly be because people do not want to spend time deciphering the meaning behind the message. They want to find things and go.

Complex signs are for those who already understand the meaning - simple signs work. A barbers pole. A sheaf of wheat. These have been around for ages and they still work for barbers or bakers everywhere because people do not have to work out what the sign means. We are conditioned to respond to these signs like Pavlov’s dogs to the ringing of a bell.

Call To Action!!!

Calls to action on a website are signs telling people what to do. In the beginning of the digital age we saw the web as something extremely clever rather than just a tool, and we made up new rules. Now it’s time to get back to the rules that work. Web design and development has become simpler and easier. Anybody with a bit of basic information can make a website, so sites are becoming more normal, reverting to a simpler, cleaner, more efficient and more effective paradigm. Website owners are beginning to listen to their customers who need simple, clear and quick ways to get around a site. It is no longer rocket science; it has become simple psychology.

So – how to monitor the movement of visitors on your site? In a supermarket you can observe them as they move around and there is an enormous amount of research that goes into working out who does what and why, and how to divert the flow of people to the products in good supply and to limit the flow to areas where the goods are low-margin or stock is short. It is a constant ‘shaping’ of the behaviour of the shopper and the flow around the store based upon the goals of the shop and the current stock levels. Try walking into a supermarket in the UK over the next few weeks and not being faced with signs for cheap beer. It’s going to happen and people are going to buy it. It has been planned for as long as England have been qualified for the World Cup and there are going to be flags and snacks and other offers for those who don’t want beer. Try to avoid it – you will find it virtually impossible to do so.

How does this affect your website?

People are conditioned to follow signs and colours. Let’s get a bit psychological, shall we? You may have heard of Pavlov’s dogs. They salivated at the ringing of a bell because they associated the sound with being fed. You probably haven’t heard of Skinners rats *. They worked out mazes for rewards. We are conditioned, too. Traffic lights, sounds, signs. We react on a sub-conscious level. The Coke™ logo means a specific thing to each of us and it is not a big shiny office block in Atlanta. They have tried to condition us to respond to the logo by associating it with ‘The real thing’™ or a whole variety of life-affirming images. They even tried to let us teach the world to sing once. We are conditioned.

We are conditioned to notice red so we make buttons red if they’re important. We notice big things, loud things, bright things. So why are the calls to action on websites designed to look cool and small when the signs in supermarkets are designed to look big, bold and simple? We think that the shops have got it right and that the web designers have got it wrong, but who’s going to argue with a bloke with a goatee beard, a black roll-neck and a beret?

So how do you test this theory? You measure it. Get some analytics on your site, get somebody who knows what they’re looking at and get them to tell you what the numbers mean in good old-fashioned English. Then test things – make the buttons bigger, make them simpler. Simplify the language, get the site right for the normal busy human being who has little or no time on his or her hands and just wants to get in, get what they want and get out again. There is so much talk about SEO that website owners believe this is the Holy Grail of digital media. Sure – it is really important to get as many visitors to your site as possible, but if they get there and they have no idea what to do so leave, all that money spent on SEO has been completely wasted.

Digital media forms part of the overall sales and marketing approach. You want people to want your product or service and the only way they are going to talk to you is if they find you and then get to the right place. Then and only then will they be in a position of making the decision to buy. So keep it simple, make it easy, don’t be fooled by the smoke and mirrors, and measure, measure, measure.

We’re BrandBoost and we’re really good at digital marketing. Thanks for your time.

* The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis, 1938. ISBN 1-58390-007-1, ISBN 0-87411-487-X.

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Online Video Is Simple To Create, Place and View - And It Works

2010-05-27T16:55:00.002+01:00

There isn’t really a medium that works as well, is as simple to create or as effective at reaching the end user as online video. It has taken the digital marketing community by storm and has almost single-handedly revolutionised the social media marketplace. Its penetration is universal; it’s use as a creative media second to none. It propels people, products and places to overnight success (Susan Boyle, anyone?) and creates markets where there were none (BlendTec – Will it Blend? It’s a must-see http://www.blendtec.com/willitblend/) From a B2B perspective – it works. Don’t believe us, believe Richard Robinson, Head of Business Markets, Google UK when he says: “Two thirds of c-suite executives view work related videos online at least once a week, in fact a quarter of them prefer watching video content to reading text.”

From the video B2B marketing in a digital world

Here are some stats to underline that point:

Videos

1 billion – The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day.
12.2 billion – Videos viewed per month on YouTube in the US (November 2009).
924 million – Videos viewed per month on Hulu in the US (November 2009).
182 – The number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).
82% – Percentage of Internet users that view videos online (USA).
39.4% – YouTube online video market share (USA).
89.1% – Percentage of embedded videos on blogs that are YouTube videos.

Online video stats from Comscore, Sysomos and YouTube.

(www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/1/November_Sees_Number_of_U.S._Videos_Viewed_Online_Surpass_30_Billion_for_First_Time_on_Record)

(www.sysomos.com/reports/video/)

(youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/10/y000000000utube.html)

It is without doubt the simplest, most effective and most engaging way to get any message across in as short a time as possible. Look at it from the perspective of the viewer: it is the easiest way to gather a lot of information about your company in a couple of minutes and with internet users watching 182 videos a month (according to the stats above) people are used to the medium.

In short - It works.

Lights, Camera, Action! - Production

What do you need to get going in this cinematographic age? Well, you’ll need an internet. These are available on a computer near you right now. You will need a video camera – the better quality it is the better resolution it will be on the web, but there’s no need for HD yet, so you don’t need that. You will need some software so that you can cut and shape your film into web-ready format, or you can plug your camera straight into your computer and download the file straight to YouTube. It all depends upon your production values. You can add stuff in like music and titling and whizzy cuts whenever you feel confident with the software, but a look at the stuff on the web and you will find that it is less Hollywood and more Cricklewood when it comes to putting the final cut together.

The essential component of a successful web-mounted video is the content; the message, the meaning. You can have the best production values in the world, but if the message is poor, the ratings will be poor, and conversely, the worst video production in the world but the best message and you have web-based gold-dust. Of course, sometimes something just catches the Zeitgeist and becomes huge regardless of any sort of quality or content, but you can’t legislate for that. It just happens. Ask Malcolm Gladwell why.

Production is not difficult and nowhere near as difficult as it was a few short years ago.

Placement

Placing video on a website is a simple task, and uploading it to Google Video or YouTube is simplicity itself – allowing your video a much greater potential audience than if it was placed only on your website. And the whole point with video is to get as many people as possible to see it so the message gets through to as wide an audience as possible.

Message

This is the absolute essential. The raison d’etre of even reading this far in the blog. Why are you even considering reading on if you don’t have an idea of what you are going to say? Now, we can help you out here by creating a program, a strategy, a plan. We can put it all together for you, we can host and post, we can SEO and develop, but that isn’t the point of this entry. The point of this entry is to let you know that online video is hugely successful, very easy to do and very easy to place. If the message hits a chord, video is the best way to get it through. There are many saying about pictures and film. It can launch a thousand ships, it’s worth a thousand words, it can pull at your heart-strings or make you laugh out loud.

The message is fundamental – the medium is simple.

We’re BrandBoost and we’re really good at digital marketing. Thanks for your time.

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Content Strategy – the route to maximising online marketing success.

2010-05-06T17:19:00.001+01:00

Content strategy (CS) is an all encompassing term – usually defined by organisational size and website/ecommerce complexity. Our focus though is on B2B SMEs (usually with relatively small and simple internet structures). So, luckily, we won’t be delving into metadata taxonomy or digging deep into information architecture. Just the same, having a planned content strategy (or more accurately, content marketing strategy) will help you develop extra profitable ongoing business relationships and sales.

The aim should be twofold – to devise ways of attracting visitors to your business website and to keep them interested, so you get the chance to build relationships with them.

A well structured website that’s designed to create an enjoyable user experience, coupled with content that’s focused on visitor needs, and that’s regularly updated, will hold their attention and keep them returning to your web pages - creating the environment for engagement, conversation, interaction, trust and sales. Relevant, updated content will also improve your search engine page rank.

For clarification, content is everything that you bring to the market and put before customers, potential customers, competitors and stakeholders under your brand banner.

As with most things, we need to know where we are before we’re able to move forward, so we need to do some preparation first and devise a solid action plan…

Review and define/redefine business needs and set goals – don’t forget your KPIs.

Identify target audience groups.

Review current and past content activity and resources.

Evaluate market and competitor activity.

Produce an outline strategy covering activity, timescales and budgets.

Research and formulate the outline content marketing plan.

Identify a range of activities to test.

Test the activities.

Revise marketing plan based on test results, firm up budget.

Execute the strategy and monitor performance.

Here's what you need to consider from point 5 onwards…

The Website

Improving website usability by enhancing its design/layout, functionality and content is the place to initiate a web content strategy. Firstly, you need to answer these questions:

Is the information on my site offering real value to visitors?

Is the information presented in a way the visitors want?

Does the site navigation provide for a good user journey?

Are the page layouts logical and do they follow conventional guidelines?

Are the pages consistent throughout for a better user experience?

Is the design appropriate for my target audiences?

Websites can grow organically, becoming unwieldy, cluttered and unfocused if not effectively managed. Therefore it’s important to have regular website reviews so you can assess and address issues quickly so it stays fresh and stimulating.

Start by reviewing your site traffic using your analytics programme. Essentially, you need to find out where visitors arrive from, on what page they land, which pages they visit, how long they stay on each page and what page they leave from. This data will provide valuable visitor flow information, highlighting which website processes and pages are working better than others. You may need to weight results in line with sales percentages to be more accurate, e.g. if 60% of your sales are from product A and 40% are from product B you’ll need to factor this difference into your calculations.

You also need to research your website’s current content and usability. This can be done on a budget if you conduct it yourself. Ask colleagues, associates and customers for their opinions about your website through a structured questionnaire - incorporating the website bullet points listed above. You usually give more credence to your customers’ responses (for obvious reasons). Also ask your research panel to list a number of other websites that they like (and the reasons why) using the same criteria as for your website – obviously, the larger the research sample the more practical the results. If possible, test your website against some of your competitors. To simplify the process use an easy scoring system – you know the sort of thing – 1 = poor, 5 = excellent. Also provide a comment box for each question to allow for personal analysis. This approach should allow for a quick and easy assessment of the responses, providing good pointers for website improvement.

Having a website that’s visitor optimised will enhance their experience and you should see longer visits with more page views and a reduced bounce rate.

It’s also worthwhile having your website search engine optimised (if it’s not already) to augment the effect of your content marketing.

Adding Value Content

Now you need to work on a strategy for attracting and engaging visitors. It will take time to build success and it requires strong dedication and probably a reasonable budget – you can’t do it all.

Listed are the primary content marketing choices from which to build your strategy. We’ve focused on the most cost-effective ways to achieve good results. You can keep production spend to a minimum but you can’t skimp on the content. Remember it’s a continuous process; if you’re not committed don’t start.

Newsletters

For most businesses newsletters are a very familiar marketing tool making them the easiest form of content to turn your hand to. That said, the success of an online version depends (as ever) on the quality of the content. This means keeping the sales pitch to a minimum and focusing on well considered stories and articles that encompass relevant industry topics, these could cover legislation, technology, distribution etc., as well providing tips, hints and advice - information that readers find useful and helpful. Ensure you include an ‘in the next issue’ list as this demonstrates your continuing commitment and gives the reader a good reason to sign-up for more. The tone doesn’t have to be serious, but the content has to be informative and demonstrate good industry knowledge.

Too often though, newsletters fail because of a lack of planning and structure. It’s better to do bi-monthly editions than monthly ones if it’s difficult getting quality content, but don’t produce them too infrequently – it’s best to have more editions with less content than fewer large editions - keeping frequent contact is of prime importance. Editorial planning is crucial to ensure a good flow of content – outsource if necessary and plan at least three editions ahead to alleviate the possibility of last minute panics and missed deadlines. Imagery is less crucial in online newsletter than printed versions but strong headlines are very important.

From a design perspective it’s more effective to produce newsletters in HTML format for email sends. Add the newsletter to your website and keep adding them. If the content is not time sensitive then they can have long and useful shelf life for your business.

If you’ve got some good newsletter articles that you think will make worthwhile press releases you can gain extra value with online distribution to the appropriate media and other channels such as Ezine Articles - all good stuff for SEO.

Blogs

Blogs are a great low-cost way to add content to your website on a regular basis and to keep the SEO going strong.

Blogs are popular because of their accessibility, their ease of use and the fact that most are free to use and publish. Wordpress and Blogger are the two most popular free off-site platforms. A major benefit of both these programmes is that they do not place ads on your blog - not always the case with free blogging tools. Wordpress provides more layout and design options than Blogger, but Blogger is easier to use (especially for the novice). Both offer video functionality.

Blogs provide the opportunity to add individuality to the writing as posts tend to focus on one issue at a time where you can be more expansive. Keep content focused on issues affecting your industry and, as with newsletters, planning and research are critical, as is the ability to string a sentence or two together.

A monthly blog post is adequate for the majority of smaller companies - it’s better to do the research and get the facts right than produce an inferior product. It’s easy underestimate how much time it takes to produce a quality blog.

White papers and opinion papers

A large number of businesses are finding white papers a very effective method for developing leads and growing prospect lists. Producing a well written document that tackles a high profile subject (within your sector) and that provides workable solutions to known issues is something people will sign-up for. Beware though; people don’t want huge weighty tomes or lightweight double-sided A4 sheets. Between 12-24 pages is usually right for most topics and will be seen as offering real value if the content is ‘up to scratch’. The good news is there are no real production costs – simply designed, downloadable PDFs work a treat. White paper writing is a growing business for trade journalists in a world of diminishing publications, so commissioning costs should not be prohibitive. Depending on your business sector, producing three to six white papers a year could create a real impact for your business.

Alternatively, you could consider opinion papers or position papers as a way of creating content. Neither requires the long-term commitment vital for blogging or the amount of in-depth research necessary for white papers. But if the subjects chosen and views expressed hit the right note they might well be a major benefit to you.

Videos

You can’t escape the rise of online video, with most companies realising its potential for explaining complex procedures clearly and quickly. It’s an ideal medium for product presentations, merchandise demonstrations, training courses, financial synopses etc.

If you think your products, services or processes will make interesting viewing it’s worth evaluating online video. The costs can be reasonable and they don’t need movie production qualities. But the video does have to be well scripted, effectively storyboarded, well rehearsed and well lit (don’t stand in front of a window in daylight). A standard handheld digital movie camera, (the kind most people use on holiday) will do the job perfectly well. You will probably need to use a tripod (or similar) to stop camera shake. Also check the sound quality first; this is often an issue with cheaper cameras.

You can use the free Windows Movie Maker for adding titles and captions (if it’s not already on your PC, do a Google search for the version for your operating system). For the more adventurous a couple of digital editing suites from Magix come feature rich at a very-low cost. There is a load more video editing software listed here... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_editing_software - for some you pay and for some you don’t.

MP4 is the preferred file format so make such your editing software can output to it.

Your website hosting company can upload your videos to your website or you can simply upload to Youtube and link back to your site. The major benefit of Youtube is that it can provide impressive SEO results for the right type of videos. Remember though, you have little control over who links to it and how they use it once it’s up on Youtube. You main retain copyright ownership but little else.

IMPORTANT: Don’t infringe copyright - use all your own content. This applies to podcasts too.

Podcasts

Podcasts are more specialised but can be a great way to inform and educate through audio (a podcast can be anything broadcastable, but it usually refers to audio). Some business sectors may seem more suited to podcasting such as science, education, medicine and technology, but as long as someone’s got something relevant to say they can podcast.

All you need is a good quality headphone/microphone set-up, some free sound recording and editing software like Audacity (together with the Lame MP3 encoder) and a PC that didn’t come off the ark - one with a decent sound card and internet connection.

Without visual stimulation podcasts need strong content (properly scripted) that’s presented with a well-modulated voice. Most free editing software will take out pauses and delays. Make sure you have a few test runs with both the recording processes and editing features and, if it’s a tightly scripted podcast, do a few rehearsals first too.

You need to output the final recording as a MP3 file (the most popular format) before uploading it to your website.

If you plan to do a series of podcasts setting up an RSS feed for listeners to sign-up for would be a good idea, but as this needs a degree of XML coding it’s probably best to use one of the free online services like Podcastgen or Poderator for this purpose. Having the podcast set up for RSS syndication again helps with the SEO.

Webinars

Webinars are the low-cost, convenient way to hold conferences, meetings, seminars and product demonstrations – there are no travel expenses, hotel bills or any of the other costs and problems associated with getting any number of people to the same place at the same time. In these days of tight budgetary control, webinars offer a great way to get your messages across while still closely interacting with customers, vendors and prospects.

Webinars can provide nearly all the functionality of a live conference – you just have to forgo the gala dinner and the close-up magician, but hey ho! You still have your panel of speakers, your chairperson or moderator, a choice of presentation methods (slides, video, interactive white board etc.) handouts, Q & As (audio or typed), polls/surveys and even virtual breakout rooms.

All attendees need is an internet linked computer (home or office) and a headphone set (preferably with a microphone attachment for those sessions with audio Q & A). You can hold a meeting for just a few to a few thousand.

Even the presenters can be at their office (or home) computers to do their presentations, they just need a webcam/microphone; they then share their desktop with the audience for displaying their visual material.

Most webinar service providers offer full a/v recording functions for these events - which might be useful for updating non-attendees, as well as for marketing purposes.

There are a number of providers all offering a range of options and features at various prices. The most popular include: Webex, gotoameeting, Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, and the up and coming DimDim.
As with all events, it’s meticulous attention to detail that makes them successful.

Forums

If you’re products have a large, active user group, a forum/message board could be a great way to leverage it. But beware, the two key words here are large and active - there are few things sadder online than a small and unloved forum.

Adding a forum module to your website should not be difficult or costly, check out the free Simple Machines software, but organising and managing it will require a fair bit of devotion in the early development stages especially.

A well-run forum can provide a vibrant user community for your business. It will require a management team to make it a success – but this team doesn’t have to be staff. Enthusiastic product users can often provide the administrative and moderating service, with your company just supplying the in-depth product knowledge personnel and technical experts.

A forum can also be used as a great research tool for things such as product development testing, product reviews etc.

Getting a forum to the stage of perpetual motion will take some real effort from a fair few people, so you have to really consider the business advantages against the time element involved before you commit to producing one.

Social Media

Social Media has moved rapidly from a non-corporate environment to the business world, helped greatly by the development of the real time search deals of Google and Bing with Facebook and Twitter. Now every company that needs good SEO has a fan page and is tweeting. Add to this the leading business networking site, Linkedin, and you’ve a three-pronged social media approach taken by a large number of organisations. Although there are other groups offering similar or alternative services to this triumvirate, none has the combined presence, or SEO value, of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Beware, there’s little evidence that social media offers any sale benefits to B2B companies, but what notable successes there have been has required an ingenious approach to promotion and engagement. Do a search for “Will it Blend” and see how Tom Dickson created a huge following for his powerful food blenders using Youtube. It’s a great idea with ‘legs’ that has attracted over 80 million viewers to these unique Blendtec product demonstration videos. Not strictly B2B, but you get the idea.

LinkedIn provides the opportunity for networking on grand scale without leaving your office. You can post articles, make comments on other articles or connect to colleagues, friends and complete strangers across a whole range of business and interest groups.

Facebook requires a bit more strategic thinking to gain mileage – it needs to be fed fresh, regular content to start building a fan base and to develop business benefits - videos are good. You can relax a bit on Facebook - it’s a pretty informal place - and post photos of the Christmas party if you like.

Microblogging (140 characters) with Twitter won’t be everyone’s cup of tea but it does offer the opportunity to start, or participate in, industry specific conversations or to carry out some micro-research.
Social media probably has many business benefits so long as you think creatively, take your time to review what going on and decide beforehand what you want to achieve from it.

Conclusion

This was supposed to be a quick overview of content strategy but the blossoming complexity of online communications makes it impossible to shortcut too much. But the growing significance of starting, joining and contributing to online communities (to build trusting relationships into the sales process) makes it imperative that these options are evaluated and strategies agreed and undertaken with some degree of urgency. If not, it could be a while before you can catch up with your competitors who are already exploiting these marketing channels.

Danny

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This time It's really personal.

2010-01-14T11:31:00.000Z

An overview of relationship marketing.

Relationship marketing has been popular for over thirty years – since we started using demographic and socio-economic data for direct marketing (DM).

Often highly creative, DM can be pretty costly what with the research, the mailing production and postage. There’s also a fair bit of wastage because the research methods are not that precise.

Web 2.0 internet has changed that. We can now carry out in-depth online lifestyle research and behavioural studies at the drop of a hat and at a fraction of the cost of alternative research methods. Providing loads more valuable information about our customers/and likely customers.

The measurability of internet marketing means it’s easy to find out about buyer habits, interests and preferences on a continual basis. This provides the opportunity to segment audiences with a far greater degree of accuracy than previously possible - creating the opening for more valuable dialogue with potential purchasers.

It is now financial viable and probably extremely advantageous for most businesses to develop a relationship marketing strategy for customer development – with all the benefits it offers.

In case you need reminding, these benefits include:

Improved customer retention, leading to more sales

Better targeted information, offers and promotions providing better take-up

It’s more difficult for competitors to take business from you

It’s easier to sell, cross-sell or even up-sell to loyal customers

Customer feedback can help improve your products/services

Satisfied customers may provide additional business though recommendations

So where do you begin relationship marketing?

Be prepared to devote the time and energy needed to formulate integrated strategies and to maintain, update and adapt them. Although there is no big expense, there is no quick fix either; developing worthwhile ongoing relationships requires a solid commitment over time.

1. Don’t stop your transactional marketing – they work in tandem, one doesn’t replace the other, although you might reduce the offline budget.

2. If you haven’t got an analytics programme running on your website (heaven forbid), get one! Google Analytics is free and does an excellent job. Analytics is essential for testing ideas and tactics and for measuring effectiveness of strategies, so it’s important. Get this done as soon as possible so you begin assessing and collating current visitor activity on your website. You’ll need this data to help plan your activity.

3. Consider in broad terms what you want to achieve from your relationship marketing and give it a reasonable working timeframe. You need to research and evaluate the online options and weigh up their pros and cons for your business. Think about how much of your time they require to action and how much you want to spend.

Your objective might be straightforward, such as doubling repeat visits to your website inside a year or complex, like achieving a mix of results that could include:

how many blog readers you can get

your opt-in newsletter take-up

the number of times your video gets viewed

how many Facebook fans you can attract

the number of responses to your E-shot promotion.

In the end it’s all about sales but initially it’s about making friends with your customers, and giving them reasons to stay loyal to you.

4. Decide on your preferred options for developing online marketing relationships. There are plenty of facts and stats online to help you and we will be covering the most popular methods (listed below) in detail in future blogs.

Blogging

Social media - Facebook, Twitter etc.

E-newsletters

E-shots

Webinars

Podcasts

Videos

You can use all these approaches to inform, educate, train, promote and entertain while at the same time developing a ‘corporate’ personality in-tune with the viewer/reader.

A much more conversational approach is usually required – for example using the ‘active voice’ when writing a blog rather than the formal ‘passive voice’ often used in business writing. Don’t make the messages sales-orientated (leave that to transactional marketing), but ensure they are stimulating, relevant and definitely customer centric – not about you, but about answering customer needs.

Whatever combination of relationship management channels you choose, your success will largely be dependent upon continually providing high quality content – so you need good ideas and lots of them.

5. After the background research you will need to sit down and set your goals and objectives. At this stage they should be flexible and adaptable so you can test and adjust your ideas. You’ll need a more fixed idea of a budget at this point but you may have to readjust it when you start planning your final strategy. You will now have to think about how you will promote your blogs, Facebook pages, videos etc. and factor in a budget for this.

6. With your goals and objectives in place you can now plan your strategies and prepare detailed budgets. The best thing about online marketing is that you can easily test strategies and adapt, tweak and adjust them as you find out more about your customers. So allow funds for testing – it’s crucial for fine-tuning your online marketing.

A few extra important points.

1. To build success you need accurate research data, so here are some thoughts about achieving this via surveys:

You can start with your customer database (past and present) and email the survey.

You can also put the survey on your website – not as a pop-up though as most people use pop-up blockers.

You can promote it with a link from your home page (with some inspired pearly words to encourage people to complete it).

Online survey software is not pricey and a programme like Survey Monkey does a great job for very little outlay.

To allow for accurate segmentation you’ll need to create survey questions specific to different audiences – you wouldn’t necessarily ask the same set of questions to existing customers as you would to a casual website visitor.

2. If you haven’t a big enough research sample there are ways to help you gain more. Here are some hints:

Purchase a database

If you buy a consumer list, make sure it’s an opt-in list from a reputable company. In the UK the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has strict guidelines for consumer emailing, with hefty fines for not following them.

The business sector is more flexible - as long as you provide an easily identifiable unsubscribe option and your full trading details you should be fine. As a rule of thumb, always ask for a sample of the data before you buy so you can verify the data accuracy. Reputable companies should be happy to comply.

Sending emails

Things can go wrong so don’t send emails from your own servers – if there’s a problem with the data you can be blacklisted as a spammer and all your online services can be blocked – emails included. Use an email service provider (ESP) like Pure360 for your email sends – they’re reasonably priced, you get pretty good analytics and the interface is easy to use.

Data protection

In the UK you need to be aware of the Data Protection Act 1998 if you hold and maintain any customer/prospect databases – in fact any databases containing personal information.

For more details check out the ICO website at http://www.ico.gov.uk/what_we_cover/data_protection.aspx

The ICO is currently in the consultancy stages for a number of changes to this Act which could entail huge fines for companies found to be in breach of the Act.

Use transactional marketing

Online or offline advertising or direct marketing can be used to get people to visit your online survey – you may need an incentive to build traffic, it depends on your creative and your market. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a prize - it could be business related such as a free white paper download or industry stats/trends – in other words something related to your market that will attract people to visit your survey page. Commissioning a white paper is not as expensive as some people think. Getting the content right with an enticing headline are the critical factors.

Use trade media (PR)

Most trade publications should provide the opportunity to feature an industry survey (you may need to add additional questions if you go this route to broaden the survey appeal). You may even get the publication to promote the survey under a joint ownership banner and/or supply supporting editorial.

3. If you don’t have the time, personnel or production skills in-house, you can commission specialists to provide the content for relationship marketing methods such as:

Blogs

Social media

Newsletters

E-shots

Webinars

Podcasts

Videos

What is important is that you have a clear content strategy, do your research, set out what you want to achieve, measure results and adapt techniques and approaches as necessary.

Lastly, but critically

Your blog, social media activity, video etc will need promoting to achieve a critical mass of readers, fans and viewers.

Apart from emailing to your database the most cost-effective way is through PR and e-PR in the relevant media, possibly supported by advertising.

This is only meant to provide an overview of relationship marketing, which is a large subject, so we’ve skimmed through it. This may have left a few gaps and created some questions, if so please contact us and we’ll see if we can fill them in. Or if you’ve think we’ve missed something get in contact – no one’s infallible, and we’re no exception.

We plan to cover content strategy in the next blog. So we hope to see you then. That is if we don’t hear from you in the meantime.

Take care.

Danny Blair
Brandboost

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