Found things

Cultural Conversations, social media and communication

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:01:47 -0400

I was recently invited to share my insights on social media at an unusual new event in Leeds.

I say unusual, but in reality Cultural Conversations was just a different format to what I am used to – a format that really reflected the nature of social networks.

This wasn’t an event where I spoke to a captive audience, rather I helped facilitate conversation ‘hubs’ and hopefully shared some useful insights. It was a really refreshing process that I felt not only reflected the structure of social networks, but also provided a really effective way of communicating ideas.

Usually events of this kind are dominated by one or more speakers who either fascinate or bore you silly. The structure of Cultural Conversations, and the great turn out (around 70 people) meant that attendees could gravitate towards conversation groups where issues or topics were discussed for around 30 minutes.

These then fed into a final session with all delegates where topics of interest were developed further. This organic approach, which closely follows the way conversations spread on Twitter (check out this project, called revisit, for a brilliant visual representation of Twitter conversations), was intuitive and engaging.

So why don’t more events adopt this intimate format? It’s often said that the most interesting elements of conferences take place away from the main halls, when delegates get together and talk. In my opinion there’s a lot to be said for flipping the standard event format on its head and enhancing what people feel is most useful. What if break-out sessions were the main focus and not an afterthought?

I’m not an event organiser. I don’t have the skills or energy to put on a major event. But if I were organising any sort of business event I’d think about going back-to-basics and consider how people communicate, both online and offline, and shape the event around that.

Social networks have afforded us considerable insight into human communication (this is a great presentation by a Google usability expert on the topic), so why are we not always harnessing those insights offline?

Going native: Are hyperlocal blogs the future of regional news?

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 05:59:00 -0400

As a former journalist little gets me more upset than the plight of regional journalism in the UK. Barely a day seems to go by without news of job cuts, strikes and falling circulation numbers.

While I these trends to make me angry I can’t help feeling that media groups missed a trick. They had the opportunity and resources to shape the new media age as they saw fit and change the way we consumed news.

Unfortunately that window of opportunity has now closed and we are daily faced with the spectacle of media companies scrambling to develop online income streams. And that scramble has led to some quite desperate stories of defeat, as was evidenced by Johnston Press’ experiment earlier this year.

But, all may not be as bleak as it seems. Necessity is indeed the mother of all invention, and people do want, or need, to know about what is happening within their local communities. With that in mind ‘hyperlocal’ has been a buzz word amongst journalism circles for the last ten years or so. But what does it mean and how is it changing the game?

Hyperlocal news sources tend to be synonymous with local blogs that only carry news relevant to a very small geographical area. As this article in Time magazine indicates, they gained greater traction in the US as the mainstream media severely contracted during the recession.

In the UK, there are numerous examples of local news sites or blogs emerging as popular resources in their local communities. In Leicester Citizenseye.org now even supplies occasional content to the city’s Leicester Mercury newspaper and in my neck of the woods the Leeds-based The Culture Vulture magazine blog continues to thrive.

While large media organisations continue to worry about content and pay walls, the whole debate has moved on. Whether we like it or not journalism is changing, it’s becoming less of a profession and more of a role that people assume.

Don’t get me wrong, the emergence of citizen journalism does concern me in many ways. But if I were in control of Johnston Press or Trinity Mirror i’d be taking these bloggers under my wing and nurturing them. In return you’d receive access to pockets of engaged local readers – the one thing that national newspapers have lost over the years.

And with that connection re-established they will be able to serve up targeted advertising that suits both advertisers and readers.

As a PR practitioner we rely on a healthy media industry to disseminate information and news about our clients. While the numbers of opportunities to self-publish have never been greater, the third party endorsement and greater cross section of publicity generated by the mainstream media still means that it is vitally important to our industry.

In that sense we have a vested interest in the future of regional media. And if the hyperlocal model works then great, but if it doesn’t i’m not sure what comes next. Specialised sites - such as this brilliant regional business site thebusinessdesk.com and The Culture Vulture as mentioned above - continue to do well, but can general news sites do so well in this environment?

At the moment it is hard to tell, but one thing is certainly sure: if media groups stop thinking about their own future and start thinking about the industry’s future, I believe they will find salvation.

Image credit: Stylianosm

Don’t put all your online eggs in one basket

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:59:00 -0400

A story popped up this week that made me think hard about why it is important not to put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to online marketing.

An American-based Facebook fan page owner saw his page and its 47,000 fans disappear overnight. The page, called The Official Real Estate Referral Group, was started over two years ago and was unilaterally removed due to copyright issue surrounding its URL.

While this is an extreme example of how powerless individuals can be when dealing with faceless (excuse the pun) social networks, it is symptomatic of the problems Facebook page owners and developers for the platform come across all the time. Features disappear, functionality is lost and those who make a living out of Facebook are left looking stupid and powerless.

I myself struggled with a bug last week which originated over a month ago and has yet to be fixed. In this instance i’ve found a work around, but the fact that no one at the social network has even deemed it important enough to respond to is part of a worrying trend. A trend that was typified by the temporary disappearance of custom landing tabs for Facebook pages that didn’t spend big on advertising or have hundreds of thousands of fans.

Social marketers are increasingly working in a proprietary environment in which we relinquish some control. As users increasingly experience the internet through social networks, we are increasingly dependent on the platforms we use being stable and reliable. Unfortunately while Twitter continues to break (fail whale anyone?) and Facebook moves the goal posts, that is simply not the case.

So do social networks have a vindictive streak, do they enjoy making those who use them for business struggle? The obvious answer is no, but I would argue that while they benevolently believe they know what is best for users, they can (perhaps unwittingly) have a strongly negative impact.

I think the lesson in all of this is that you shouldn’t rely on one platform or channel too much. However successful your Facebook page or Twitter profile is, be prepared to accept indiscriminate changes to the platform and spasmodic outages. And more importantly, don’t expect an immediate answer to your complaints or messages, in fact, expect to be largely on your own.

But despite my gloomy outlook increased integration of different social networking platforms, and their spread into the wider online ecosystem (e.g. Facebook’s open graph protocol) has improved matters by allowing you to communicate through more than one channel simultaneously.

While things are becoming more linked up, i’d say the old adage involving eggs and baskets still holds true online.

Photo credit: Jronaldlee

Elephant and Monkey

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:19:46 -0400

I was in Falmouth, Cornwall last week and had the pleasure of visiting my family’s shop, Elephant and Monkey, for the first time.

It is jam packed with fantastic mid-century furniture, paintings and textiles. And also has some of the best contemporary craft Britain has to offer.

If you’re ever in the area it is definitely worth a look. There are also some fab items available online.

Elephant & Monkey
35 Killigrew Street
Falmouth
Cornwall
TR11 3PW

www.elephantandmonkey.co.uk

Elly on the Camel Trail between Wadebridge and Padstow. Me...

Mon, 05 Jul 2010 07:09:52 -0400

Elly on the Camel Trail between Wadebridge and Padstow. Me taking wobbly photos on my bike (July ‘10)

Liking as the new linking: What does it mean for online marketing?

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:49:00 -0400

One of search engine giant Google’s priorities is to improve user satisfaction by quickly delivering the desired result for every search term entered - for every user, every time.

As part of that it is constantly looking at ways to index the entire internet. At the moment though there is one barrier to Google achieving that goal: Facebook.

Facebook presents a real challenge to Google as the majority of activity by Facebook’s 500 million users stays on the social network’s servers and cannot be indexed. This has the search giant seriously worried, as status updates alone are estimated to amount to more than ten times the number of words written on blogs worldwide (thanks to AllFacebook for this and other excellent reporting on this topic).

The ‘Like’ is released

Google’s concern over this issue runs in parallel to Facebook’s recent launch of the Open Graph Protocol, which extends the ‘Like’ function outside of the network. It allows webmasters to install Like buttons on their sites and lets users share their ‘Like’ (or vote of approval) for content outside of Facebook on the popular network.

Despite Google’s concern about Facebook’s ‘hidden’ data this all seems reasonably inconspicuous. That would be unless external content wasn’t showing up in Facebook search…which it is.

Thanks again to AllFacebook, who reported this was happening earlier in the week for certain TripAdvisor listings:

These results pop-up as ‘Pages’ in Facebook search but are not pages on the network. Instead clicking on the link in results takes you through to the TripAdvisor listing.

This is fascinating stuff and makes Facebook’s future plans a really compelling mystery. In one move it has effectively produced a brilliant way of indexing content. And if they can keep spam under control this could well become the people’s search engine.

Facebook is clunky and so is its search function

While the potential for this is enormous there is a real danger that Facebook is trying to run before it can walk in the search game.

Its current internal search function is truly appalling, with pages regularly disappearing out of search altogether.

More fundamentally, Facebook has to figure out how to describe the search results generated through the Open Graph if it is ever going to meet Google’s ability to satisfy users. What are these results? Are they a product of the people’s search engine I described above? Or simply a popularity contest that is therefore both unreliable and biased?

Links are just one measurement that Google uses to rank content in search results, Facebook needs to identify other ranking factors that will balance out the ‘Like’ and make this form of search credible.

Battle lines are drawn

These questions do need to be answered. But in the meantime we can be in no doubt that Facebook is squaring up to Google and wants ‘Like’ to become the new link.

Another big question is how Facebook will move out into the wider internet over time. It is largely still a closed system. To compete in the search world data from the Open Graph will have to be available and searchable outside of the network.

Alternatively, Facebook may become the homepage of choice (some would argue this is already happening) and form a portal or conduit to the rest of the internet, with the ‘Like’ search engine an integral element of that.

So what should you do?

There is really only one thing to do right now, and it plays perfectly into Facebook’s hands. Any webmaster with a busy site would be stupid not to implement the company’s Open Graph Protocol and to see how things play out.

If you haven’t already, then also definitely create a Facebook page for your organisation or company, as it is likely they will also form part of the ‘like’ search engine in the future.

Other than that, just pull up a chair and watch as two of the internet’s titans go head-to-head in a battle that will shape the way we use the internet.

Photo credit: richkidsunite

South Africa, April 2010. Had a brilliant time on our honeymoon...

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:58:35 -0400

South Africa, April 2010.

Had a brilliant time on our honeymoon and here are a few of the pics.

Want to work at Tinderbox?

Fri, 14 May 2010 06:03:00 -0400

We’re looking for a student intern to work at Tinderbox this summer. Email me - joel@tinderboxmedia.co.uk of you are interested.

Digital PR Executive

Summer 2010 placement

Deadline for Applications 21 May 2010

Do you know your Twitter from your Tumblr?

Your Wordpress.org from your Wordpress.com?

Tinderbox Media (www.tinderboxmedia.co.uk) is an online and offline PR agency based in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.

Small but perfectly formed, we are a young and dynamic agency. We pride ourselves on the production of innovative campaigns and measurable results for local, national and international brands. Our clients are drawn from fields including professional services, e-commerce and online publishing.

We are expanding fast and keen to give a student the opportunity to tackle exciting client work and also improve their knowledge and skills within the industry. The Tinderbox team can offer practical insights into how offline and online PR works and help the successful candidate to gain practical experience of the constantly evolving world of social media marketing. Anyone can schlump in the corner opening post; we’re after an ambitious person who is prepared to learn quickly and add real value to our ongoing client programmes and projects.

We are looking for someone with a strong interest and knowledge of social media and blogging, as well as traditional PR methods. Perhaps you blog, maintain a successful Facebook page, or Digg away. Knowledge of search engine optimisation basics and video editing skills would be a bonus, but are not essential.

Excellent writing skills are a must. The ability to work independently, with creativity and insight, is also an important attribute.

If this sounds like you, then we’d love to hear from you.

All travel and subsistence expenses paid.

Deadline for applications is May 21 2010.

Contact Joel Turner with your CV and a covering email or letter explaining why you’d like to work with us. Post it to Tinderbox Media, Evans Business Centre, Hartwith Way, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, HG3 2XA or email joel@tinderboxmedia.co.uk.

So much has happened...

Tue, 11 May 2010 12:16:32 -0400

…since I last posted. I’m married, have been on honeymoon (which sort of explains the gap in postings) and the UK election campaign has been and gone.

We’re now in the grips of hung parliament fever. As a Lib Dem voter i’m pleased at the possibility of the party gaining real power, but also slightly worried. It strikes me as one of those things you wish for but never fully expect to happen - much like winning the lottery. As a result you never think about what would really happen if it came true…

Clay Skirky - It’s not information overload. It’s...

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:54:00 -0400

Clay Skirky - It’s not information overload. It’s filter failure.

Think Visibility 3 - What I learnt

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:51:57 -0400

I was lucky enough to hear some inspiring speakers and meet some fantastic people at the third Think Visibility conference this weekend.

The sold-out conference focuses ‘on the items that usually get left out of the web process.’ It was a great opportunity to tap into the latest thinking on topics as diverse as link building strategies for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and how to improve conversion rates (those who actually buy when visiting) on ecommerce sites.

Here are the top ten things I learnt at Think Visibility:

1. Tom Critchlow, head of search marketing at Distilled, talked about Google Local. He highlighted the importance of citations, alongside links, in improving local search results. One of his top tips suggested adding an address to company profiles that is identical to the format and structure of the address in the local search listing. Google recognises this as a citation and as a consequence it will improve the websites standing in local search results. Simply put; the more citations that Google can recognise as relevant to your company, the more prominently you will appear in Google Local listings.

2. Sarah Carling, from Bloom Media, discussed project management tools for SEO. She suggested using a number of interesting tools, including online scheduling and collaborative working tool tom’splanner.

3. Andrew Burnett, of Andrew Burnett Ltd, spoke about building a website’s presence on social news websites. He has a background in web development and spoke about how he has drawn inspiration for sticking page layouts (those which keep readers on the page) from the telegraph.co.uk

4. In the same presentation Andrew also gave a tip on how to track stories submitted to Digg as they move around the social ether. He suggested using trak.ly – a nifty bit of software which does records social sharing activity after a story has been submitted to Digg.

5. Iliya Vjestica, online marketing manager at Magnitude, spoke about engaging with customers through social media. He highlighted a couple of statistics that show just how fast this strand of online marketing is changing. The one that really captured our imagination was that 1.5 million businesses around the globe search on YouTube every day.

6. Paddy Moogan , online marketing campaign manager at Pin Digital gave an overview of various link-building techniques – with a particular emphasis on those links that are hardest to get. Slides from his presentation are available here. His talk was packed full of interesting gems, but our brains began whirring when Paddy mentioned how your company’s USPs could well be link-bait. An example of this could be a company with strong environmental credentials that ‘green’ bloggers or websites hold-up as an example of best practise and link to. Seems obvious really, but the obvious is often overlooked.

7. Paul Carpenter, of Bronco, spoke about how to use Google News to improve a website’s online visibility. This is a subject dear to our hearts and some of his suggestions on how to get your blog, or the news section of your website, into Google news were particularly noteworthy.

8. John O’Donovan, head of architecture for BBC News and Sport spoke about the site, its relationship with search engines and its audience reach. John’s presentation was fascinating (mainly because he can do all the stuff most webmasters don’t have the time or money to attempt) but the most interesting insights were those he had on the semantic web. He explained how placing pages within webs of linked data, in particular by linking out to various wikis, is improving user experience and perhaps more importantly (for everyone in the room except John!) improving search visbility.

9. Alun Rowe, owner of web development agency Pentangle talked about how online branding is about more than just a website. He highlighted the power and influence of forums and one aspect of them that is easily forgotten – forum users are real people, if you get a chance to meet them in real-life, use it.

10. Various – Page Rank, does it matter? Is it just a guide to a website or blogs’ authority, or is it the lifeblood of the internet? Various people said different things on this topic throughout the day. It seems unlikely that it has been entirely dropped as way of measuring online authority by Google, but the overall message is that there are a lot of other factors that are equally, if not more important.

Blogs just went real-time

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:39:31 -0500

Pubsubhubbub.

No this blog hasn’t been hacked, and nor am I typing jibberish. Pubsubhubbub, or PuSH as it also helpfully known, is a new protocol which is moving blogs into real-time.

PuSH allows services that subscribe to a blog, mainly readers like Google Reader, to get new posts almost instantaneously. So when you hit the publish button your post is pushed into the readers of all those who subscribe to it. Previously readers sent periodic requests to blogs asking whether there were any updates and retrieving new posts, inevitably leading to a lag between a blog being finished and subscribers reading it.

Wordpress (the leading blogging platform) has installed this protocol on all the blogs it currently hosts (some 10.5 million) so that new posts from these blogs are pushed to blog readers. For those who use Wordpress software to host their blog (many million more) their is now a plug-in they can install to do so as well.

So now we’ve deciphered the jibberish, what does this actually mean?

Well, it means several things; some good, some not so good.

The good

Blogs go real-time - this is great is your latest post is reacting to something current. You want your blog to be part of the debate before it is a long forgotten trending topic on Twitter, or old hat with your colleagues, partners and clients.

Share and share alike - again the advantage of real-time feeds is that our readers can then go on to share a post they like within minutes on social bookmarking or networking sites, meaning your blog is central to the evolving discussion.

The not so good

Publish and be damned - there is no going back now, if you have a Wordpress blog or install the PuSH plug-in your post is out there as soon as you hit publish. If you’ve made mistakes, want to change it around or retract part of it there is no longer a lag which allows you to do so before others read it.

Reputation, reputation, reputation - if everyone is firing off blogs that are read instantaneously it doesn’t give you much time to respond if an issue which is damaging to your reputation, or that of your business, emerges. You could quite quickly become the centre of a blog-storm, as posts fly into people’s blog readers and are then shared as mentioned above.

Although i’ve ended on a negative note this is actually a major breakthrough. It does however bring into question how often people are likely to spend on blogs in the future. One of the major reasons most people visit their favourite blogs directly is that they know that is where they’ll find the freshest content. If they can read and share the latest posts in their blog reader, will they visit blogs directly unless they have a burning urge to comment?

Image credit: dark_ghetto28

Microsoft shares B2B social secrets…and moves beyond measurement

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:36:36 -0500

There is a lot of current debate about whether social media has a part to play in business-to-business marketing.

Many observers say it doesn’t, and that social media marketing is only a useful marketing discipline for communicating with consumers. So are the naysayers right? Are Twitter, Facebook et al useful platforms for communicating with businesses?

One of the major problems in forming a cogent argument for social media in the B2B marketing mix has been the dearth of decent case studies. There are some good resources (socialmediab2b.com is a blog that offers some great thinking and insights) but until recently there have been few examples to call on that demonstrate its value. Certainly not in the same way that Dell and Zappos have shown the power of social media in talking to consumers and generating sales.

Well maybe that’s all about to change. In recent months several B2B case studies have emerged and now the world’s biggest technology company, Microsoft, has released a short whitepaper chronicling the success that Microsoft Advertising division has had in reaching a business audience.

The first thing to recognise in highlighting this case study, and using it to champion the role of social media when marketing to businesses, is that the Microsoft Advertising team have been largely preaching to the converted. They haven’t faced a challenge in finding users online because the division’s customer-base is largely made up of digital marketers who spend most of their lives online and embrace every new social network and development.

That said you’d be hard pushed to find many people who don’t spend at least part of their time online these days, and most people experience the internet through the prism of a social network. Whether it’s an office worker logging in to Facebook at lunchtime, or a bored exec checking their Twitter feed during a meeting – increasingly people experience the internet through social networks. And the link ecosystems that social networks create guide many users through the billions of web pages out there.

Back to Microsoft Advertising though, and quite openly and honestly the division recognises that it first took interest in social media (and founded a community team) to tackle negative publicity surrounding the launch of adCenter in 2005:

At its beta launch, adCenter was met by the search engine marketing community with some consternation. It seemed that excitement at a potential rival for Google Adwords, coupled with an expectation that Microsoft would deliver a

comparable user experience right out of the gate, led some detractors to start writing on blogs and forums that Microsoft didn’t know what it was doing, that it was subversively forcing advertisers to use Internet Explorer as adCenter was not compatible with rival browsers, and that a software company could not possibly compete or react quickly enough in such a fast-changing environment, given its background in 2- to 3-year cycles of product releases.

The Microsoft Advertising community team was born out of necessity in some ways. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. They knew very early on that they weren’t just shamelessly plugging their products and that they had to enter a dialogue with users to help them understand the value of adCenter, help answer their queries and challenge any misconceptions.

So what came next? Well, let’s remember this was back in 2006. Twitter didn’t exist, Facebook was just finding its feet and likewise LinkedIn wasn’t the huge phenomenon it is now. So the team created its own platform by launching a blog:

We started our blog back in 2006 as an official voice, our calling card, if you like. If you wanted information or news from the most credible source, the adCenter blog would be where you’d find it first. It served as a tool for telling our story in a world where marketing-speak sometimes just doesn’t wash, especially if the tide of opinion is against you. It provided valuable data in the form of comments and links from other posts, which we could collate and feed back to product and marketing teams to show what the real pulse was out there in the marketplace.

A Twitter profile and Facebook page followed when the time was right as the team recognised another important social media lesson – not everyone will come to you, you have to go to them. Finding the right context for conversations with your customers is just as important as what you say.

Sitting side by side with context is ‘content.’ The mantra ‘content is king’ still holds true but there is no point in generating content if no one consumes it. And likewise there is even less point having a load of different social media profiles that are not updated. Content and context are both equally important – an observation the team picked up on:

It takes time to build a community on each and every platform, and the web is littered with stale Facebook pages and dormant Twitter accounts because a marketing department saw social media as a quick win, a viral excuse for hard graft in engaging customers in an authentic and timely fashion. If you’re taking your message off-site, you have to budget for some extra time, education and execution to keep that conversation alive and ongoing.

Another important point to draw from this excerpt is that social media is not a ‘quick win.’ There is a tendency to equate the real-time nature of social media with immediate results.

The community team saw this was not the case. But despite the indulgence of a multinational corporation (the whitepaper says that before the explosion of social media ‘our team was seen as a support function, very much a “nice to have”.’) and all the time and resources you could ask for, the team did think hard about measurement.

And in thinking about how to measure social media engagement they derived two very interesting conclusions; that time spent answering customer queries online is cheaper the alternative, and that online activity is ‘earned’ and therefore a lot cheaper than conventional advertising:

· We track and monitor all clicks on links in our Twitter feed, learning what is most popular for future reference, and multiply their number by our call centre costs. Add incremental revenue to that number and you have significant cost savings.

· Tallying up how often our content is shared and putting a realistic monetary value to how much that exposure would cost in the press is one way of demonstrating the value. Our Twitter following is more than 8,000, but regularly our reach grows to more than 50,000 internet marketers when our followers deem something we’ve said as worthy of sharing.

I think these are the two most interesting elements of the whitepaper. Both are bold steps and give social media legitimacy as a measurable, cost-effective B2B marketing channel.

Of course Microsoft is a huge corporation, and one that spends as much, if not more time talking to consumers. But how many marketing departments in companies around the world wouldn’t sit up and take notice of Microsoft Advertising’s experiences? I’m guessing very few.

By making that leap from measurement to return on investment this whitepaper joins the dots and moves the debate on a long way.

Perhaps most surprisingly it has come from Microsoft, one of the most maligned tech companies around. In many ways this illustrates the transformative powers of social media marketing – even companies with poor reputations can pick up the baton and start having open and frank conversations with their customers again.

Social media breaks down borders

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:57:20 -0500

The Tinderbox Media team were brainstorming today - planning a workshop on social media for businesses looking to export.

There is a lot to think about when considering moving into foreign markets. Currencies, insurance, possible languages barriers and cultural differences are just a few (here is a great resource if you want guidance on some of those issues).

But the one thing that struck me is that from a marketing perspective is that businesses have never been in a better position. The many opportunities to market a company and its products online has broken down geographical barriers (and barriers to the boardroom) like never before. Whilst in previous decades it would have taken thousands of pounds to advertise, visit trade shows, employ sales agents or invest in PR within your target market, now companies with modest means can make a splash.

But while it costs nothing to create a Linkedin profile, tweet a bit, or create a Facebook page, understanding how to make it work to your advantage can be a different proposition altogether.

I’m going to share some of our experiences on this blog and at Tinderbox’s sister blog - Corporate Blogger.

I think B2B has been left behind by the social media debate in recent times, it’s not as sexy as consumer marketing but over the past year (Happy Birthday social media B2B) it has helped to reinvigorate traditional B2B thinking.

To be continued…

My favourite ad from the Superbowl - Audi tackles the diesel challenge

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:31:00 -0500

This is a very clever ad because Audi is trying to do two things.

Firstly the company is trying to flog its products, which it does with some beautiful shots of the A3 at the end.

But secondly, and most importantly, Audi is trying to change public perception of diesel cars in America.

First generation dirty diesel cars which omitted plooms of black smoke and were generally considered to be pretty slow seriously affected the American public’s perception of the fuel type in the 70’s and 80’s. As a consequence diesel car sales stalled.

The fuel crisis of the early Seventies brought them into circulation in the US. But as soon as fuel prices dropped again Americans were more than happy to drop their diesels.

As a consequence American car companies never put any energy into developing diesel family cars and instead continued to pump out their less fuel efficient petrol (or ‘gas’) counterparts.

The US of A is at somewhat of a crossroads now, with fuel prices on an ever upward trend and fuel efficient cars more important to American people than ever before. Audi’s conscious effort to change the perception of diesel cars is well-timed but they face a real uphill battle.

This ad cleverly ties into the growing environmental movement within America’s middle class urbanites and reassures them that buying a diesel Audi is a good move for the environment.

Changing public opinion is a difficult task but Audi is getting stuck in to the challenge with humour and no shortage or creativity.

New office! New job! Wow!

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:07:00 -0500

New office! New job! Wow!

Lets go outside

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:34:24 -0500

No this post isn’t about that George Michael song, but it is instead a brief word about outdoor advertising.

In an increasingly jumbled marketing landscape outdoor advertising is one of the few mediums which is guaranteed to still reach consumers, and presents strong value for money (note I didn’t say ROI for good reason).

I have an interest in this market because I work with Airpod Media, a media owner which has a network of advertising panels in UK shopping centres. Airpod is a relatively small operator but is doing some interesting stuff with an innovative online booking system that will streamline the way buying agencies book media. The industry as a whole is embracing technology and changing fast.

Yesterday saw one of biggest companies in the sector gobbled up by one of its rivals in a move that has really shaken up the market. This kind of consolidation will make 2010 an interesting year, and hopefully for Airpod a growth year as marketers realise where the best values lies in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

Coca-cola drops one use microsites and embraces social media

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:56:00 -0500

I noticed with interest this week that Coke is dropping single use sites (see here for story), a move I suggested would serve them well in my guest post at Blogstorm last year.

As I pointed out then and they seem to have realised the problems with single use sites for promotions are two-fold; one, you don’t really build a community around the site; and two, the natural search benefits of having a high-traffic site are lost when you abandon it.

I also caught a glimpse of the soft drink giant’s social media policy last week (take a peek here). Undoubtedly they are latecomers to the party (as I pointed out in my previous blog, the biggest Coca-cola fan page on Facebook was created by two, well, fans) but judging by their increased presence and well-written policy it seems they have their hats and streamers now.

Free Gucci Mixtape - seriously cool

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:38:55 -0500

Free Gucci Mixtape - seriously cool

Facebook page marketing tips

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:10:00 -0500

Facebook really is first among equals when it comes to social networks. Worldwide around 500,000 new people sign-up every day and the average UK user spends three solid days a year on the site.

Despite Facebook’s best efforts the network remains a strange mix of public and private, and besides advertising, those with pages for their business or organisation need to think creatively about how to attract fans.

Here are a few ideas you can put into practice very quickly and form a good basis for ongoing Facebook marketing campaigns.

Think SEO – pages are indexed on search engines so think in terms of SEO for a normal web page. Your page should have the right title and also the right URL. When you have over 25 fans you can claim a vanity URL. Chose wisely as you are stuck with this URL and can’t change it. The profile box on the left-hand side of your page is a good place to post keyword rich copy which is relevant to your title. Also use the Info tab to do the same in the fields allocated for ‘company description’ and ‘company mission’.

Custom landing tab – a great way of capturing non-fans and asking them to invite others, this will appear to all non-fans when they click onto your page. Here is a good guide on how to put one together using the FBML editor. The best landing tabs have a composite image (744×477 is the best size in terms of formatting) that tells first-time visitors where to click to become a fan and also includes brand imagery. This sits above an invite friends box.

Images – upload as many relevant images as you can. Pictures are great content for Facebook pages. Watermark all images before uploading to the page with your company logo or website address (if you don’t have photo editing software use Picmarkr), then make sure each picture has a caption which includes your keywords and website address. Tag people in images, especially non-fans, as this will ensure your picture ends up in their stream with a watermark of your company logo or URL.

Fanbox – you can create a Fanbox by following a link in the Edit Page section of your Facebook page. You can then generate Javascript code which you should embed anywhere you possibly can – including your blog and website. Also include your Facebook page address on email footers, business cards and on your Twitter profile to keep the traffic flowing.

These basic steps are a good start and should start to yield results fairly quickly. You can now move on to more targeted promotional activity like Facebook only offers and competitions for fans, polls and RSS feeds from your news page or blog. Facebook advertising is also coming of age after long being the preserve of spammers and it offers an unparalled opportunity to target users based on demographic data, geographical location and personal interests.

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35 Killigrew Street
Falmouth
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TR11 3PW