B2B Marketing

LinkedIn top tips on building your network

2012-01-20T13:01:00.000Z

Before you invite someone to connect on LinkedIn

1. Get a photo; it's difficult to connect with an invisible person.

2. Add some content to your profile. One line about your current job just isn't enough.

3. If you haven't met, say why you want to connect and unless it's meaningful, don't try and connect. Nb none of these reasons count:

We're in the same group so I thought it would be good to connect (this is not a reason and I'm suspicious you might just want my contact list!)
We know some of the same people (and why does this mean we should connect?)

WARNING

If you don't say why and the person that you're trying to connect with doesn't know you, they may select the 'I don't know Fred Bloggs' and if they click this button, along with 3 others, LinkedIn assumes (and they might be right) that you're building a network without knowing the people, so it will start to

Ask you for your password more often
Ask for the email address of the next and the next and the next person with who you wish to connect....

TIP

Always give the person a 'get out clause' in case they don't want to connect or in case it's against their company policy. This can be as simple as 'if you don't want to connect at this time, or you're too busy that's ok too'

If the person does connect, send a message immediately. Say "it's good to be connected because...."

4. Tag the person. Create a tag in your contacts so if you need to contact all your suppliers, network friends, people with a specific link, so can do so in one go.

Twitter Stats

2011-12-01T18:53:00.000Z

What are the latest Twitter numbers?

100 million users per day
50 million users login daily
250 million tweets per day
2400 advertisers (there were just 6 eighteen months' ago)

Twitter products
Promoted tweets, promoted accounts and promoted trends

Twitter pricing
Auction style, fill in a form on their site and they get back to you http://business.twitter.com/advertise/start/

Watch the interview with Adam Bain, Chief Revenue Officer and Business Insider CEO and Editor Henry Blodger:

How to assign a tab as a Welcome Page on Facebook

2011-11-11T17:20:00.005Z

You can assign a tab as a Welcome Page to Facebook that new visitors to the page will see first eg a message requesting visitors to LIKE your page could appear first.

1.    Login to your page

2.    Click on Edit my Page

3.    Go to Wall Settings

4.    Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else: (Select the tab you want new visitors to see when they arrive at your site. The default page for existing fans is the Wall)

LinkedIn comes of Age – UK Prime Minister Dave Cameron signs up

2011-11-01T17:22:00.000Z

This article was provided to me by Lauren Dew of TOUCHDOWNPR.

It was recently announced that David Cameron has joined LinkedIn (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15293934), adding fuel to the argument that a full social media profile extends beyond Facebook and Twitter.

But is LinkedIn purely a resource for business networking and job opportunities, or like its younger social media compatriots, is there a scope for brands to reach and engage prospective customers with well-targeted marketing offers?

StrongMail feels that LinkedIn is a marketing resource that has been un-tapped as of yet, and today announced a new version of its word-of-mouth acquisition solution, StrongMail Influencer, to address this.

By allowing marketers to launch an interactive referral marketing programme from any website or email, the product makes it easy for consumers to recommend products or services via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or through email. With enhanced reporting features that add email open rates to standard click and conversion data provided by the system, marketers can identify their biggest influencers and the total reach of their programme across multi-generational sharing activity.

How to Review and Add Companies on Google Places

2011-10-11T17:15:00.000+01:00

What is Google Places?

Instead of using telephone directories, many people use Google to search for new products and services. Your business may appear automatically in Google search results, on Google maps and local listings even if you don’t have a website.

The content of how your business appears on Google will vary, depending on
•    How your Search Engine optimisation is managed
•    How many pages on your website have been found (indexed) by Google
•    The amount of information you have added to your Google Places listing
•    The number of reviews your business has

Why Review Businesses?
Google is using reviews as part of its search engine optimisation algorithm. This means it is important for you to ensure your business is added to Google Places and to encourage clients to add reviews – as we are doing now!

PART ONE - HOW TO ADD A BUSINESS REVIEW

Sign into Google (or create Google account)
Select google maps
Type in the name of a company you’d like to review
Select ‘write a review’
Write a review and publish
Select the star rating and add your comments

PART TWO - HOW TO ADD YOUR BUSINESS TO GOOGLE PLACES
Google places is free. It takes some time to list the correct details and occasionally amend older information. Once you’ve added your business, you need to encourage reviews and update as necessary.

1.    Visit places.google.com/business
2.    Sign in or open a Google account (you can use your own email address)
3.    Click List your business
4.    Add your main company telephone number and click Find business information
5.    If your business is already listed, you can edit. If it is not listed, you can add.

You have now added your business to Google places!
6.    Include as much detail as possible, as well as any offers that are available:

•    Company/Organization
•    Address (required)
•    Phone Number (required)
•    Website: Your website URL can be a maximum of 255 characters.
•    Categories: Enter several categories to describe your business, to make it easier for others to find when they search Google. Google will automatically suggest categories as you type. Make sure you choose one Google-suggested category before adding customizable categories. You can enter up to 5 categories for your business.
•    Hours of operation.
•    Payment options
•    Photos

7.    Preview your listing as it will appear in Maps on the right side of your screen. New information will appear in the preview as you enter it. When you’re satisfied with your listing, click Submit at the bottom of the page.

8.    Choose how you would like to verify your listing and click Finish.

How can we monetise our website?

2011-09-27T08:59:00.004+01:00

Our website generates large numbers of page impressions and we are keen to monetise this and generate alterative revenue streams. What’s the best way to go about this?

I spoke to John Newton at ClickThrough Marketing and he has shared his key ways to monetise a website that is generating significant traffic.

SELF SERVICE NETWORKS
Try the DIY approach, click here for the main companies. The largest self service ad network is AdSense. Others include

Adbrite
Bidvertiser
Chitika
Kontera

Most of these are US focussed but they will have UK coverage as it is the second biggest ad market.

They are easy to sign up to, but if you have “premium” inventory then these may well undervalue your website.

The main reason to use them is to add reach and provide backfill when other networks fail to sell your inventory. Plus some offer formats (e.g. interstitials, pagepeels, incontent text ads) that may not be offered by other mainstream networks, which can provide extra ad revenue, but don’t forget that these ad types can also irritate users.

GO DIRECT
You could speak to some ad networks directly and see if they are interested in representing you. The biggest UK ad networks are IASH members – you can see a list of them here which will also have contact details for each one: http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/iashmember.html.

The biggest networks are

Specific Media
24-7 Real Media
ValueClick
Unanimis
Tribal Fusion and
Adconion.

They generally have a form on their sites for your client to apply to become a publisher.

TIP
Do check their Behavioural Targeting capabilities – networks such as http://www.criteo.com/ and http://www.audiencescience.com/ are doing a great job at the moment using data about what a consumer is doing online to serve vastly more relevant ads – which sell for considerably more than standard geo/category/keyword/demo based targeting.

AD MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Consider using an ad management system on your site to manage the process.

Rather than working with just one network, you can use a solution such as “DoubleClick for Publishers” (another free Google service) that will juggle first-party ads (direct sales) and third-party ads (AdSense and other networks) and show the ad that it believes will yield the most for every single ad impression based on past data.

There are other services like this too - http://yieldbuild.com/, http://www.pubmatic.com/, http://www.admeld.com/ and http://www.rubiconproject.com/. Again, they work to automate the decision making in which ad to show from the different ad networks that your client is signed up with.

SIGN UP WITH AN AD EXCHANGE
These provide publishers with a way to open up their inventory to a number of different buyers at once – agencies, networks, direct buyers. There are a number of them out there – mainly run by the big search firms:

http://rightmedia.com/
http://advertising.microsoft.com/exchange, http://www.google.com/doubleclick/advertisers/ad_exchange.html - but also http://www.contextweb.com/ad-exchange and
http://www.openx.com/

Some of these are more complex, but they provide the most power.

Do you use ad revenue generation tools? What works for your business?

Digital Media Debate

2011-09-15T08:21:00.008+01:00

Earlier this week I attended the Digital Media Debate organized by the Worshipful Company of Marketors and the Worshipful Company of Stationers.

The debate was managed by Venetia Howes and the speakers were

Professor Merlin Stone: Head of Research at The Customer Framework, visiting Professor at De Montford and was previously at IBM
Fergus Boyd, Head Of E Business at Virgin Atlantic
Daniel Finklestein OBE An economist, writes for The Times
Rory Sutherland, Executive Creative Director and Vice-Chairman, OgilvyOne London and Vice-Chairman, Ogilvy Group UK

Some interesting issues were discussed, here are the highlights:

Where are we now with digital media?

•    Social media has only really been around for 10 years.
•    The application is free, the costs are in its management.
•    A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, there are many people selling digital media advice and training with little experience or knowledge which means that people can get it wrong, with bad advice.
•    Social networking is not serious enough, can we get an alternative word, ‘social’ networking makes people think of one very particular application.
•    People solve their own problems online by searching for them.
•    We like the Brands we buy rather than buying the brands we like.
•    The Internet enables people to interact without social embarrassment.

Where are we going with digital marketing?
•    Customers expect more from brands and customer expectations will continue to increase.
•    It’s essential to start with brand values.
•    We need models of better predictability and better understanding of our behaviour.
•    We will be forced as marketers to create better models.

Join the debate - what's your prediction of the future? Earlier in the year I listed predictions for Facebook - but what about LinkedIn and other digital campaign tools?

Monkeys that make life simple

2011-09-12T08:21:00.000+01:00

I work with a tribe of monkeys. That’s not an insult to my co-workers, but the simple truth.

The monkeys in my life include:

MailChimp
SurveyMonkey
Parcel Monkey

Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a great way to send many emails at the same time. The basic service is free and you can get reports to see
•    How many people opened your email
•    How many bounces (soft or hard)
•    How many people clicked through to the links in your email

This online software also includes A B testing. This means that you can test an email with two different headlines to see which one works best. Mailchimp sends the email to 20% of your target list. 10% receive subject one and the other 10% subject two. Based on the responses, the remaining 80% receive the email with the best subject line.

Mailchimp offers much more from

Using Autoresponders
Guide to Common Rookie Mistakes in Email Marketing
and a knowledgebase that shares definitions such as the difference between a hard and soft bounce

SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a free online questionnaire and survey software. If you’re new to surveys it contains a tutorials section with helpful guides like How to create a survey and Tips to improve response rates

The reason I use SurveyMonkey is because it allows me to collect the data in many different ways:

I can send an email invite
embed the survey into my website
embed the survey into my Facebook page
embed the survey into a blog or other social media space
via a generic email including the survey link.

The paid-for version allows you to export the responses into an excel sheet for further analysis. The free version lets you look at the responses on screen.

Parcel Monkey
When I’m posting copies of my books, or sending large parcels, I use Parcel Monkey. It’s an online courier service where you get to choose the carrier (e.g. City Link, Parcelforce, DHL etc), service needed, book and pay for online.

There are other services like this available, the reasons that I return to Parcel Monkey are:

Address book - It stores your favourite addresses, so I don’t need to re-type my address when I’m arranging a collection.
Online tracking – in one place I can see where all the parcels are in their journey.
Easy admin - Instant online invoice.

That’s my tribe of monkeys. Are there any other monkeys you know about that I should include?

QR CODES

2011-09-01T09:12:00.002+01:00

QR codes have started to increase in marketing popularity, but how should you use them and what should you avoid?

What are QR codes?
A QR or Quick Response code is a 3D bar code, created in Japan to speed up the workflow process in the automotive industry. They enable the viewer to go directly to a specific piece of information, which could be a web page, status update or text information.

How does it work?

You convert your information into a QR code using a free QR code generator. I use http://qrcode.kaywa.com/
Your target audience needs a smart phone and QR reader.

What QR Readers are available?
This is a growing number. I use Red Laser which works on most smart phones (iPhones, Blackberrys, Androids). Just Google QR reader and see what works for you. QR readers are free to download.

Why are we interested?
At the start of the year I predicted that QR codes would become more popular to marketers as The Sunday Telegraph, a newspaper with the oldest demographic profile in the UK, starting using these codes in their travel section. The benefit for the reader is that if they saw a holiday they were interested in, let’s say it was a trip to Canada, traditionally they would need to go to a PC and type in the web address which could be http://travelshop.telegraph.co.uk/viewholiday/LLL/1888/four-star-canadas-maple-leaf-trail.htm. If this was converted to a QR code using a free QR code generator:

And this becomes a QR code.

The reader simply takes their smart phone, scans and jumps to the information. Many QR readers allow you to

Email the link to a friend
Share the information
Save to review later

How can they be used by marketing people?

Retail
Provide information about your store’s opening hours, telephone number and key points outside the store when closed.

Restaurants
All your contact info and the latest menus.

Cultural and Tourist Venues
Give the visitor more information on what they’re looking at. The National Memoriam Arboretum in Alrewas, Staffordshire, uses QR codes to give more details on the memorials

Exhibitions
Ever visited a show and exchanged business cards? Go one better and have a QR code that allows your potential customers to scan and instantly capture your details.

Business cards
Business cards are a 2D medium and adding a barcode adds a £D quality. It allows you to share more information (all your contact details or your LinkedIn profile) at one scan.

Advertisers
Add a QR code to enable the reader to take advantage of the offer, find more information. This is already being used by L’Oréal and pharmaceutical companies.

Estate Agents
Why not have a QR code next to the offline printed adverts and the window adverts? Take it one stage further to add ‘book viewing’.

Car Insurance
It would be great in the UK if we could display car insurance in the window. Every police officer, traffic warden would scan the QR code in the window and it would show the owner and all insurance details instantly.

Vans
If you’re distributing products your vehicle is a giant mobile advert. Why not add a QR code so passers-by can capture your details?

How are QR codes being used now?

They are used for tickets to events such as conferences and concerts
Some (but not all) Estate Agents are using in printed media
Blue chip companies are using in their advertising
I add a QR code to my business cards ;)
Some exhibitors are using QR codes at shows (this is growing)

What examples of QR codes have you seen? Are they working for your business?

WINNING IN EMAIL MARKETING

2011-08-24T10:50:00.001+01:00

Email marketing is often perceived as being free. That’s not strictly true as it takes time to organise and manage.

I am often asked
•    How do we go about email marketing?
•    What are the rules?
•    How do we build our mailing list?
•    Should we buy lists?

This presentation on slideshare shares the key issues you need to consider. From the Process of Email Marketing to Frequency of email.

Email marketing

View more presentations from Evonomie.

I have noted some additional web links for email marketers here:

SENDING MASS EMAILS
http://mailchimp.com/ this is a useful way to send out mass emails. I was reminded of this last week when another business that uses the same IP address set as us, sent out masses of email from their server, this looked like spam to the Internet Service Providers (like British Telecom) who went ahead and blacklisted the IP address. What that means to me and my business is that suddenly we can send emails, but no one receives them as we’re blacklisted.

You can get taken off the blacklist, but it takes several days and in the meantime you don’t know who is and isn’t getting your emails. To avoid this, use a verified mailing company like Mailchimp. Their basic offer is very good and free.

TESTING EMAIL FORMATS
More and more people use different email clients, like Microsoft Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo and Google mail. But what does your beautifully crafted email look like when it arrives? It’s difficult to know, unless you set up many different email accounts and test on each. Alternatively Email On Acid has a free service that allows you to test a few different formats. You can pay as you go for a wider test.

VERIFY YOUR EMAIL LIST
One of the key indicators that you’re a spammer is if you’re using old or out of date email addresses. At a client’s yesterday they realised their last email newsletter was 11 months’ ago. So much has happened during the last year it’s difficult to know how valid the list is. Glock Soft has a limited free version where it can check your list and note the numbers of hard and soft bounces so that you can start any campaign with a clean list. http://www.glocksoft.com/

EMAIL EXTRAS
Lyris is a favourite resource of mine for all email tools. They have a spam checker and will let you know how ‘spammy’ your email looks. There is loads inside their website, go explore!

How do I connect with people on LinkedIn, that I don’t know?

2011-08-03T09:21:00.003+01:00

LinkedIn discourages you from connecting directly with people you don’t know, but there are many ways around this.

Start by doing some research and looking at the person’s profile:

• Some people include their email address in their profile, so you can send them an email, start a conversation and invite to connect.

• Other people are in several groups, you can see the groups they’ve joined and start a discussion and make contact.

• The public profile may highlight that they are attending specific events. You can say you’re ‘interested’ in these events and make contact with those in the guest list. Simply look at the main toolbar and click on MORE/ EVENTS, click the button that says you’re interested or attending – other people can see you will be there and this starts a conversation.

LinkedIn is also about ‘degrees of separation:

If I’m connected to someone, I’m one degree of separation away (a #1 appears after their name).
If I know someone who knows this person there is a #2 and so on.
Look at those you are interested in connecting with and if there’s a #2 after their name you can see who you know, that knows that person. Then you can ‘ask for an introduction' through LinkedIn.

TIP
Don’t forget to personalise the standard templates and give really good reasons why you want to connect.

Alternatively, I pay $19.95 a month for a Business Premium account in LinkedIn and on of the benefits is that I can send a certain number of ‘inmails’. This means I can contact someone directly via LinkedIn. If you had this, you could contact many people where you don’t know them, but feel there may be some synergy.

How can I create two pages on Facebook?

2011-07-27T10:17:00.001+01:00

I want to create two pages on Facebook for two different businesses. I don’t want one group of clients seeing the other page. How do I do this?

To create a company page on Facebook you need a real profile. Facebook is starting to contact people with ‘fake’ profiles or profiles of companies and telling them to switch or it will be removed.

1 Create the profile

2 Go to ‘Advertising’ at the bottom of the page

3 Select pages and you will see ‘create a page’ button, click on this to get started

To create the second page:
4 Go to ‘Advertising’ at the bottom of the page, then select pages and in the top right you can see ‘create a page’ click on this button to create page two.

Although you’ll be managing two pages that you may want to keep separate, people viewing your pages will NOT see that you are the admin. This means they can’t see the connection between the two pages.

TIP
It’s a good idea to get someone else to help out as an ‘admin’ which means if you ever lose your Facebook details, someone else can unlock this easily.

For more on Facebook see

Facebook tips for business

Claiming your Facebook company username

Future developments

How to create a company profile on my LinkedIn

2011-06-17T10:26:00.000+01:00

LinkedIn has started adding Company Pages to its website.

This means you can

Follow a company
Check out who you know that works there
Add your own company
Add your own products and services
Get reviews for your own products and services

To add your company to LinkedIn you should

1. Login to LinkedIn

2. Look at the search box in the top right hand corner

3. Type in your company name and search

4. If you see

No company result found

5. Click on

Add a company profile

These instructions appear:

Add company name
Add your email address and then you see a window that says
Now check your inbox...

To continue creating YOURCOMPANY profile, please do the following:

6. Check your inbox for youremail@yourcompany.co.uk

7. Follow the instructions in the email

8. Complete your company profile information

All you do is add more information about your company!

Online Innovations

2011-05-31T08:39:00.004+01:00

A few recent online innovations that have crossed my path. NetCheck from knowthenet.org.uk NetCheck is a free tool that lets you assess how effectively you’re using the Internet compared to the competition (companies of a similar size and sector). It’s divided into three short sections: Listening to customers; Growing Your Business and Cutting costs at the end of the questionnaire you can see how your answers compare with other businesses that have taken the NetCheck and share some expert tips on other smart things you could be doing. Interesting quiz, simplistic tool and difficult to see how this could have a real impact on businesses. Alamy Not strictly speaking a tool, but a German stockphoto website. Some creative images, but you need to speak German to navigate the site. What’s also interesting on this site is that there is a ‘find a photographer’ section. MyCube Coming soon – a way to monetise the web. Still in beta and my version isn’t working ;) Want more Quick Wins? Buy the book. Buy the app.

IT Job Board

2011-05-05T09:29:00.001+01:00

UK’s biggest IT recruitment job site re-launches with a website designed by IT professionals for IT professionals

Today sees the re-launch of The IT Job Board website, the UK’s biggest IT specialist job board.

As a company which focuses on putting its candidates at the core of its business, the decision to re-brand was off the back of the newly formed candidate test lab. The company used the test lab forum to run a number of usability and focus groups. The fresh design includes a new look logo with a magnifying glass marque, new colour pallet and typography. The new strapline is ‘your search made simple’ which stays true to the needs of IT professionals.

Commenting on the re-brand, Jamie Bowler, Head of Marketing at The IT Job Board, said: “The fresh and contemporary re-brand signals a new phase in the growth of the business, and will be rolled out across all communications over the coming weeks and months.

“The tagline ‘your search made simple’ underpins our product strategy around delivering an even more compelling and straightforward candidate experience, and reinforces the fact that we are a specialist website for IT professionals. We have listened to our candidates and acted upon their needs”

The IT Job Board has unveiled its new brand in the UK, which will soon be rolled out across the company’s international sites – in Germany, Holland and Belgium.

Location Based Marketing tools, the essentials on Gowalla and Foursquare

2011-05-03T09:59:00.007+01:00

Much has been written about Location Based Marketing tools, and it’s fair to say that many people still aren’t aware of what’s there. This post looks at the essentials on Gowalla and Foursquare.

What are these location based tools?
Gowalla - positioned as a social version of lonely planet, a travel guide written by your friends.

Foursquare - mash-up between an online loyalty card and geo-social networking tool.

How do they work?
Users access these Location Based Marketing tools from their smartphone. On arrival at a destination, they 'check in'.

Why?

Points, badges, rewards.
Gowalla gives you nicely designed badges ‘passport stamps’
Foursquare gives you points and potential rewards.
Both share tips from other visitors.
You can see if any existing or potentially new friends are at the same place.
Both connect to Twitter, Facebook and you can share updates with friends.

Numbers

Gowalla claims internationally to have over 1 million users
Foursquare claims to have 7.5 million users.

More info

Other posts on Gowalla
http://business2businessmarketing.blogspot.com/2011/04/gowalla-lonely-planet-written-by-your.html

Other posts on Foursquare
http://business2businessmarketing.blogspot.com/2011/02/my-foursquare-experiment.html

http://www.evonomie.net/blog_post.php/info_id/633

http://www.evonomie.net/blog_post.php/info_id/626

Want more Quick Wins? Buy the book. Buy the app.

Gowalla - a lonely planet written by your friends?

2011-04-26T10:25:00.006+01:00

Gowalla is positioned as a social version of lonely planet, a travel guide written by your friends.

You arrive at a venue, check in, see who's there, what local information is available and get a badge as a memento of your visit.

Where did it come from?

In the USA when visiting ski resorts you can collect different 'ski pins', badges acting as a memory of your travels. Josh Williams, Gowalla CEO and Founder, remembers his mother talking about her travels through Europe and collecting a charm bracelet in different cities. The idea behind Gowalla was to collect badges in different locations. The gowalla team worked on designing nice looking passport stamps featuring the places where people travelled.

The Gowalla logo was inspired by a film with Nicole Kidman, based in the Australian outback. Gowalla in Hindi means someone who goes places.

Launched two days before Foursquare, you can check in on Gowalla and push to Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare.

Where is Gowalla now?

All Location based networks gained traction due to the increased use of smart phones. Gowalla has seen increased numbers and claims internationally to have over 1 million users, that's much fewer than Foursquare at 7.5 million. They are based in Austin, Texas Gowalla has almost 30 staff and they're hiring!

It's not just about the badges

There are thousands of badges for different venues and Gowalla looked like a Foursquare me-too, but they have a much better defined space, aligning themselves with the tourism market and building links with household brands such as Disney.

Disney spoke to Gowalla to create different badges for different parts of the parks at different times. This is a way to move regular visitors to less trafficked areas. Nearly 60% of those that checked-in captured the badges, making a real difference to those quieter areas of Disney's theme parks.

National Geographic has a range of info such as walking trips across cities and this is being used by Gowalla to add greater value to the check-in.

Key message for business

If you have a venue, claim it! People, although still small numbers, are using location based services, this provides an opportunity to reach out to potential fans and let them know about events, under-visited areas, special offers in quieter times. It provides a potential mechanism for traffic flows through all major theme parks, cities and events, if used well.

And the future?

Facebook places is not seen as a competitor, more a vehicle that will educate the market into the word check-in and raise the profile of location services in general.

1. We may see 'frictionless check-ins' in a year or so. Simply shake your phone and it's done. No need to open the app, click check-in and wait for the server to respond.

2. The 'pay per click' budget may be replaced with 'pay per check-in'.

3. Explore before you leave home with a plan pass that enables check-ins before you leave home. Is this an alternative to Trip Advisor?

Facebook Deals and Foursquare - what's happening?

2011-04-13T15:11:00.020+01:00

I'm predicting the death of Foursquare by the end of this year.

In January I held my own Foursquare experiment and I checked-in everywhere I visited for four weeks. This gave me both the user's perspective and better understanding for its potential for business. Click here to read the user's perspective.

Reasons for the experiment were

People were talking about Foursquare, but I didn't know anyone that was using it
The 'check-in to Foursquare here' sticker just wasn't visible in the places I was spending money (consumer and business)
Facebook launched 'Deals' in the USA and I predicted it would arrive in the UK by the end of January to mid February (it arrived on 31 January)
I'm in marketing and love to know about the latest applications for business

Just in case you're not familiar with Foursquare, you visit a venue (shop, restaurant, bar, office) and check-in using a smart phone. The most loyal customer (measured by volume of check-ins) is promoted to the Mayor and in theory gains a reward such as a free coffee, free pizza on Wednesdays or 10% off.

So where is foursquare now?

The friends who started using it quickly tired of logging into a new application, plus Facebook. Their friends equally tired of seeing constant check-ins, and the novelty of being the mayor with no reward soon faded.

It's about numbers

30 million people in the UK actively use Facebook every month (source: David Parfect, UK Sales Manager, Facebook, March 2011) of which 50% do so on a daily basis and the average Facebook user has 135 friends. If I pop to the hairdressers, drop in to Waitrose supermarket on the way home, collect some dry cleaning or grab a pizza for friends and on arrival check in on Facebook, I can share with my 100 friends and 4 make a comment, the check-in is potentially seen by up to 540 people and I have fewer friends than the average user. If I do not use Facebook, only those directly involved with the transaction (shop staff) are aware.

Word of mouth marketing is recognised as a powerful way to promote products and services. Social media marketing delivers word of mouth, but on a much larger scale.

On Foursquare, so few of my friends were using it that my check-ins were only seen by 5 or 6 people. When I connected my Facebook and Foursquare accounts, my friends became bored as there was little commentary, just 'Annmarie has just checked-in to Debenhams in Oxford Street'. I could add comments, but it wasn't easy and I could even check-in without getting out of my car, or when walking in the area. In fact until recently I was the mayor of Dominos Pizza in a district of Birmingham although I'd never gone into the store. This isn't about brand loyalty, it's about playing a game.

It's about content

By contrast a check-in via Facebook is richer. When you check-in to a venue there is a good chance that it's already populated with more information, about its history, what's on offer or local data, such as a recent visit to Wolverhampton Wanderers where the entire history of the club was visible.

Foursquare was being trialled by advanced thinking companies like Debenhams and now it seems, along with Alton Towers, Argos, Yo Sushi and Mazda, they're also using (possibly switching?) Facebook Deals.

It's about engaging the companies

Facebook Deals is making it easy for companies to connect, take advantage of offers and is keen to expand its UK case study base. Foursquare's profile amongst the business community is much lower. I speak to groups of businesses on a regular basis and few have heard of Foursquare. Equally I am the mayor of a small sandwich shop in Warwickshire and they are oblivious to the potential benefits and impact on their business. If you contact Foursquare to amend a venue location, the registration process is not straightforward. Part of this involves waiting for a code to arrive in the mail from the USA. Overall as a business user, Foursquare is clunky.

It's about Ease of Use

Facebook Deals uses an open API (application programming interface) so developers can integrate it into their applications. This makes it easy to use and simple to integrate into existing business processes. Worldwide Foursquare has 7.5 million users, Facebook has 500 million. Those on Facebook are already familiar with how it works, experienced in downloading games, sending messages to friends and uploading photos, there is nothing for users to learn with Facebook. No new tools, no new profiles to upload, no statuses to change.

It's about business branding

Foursquare doesn't provide much of a company page, its just about the location with few other details. Facebook has already established company pages which evolved earlier this year (Click here for info on the changes) to enable businesses to use an open programming language to develop and enrich their pages. Facebook has been around for 7 years, Foursquare for 2, but Facebook has come of age and understands how to attract business users.

Do you Facebook and / or Foursquare? What's your view? Can Foursquare make that leap into 2012 or will it stay in the little league? Let me know what you think! Best answer before 29 April 2011 will win a copy of Quick Win Digital Marketing!

Facebook Developments and the Future

2011-04-04T14:28:00.009+01:00

At the Social Media World Forum I listened to David Parfect from Facebook. He’s the UK Sales Manager and shared how Facebook is working for companies.

The key issue with all social media is that it’s about scale, illustrated in these two slides from David Parfect's presentation:

In the UK there are around 29 million active users of Facebook. These are people who log onto Facebook at least once a month. Of these, 10 million are mobile users – who says you can’t use Facebook at work?

The daily reach is 14 million in the UK, that’s a bigger audience than the first episode of the X-Factor and more than those watching the 2010 World Cup Final in South Africa.

New product development: Vitamin Water sought opinions from fans on their US Facebook page to develop a new favour developed

New product opportunities: Facebook supports many applications and one, Farmville, has over 80 million users.

Facebook Deals: Generating real results. Alton Towers used Facebook Deals to drive 5000 people in the UK to its doors, as a test.

What’s the future for Facebook and Social Media?

Mobile is a major growth area
Social commerce will take off
Facebook credits are catching on
Instant Personalization is being used by several companies
Social by design is the way new websites and marketing material will be focused

Want more Quick Wins? Buy the book. Buy the app.

Social Media World Forum London Olympia, March 2011

2011-03-30T09:29:00.002+01:00

Zoe Sands from Juniper Networks revealed how over 4 years they have created a community of 23,000 tech users. The community is J-Net and this has resulted in a 300% increase in traffic to their main website.

The Community is now 4 years old, it took time to build and was not an overnight success, today has 23,000 community users.

Zoe mentioned that other results included being nominated for the Forrester groundswell awards and she shared tips on how the process worked. For anyone looking to start a community, the key issues are:

Purpose

What's your purpose, why are you doing this?
What do you hope to gain?

Research

Do some homework and identify what's right for your business. Twitter may not be right for the target audience, but equally it is may be exactly the right approach.

Resource

It is not about a single person, so mobilise the workforce and get everyone involved. The more that are involved, the more likely it is to gain momentum and work.

Sponsor

Get a senior level person to drive social media and understand and share the benefits. If you don't have a member of the executive team involved, it will be hard work and could fail before it starts.

Plan

Consider all the 'what if' situations, both negative and positive. How will you manage any issues?
Are there any factors you need to address early?
Define the plan for site, assign roles and be clear on who will be managing what.

Pilot

Always start with a pilot, integrate social media into an event, create hashtags to own the event and start small.

Test and refine

Have a go at social media and integrate into all aspects of the business. Start by tweeting press releases etc.

Investment

The social media tools may be free, but you need to invest in content creation, monitoring and resources. If your staff don't know where to start, get some training to ensure they are all in the same space.

Need social media marketing training for your team?

Twitter Backgrounds and Twitter Pages - Useful list

2011-02-21T08:54:00.004Z

Twitter Pages - what's your view?

Recently I have explored Twitter backgrounds. They are only really useful where people are using Twitter.com as their Twitter client.

This started as I had a new profile photo and wanted to replace the older image on my current Twitter page so decided to take the plunge and pay $163 for a professional background from Tweetpages as they were recommended in " Twitter Power" by Joel Comm. But sadly my experience was not good and the wheels really did fall off the process.

To help you with your Twitter pages - if you feel it's worth a custom page, I looked around at a few other twitter pages and have created this list that you might find useful if you’re considering a new Twitter background page.

LIST OF TWITTER BACKGROUND WEBSITES

http://www.twitbacks.com/

Plenty of personalisation options and can URLs to Website, LinkedIn, bookmarking and blog.

$4.99 to remove twitbacks logo

$4.99 to personalise background colours

http://www.twitterbackgrounds.org/

Large images and no space to add company or personal details, but quite funky.

http://www.twitrbackgrounds.com/

Twitter Background Creator can be trialled free and installed for $9.99. You can upload up to 4 pictures in your favourite design. I thought this looked quite good, but the links to the $9.99 option were not existent when I tried this.

They also sell custom backgrounds for $89 with a guaranteed 3 day turnaround which sounds impressive. Might give them a try.

http://viuu.co.uk/

Can browse by colour as well as collections which is useful if you’re looking for a specific colour. Most options are simply large images with an instant download. Lots of rock and pop themes, plenty of arty options too.

Free of charge, but no space to add company or personal details

http://www.twitter-images.com/

Free images and for $25 you can have their logo removed.

A custom option is offered for $79.

Another free option - Template to download

See how to Design a free custom background for twitter using Powerpoint or Open Office Template from @MercianLabels

DIY Twitter Pages

There is always the DIY option where you create your own and work on a width of 1040px and to ensure it’s 100% viewable on all types of screens. That’s just a slim 41px on each side.

What’s your experience? Have you opted for DIY, a paid-for service or something else. Please share! How did it work, what did you like and dislike?

Facebook - all the changes, step by step guide

2011-02-14T09:27:00.000Z

Facebook has just changed Fan or Company pages. I've prepared this step by step guide to show the changes and the action you need to take if you manage Facebook Pages and are wondering what's happening.

Facebook changes feb 2011 evonomie presentation

View more presentations from Evonomie.

Want more Quick Wins? Buy the book. Buy the app.

My Foursquare Experiment

2011-02-03T09:22:00.004Z

Foursquare is a mash-up between an online loyalty card and geo-social networking tool. It's in the category of Location Based Services (LBS).

Users access Foursquare from their smartphone and when they arrive at a specific destination, they 'check in'. In theory organisations can reward regular customers (the most loyal customer becomes 'the mayor') and encourage potential customers to share their wallet, with a range of special offers.

I was slightly sceptical and decided to adopt foursquare for a month to understand how it works, the user's perspective and the benefits for businesses. This post looks at the User perspective and I've shared my stats above!

User perspective

Signing up is easy, the usual user name and password and As soon as I'd signed up and checked-in to my first venue I received my first badge, the Newbie.

The awarding of badges adds to the competitive element of foursquare. You realise it's not just badges and mayorships but points too. My only friends using foursquare are male as my female friends are concerned with the potential for stalking. The male friends using Foursquare are competitive and keen to

Get more points
Check-in to more venues
Win more badges
Gain new mayorships
Oust the current mayor
Leave tips about venues

To become Mayor you need to be the most frequent visitor within 30 days. If you make more visits than the current mayor they are ousted and everyone knows, as emails and updates appear, sharing the news. You can visit a venue more than once in a day but points are only awarded for a single daily check-in. It's essential to have a photo to become mayor, even if it's a meaningless image.

The competitive element means that some users

Create duplicate venues so they can become mayor
Check-in when passing the venue, rather than stopping there
Check-in to many venues at the same time as 'points mean prizes'

Foursquare allows you to connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts to share updates. This lets users update their social media accounts whilst on the move. The downside is that if you're busy bagging venues, you're constantly updating all your accounts whilst checking-in, regardless of whether you've actually stopped. My friends quickly became frustrated seeing my updates as 'checked-in to abc venue'. Some said it was boring as there was no commentary attached and there was no real dialogue. Others said nothing, but stopped following me on Twitter and removed my updates from Facebook. More context can be added to a venue with a 'shout' but few seem to use this function.

I got around this by checking-in 'off the grid' but the downside is that this doesn't gain any points or badges. Then I realised I could check-in share with friends on Foursquare but remove sharing with Facebook and Twitter.

Many of the foursquare badges are unavailable in the UK. It's very USA centric and focuses mainly on cities. This means venues in smaller locations in the UK are added by a few brave souls trying to encourage early adoption. It also means that I'm mayor of a couple of venues that have never heard of Foursquare.

If you check-in at too many venues too quickly a message appears telling you 'whoa! No points for rapid fire check-ins, stay a while'.

There are also strange venues. People's houses, beds and sitting rooms are classified as venues. One of my friends has created 'stuck in traffic outside...' as a venue. I'm not sure I want to check-in to someone's house if I don't know them.

On the practical side, there are challenges. Exploring venues in the area is dependent upon the availability of Internet access. Without this, it simply doesn't function. Sometimes there is a delay between checking-in and gaining points, so a warning message appears 'ok we've got you at ... but your phone thinks you're a bit too far away, so no points or badges this time.' opening Foursquare on an iPhone uses up lots of battery. Nearly one per cent every time you re-load places or check-in. Some venues are in the wrong location and my phone this I'm too far way when I'm in the reception area.

There is a scary side too. You can see how many others are at the venue and others can see you too.

As a user I won't continue with Foursquare. Too few rewards outside big cities, friends unhappy about the constant sharing of where I am and a degree of concern about sharing my constant whereabouts.

Added to this Facebook Deals has now been launched….

E-PR WEBSITES

2011-01-13T12:18:00.003Z

There are a growing number of websites where free press releases can be submitted. The main business model is to offer a free, but upgradable service.

These are some of the e-Pr websites I’ve found and they are all members only sites that you need to join before submitting a press release

Website	Comments	Pricing
BusinessWire.com	Need to print out and fax form to regional office	Based on geographic reach and word count c£260 for 400 words press release and goes to 2,500 websites
Earthpublisher.com	Clunky signup and need to add postcode numbers only!	Free
Newsvine.com	Easy to use, copy and paste content and press submit!	Free
OpenPress - www.theopenpress.com	If you would like an account email admin@theopenpress.com with the word "Register" in the subject line	Waiting to hear
PR.com	Tries to drive users towards paid-for options. Need to check boxes carefully.	Free
PRweb –www.prwebdirect.com	Many pricing options, aimed at business users	From $80 per press release
thebusinessdesk.com	Based on specific locations e.g. The West Midlands) and requesting news	Free

Twitter 2010 Top Users

2011-01-04T12:47:00.003Z

Great example of businesses using social media in 2010. According to Advertising Age the top tweeters in 2010 were as follows: Top 10 Non-Tech Companies/Products on Twitter:

Uniqlo
BBC
Lanvin-H&M
Capricho Magazine
Nike
Four Loko
McDonald's
AirTran/Southwest
Cadbury-Kraft
Toms Shoes

The Top 10 Companies on Twitter in 2010 with a technology bias were:

Apple
Google
Twitter
Uniqlo
Research in Motion
Microsoft
Facebook
Nintendo
Sony
BBC

Will Foursquare survive Facebook Deals?

2010-12-10T17:07:00.000Z

Foursquare is the ultimate in mobile loyalty cards. Forget loading the wallet with more plastic, just carry your mobile phone and every time you ‘check in’ to a venue you collect points.

And what’s more, gain public recognition as the most frequent visitors are promoted to Mayor which brings additional benefits from free coffee to discounts and special offers.

Some people are saying that Foursquare is where Twitter was two years’ ago. Just before tipping point, I’m not so sure. Twitter didn’t have the Facebook goliath waiting in the wings ready to launch an equivalent type of location based service. Facebook is now trialling ‘Deals’ in the USA, launched just a few weeks ago and it’s very clever.

Facebook Deals is similar to Foursquare but with an extended product offer. Firstly it encourages you to join up with your friends for a deal (Friends deal). The altruistic out there can check-in and get the business to donate to charity (Charity deals) of if you’re after a bargain; the Individual deals promote offers, such as the Gap jeans promotion in the US. And there’s the reward card, Loyalty deals, for money off, free coffees and the like.

Sounds similar to Foursquare?

What are you using Foursquare of Facebook? And will Foursquare create new deals to fight back?

Upgrading your website

2010-11-03T10:21:00.000Z

Websites provide customers with access to your company 24/7. Today a website is an intrinsic element of a company’s marketing mix and it’s essential to get it right. These are our 7 top tips for upgrading your website.

1. Decide your objectives

What do you want to get out of your website?
To generate leads
To reassure existing customers
To check stock
To enable customers to buy online?
Before you review your website, decide what you need.

2. Prepare your content

Getting noticed in a crowded world has become more challenging and fighting your way up the search engine ladder can be tough.
It starts with great content.
Content that’s relevant and recent:
relevant to people searching for your products or services
recent enough to attract the search engines.

3. Less is more

Too much information on a website can lead a potential customer to make a negative decision about your business instead of picking up the telephone and calling you.
Look at alternatives to lengthy text articles.
Can you add a YouTube video?
Or a PowerPoint presentation?
Or a series of great photos?

4. Looking good

Design matters when we encounter so many brands on a daily basis but ease of use is more important!
A great looking site that is difficult to navigate is likely to lose more visitors than a less attractive, but easy to use site.

5. Don’t forget the construction

Many sites use flash or other plug-ins, but this isn’t available for Apple iPad and mobile phone users.
Sites using this technology may need a re-think.

6. Make sites search engine friendly

There are many simple tasks from creating good ALT tags and adding appropriate Title text, to updating content and finding suitable sites with which to connect.
Get the construction right from the start.

7. Link it all together

If you’re using YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter or blogs, don’t forget to tell your visitors to explore these sites too!

Facebook Landing Pages

2010-10-01T18:00:00.000+01:00

How do I organise a 'landing page' for my company's Facebook page?

Login to Facebook and search for the Static FBML app.
Click the drop down menu to select the page you want to add the app to.
Go to your Company Page and click on Edit Page.
You can now scroll down to edit the FBML tab you have just created and rename it.
To add content use HTML or FBML. More information can be found on the Facebook developer's area.

If you want to add more (FBML) tabs, this can be done by clicking on the link ADD ANOTHER FBML PAGE (which is found at the bottom of the Edit Page of any of your FBML pages).

You may need to convert your text using an HTML or FBML converter. Speak to your techy or search online for a suitable converter. I used http://word2cleanhtml.com and it worked well.

Cartooning for Presenters and Trainers

2010-09-21T08:06:00.008+01:00

Do you run workshops, seminars or other events?

“Discover How To Wow Your Audience and Turns Words into Pictures…Even if You Think You Can’t Draw!” If You've Ever Wanted To Add the Wow Factor to Your Workshops, Increase Your Fees, Get More Bookings and Make Your Flyers Stands Out From the Crowd, Make Sure you Book a Place on The ONLY Cartoon Workshop in The Midlands This Year.

Learn to cartoon in this one day workshop in the Midlands, by special arrangement with Graham Shaw.

This course will show that you can in fact draw effective pictures when you know how.

WHEN - Fri 10 December 2010 TIME - 10am - 4pm WHERE - Lichfield (free parking) FEE - £325 + VAT WHAT’S INCLUDED? · A hands-on practical workshop · All refreshments and lunch · All materials to get you cartooning

Graham Shaw, the international trainer and Cartoon expert who trains trainers internationally, has agreed a one-day workshop in Lichfield this year. It’s taken a while to get him to agree to come to the Midlands – this really is a one off! Graham will guide you through is easy-to-learn steps that will soon have you drawing great cartoons. It’s taking place on Friday 10th December (10am to 4pm) and will show trainers how to use cartoons effectively in their training sessions and workshops. I’m sure you’d agree that it’s an impressive ability to transfer a whole bunch of words into a single drawing. But, the places really are limited. We’re holding the workshop in our meeting room in Lichfield and we can only accommodate 12 people. Personally, I claim that I couldn’t draw a straight line and always cringe when I’m asked to draw an image of something, but I’ve had some help from Graham and guess what, I can create cartoons!

Limited to 12 places - A one off for 2010

To secure your place email annmariehanlon @ evonomie.net or telephone 01543 258522 and ask for Annmarie Hanlon

Want more Quick Wins? Buy the book. Buy the app.

Writing for digital

2010-09-15T15:44:00.003+01:00

Writing for digital media is not like writing for traditional presses. There is no longer time to create a great introduction paragraph and add more detail, it is necessary to grab the reader’s attention in 3 seconds, which means the headline must engage the reader instantly.

It is personal

Social media is personal, it is a conversation between you and your fans / connections / viewers and anyone else that may be listening.

Most updates / tweets / posts are written in the first person (singular or plural). The third person does not work in digital media.

It is acceptable to say “we are having a promotion this afternoon” if representing a company. It is not great to issue posts / tweets etc like “The ABC Company is having a promotion this afternoon”.

Better still would be “I’m getting ready for a promotion at the ABC Company this afternoon”.

Short and sweet

LinkedIn and Twitter allow 140 characters (including spaces and punctuation) which includes your Twitter identity when someone is repeating (re-tweeting) what you have said.

This means writing short statements to tempt the reader to click on a link for more has become the norm.

Facebook conventions dictate short and sweet although there are no limits on post sizes. The average person posts a sentence or two at most.

Shorten links

When adding a link to a media release it can take up far too many characters. There are various websites which will reduce the size of a link, free of charge, so that http://www.evonomie.net/content.php/info_id/497 which is 88 characters becomes:

http://bit.ly/aAPxsj - using bit.ly
http://tiny.cc/jql1x - using tiny.cc – used by The Times
http://alturl.com/qhabk - using short URL

Facts, figures and questions

Providing statistics, numbers, fascinating facts and questions generates better responses than direct statements. People are reading the posts / tweets / updates at their desk and a question like “have you visited the world’s best airport lounges” is more appealing than “new study on airport facilities”.

Punctuation and spelling

Punctuation has changed too. In social media it is not uncommon to see

No punctuation at all – to reduce the number of characters
Use of smiley faces :) to indicate positive messages
Abbreviations that may be more common in text messages

For clients using social media spelling is important, if part of the brand image, but once the tweet or update is posted, it is difficult to retract.

If you issue something with an error, re-issue with the correct spelling. Better still, make another more useful statement.

Repurpose your content

Whenever you create a press release, write an article, say something, make sure it’s on LinkedIn (share with Twitter), on your blog, website news area and Facebook. Use the information, use it again and once more for good measure. For example a news item about a new partner at a law firm could have several different headings:

Jane Smith joins Birmingham LLP
Birmingham LLP announce promotions
Have you read about the local woman being promoted?

Resources

http://bit.ly/
http://www.tiny.cc/
http://www.shorturl.com/

by Annmarie Hanlon

Want more Quick Wins? Buy the book. Buy the app.

2010-09-08T08:00:00.000+01:00

Using The Social Media Balance Sheet™ tool to measure social media presence – for sector and competitor research

Social Media Metrics have to date mainly focused on the view of their effectiveness from inside the company. At Evonomie we’ve been looking for a while for an external qualitative method to measure companies’ online activities as part of a strategic review.

Internal or in-company quantitative methods are in abundance and focus on activity, surveys and return on investment (ROI). These are certainly valid metrics and there is a comprehensive list in Jim Sterne’s book Social Media Metrics. The real question when conducting research is how can you capture the metrics if you’re outside the company? You don’t have access to their analytics so need to make a judgement on what’s important and whether the information is available.

Benefits of benchmarking competitor use of social media

Reasons we want to measure the social media activity from an external perspective include:

The review competitors’ activity, their strengths and weaknesses
To understand where and how the market segment is using social media
To identify opportunities
To identify threats
To review new markets companies may consider moving into

There are advantages of The Social Media Balance Sheet™ from an internal perspective too:

Once completed, it provides a benchmark and can be reviewed for ongoing comparative analysis of the market sector and / or key competitors
It is a tool for in house brand managers to ensure no brand creep is taking place
It is a great way to explain to staff how and why it’s essential to maintain key brand messages

Methodology

We needed a methodology that would provide a ‘one page snapshot’ of what was happening with several companies and after trial and error we’ve developed The Social Media Balance Sheet™. This provides a summary of the key issues. I’ve shared this here along with the rationale as to why these areas were considered important.

AREA	WHY
Using since	A way to identify early adopters. When did the organisation embrace social media or dip their toe into the digital waters? Are brand leaders leading the field?
Who updating	To understand their commitment to social media. Is it an internal person (junior, senior, IT or marketing) or an external agency? All the updates on one day or over a period of time?
When updating	Social media is 24/7, how does the organisation manage this? Monday to Friday or more?
Latest update	To measure activity and if the account is still current. Have they captured their brand name but not taken action?
Contribution	To see the impact of their communications. The number of updates (may be linked to number of fans) and interaction from their network.
Network size	To gauge their share of the voice in the sector.
Programmes used	To look at their management of social media. Multiple programmes or streamlined?
Joined up	To understand their approach to marketing and whether it’s integrated throughout all their communications. Links to landing pages.
Identity format	To identify brand consistency and brand creep. Some companies use a corporate face, others use the individuals within the company, what identity is being used?

We have been reviewing the top 10 UK FTSE 100 companies’ activities and their social media approach. So far we’ve reviewed:

Lloyds Banking Group PLC
Vodafone Group Plc
Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC
BP Plc
National Grid Plc
Barclays PLC
BT Group PLC
Income & Growth VCT
HSBC Holdings PLC
Prudential Plc

Initial results of benchmarking

Our initial conclusions as to the social media being actively used (i.e. within the last 2 months) show that Facebook and Twitter are the most popular vehicles for these companies. As you might expect, a telecoms company, Vodafone, is using the most social media tools.

Within this group of 10 we discovered that blogs and photo sharing sites were not popular. This may be as blogging requires more effort from the company and is less interactive and engaging than Facebook. Equally photo sharing sites represent a challenge for service businesses as I’m not sure I would stand in my bank and take photos! Five of the companies reviewed were in financial services and these companies are lowest users of social media.

The summary shown below illustrates which social media tools these FTSE companies are currently using (nb this is subject to change within any hour!)

Vodafone Group Plc uses Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
The Royal Bank of Scotland PLC uses Facebook and Twitter
National Grid Plc uses Facebook and YouTube
BT Group PLC has a blog and uses Twitter
HSBC Holdings PLC has a blog and uses Twitter
Lloyds Banking Group Plc uses Facebook
Barclays PLC uses Twitter for a competition and for its stockbroking arm
BP Plc (in the UK) uses Photo Sharing tools
Prudential plc and Income Growth VCT plc do not use any social media tools.

We were surprised that the adoption of social media as part of an overall marketing strategy was so low within this group. Over the next 5 years social media tools will change our business models yet these giant corporations are largely ignoring its potential.

Notably, BP, which has recently been in the news a great deal in the UK and US and yet their social media presence is restricted to the US only. A Sunday paper reported that BP had hired Brunswick (specialist financial PR company) to help with PR. Will this have an impact on their social media?

One of the challenges is that failure to adopt social media may result in others (detractors, campaigners) taking your share of the voice and controlling your message.

Want more Quick Wins? Buy the book. Buy the app.

10 Practical tips on using LinkedIn for businesses

2010-08-31T08:00:00.004+01:00

Ignoring the power of LinkedIn to drive new business and build relationships is missing a big opportunity for companies small and large alike.

LinkedIn is the first place many larger businesses check out potential suppliers and new hires. Using LinkedIn makes you more visible to existing and potential clients as well as your peers. These reach and growth figures are undeniable:

LinkedIn has over 65 million members in over 200 countries.
A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S.

Our ten practical tips are aimed at helping you to get more out of LinkedIn.

1 – Complete your profile

Improve how people can find and connect to you by adding past places you have worked, details of your higher and further education (leave out schooling before 18), activities and professional memberships.

You have 1895 characters to create your LinkedIn profile. Do include:

BACKGROUND
HOW WE CAN HELP YOUR COMPANY
CONNECT WITH ME AND MY COMPANY

To make elements of your profile stand out use block capitals and plenty of spaces between sections.

2 – Add a photo

A photo is a great visual prompt to remind your contacts who you are. Profiles with photos look less interesting and without a photo you become a grey head and shoulders. People sometimes ask “I had a professional shot taken a few years ago is that ok?” Yes it is! Ensure the photo is decent if not recent. A decent photo can be used in many social networking spaces whereas a recent photo of you on the beach may not be what your clients want to see.

Photos can be up to 4MB in size and need to be common file formats such as JPG, GIF, and PNG. You can preview your photo before saving and sharing with your contacts.

Once your photo is in place, it’s part of your personal brand, so stick with the same image, rather than changing on a regular basis!

3 – Professional Headline

You can use up to 120 characters in your Professional Headline. Most people’s headline is ‘Owner, ABC Ltd’ and if I’m searching through several hundred contacts, that doesn’t stand out, whereas ‘Dave Chaffey, Expert Digital Marketer – Consultant, Author and Speaker’ jumps right out from the page.

Find your Professional Headline at the top of your profile directly below your name.

4 – Get recommended

LinkedIn makes it so easy to seek recommendations. These are mini case studies that will get reviewed and are a great way to showcase your talents.

Every six months seek newer recommendations from different people. This builds up the number of recommendations which features in your public profile as well as keeping your profile fresh. Simply click on the profile / recommendations / request recommendations button.

If you’re not happy with a recommendation, you can always choose not to display it in your profile!

5 – Make recommendations

Where you are happy with a service, product being sold, company or person, do make recommendations. This only needs to be a short paragraph about their best qualities.

If someone recommends you, wait a month before returning the favour. Otherwise on the updates page it looks like you were obliged to make the recommendation.

6 – Join groups

Joining groups gives you access to a wider pool of contacts, allows you to display group membership on your profile and enables you to network with a more targeted group of people. Some groups are very sales orientated, others require membership or professional qualifications and their focus tends to be different.

The great feature about groups is that you can belong to the same group as someone without being connected to them. This means you can see what your competitors are involved with (and they can see your activity) but they can’t access your connections.

You can currently join up to 50 groups in different categories: alumni, corporate, conference, networking, non profit and professional.

There are over 500,000 groups on LinkedIn and if you can’t find the group you’re looking for, you can always start your own!

June 2010 update: Linked In has enhanced the interface for Linked In Groups. This blog post explains the updates to Linked In Groups. The post and video explains how active contributors can benefit and they are rewarded and highlighted more within the new system.

7 – Ask and / or answer questions

Inside the LinkedIn community you can ask and answer questions. If you’re exploring new markets or wanting to know the latest software tool in a specific industry, you can ask questions and within a few hours the answers will appear.

Answer questions to share your knowledge or expertise or to recommend others to help.

Even better, Google seems to love LinkedIn questions and finds them within a few hours.

8 – Update your status

LinkedIn status updates are a maximum of 141 characters. Use this to talk about your new blog posts, share what you’re reading or comment about your day.

Think about your updates – LinkedIn is a professional network not Facebook!

You can add your Twitter account to LinkedIn, so that when you post a LinkedIn update it tweets at the same time.

9 – Build connections

LinkedIn is not a business card competition! If you add connections to your network, each person can see your connections, unless you hide your connections, which isn’t in the spirit of the network – unless you’re a recruiter.

You can build the number of your connections by:

Finding people in your address book that are already on LinkedIn and importing these contacts.
Sending invitations to people you’ve met at an event – it’s a great way to stay in touch and find out more about someone.
Using the ‘company search’ tool to find colleagues or reconnect with people you’ve worked with in the past.
Sometimes you may find your connections know someone you’d like to meet. You can ask for an introduction, in the same way you would do at a face to face networking event.

Think carefully about adding connections and only click the ‘add connection’ button if you’re happy to share your address book with that person.

10 – Personalise emails

LinkedIn provides a range of template emails to add someone to your network and request recommendations. It’s a good idea to personalise these templates and say why you’d like to be connected to someone, rather than sending the ‘I’d like to connect with you on LinkedIn’ email. If it’s someone you haven’t met for a while, this breaks the ice and you’re more likely to generate a positive response.

And finally, treat LinkedIn the same way as you would face to face networking. You need to work at it to get results.

Article by Annmarie Hanlon.
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5 Social Media Graphics

2010-08-20T17:16:00.001+01:00

Social media is a dynamic form of communication. Instant, short and sometimes worthy of sharing. I’ve found 5 social media graphics that merit sharing.
For beginners - The Do's and Don’ts of Social Media for Business
Easy to view one pager by Michael Schulz that addresses the key issues. Great use of cartoons.

Getting your colleagues involved - Building a Company with Social Media

Created by Elliance this simple graphic shows the different functions in an organisation and how they can use social media.

How social media grew - The Boom of Social Sites

Focus editors created a timeline starting in 1995 with classmates.com. It’s a couple of years old and it would be great to see a revised version, especially as the numbers for Twitter, Facebook and MySpace have changed some much.

Internet usage - State of the Internet Explained In One Giant Infographic

Samuel Axon via Mashable’s diagram shows who uses the Internet, how often and where.

Market sizes - The 2010 Social Networking Map

Ethan Bloch at Flowtown created this map which indicates the power of different social media platforms. This is a favourite of mine. A great way to convert disbelievers and puts social media into perspective.

Do let me know if you have a favourite social media graphic or cartoon.

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Twitter for businesses: 10 Quick Wins to create your Twitter strategy

2010-08-12T08:29:00.040+01:00

Twitter is about answering the question ‘what are you doing’ in less than 140 characters. That’s about 12 words. In this article I suggest 10 quick wins to get you started in Twitter or to review your current approach. I hope these wins work for you whether you’re a business or personal tweeter or both.

Before we get to my 10 quick wins, here’s a quick refresher of some of the Twitter commands since I find that many small and medium businesses are still picking up on Twitter.

Twitter jargon buster

Tweet – a post, message or update on Twitter
@username + message – an open tweet that can be seen by your followers and by @username’s followers
DM username – a private tweet that can only be seen by username
#hashtag - a Twitter keyword. Adding # makes the word searchable.
RT – repeating a Tweet, known as a ReTweet

Ten Quick Wins to create a Twitter strategy

1 – Decide your objectives

Twitter can become time consuming and many people initially didn’t get the point. There are many companies now using Twitter successfully and their common denominator is that they have clear objectives.

Starting your Twitter journey or if you are already using Twitter but don’t feel it’s working, decide what you want out of it. Here are some ideas to consider:

Promote key messages
Build brand awareness
Drive traffic to your website
Promote special offers
Respond to customer queries
Provide advice and tips
Share news
Build community
Raise funds
Generate sponsorship
Customer services
Product demos
Recruit new staff
Research your market

Once you have decided your objectives, you can then plan how this will be achieved.

2 – Agree your identity

Business or personal? If your objective is to generate business, it’s better to adopt a business identity. If you have several people inside your company who will tweet, a common format needs to be agreed, such as Evonomie_Jo or Evonomie_Am. This enables followers to know that this is a company tweet, but the individual is identifiable. Alternatively, adopt the company name and in the biography (see below) identify the tweeters.

One of the challenges with Twitter is that user names are limited to 15 characters. If your company name is longer, you may need to think carefully about how to present your brand. Once you have agreed your Twitter identity, don’t change it as you could lose and confuse followers.

3 – Protect your brand

Twitter and other social media requires a square logo. If you have a rectangular logo and upload this to Twitter, it will crop the sides, damaging your visual identity.

Get your designer to prepare ‘social media ready’ logos that are sized for Twitter at 700k.

Once your brand is established, don’t change the visual identity or your photo without good reason!

If you don’t add a photo you will retain the default Twitter bird as your visual identity which will not distinguish any of your tweets from other users of Twitter.

If someone else is using your brand name you can apply to Twitter to get the account suspended and eventually transferred. This does take a long time, so register new brands early.

4 – Prepare your bio

Your bio or biography is 160 characters about you or your company. A short sentence about what you do. It is searchable and important to focus on a few essential keywords as a bio is the first place potential followers review. Bizarrely, many people don’t complete their bio at all!

Your bio can be read by followers and non followers alike so ensure that it reflects your Twitter objectives. If the identity is for a company make sure this follows your normal brand rules. If it’s a personal bio, check that it doesn’t infringe any company brand guidelines.

5 – Agree update responsibility

There are 90 million Twitter accounts but only 18 million are active. If you are going to register a Twitter profile, make sure that the account is updated, in line with your objectives. This may be once a day or twice a week, or every hour, but to retain a Twitter account, build followers and achieve your objectives it needs some activity.

Twitter considers an account as inactive if it hasn’t been logged into or updated in over 6 months. These accounts may be automatically removed from Twitter.

6 – Decide Twitter management

Updating Twitter is best done in house. If you need external help, Twitter may not be right for your company. Twitter is often given to junior staff, which is fine, as long as they are given clear guidelines on the company’s brand values and ‘tone of voice’. For example in November an airline was tweeting about a ‘scary competition’ they meant Halloween, but airlines should never use the word ‘scary’ in their marketing communications!

If you are a professional or business user and use LinkedIn, you can simply add Twitter to your LinkedIn account and when adding a ‘status update’ in LinkedIn, you can check the box to automatically tweet at the same time.

7 – Organise landing pages

Your bio includes a web page link. Instead of sending all traffic to your home page, organise a separate page for your Twitter followers. This will enable

Easier analysis of how visitors found your site and the actions they took [Editor's note: Like this - hadn't thought of it = DFA, Design for Analytics]
Your twitter followers to get all the information they need about you, in more than 160 characters, in one place

8 – Use free software

Twitter.com is the most basic way to use Twitter. It doesn’t spell-check, allow you to schedule posts or to group your favourites.

There are many great free software tools including:

We use Tweetdeck and Hootsuite for the PC and iPhone. We also have Echofon on the iPhone which is a cut down version of Twittter online.

9 – Share the news

Once you have started tweeting, make sure your existing customers are aware. This helps to grow your follower base and to keep you ‘front of mind’. Make sure the Twitter logo and your @username are on your

Website
Emails
Business cards
Blogs
LinkedIn profile

10 – Get Interactive

To make Twitter work and to achieve your objectives you need to invest some time to tweet.

Re-purpose (re-use) existing content
ReTweet interesting Tweets
Recommend interesting Tweeters – ‘Follow Friday’ #FF is set up to do this
Tweet about useful and interesting information, sharing your breakfast menu is not that fascinating – unless you own a Bed & Breakfast establishment!
Tweet on a regular basis – this could be daily or weekly, but a Twitter account with few tweets won’t attract many followers.

And finally, set up alerts via www.google.com/alerts and tweetbeep.com to monitor your brand online and measure the impact of Twitter.

I’ve adapted this post from my book Quick Win Digital Marketing. For answers to digital marketing questions see Quick Win Digital Marketing by Annmarie Hanlon and Joanna Akins (Book available from Oak Tree Press and App available from iTunes store).

Article by Annmarie Hanlon.

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What makes a tweet influential?

2010-08-05T14:50:00.002+01:00

HP Labs’ Social Computing Lab has carried out a study to find out what makes a tweet influential.

The research involved analysing 22 million tweets.

You can read the findings in the press release here http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Data-Central/What-makes-a-tweet-influential-New-HP-Labs-social-media-research/ba-p/81855 or view an interview with Dr Bernardo A Huberman, Director of HP Lab’s Social Computing Lab http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3O7Y5HVu0ek.

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Private Member Websites

2010-07-28T13:30:00.000+01:00

Private members sites, also known as private sales sites offer those who have joined (usually free) the chance to buy products and clothing at knock-down prices. These are normally selected luxury products and / or branded items that are available for a short period, usually between two and four days.

Members usually receive an email informing them when a new range of items is being added to the website along with when the sale starts and when it will end to encourage people to buy quickly.

The most well-known sites are:

Vente-privee.com
Secretsales.com
Brandalley.co.uk
Cocosa.com
Achica.com

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“Cartoons can generate more sales for service businesses than a whole page of words”

2010-07-26T10:52:00.000+01:00

Service businesses face special challenges and can be difficult to demonstrate. If you’re using any form of social media, such as blogging, the blogs can be less engaging as it’s mainly words, no images. This October, for one session only, we’re organising a full day’s cartooning workshop. Everyone says they can’t draw (including me) but this one day session will show you the mechanics. Coming soon. Want more Quick Wins? Buy the book. Buy the app.

iPhone News

2010-07-23T15:03:00.000+01:00

Apple has opened a ‘try before you buy’ section in its App Store. The app must already have a free version / lite version to appear.

You can now Gift an App so if you see a great App that a friend or colleague would like, you can send it to them.

It has been made legal to jailbreak your iPhone. This means that you can run other Apps on it.

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Wear a Virtual Watch

2010-07-21T13:17:00.000+01:00

We mentioned some virtual products in a previous blog post. Tissot provides an augmented reality feature developed by Holition. It’s a feature for customers to see what a Tissot watch will look like on.

The idea is to download a paper wristband, put it on a show it to your webcam. This will then connect to a system to show the customer on their screen what they look like wearing it.

Visit http://www.http//www.tissot.ch/reality/

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5 Virtual Tools

2010-07-19T08:30:00.000+01:00

Virtual tools are being used more by companies who are trying to find ways to sell products and services. Here are 5 virtual tools:

1. Virtual makeup - mirror www.ezface.com. If you have ever wanted to see what makeup will suit your face without buying it you can upload your photo at ezface.com and trial products. Brands of makeup available to trial virtually include Covergirl, L’Oreal and Maybelline. If you don’t want to upload your own photo you can try it using the photo already there. Try eye shadow, eye liner, eye pencil, lip liner, lip gloss, mascara, foundation, blush, powder and nail polish!

2. Virtual Mannequin 3M has developed a virtual mannequin which it says is perfect for anywhere where customer communication is required such as in museums and cinemas. It is ‘virtual person’ projected onto an acrylic cut out, with sound and graphics, who can talk about anything you want it to for as long as you want – 24 hours, 7 days a week if you like http://solutions.3m.co.uk/wps/portal/3M/en_GB/vikuiti-uk/home/products-solutions/rear-projection-displays/VirtualMannequin/. To see it in action visit http://www.3m.co.uk/intl/uk/videos/VirtualMannequin.wmv

3. Virtual recruitment – L’Oréal has launched a game called Reveal that gives students and graduates the opportunity to work as a Management Trainee virtually in different departments of an organisation carrying out different tasks. The site can be found at http://www.reveal-thegame.com.

4. Virtual glasses – Glasses Direct provides an online area to upload your photo and try on different pairs of glasses. See www.glassesdirect.co.uk/virtual_mirror

5. Virtual World - There is also a virtual world called Second Life where users create a virtual representation of themselves and can buy and build land and property including virtual products such as cars, clothing and trainers.

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LinkedIn - Monitoring Questions

2010-07-14T08:00:00.002+01:00

Answering Questions in LinkedIn gets you involved in conversations with group members on LinkedIn. This is good to highlight your expertise, create awareness for your company and appear in Google search results.

There is an easy way to monitor LinkedIn Answers:

Login to your account.

Select Answers under the More menu at the top.

Choose your preferred category from the right hand side.

Click on the "Subscribe to new questions in:[your category]" and choose your preferred RSS reader.

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Blogger blog post footers

2010-07-08T08:00:00.000+01:00

Can I automatically add text / footer to the bottom of every blog article?
Yes, you will need to login to your blog.

Click into Settings

Formatting

Add your text in. If you want to add links hyperlinks in, you will need to create a blog post, create the text then click on the HTML tab, copy and paste into your settings, formatting area.

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Docstoc.com

2010-07-05T08:00:00.000+01:00

Docstoc.com is an online space to share and download professional documents. You can also sell and buy documents. There are a huge variety of documents including legal templates, spreadsheets, guides and more.
You create a profile.
To sell document you need to create a seller account at www.docstock.com/sell/register.
Seller FAQs are at www.docstoc.com/sell/faq
No fees for the first 60 days but thereafter sales are split 50/50.
Payments are issued within 30 days of the last day of each month when its $100 or more – if not this amount is carried over until this sum is reached.
Can be paid by PayPal or by cheque.

A ‘like’ button can be added to all documents so these can be shared on Facebook.
Users get a 7-day money back guarantee.

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TweetDeck features you might not know about

2010-07-01T08:00:00.001+01:00

Here are some amends or TweetDeck features that you may not know about:

Hide people’s tweets using TweetDeck

Click on the settings icons.

Choose Global Filter and you can hide tweets from specific people, tweets containing certain words or from sources such as Facebook.

Type in people’s Twitter name separated by a comma and click on Save settings. These will disappear from your All Friends column. If you want to add more filters or edit your current ones, just go back to settings in TweetDeck and amend, add or delete existing filters.

Schedule updates

Click on the clock icon next to the Send button. You will need to create a TweetDeck account if you don’t already have one.

Update sites from TweetDeck

Updates sites direct from TweetDeck including Google Buzz and Foursquare. (TweetDeck also updates Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn).

Creating additional columns for Mentions

If you are looking after more than one Twitter account, ensure that you have added the account so it will show that the top of TweetDeck next to From: You can then add a column to view Mentions for that Twitter account. Click on the + sign to add a new column, select the Twitter icon next to Using Account and choose the required account from the drop down menu. Next click on Core under Add column: and choose Mentions. A new column will appear on TweetDeck.

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Add a Facebook Recommend or Like button to your Blogger blog

2010-06-29T08:00:00.005+01:00

and straight after this paste the following code to add a Like button - you can get this from the original source which is http://www.bloggerplugins.org/2010/04/facebook-like-button-for-blogger.html

Custom landing pages on Facebook

2010-06-25T08:00:00.002+01:00

I've noticed some companies are assigning a tab as their welcome on their Facebook page - how do I do this?

The idea of using a custom tab as a landing page for new visitors is to explain to them the purpose of your Facebook page and why they should 'like' it.

This is simple to do:

Login to your Facebook Page
Edit wall settings
Drop down menu to select the tab you want potential fans to arrive at. Your existing fans will always arrive at your wall.

This facility was removed sometime ago by Facebook and there was a lot of complaints on the Developer Forum. This was consequently changed back again very quickly!

Facebook was only going to provide the facility to those with 10,000+ fans or "the page admin must work with their ads account manager"

The post was on the Facebook developer's forum on 19th May 2010 and read:

Hello all,

We apologize for not messaging this earlier. Facebook recently made a change requiring that Pages be authenticated before enabling the ability to set a landing tab beyond Wall or Info. To be eligible for authentication, a Page must have greater than 10k fans or the Page admin must work with their ads account manager. If you are already working with an account representative, please contact that representative to begin the authentication process. If you do not work with an account representative, you can use this contact form to inquire about working with an account representative.

Also, for advertisers who don’t have a representative or 10k fans, and want to run ads and land users on a specific tab, you can still do so with standard Facebook ads by making their Destination URL as the URL incl. your tab. Unfortunately, this currently will not work with "Fan" ads. Thanks, Matt Trainer

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Adding a New Tab to your Company's Facebook Page

2010-06-22T08:00:00.002+01:00

Can I add a new tab to my company's Facebook page?
Yes, you can. This means that you can rename the tab and add in content using HMTL or Facebook Markup Language (FMBL).
Login to Facebook and search for the Static FBML app.
Click the drop down menu to select the page you want to add the app to.
Go to your Company Page and click on Edit Page.
You can now scroll down to edit the FBML tab you have just created and rename it. To add content use HTML oR FBML. More information can be found on the Facebook developer's area.

If you want to add more FBML tabs, this can be done by clicking on the link ADD ANOTHER FBML PAGE (which is found at the bottom of the Edit Page of any of your FBML pages).

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How to add a Retweet button to your Blogger blog

2010-06-17T08:00:00.011+01:00

Sign in to your Blogger blog.

In the Dashboard area of your blog, Click on Layout, Edit HTML. We recommend you save your template first before doing anything.

Under the 'Edit Template' menu tick the box to Expand Widget Templates.

Save template. The retweet button should now appear on each of your blog posts.

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Your own Facebook Page URL

2010-06-14T08:00:00.000+01:00

If you have over 25 fans on your Facebook Page you can get your own URL. This is useful for adding to business cards, email signatures and makes it easier to tell others as you do not have to read out a string of numbers. Our Facebook page for example is http://www.facebook.com/evonomie.

To set up your own Facebook Page URL go to http://www.facebook.com/username and sign in to Facebook. You will see a note telling you that you can have a username for your Facebook profile. Further down the page it will say “set a username for your Pages.” There may be a drop down menu next to Page Name. Select your Page and enter in your desired username. Click on check availability.

You can now go ahead and confirm your chosen URL and this should now be set up. Please note that will not be able to make any changes to this URL once it has been set up.

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Organising Events with Eventbrite

2010-06-11T08:00:00.000+01:00

Organising an event? Eventbrite makes it easy to create an event online, promote it, register delegates and take payment.

It is free to use for free events and takes a small payment if the event is a paid for event. You create a pay for people to register, send invitations to your contacts and then take payment.

It's really easy to use. See www.eventbrite.com to create your event.

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Digital Tracker May 2010

2010-06-09T08:00:00.001+01:00

The Direct Marketing Association’s Digital Tracker published in May 2010 shows that:

60% of the 1,800+ consumers that took part in the study preferred receiving emails that contained money off, followed by 18% who liked free delivery.
The top three industries that consumers believe are good at promotion are travel and tourism, retail and food with Tesco being the best brand at emailing.

More results can been seen on Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/bryanmiller/dma-digital-tracking-study-may-2010

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Web design process

2010-06-08T13:59:00.004+01:00

What are the key stages in web design?

Recently we've been looking at the whole process of web design and what’s involved.

We don’t offer web design and often recommend great web companies for clients. It's more than just design and development. Looking at the key stages, we think they’re here.

If we’ve missed anything, let me know!

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Digital Marketing Qualifications / Course

2010-06-04T08:00:00.004+01:00

Are you thinking of studying for a digital marketing qualification or attending a digital marketing course?

Here are some options:

The Diploma in Digital Marketing which is assessed by Assignments and can be studied for by Distance Learning.

The modules covered are:

Digital Marketing Essentials
Digital Marketing Planning
Marketing & Consumer Behaviour (double unit). If you already have the Chartered Institute of Marketing Professional Diploma, you are exempt from the Marketing & Consumer Behaviour module.

There is also the CAM Diploma in Managing Digital Media which includes:

Integrating Digital Media and Branding
Implementing Digital Campaigns

For more details see the Oxford College of Marketing website http://www.oxfordcollegeofmarketing.com/cam-digital-marketing.html.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing’s short courses including:

Digital Marketing - 3 days
Digital Marketing Masterclass - 2 days
Digital Metrics and Analytics - 1 day

See the CIM website and the list of courses http://www.cim.co.uk/tandq/training/courseAtoZ.aspx

Evonomie holds social media courses. Our most popular is the Quick Win Digital Marketing Course based on our book Quick Win Digital Marketing by Annmarie Hanlon and Joanna Akins. It covers Social Networking for Business, is half a day and shares secrets on digital marketing tools and how they can generate business for you.

For more information, contact Evonomie using the email evolve@evonomie.net.

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Adding a new tab to a Company Facebook Page

2010-06-01T08:00:00.007+01:00

Can I add a new tab to my company's Facebook page?

Yes, you can. This means that you can rename the tab and add in content using HMTL or Facebook Markup Language (FMBL).

Login to Facebook and search for the Static FBML app.

Just under the logo for the Static FBML app there is a menu item "Add to my Page"

Click the drop down menu to select the page you want to add the app to.

Go to your Company Page and click on Edit Page.

You can now scroll down to edit the FBML tab you have just created and rename it. To add content use HTML oR FBML. More information can be found on the Facebook developer's area.

If you want to add more FBML tabs, this can be done by clicking on the link ADD ANOTHER FBML PAGE (which is found at the bottom of the Edit Page of any of your FBML pages).

Once you have added in the new title and content for this page, go back to your home page and click on the + mark where you will see your added tab. Move this across to the preferred place. You will see that other tabs move along out of sight but can be accessed by clicking on the >> button.

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Diversification Funding

2010-05-27T08:00:00.003+01:00

Did you know? Funding is available for businesses within the West Midlands area who want to diversify? This means help is available to

launch an existing product / service to a new market / customer OR
launch a new product / service to an existing market / customer

The financial support available is towards consultancy and is usually funded 50/50 so Business Link will pay half.

We are a marketing consultancy based in Lichfield and can help you to diversify. We are experts in digital marketing and research and have been established for over 20 years.

If you want to know more, contact Evonomie on 01543 258522 or email evolve@evonomie.net

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Walsall Business Forum event

2010-05-25T08:02:00.000+01:00

Thanks for attending and to all those who came up and asked questions afterwards! For your copy of the presentation click on this link in Slideshare. Don't forget to Tweet / share in LinkedIn ;) These links might also be useful: LINKEDIN Quick Wins for LinkedIn - http://www.smartinsights.com/blog/online-pr-social-media/10-tips-on-using-linked-in-for-marketing-businesses/ LinkedIn Essentials Status Updates on LinkedIn TWITTER Quick Wins for Twitter - http://www.smartinsights.com/blog/online-pr-social-media/quick-wins-twitter-for-businesses-9382/ If you need help with a social media policy, you could start by looking at Free Social Media Policy General marketing quick wins Any questions, do contact me via LinkedIn or our website. Want more Quick Wins? Buy the book. Buy the app.

Derogatory comments about your boss on Facebook

2010-05-21T08:00:00.000+01:00

A survey by YouGov and Croner shows that more than 1 in 10 people under the age of 35 has made a derogatory comment about their boss on Facebook. 11 per cent over under 35 year olds and four per cent of 45+ had also posted similar.

Did you know that http://youropenbook.org provides a facility to search Facebook updates?

The founder wanted to highlight Facebook’s privacy issues.

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Using your iPhone to Pay by Visa

2010-05-19T08:00:00.002+01:00

DeviceFidelity has developed In2PayTM which allows Apple iPhone users to make contactless transactions by using a microSD based app and In2Pay case.

The iPhone fits into the In2Pay case and works with iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G. Payments can be made by waving the iPhone in front of a contactless payment terminal.

DeviceFidelity and Visa worked together to develop the use of Visa PayWave and In2Pay which has now been extended to the iPhone.

"Visa is working to bring the security and convenience of digital currency to mobile users around the world," said Dave Wentker, Head of Mobile Contactless Payments at Visa Inc. "Our collaboration with DeviceFidelity can extend the reach of Visa mobile payments to millions of iPhone users."

It can be password protected and if you lose your mobile your account can be deactivated.

The product will be tested during the second quarter of this year.

For more information see:

http://www.devicefidelity.com
http://corporate.visa.com
Watch the video on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrX8ELi04Tw&feature=player_embedded

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Sharing Blog Articles

2010-05-17T08:00:00.004+01:00

What happens if I click on the Share button in Blogger?

You are reading this article and you might decide it would be of interest to your Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections or your Facebook friends / fans.

Here is what happens if sharing to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. You need to click the Share button and scroll down to the application you want eg Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook.

To Share on Twitter

It asks you to log into your Twitter account.
It pastes in the name of the page eg B2B Marketing: [addings in the bit.ly link to your eg blog article] and adds via @addthis.

To Share on LinkedIn

It shows an image at the top and just shares the blog URL. You can also add a message, post just to a group or groups or send to individuals.

To Share on Facebook

First of all, you need to make sure that only the blog article you want to share is showing so you will need to click on the Title first eg Sharing Blog Articles.

Alternatively, you can click on the Recommend button below the article to recommend to your friends on Facebook.

It will ask you to log in to your account.

You can add in a status update and a thumbnail below (which you can remove). It did not actually work for us in Internet Explorer. It selected an earlier blog article? We tried it in Firefox and it worked fine has then randomly selected a blog article - the one two blogs down from the one I want to share!

Status Updates on LinkedIn

2010-05-13T08:00:00.000+01:00

A status update on LinkedIn is a way of sharing news with your connections or making an announcement. Here are a few ideas for status updates

Tell people what you are working on eg I'm researching the housing market
Promote your expertise eg My book Quick Win Digital Marketing is now available to buy writing see http://www.oaktreepress.com/Ecom1/library3.nsf/CatalogByTitle/30F2BDB18EF8B31C802576560054F41E!OpenDocument
Promote events / open days /new services or products eg Just launched new range of t-shirts for the summer
Ask opinions or advice from your connections
Add promotions eg free webinar on how to create a great LinkedIn profile, book now!
Post your tweet by adding #in to it and it will appear in your LinkedIn status
Let your connections know that your latest newsletter is available and add a link to its location on your website
Share great websites eg http://www.quickwinmarketing.com/

Free Social Media Policy

2010-05-11T08:00:00.001+01:00

Do you need a social media policy? Policytool.net can generate one for you. There are 12 questions which ask:

Your full legal company name
The name that your company is commonly known as (if different)
Who can use your social media policy - everybody or just specific individuals
Whether employees need to get permission before using social media (if yes, the person who can give permission needs to be entered)
Whether employees can use your company as a user name without approval (and the name of the person who needs to give permission)
If there are any well-known employees who should follow this policy for personal use
Any ethical standards employees need to follow?
If you provide any in-house assistance with social media accounts and settings
Whether profiles need to be consistent with the company's website or publications
Do corporate photos need to be used for profile pictures?
Do employees need to use a disclaimer to say their comments are not on behalf of the company
Do you want to add any tips for the successful use of social media?

A social media policy is then generated for you. Visit http://socialmedia.policytool.net/ and follow the instructions.

LinkedIn Essentials

2010-05-06T08:00:00.001+01:00

Using LinkedIn? Here are some quick wins to get the best out of LinkedIn:

Add a photo
Add a description of your job in the title not just your name.If you do not want others to see you have looked at their profile, you need to untick a box in your Privacy Settings, Profile Views
Claim your vanity URL eg uk.linkedin.com/in/joannaakins
Add a company profile
Add your website and other online areas to your profile
Share relevant content to your Twitter account or Facebook Company Page

LinkedIn Company Follow facility

2010-05-05T08:43:00.000+01:00

LinkedIn has added a ‘follow company’ feature. This means that you can keep tabs on company news, new hires and other information at your favourite companies.

Simply find the company on LinkedIn and click on ‘follow company’.
To see all company updates go to More / Companies. All updates from your featured companies show in a timeline.
This is not an anonymous feature as the company profiles show the names of those following.

Facebook's Gross National Happiness

2010-05-04T08:00:00.005+01:00

Facebook's Gross National Happiness is a chart that shows you the days of the year that people are most happy!

It is a Facebook application presented as a graph that will track people's status updates by counting whether the update is positive or negative. This would include, amongst others, such words as 'happy', 'yay', 'awesome' and unhappy words include 'sad', 'doubt' and 'tragic'. The Gross National Happy Index was launched in October 2009 but has recently included the UK. The happiest days are Christmas, New Year and Valentine's Day and Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. http://apps.facebook.com/gnh_index/

Evernote - a place to save everything?

2010-04-30T08:00:00.002+01:00

Evernote is a place to save all your notes, list of to dos, thoughts, photos, reminders and anything else you want to keep in one place. You will need to register first. When you create a new note, a WYSIWYG editor shows where you can type text, include links and attach files including photos.

LinkedIn for business 10 tips

2010-04-27T10:20:00.000+01:00

If you are using LinkedIn these hints will help improve your profile and the results you get from professional networking.

Complete your profile
Add a photo
Organise a professional headline
Get recommended
Make recommendations
Join groups
Ask / answer questions
Update your status
Build connections
Personalise emails

see Smart Insights for details on these 10 ways to use LinkedIn for business and professionals.

The Times 100

2010-04-26T08:00:00.001+01:00

The Times 100 is a good source of information for marketing students and lecturers. It provides:

Case studies
Revision theory
Quizzes

The Times 100 can be found on Twitter so you can be alerted when new material is available on the website www.twitter.com/thetimes100 or you can sign up to receive details by email.

Here are a few of the case studies

Asos - the product life cycle and online fashion http://www.thetimes100.co.uk/case-study--the-product-life-cycle-online-fashion--134-364-1.php
Ikea - SWOT analysis and sustainable business planning http://www.thetimes100.co.uk/case-study--swot-analysis-sustainable-business-planning--110-368-1.php
Parcelforce - using the marketing mix to drive change http://www.thetimes100.co.uk/case-study--using-marketing-mix-to-drive-change--133-374-1.php

Reuters

2010-04-22T08:00:00.002+01:00

If you want to keep up to date with the latest market news or major company news stories visit Reuters at http://uk.reuters.com/ Reuters provides:

The latest market statistics eg FTSE 100 index, NASDAQ.
Company news including the latest share price for the FTSE 100 companies along with share price charts, latest news, company profile which includes a financial synopsis, number of employees and analyst research (you have to pay for this research).
View news stories on large companies.
You can add companies to your portfolio so at a glance you can see latest share prices.

Foursquare

2010-04-16T08:00:00.001+01:00

What is Foursquare? First of all, you need to know some terms: The 'Mayor' - a person who visits a location eg restaurant, store, etc the most frequently over a 30 days period. Check-in - use your mobile's GPS to log in to foursquare and post your location or there is an app for iPhones. Foursquare is a location based program where users can post their location along with other information, eg I am at The Restaurant, offer on 2 meals for the price of 1. When you are at a location such as a shop, restaurant, you 'check-in' to that place by using internet access on your mobile phone. If you are the most frequent visitor within a timeframe of 30 days to The Restaurant, you will be crowned Mayor of that place. Debenhams has been using foursquare and Twitter to let people know they can drop in for a free coffee on a Friday if they check-in to Debenhams Oxford Street on foursquare By offering freebies or offers to the 'Mayor' it encourages people to go to the store, shop, restaurant etc to claim points and become the Mayor. If the location you are checking-in to is not already listed on foursquare, you can add it. Benefits

Retailers will be able to see who is visiting their premises most frequently.
Retailers can increase the number of people visiting their premises by offering offers encouraging check-ins.
Your friends on foursquare will see where you are and you can meet up with them or they simply learn about places you regularly visit - word of mouth marketing.

Potential downsides Pleaserobme.com highlighted the dangers using foursquare and Twitter by providing details of your location.

Those using Facebook should also be aware that posting you're away on holiday is not a good idea.

Twitter's Promoted Tweets

2010-04-14T09:49:00.001+01:00

Twitter launched a new service yesterday called Promoted Tweets. The promoted tweets are being trialled using a number of partners to begin with such as Starbucks. Promoted tweets will appear at the top of the real-time search results page eg search for coffee and you will see the Starbucks promoted tweet. Promoted tweets will look like a normal tweet but display "Promoted by [company name]" at the bottom of it. It will still have all the functionality of a regular tweet eg retweeting. More information is due to be announced today and tomorrow at the Twitter Developer Conference. Follow @chirp on Twitter for news from the conference.

LinkedIn Groups

2010-04-12T08:03:00.000+01:00

How many groups are there on LinkedIn?

How many groups are there on LinkedIn? When I checked last week, there were 542,340 groups, comprised as follows:

Networking - 167,368
Professional - 159,708
Alumni - 97,044
Corporate - 58,270
Non profit - 47,467
Conference - 12,483

The largest area is networking which constantly evolves as new themes emerge. Groups such as 'conference' do come and go depending on the timing of their events. Don't forget, if you can't find a group you want to join - you can always start your own!

Read It Later

2010-04-09T08:00:00.000+01:00

Do you ever get distracted by reading articles on the internet during the day? If so, Read it later is the answer! It is a quick and easy way of saving articles as favourites and reserving some time during the week to read through them all. This may be for writing blog articles, tweeting news or sending useful articles to your clients or just keeping up to date with the latest industry news. Go to http://readitlaterlist.com/ and click on the Add to Firefox or other internet browsers listed below this. For example, choose Internet Explorer, click on Read It Later's web version. Select Read It later under the Available Bookmarklets and then follow the instructions to add the Bookmarklets - you need to hover over the icons, right click and add to your Favourites. After setting this up you can then view your saved pages and click on Reading List to read through them. It is also possible to view your Reading List online by creating an account. There is also a Readitlater iPhone app.

How many characters?

2010-04-06T09:17:00.002+01:00

Social media often restricts the number of characters that can be added to a post, update or profile.

If you’re a company using these digital tools, you need to be able to create biographies, profiles and more in very sort sentences.

Facebook Ads Title - 25 characters Body text - 135 characters LinkedIn Professional Headline - 120 characters Your Profile - 1895 characters Status updates - 141 characters Twitter Bio - 160 characters Name - 15 characters

QUICK WINS

Set up a digital tools doc with all the messages you want to communicate
Edit down to the relevant character / word counts
Spell check and count the number of words
Use the same bio in all your profiles

Free Annual Reports

2010-04-02T08:00:00.000+01:00

Do you need a company's annual report. Here's how to get it: First of all, visit the company's website and you can usually download their annual report or annual review in PDF. If you want a hard copy you could contact the company to ask for one or the Annual Report Service may be able to send these to you by post (you can order up to 25 reports and they will be delivered to you free.) Some of the companies listed only offer their report by email. https://www.orderannualreports.com/

Organising your LinkedIn Profile

2010-03-31T08:00:00.000+01:00

LinkedIn now allows users to move around sections of their LinkedIn profile. So, if you want your recommendations to be the first thing people see when they view your profile you can now move this section to the top. Sign in to your LinkedIn account and go to your Profile. If you hover over each section eg Recommendations, a cross will appear and you can drag the sections around.

How do I add my business to the Google Local Business Directory?

2010-03-29T08:00:00.001+01:00

Adding your business to the Google Local Business Directory Visit http://www.google.com/local/add/ Click on Add new business. Select your Country, complete your business details and click next. The next stage allows you to add more detailed information about your business such as opening hours. The benefit of adding your business to the Google Local Business Directory is that when someone performs a search for eg "restaurant in lichfield" your details will show in the results page along with a map and further information. Recommendations on Google Local Business Directory People can recommend businesses listed in the directory which adds credibility to your business. Guidelines for listings See business listing guidelines at http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=107528