Ok, so Twitter's popularity continues to grow, with user numbers still growing at an impressive rate, and unlike much of the digital social landscape, not fuelled by the youth of the world.
A great source of information, news, research and a great way to network and keep in touch in your professional as well as personal life, Twitter certainly seems to have it all.
So would you like to meet a few of Bluhalo's Twitterers?
@Bluhalo
Had to have a mention really! Includes useful retweets and updates of the latest news, views and information from Bluhalo.
@spg4
Bluhalo's Founder and MD. Spencer tweets about everything digital, with great insight into the future of digital.
@vimal78
Bluhalo's Business Development Director. Vim tweets include a combination of the latest tech info, digital trends and the comings and goings of the agency.
@jocelynkirby
Bluhalo's Marketing Manager, Jocelyn's tweets cover the latest digital marketing news, views and research as well as the latest happenings from the Bluhalo team.
@kunji
One of Bluhalo's longest serving employees, Kunji tweets on the latest of the web. If you want to find out about the hottest new sites online, Kunji is the one to follow.
@pete_white
A member of Bluhalo's digital creative team, if something creative is worth seeing, Pete will be tweeting about it.
So there you have it, an intro to Bluhalo's dedicated twitterers. We are of course (almost) all on Twitter here at Bluhalo, but those mentioned above are the key contributors to Bluhalo's Twittering. Enjoy the show!
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Monday, 25 January 2010
Thursday, 21 January 2010
Twitter Gaming - valid marketing or ethical minefield?
Twitter gaming – one of the hottest topics of recent weeks and one that appears to have caused a divide of opinion in the digital world. As a sure-fire way of gaining large numbers of Twitter followers; and fast; is Twitter gaming just another valid marketing technique that gives brands a great way to reach their target markets with their latest message? Or in a digital world where consumer engagement is built around the ethics of authenticity, genuine interaction and the sharing of useful information, is there still room for the traditional ‘push’ marketing message?
A topic of much contention, and one that our very own Spencer Gallgher, will put to the Digital Loungers at this month's Digital Lounge event next week. If you fancy joining the debate, you can find out more and book online by visiting the Digital Lounge website.
To keep up to date with all things digital, you can follow Spencer on Twitter @spg4.
A topic of much contention, and one that our very own Spencer Gallgher, will put to the Digital Loungers at this month's Digital Lounge event next week. If you fancy joining the debate, you can find out more and book online by visiting the Digital Lounge website.
To keep up to date with all things digital, you can follow Spencer on Twitter @spg4.
Tuesday, 15 December 2009
2009 Roundup and 2010 Predictions
The 2009 roundup and 2010 predictions from EConsultancy makes for great reading!
I particularly like the mentions of real-time and augmented reality, and will watch with great interest for advancements in the analysis and measurement tools out there. With budgets being more carefully spent and the demand for payment by results and quantifiable ROI on the increase, it will cetainly be interesting to see the progression made in this area in 2010.
You can view the full article by clicking here.
Jocelyn Kirby
Marketing & Business Development Manager
Twitter @jocelynkirby
I particularly like the mentions of real-time and augmented reality, and will watch with great interest for advancements in the analysis and measurement tools out there. With budgets being more carefully spent and the demand for payment by results and quantifiable ROI on the increase, it will cetainly be interesting to see the progression made in this area in 2010.
You can view the full article by clicking here.
Jocelyn Kirby
Marketing & Business Development Manager
Twitter @jocelynkirby
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
Writing a Business Blog - stuck for inspiration?
Ok, so today’s blog has come from my lack of inspiration for a topic to write about and it got me thinking… how many people out there that write for a business blog have moments when they are simply struggling for inspiration?
I’m guessing a fair few, so I’ve put together some simple suggestions on how to create inspiration, when the ideas just aren’t a-flowing. Let’s kick off with current news.
Current news is a great source of inspiration for your blog posts – it’s current, therefore relevant and every industry has related news so (if you don’t already) regardless of your industry, find a selection of reliable news sources and monitor them daily – you’ll soon find the creative juices start flowing!
When it comes to current news, don’t just regurgitate a story that you read and find interesting! Read it, think about it and then form your own opinion. Not only are you adding value, you are also then positioning your brand as a thought leader – just be careful not to cross the line to become uber-controversial – it may not impact too positively on your brand, unless controversial is what you’re all about! (The new American Apparel ad that has made it to almost all marketing press today springs to mind)
So current news – read it, think about it, form an educated, well-articulated opinion, blog about it!
So let’s say, like me, today’s news just doesn’t float your blog-writing boat, what next?
Try turning to your colleagues. As immersed in your industry as you are, your colleagues are a great source of ideas for blog posts, if not for the posts themselves! Variety is the spice of life, so why not your blog too? Try enlisting a team of bloggers to contribute to your blog on different aspects of your company and industry – they may need to be coerced from time to time, but writing for a blog is something that many people find satisfying, great for their online personal brand (that’s another post in itself) and a welcome break for their everyday job roles.
Ok, so now I’ll assume that colleagues are less than co-operative / busy / out of the office… what now?
It is often difficult to come up with an idea for a post from nowhere. So let’s consider why you write your blog? To drive sales leads? To increase brand awareness? To position your business as an authority in your industry? To help others? Hopefully it is a beautifully balanced amalgamation of all four of the above, but whatever the motivation behind your blog, use that as a starting point for idea generation.
If you want to generate sales leads, consider your key search terms and use this as a basis for an article, discuss a new product line, or simply showcase a recent client success. To increase brand awareness and present your business as an authority, consider focusing (ethically, unlike Habitat’s Twitter PR disaster) on incredibly popular and of-the-minute topics related to your industry to gain maximum coverage and increased likelihood of social sharing. If you want to help others? Consider ‘top tips’, ‘how-to’ guides and general information provision.
Regardless of your motivation, ensure you pay careful consideration to your target market, tone of voice and messaging – get that wrong and your blog may miss the mark altogether!
For more blogging tips, you can check out our previous post on 5 simple tips to blogging successfully.
Jocelyn Kirby
Marketing & Business Development Manager
I’m guessing a fair few, so I’ve put together some simple suggestions on how to create inspiration, when the ideas just aren’t a-flowing. Let’s kick off with current news.
Current news is a great source of inspiration for your blog posts – it’s current, therefore relevant and every industry has related news so (if you don’t already) regardless of your industry, find a selection of reliable news sources and monitor them daily – you’ll soon find the creative juices start flowing!
When it comes to current news, don’t just regurgitate a story that you read and find interesting! Read it, think about it and then form your own opinion. Not only are you adding value, you are also then positioning your brand as a thought leader – just be careful not to cross the line to become uber-controversial – it may not impact too positively on your brand, unless controversial is what you’re all about! (The new American Apparel ad that has made it to almost all marketing press today springs to mind)
So current news – read it, think about it, form an educated, well-articulated opinion, blog about it!
So let’s say, like me, today’s news just doesn’t float your blog-writing boat, what next?
Try turning to your colleagues. As immersed in your industry as you are, your colleagues are a great source of ideas for blog posts, if not for the posts themselves! Variety is the spice of life, so why not your blog too? Try enlisting a team of bloggers to contribute to your blog on different aspects of your company and industry – they may need to be coerced from time to time, but writing for a blog is something that many people find satisfying, great for their online personal brand (that’s another post in itself) and a welcome break for their everyday job roles.
Ok, so now I’ll assume that colleagues are less than co-operative / busy / out of the office… what now?
It is often difficult to come up with an idea for a post from nowhere. So let’s consider why you write your blog? To drive sales leads? To increase brand awareness? To position your business as an authority in your industry? To help others? Hopefully it is a beautifully balanced amalgamation of all four of the above, but whatever the motivation behind your blog, use that as a starting point for idea generation.
If you want to generate sales leads, consider your key search terms and use this as a basis for an article, discuss a new product line, or simply showcase a recent client success. To increase brand awareness and present your business as an authority, consider focusing (ethically, unlike Habitat’s Twitter PR disaster) on incredibly popular and of-the-minute topics related to your industry to gain maximum coverage and increased likelihood of social sharing. If you want to help others? Consider ‘top tips’, ‘how-to’ guides and general information provision.
Regardless of your motivation, ensure you pay careful consideration to your target market, tone of voice and messaging – get that wrong and your blog may miss the mark altogether!
For more blogging tips, you can check out our previous post on 5 simple tips to blogging successfully.
Jocelyn Kirby
Marketing & Business Development Manager
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Twitter Hashtag Competitions - Just Spam?
The recent increase in popularity of the use of hashtags on Twitter (used as a way of creating groupings for Tweets based on keywords), has given rise to an increase in the use of hashtags for ‘spam’.
Not limited to the domain of the stereotypical spammer, we have seen significant numbers of reputable brands falling prey to the attraction of hashtags, only to be shot down and their attempts labeled as spam.
One of the most recent high profile examples was Habitat’s less than thoughtful use of trending hashtags to gain following and exposure on Twitter, even using hashtags related to the Iran election to gain coverage. Not a clever move, and one which left Habitat reeling from the criticism and #habitatfail comments that flooded the Tweetsphere.
So, if a brand as respectable as Habitat can be so unethical in its use of hashtags, it is no wonder that a recent NMA poll showed that 61% of us feel that Twitter competitions by brands which ask users to retweet hashtags are just spam.
So, before you launch a competition on Twitter using hashtags, think again…
Jocelyn Kirby
Marketing & Business Development Manager
@jocelynkirby
Not limited to the domain of the stereotypical spammer, we have seen significant numbers of reputable brands falling prey to the attraction of hashtags, only to be shot down and their attempts labeled as spam.
One of the most recent high profile examples was Habitat’s less than thoughtful use of trending hashtags to gain following and exposure on Twitter, even using hashtags related to the Iran election to gain coverage. Not a clever move, and one which left Habitat reeling from the criticism and #habitatfail comments that flooded the Tweetsphere.
So, if a brand as respectable as Habitat can be so unethical in its use of hashtags, it is no wonder that a recent NMA poll showed that 61% of us feel that Twitter competitions by brands which ask users to retweet hashtags are just spam.
So, before you launch a competition on Twitter using hashtags, think again…
Jocelyn Kirby
Marketing & Business Development Manager
@jocelynkirby
Thursday, 6 August 2009
B2B Social Media Marketing
There has been many a discussion on the merits of social media as both a channel for lead generation and relationship building. But where benefits lie, so apply the hidden rules of ethical marketing. At what point does using social media for lead generation become spam? To what extent can you build a professional relationship with someone in their ‘personal’ social space?
With many debates and opinions on the above in the social sphere, it’s clear to see why some brands have got it wrong. Yet there are also many B2B brands that have got it right. Dell, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Cap Gemini are all examples of brands using Twitter for engagement AND lead generation that also appear to be getting the balance right. Dell, probably the most cited example of a B2B brand’s use of Twitter, boasts more than $3M in sales since its launch of @DellOutlet in 2007. In contrast to Dell’s sales driven approach, Cap Gemini, Sun and IBM focus on more of an engaging and informative approach, yet are still only part of a handful of well-known B2B brands making real use of Twitter.
But can you really apply social media in B2B marketing?
The answer to this question is an absolute, resounding, YES! Social media provides us with unprecedented access to the entire decision making unit, including that elusive C-level executive. Free from the traditional gatekeepers, direct engagement of the ultimate decision maker is now possible like never before, leaving the playing field wide open for a new breed of marketer.
So what can you do to make sure you get it right?
The changing face of the marketing department of today signifies that marketers are committed to the whole-hearted embracement of social media, with new roles such as ‘Chief Listening Officer’, indicating the enormity of the impact social media is having on today’s business world. Yet still, many brands are dabbling in social media without the appropriate planning, research and investment – often causing more damage than is gained in brand equity.
To fully commit to social media, brands must give proper consideration to a number of factors not least including objective and KPI setting, targeting, tone of voice, consistency of brand message, and more importantly, the brand’s overall digital roadmap.
In B2B we are lucky, not only are we highly attuned to the detailed analysis of campaign metrics and ROI performance, we are already well-practised in niche targeting, something that many a B2C marketer is still coming to terms with in the digital world. With this in mind, B2B social media marketing not only provides B2B marketers with a truly exciting engagement opportunity; approached thoughtfully, it also gives the opportunity for B2B brands to outshine their so often overrated B2C counterparts.
With many debates and opinions on the above in the social sphere, it’s clear to see why some brands have got it wrong. Yet there are also many B2B brands that have got it right. Dell, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Cap Gemini are all examples of brands using Twitter for engagement AND lead generation that also appear to be getting the balance right. Dell, probably the most cited example of a B2B brand’s use of Twitter, boasts more than $3M in sales since its launch of @DellOutlet in 2007. In contrast to Dell’s sales driven approach, Cap Gemini, Sun and IBM focus on more of an engaging and informative approach, yet are still only part of a handful of well-known B2B brands making real use of Twitter.
But can you really apply social media in B2B marketing?
The answer to this question is an absolute, resounding, YES! Social media provides us with unprecedented access to the entire decision making unit, including that elusive C-level executive. Free from the traditional gatekeepers, direct engagement of the ultimate decision maker is now possible like never before, leaving the playing field wide open for a new breed of marketer.
So what can you do to make sure you get it right?
The changing face of the marketing department of today signifies that marketers are committed to the whole-hearted embracement of social media, with new roles such as ‘Chief Listening Officer’, indicating the enormity of the impact social media is having on today’s business world. Yet still, many brands are dabbling in social media without the appropriate planning, research and investment – often causing more damage than is gained in brand equity.
To fully commit to social media, brands must give proper consideration to a number of factors not least including objective and KPI setting, targeting, tone of voice, consistency of brand message, and more importantly, the brand’s overall digital roadmap.
In B2B we are lucky, not only are we highly attuned to the detailed analysis of campaign metrics and ROI performance, we are already well-practised in niche targeting, something that many a B2C marketer is still coming to terms with in the digital world. With this in mind, B2B social media marketing not only provides B2B marketers with a truly exciting engagement opportunity; approached thoughtfully, it also gives the opportunity for B2B brands to outshine their so often overrated B2C counterparts.
Thursday, 30 July 2009
The Role of the Chief Listening Officer
So, there is a lot of discussion as to the purpose of the latest buzz role within large businesses; the ‘Chief Listening Officer’.
It sounds silly, we know. In fact, I do rather like to think that as an Account Manager, the term ‘Good Will Ambassador’ should most certainly be written into my job spec. However, the appointment of an individual whose role is solely based on engaging with consumer thoughts and most likely, gripes, must certainly be considered within brands.
Customer Think, “Customer-Centric Business Strategists”, believes that consumers will “remain loyal only to those who demonstrate that they value their relationship. In this chaotic and complex life, trust will become more critical, and companies that can earn and retain a customer's trust will be in a privileged position. They will have the edge in selling to that customer.”
Today, in the social networking space, the potential to engage and proactively tackle customer issues not only one on one, but en masse, is endless and brands must be aware that the social networking space cannot be overlooked as an area in which great damage can be done to a brand or product’s reputation. At this point we must of course reference the Stephen Fry vs Sony Vaio rampage.
Not only can individual customer gripes be tackled, a CLO can also track trends and patterns, positive and negative feedback, and hopefully, improve a brand’s products to better suit the needs of their customer in the first place!
Using Stephen Fry vs Sony Vaio as just one example (Stephen Fry is currently being followed on Twitter by 680,885 tweeters), we believe that appointing the role of a Chief Listening Officer, hammy as it sounds, is a jolly good idea.
Alternatively, brands are more than welcome to give Bluhalo a call and we can assist you in keeping your ears to the ground!
It sounds silly, we know. In fact, I do rather like to think that as an Account Manager, the term ‘Good Will Ambassador’ should most certainly be written into my job spec. However, the appointment of an individual whose role is solely based on engaging with consumer thoughts and most likely, gripes, must certainly be considered within brands.
Customer Think, “Customer-Centric Business Strategists”, believes that consumers will “remain loyal only to those who demonstrate that they value their relationship. In this chaotic and complex life, trust will become more critical, and companies that can earn and retain a customer's trust will be in a privileged position. They will have the edge in selling to that customer.”
Today, in the social networking space, the potential to engage and proactively tackle customer issues not only one on one, but en masse, is endless and brands must be aware that the social networking space cannot be overlooked as an area in which great damage can be done to a brand or product’s reputation. At this point we must of course reference the Stephen Fry vs Sony Vaio rampage.
Not only can individual customer gripes be tackled, a CLO can also track trends and patterns, positive and negative feedback, and hopefully, improve a brand’s products to better suit the needs of their customer in the first place!
Using Stephen Fry vs Sony Vaio as just one example (Stephen Fry is currently being followed on Twitter by 680,885 tweeters), we believe that appointing the role of a Chief Listening Officer, hammy as it sounds, is a jolly good idea.
Alternatively, brands are more than welcome to give Bluhalo a call and we can assist you in keeping your ears to the ground!
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
Newspapers - death by social media?
There are increasing rumblings in the online newspaper world as Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times speaking at a Media Standards Trust event, said he expects almost all newspapers to begin charging for their online content within a year, echoing News Corp's Rupert Murdoch's recent prediction. Both the Financial Times and Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal currently offer some free content but charge for premium access. Murdoch plans to start charging for access to all their sites within a year. This month, the New York Times decided it would move ahead with its plan to charge for online content after proposing the idea to readers through a survey, asking: "How likely would you be to pay a $2.50 monthly fee -- which would be a 50% discount for home delivery subscribers -- for continued, unlimited access to nytimes.com?"
So how would you feel if you had to start paying for access to online newspapers? You probably wouldn’t care; I certainly wouldn’t, but it seems as if, in these ever increasing hard economic times, it is certainly the route that most newspaper companies are heading, as a way to recoup their falling revenues from advertisers who are abandoning them in their droves, along with the purchasers of their newspapers.
I can understand why people would pay for financial information etc., but why would we bother to pay for general news stories, which form the bulk of the copy, when we’ve got used to having instant access to information via mobiles as well as our computers? With the onslaught of Twitter and other social networking sites, the world can know about events from people who are there, long before the news networks get their people on location. For example, news of Michael Jackson’s death appeared on both, hours before the story was covered by official news sources.
In my opinion, the newspapers need to think ‘outside the box’ in the same way that glossy magazines did a few years ago. The relatively ‘cheap treat’ for a woman of buying a magazine that she can pick up and read wherever she wants (which now also come in different sizes, so you can even choose one that even fits in your handbag!) will always exist; but when a monthly magazine has long lead times, the website offers the perfect channel for covering all sorts of stories that would otherwise be ignored as old news by the time the next issue was going to the printers.
The successful launch of the UK Vogue site some years ago allowed different editorial content to be created, so that fashionistas could have a daily fix of fashion news which complemented their monthly magazine read. It ensured that the catwalk shows could be covered instantly, with image and video coverage of not just the clothes, but interviews with the designers and coverage of who was attending which shows and with whom – all compulsive information for people in and lovers of the fashion industry!
But the secret to their success was providing something new and different that readers couldn’t easily get from other sources. With a dedicated team with their fingers on the pulse, they could provide all the inside track on their site, but free of charge. Although online newspapers can potentially do the same thing, why on earth would we ever be persuaded to pay for news that we can get from lots of other sources? Beats me…
Jill Thater
Client Services Director
So how would you feel if you had to start paying for access to online newspapers? You probably wouldn’t care; I certainly wouldn’t, but it seems as if, in these ever increasing hard economic times, it is certainly the route that most newspaper companies are heading, as a way to recoup their falling revenues from advertisers who are abandoning them in their droves, along with the purchasers of their newspapers.
I can understand why people would pay for financial information etc., but why would we bother to pay for general news stories, which form the bulk of the copy, when we’ve got used to having instant access to information via mobiles as well as our computers? With the onslaught of Twitter and other social networking sites, the world can know about events from people who are there, long before the news networks get their people on location. For example, news of Michael Jackson’s death appeared on both, hours before the story was covered by official news sources.
In my opinion, the newspapers need to think ‘outside the box’ in the same way that glossy magazines did a few years ago. The relatively ‘cheap treat’ for a woman of buying a magazine that she can pick up and read wherever she wants (which now also come in different sizes, so you can even choose one that even fits in your handbag!) will always exist; but when a monthly magazine has long lead times, the website offers the perfect channel for covering all sorts of stories that would otherwise be ignored as old news by the time the next issue was going to the printers.
The successful launch of the UK Vogue site some years ago allowed different editorial content to be created, so that fashionistas could have a daily fix of fashion news which complemented their monthly magazine read. It ensured that the catwalk shows could be covered instantly, with image and video coverage of not just the clothes, but interviews with the designers and coverage of who was attending which shows and with whom – all compulsive information for people in and lovers of the fashion industry!
But the secret to their success was providing something new and different that readers couldn’t easily get from other sources. With a dedicated team with their fingers on the pulse, they could provide all the inside track on their site, but free of charge. Although online newspapers can potentially do the same thing, why on earth would we ever be persuaded to pay for news that we can get from lots of other sources? Beats me…
Jill Thater
Client Services Director
Monday, 15 June 2009
Wave hello to Google…..
One thing that you rarely hear in the Bluhalo office, is a group of developers whooping and wolf whistling en masse. Therefore, I can only conclude that the group of 4000 developers who attended the Google Wave Developer Preview I/O 2009, and did just that, were watching something incredibly exciting.
Many of us have been impressed, if not slightly dumbfounded, with the boom in popularity of online social networking that has occurred over the past few of years. Sites such as Bebo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter seem to have shot up in popularity almost overnight, to the point where those who are not involved begin to feel rather like social pariahs.
Google Wave seems set to trump all of these social networking sites, or at least be made available to be imbedded in the most popular of these. Users can also integrate their networking sites into Google Wave.
Mashable describes the Google Wave as “a real-time communication platform. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been or share files.”
Most of Google Wave is real time. It even, in my opinion, out-does Instant Messaging. Although with many IM services, we are made aware of the fact that the participants in our conversation are writing a message, we are still made to wait for them to hit return, prior to viewing their message and responding. With Google Wave, conversations are truly live because participants can see others type character by character.
A Wave, or topic, is opened, and invited participants are free to contribute. It is truly collaborative. There is also a playback tool so that users can view the history of the Wave and edit at any point, should they so wish. More than one user can also edit a wave at once.
Here, we have given a brief mention to just a few of the cool features…
- There is a translation tool called ‘Rosy’, which enables users to contribute in their own language, which will then be translated to the chosen language, should the participants wish. This happens as the user types.
- A Google search can be conducted from inside a wave, which will then give the writer the option of adding a link.
- A place name can be converted to a map.
- Videos can be embedded.
- Even the spell check is advanced- ‘Spelly’, as the Google development team are affectionately nicknaming it, takes the context of a word and matches it against an enormous language model that has been built from much of the world wide web.
There are also many other “nicknames’ that we will need to get used to. One of these is ‘Twave’. A Twave is a Wave of Tweets. Once the Twave has been embedded in the Wave, everyone following this Tweet on Twitter, can make comments which will also appear on the Wave.
The development team have warned that it may take time for some of users to realize many of the benefits of the Wave because we are so used to working with older tools but although Google are still developing this for use in the workplace, so far, the Wave is shaping up to be a great tool for document production.
The list of cool things that can be done using this tool is almost endless so we will leave you to explore the possibilities further yourselves by watching the Developer Preview on YouTube.
Anya Gooch
Account Manager
Many of us have been impressed, if not slightly dumbfounded, with the boom in popularity of online social networking that has occurred over the past few of years. Sites such as Bebo, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter seem to have shot up in popularity almost overnight, to the point where those who are not involved begin to feel rather like social pariahs.
Google Wave seems set to trump all of these social networking sites, or at least be made available to be imbedded in the most popular of these. Users can also integrate their networking sites into Google Wave.
Mashable describes the Google Wave as “a real-time communication platform. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been or share files.”
Most of Google Wave is real time. It even, in my opinion, out-does Instant Messaging. Although with many IM services, we are made aware of the fact that the participants in our conversation are writing a message, we are still made to wait for them to hit return, prior to viewing their message and responding. With Google Wave, conversations are truly live because participants can see others type character by character.
A Wave, or topic, is opened, and invited participants are free to contribute. It is truly collaborative. There is also a playback tool so that users can view the history of the Wave and edit at any point, should they so wish. More than one user can also edit a wave at once.
Here, we have given a brief mention to just a few of the cool features…
- There is a translation tool called ‘Rosy’, which enables users to contribute in their own language, which will then be translated to the chosen language, should the participants wish. This happens as the user types.
- A Google search can be conducted from inside a wave, which will then give the writer the option of adding a link.
- A place name can be converted to a map.
- Videos can be embedded.
- Even the spell check is advanced- ‘Spelly’, as the Google development team are affectionately nicknaming it, takes the context of a word and matches it against an enormous language model that has been built from much of the world wide web.
There are also many other “nicknames’ that we will need to get used to. One of these is ‘Twave’. A Twave is a Wave of Tweets. Once the Twave has been embedded in the Wave, everyone following this Tweet on Twitter, can make comments which will also appear on the Wave.
The development team have warned that it may take time for some of users to realize many of the benefits of the Wave because we are so used to working with older tools but although Google are still developing this for use in the workplace, so far, the Wave is shaping up to be a great tool for document production.
The list of cool things that can be done using this tool is almost endless so we will leave you to explore the possibilities further yourselves by watching the Developer Preview on YouTube.
Anya Gooch
Account Manager
Thursday, 4 June 2009
Tweets, Dweets and Hashtags
If you find yourself a little confused as to what all of the Twitter-related terms mean, then you are not alone. Twitter is creating a host of new words for the English language and the meanings aren't always clear at first glance.
Today, I came across a great starting point to help you understand the ins-and outs of Twitter and related vocabulary - Twictionary, a glossary from UTalkMarketing - worth a read if you want to be in the know about your Tweets, Dweets and Hashtags!
If that gives you a taste for more, your Twitter homepage gives you a Twitter-related word definition every time you refresh, revealing yet more Twitter words and new services born out of the Twitter revolution. Enjoy!
Jocelyn Kirby
Marketing & Business Development Manager
Today, I came across a great starting point to help you understand the ins-and outs of Twitter and related vocabulary - Twictionary, a glossary from UTalkMarketing - worth a read if you want to be in the know about your Tweets, Dweets and Hashtags!
If that gives you a taste for more, your Twitter homepage gives you a Twitter-related word definition every time you refresh, revealing yet more Twitter words and new services born out of the Twitter revolution. Enjoy!
Jocelyn Kirby
Marketing & Business Development Manager
Friday, 15 May 2009
Site Spotting: Top 5 sites this month
Welcome to my second installment of site spotting. I hope you enjoyed the first, if you missed it you can view it here. I normally post my finds on twitter but this month I’m sharing my top 5 sites i found in April with you.
I hope you enjoy my top 5, lookout for next months top 5. If you want to keep track of sites I find follow me on twitter @kunji.
Kunji
- Namechk
namechk
check to see if your desired username or vanity url is still available at dozens of popular social networking and social bookmarking websites.
http://www.namechk.com/ - Doodlewall
a virtual wall
where everybody can draw.
http://www.doodlewall.com/ - Quick.tv
make video interactive
with advanced interactive tools, professional web video publishers can inject interactivity into videos with a quick click, drag, and drop.
http://www.quick.tv/ - Tipjoy
simple social payments for great people
makes it easy for people to earn money from and give money to people, causes and content.
http://tipjoy.com/ - Deep Zoom Pix
explore photos like never before
enables you to explore and share photos in a new and interactive way.
http://www.deepzoompix.com/
I hope you enjoy my top 5, lookout for next months top 5. If you want to keep track of sites I find follow me on twitter @kunji.
Kunji
Monday, 27 April 2009
Top Web Trends... for the immediate future
1. Broadcast/Audio Revolution....
What’s after Twitter? Maybe Qik.com? 12 Second TV and Audioboo are the next thing to fuel our egos or the need to tell the world what we are up to via video or audiomicro blogs, watch this space for further updates.
2. Mobile Revolution
As predicted by us only a couple of years ago, we are now en masse handsets with the ability to successfully render actual websites, we have a little way to go, but be under no illusion it’s the beginning of the end for WAP and small screens are already getting larger. With many websites (such as Facebook and Twitter) seeing a large proportion of their users engaging via mobile, the significance of mobile internet users should now be grabbing your attention, if it hasn’t already. Your customers (or fans as we often call them) and other website visitors are no longer limited to the PC or laptop. Start thinking about how you can capitalise on this. So could an iPhone App, Android App or Blackberry App transform the way your customers or employees engage with your brand or business?
3. The Cloud
If there is one way to start thinking green, think about where and how your website is hosted. Using the Cloud can be much more power efficient. It’s huge and we love it! Giving sites quicker loading times, a more cost efficient service and better reliability, The Cloud is here to stay (for the time being anyway). We’re looking forward to further advances and a maturation of the marketplace starting with the Open Cloud Manifesto, giving true scalability and cross-platform compatibility – you can find out more about this in our blog article on the Open Cloud Manifesto.
4. SAAS
Possibly one of the most significant trends on the web today, Software as a Service is fast becoming an internet phenomenon. Closely related to The Cloud, SaaS provides software to users without the need to physically buy the software, use hard drive space or implement updates. Providing a dramatically improved user experience, variety of subscription models and greater control for the software provider, SaaS is set to make it big in both the software and gaming worlds. You can find out more about it in our blog article.
5. On Demand Services
We’re familiar with on demand TV both on TV and online. Extending this model further, there has been a recent increase in a variety of other on demand services, partly thanks to the increase in popularity of SaaS. With gaming, music, software (to name a few) all seeing a rise in usage, and with the recent high profile launch of Quake Live, on demand services will continue to grow in terms of reach – potentially extending into other areas of our physical lives as technologies become more sophisticated. Playstation ‘home’, the equivalent of Second Life could be the perfect place for these environments to develop.
6. Social Media Mashups
Mashups come in all shapes and sizes, with social media mashups providing a host of additional opportunities for brands to engage and interact with their consumers. The applications are virtually limitless… If you’re in retail marketing you’ll know that people buy online (and offline) based on recommendations and reviews – fact. So, imagine taking all the positive talk on your brand from the social media world and showing it next to the relevant products on your ecommerce site – starting to get excited by this…? You can read more about mashups in our recent blog article.
7. Brand Buzz Monitoring
“To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person”, although said by Bruce Lee in relation to martial arts is very applicable to your brand online. More so than ever before, your brand is not in any way, shape or form limited to the parameters dictated by your brand guidelines. Your brand is a product of the input of thousands, maybe millions of people from around the world giving their opinion of your brand, publicly loving or hating it, praising or complaining about it and the chances are, you probably don’t even see the majority of this – the brand you’ve created and you see is likely to only be the tip of the iceberg. Brand buzz monitoring gives you the ability to not only monitor your complete brand (warts and all) and its mentions online, it also gives you the opportunity to respond and interact with all that touch your brand. The value of this is, frankly speaking, invaluable, and with many brands enthusiastically embracing the huge potential of brand buzz monitoring online, now is definitely not the time to be left behind! To find out more about buzz monitoring and social media ROI, read our recent blog article.
8. Web 3.0 (update)
Web 3.0 is all about getting your computer to act on your thoughts to help you get things done without you having to do anything...it’s early stages but it’s certainly exciting. For starters it’s worth checking out Gazaro, a brand based search engine that keeps an eye on product pricing to keep you up to date with the best prices. Another of these new wave search engines worth watching is Evri, not new but an early semantic search engine.
9. Pervasive Web
Very much linked to Web 3.0, it’s almost here and when it does go mainstream, the pervasive web is going to make a pretty huge splash in the same way Twitter did at the beginning of this year. We’re keen on Ztamp:s, part of the Nabaztag’s growing line of accessories. They can get your umbrella to tell you the weather forecast or your coffee mug to read out the latest business news! Sound too futuristic to be true? You can check out Ztamp:s and the rest of the accessory range on Ztore.
10. Simplicity
It doesn’t always have to be about an all singing, all dancing, cutting edge website (of course we love those too), but to quote Einstein “simplicity is the ultimate complexity”. Some of the most successful things online have been born out of the simplest ideas – just think about Google and Twitter! A great site we’ve come across recently is Domai.nr – really useful in a world where it is increasingly difficult to find the perfect domain name.
If you'd like to talk to us about any of the above, or any other aspect of your brand's online presence, then give us a call on 01252 70 11 11 or drop us an email.
What’s after Twitter? Maybe Qik.com? 12 Second TV and Audioboo are the next thing to fuel our egos or the need to tell the world what we are up to via video or audiomicro blogs, watch this space for further updates.
2. Mobile Revolution
As predicted by us only a couple of years ago, we are now en masse handsets with the ability to successfully render actual websites, we have a little way to go, but be under no illusion it’s the beginning of the end for WAP and small screens are already getting larger. With many websites (such as Facebook and Twitter) seeing a large proportion of their users engaging via mobile, the significance of mobile internet users should now be grabbing your attention, if it hasn’t already. Your customers (or fans as we often call them) and other website visitors are no longer limited to the PC or laptop. Start thinking about how you can capitalise on this. So could an iPhone App, Android App or Blackberry App transform the way your customers or employees engage with your brand or business?
3. The Cloud
If there is one way to start thinking green, think about where and how your website is hosted. Using the Cloud can be much more power efficient. It’s huge and we love it! Giving sites quicker loading times, a more cost efficient service and better reliability, The Cloud is here to stay (for the time being anyway). We’re looking forward to further advances and a maturation of the marketplace starting with the Open Cloud Manifesto, giving true scalability and cross-platform compatibility – you can find out more about this in our blog article on the Open Cloud Manifesto.
4. SAAS
Possibly one of the most significant trends on the web today, Software as a Service is fast becoming an internet phenomenon. Closely related to The Cloud, SaaS provides software to users without the need to physically buy the software, use hard drive space or implement updates. Providing a dramatically improved user experience, variety of subscription models and greater control for the software provider, SaaS is set to make it big in both the software and gaming worlds. You can find out more about it in our blog article.
5. On Demand Services
We’re familiar with on demand TV both on TV and online. Extending this model further, there has been a recent increase in a variety of other on demand services, partly thanks to the increase in popularity of SaaS. With gaming, music, software (to name a few) all seeing a rise in usage, and with the recent high profile launch of Quake Live, on demand services will continue to grow in terms of reach – potentially extending into other areas of our physical lives as technologies become more sophisticated. Playstation ‘home’, the equivalent of Second Life could be the perfect place for these environments to develop.
6. Social Media Mashups
Mashups come in all shapes and sizes, with social media mashups providing a host of additional opportunities for brands to engage and interact with their consumers. The applications are virtually limitless… If you’re in retail marketing you’ll know that people buy online (and offline) based on recommendations and reviews – fact. So, imagine taking all the positive talk on your brand from the social media world and showing it next to the relevant products on your ecommerce site – starting to get excited by this…? You can read more about mashups in our recent blog article.
7. Brand Buzz Monitoring
“To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person”, although said by Bruce Lee in relation to martial arts is very applicable to your brand online. More so than ever before, your brand is not in any way, shape or form limited to the parameters dictated by your brand guidelines. Your brand is a product of the input of thousands, maybe millions of people from around the world giving their opinion of your brand, publicly loving or hating it, praising or complaining about it and the chances are, you probably don’t even see the majority of this – the brand you’ve created and you see is likely to only be the tip of the iceberg. Brand buzz monitoring gives you the ability to not only monitor your complete brand (warts and all) and its mentions online, it also gives you the opportunity to respond and interact with all that touch your brand. The value of this is, frankly speaking, invaluable, and with many brands enthusiastically embracing the huge potential of brand buzz monitoring online, now is definitely not the time to be left behind! To find out more about buzz monitoring and social media ROI, read our recent blog article.
8. Web 3.0 (update)
Web 3.0 is all about getting your computer to act on your thoughts to help you get things done without you having to do anything...it’s early stages but it’s certainly exciting. For starters it’s worth checking out Gazaro, a brand based search engine that keeps an eye on product pricing to keep you up to date with the best prices. Another of these new wave search engines worth watching is Evri, not new but an early semantic search engine.
9. Pervasive Web
Very much linked to Web 3.0, it’s almost here and when it does go mainstream, the pervasive web is going to make a pretty huge splash in the same way Twitter did at the beginning of this year. We’re keen on Ztamp:s, part of the Nabaztag’s growing line of accessories. They can get your umbrella to tell you the weather forecast or your coffee mug to read out the latest business news! Sound too futuristic to be true? You can check out Ztamp:s and the rest of the accessory range on Ztore.
10. Simplicity
It doesn’t always have to be about an all singing, all dancing, cutting edge website (of course we love those too), but to quote Einstein “simplicity is the ultimate complexity”. Some of the most successful things online have been born out of the simplest ideas – just think about Google and Twitter! A great site we’ve come across recently is Domai.nr – really useful in a world where it is increasingly difficult to find the perfect domain name.
If you'd like to talk to us about any of the above, or any other aspect of your brand's online presence, then give us a call on 01252 70 11 11 or drop us an email.
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
Site Spotting: Top 5 sites for March
I trawl the web everyday and sometimes if I’m lucky I spot a site that catches my eye, has something interesting that I can’t resist sharing. I normally post my finds on twitter but this month I’m going to share my top 5 sites i found in March with you.
I hope you enjoy my top 5, lookout for next months top 5. If you want to keep track of sites I find follow me on twitter @kunji.
Kunji
- TwInfluence
twitter influence analyzer
This analyzer measures twitterers and followers as well as social network analysis to find out who has the most influence on twitter.
http://twinfluence.com/ - Twerbosepost
longer tweets on twitter when 140 characters just is not enough.
Twitter has a limit of 140 characters that can be posted to it but if you want to say more you can use Twerbose.
http://twerbose.com/ - Veri
personalised news for you
Vote for news you like and news you don’t and veri’s personalization technology learns to deliver the topics and news you prefer.
http://www.veri.com/ - Hollr
shout about favorite new products
Hollr allows users to show off products that they think are great and will be a success, like a product? Hollr about it.
http://www.hollrr.com/ - Onlive
the future of gaming
Games on demand via your TV, PC or Mac through you broadband connection. Currently in private beta testing in the US, can’t wait to see it in action!
http://www.onlive.com/
I hope you enjoy my top 5, lookout for next months top 5. If you want to keep track of sites I find follow me on twitter @kunji.
Kunji
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Can You Measure Social Media ROI?
The short answer is Yes, you can measure social media ROI. If you explore this question in a little more detail however, you’ll quickly come to the conclusion that when it comes to social media, ROI is not frequently going to be directly financial.
But as we know that there is much more to marketing than direct financial return, and with many brands already reaping the benefits of social media (and many feeling the pain of jumping in without consideration), there’s something about social media that brings a whole new dimension to the world of marketing. And when we refer to social media, we don’t just mean Facebook advertising, we’re talking about customer interaction, real conversations and relationship building.
How can you measure social media ROI?
Measuring social media ROI is a much discussed topic, and a topic that has historically been difficult to achieve consensus upon, not least because business objectives when approaching social media can vary quite significantly.
So what are the options?
As marketers, it’s numbers - quantifiable results, that secure budgets and with a largely qualitative medium, you’ve got to work hard to prove its worth. There are a number of things you can do and online resources that are available to assist you in putting together a convincing report of your social media success:
- Start with the obvious
Before you do anything else, make sure that you don’t forget to monitor the obvious stats. They’re easy to get hold of and tell you a lot about your standing in the social media world. Start with stats such as Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Flickr contacts, YouTube friends – working on building your presence in these popular communities is a good starting point if you’re new to social media marketing.
- Monitor brand buzz
Keep an eye on how frequently and in what context your brand is mentioned on social media sites – you can do this by using a number of the Twitter applications that are now available - setting up a search in Tweetdeck to monitor mentions of your brand name is a great start.
- Analyse the stats
Just as you monitor your website for traffic levels, unique visitors, time on site, bounce rates etc (and if you don’t, you should!), any reputable analytics package will also let you monitor your referring sites – sites that are sending you traffic. This lets you monitor how much traffic you are getting from social media sites. If you want to be sure the figures you’re getting are accurate, take an average pre-social media campaign and compare this to your stats whilst on-campaign. If you have a more advanced package, then you’ll be able to track right from referred site through to conversion – giving you a quantifiable and directly attributable financial result from your social media campaign.
- More quantitative measurement
There are also an increasing number of online measurement tools that can help to justify your social media spend and give you a guide as to the effectiveness of your social media efforts. A couple of examples of such sites are:
Marketing & Business Development Manager
But as we know that there is much more to marketing than direct financial return, and with many brands already reaping the benefits of social media (and many feeling the pain of jumping in without consideration), there’s something about social media that brings a whole new dimension to the world of marketing. And when we refer to social media, we don’t just mean Facebook advertising, we’re talking about customer interaction, real conversations and relationship building.
How can you measure social media ROI?
Measuring social media ROI is a much discussed topic, and a topic that has historically been difficult to achieve consensus upon, not least because business objectives when approaching social media can vary quite significantly.
So what are the options?
As marketers, it’s numbers - quantifiable results, that secure budgets and with a largely qualitative medium, you’ve got to work hard to prove its worth. There are a number of things you can do and online resources that are available to assist you in putting together a convincing report of your social media success:
- Start with the obvious
Before you do anything else, make sure that you don’t forget to monitor the obvious stats. They’re easy to get hold of and tell you a lot about your standing in the social media world. Start with stats such as Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Flickr contacts, YouTube friends – working on building your presence in these popular communities is a good starting point if you’re new to social media marketing.
- Monitor brand buzz
Keep an eye on how frequently and in what context your brand is mentioned on social media sites – you can do this by using a number of the Twitter applications that are now available - setting up a search in Tweetdeck to monitor mentions of your brand name is a great start.
- Analyse the stats
Just as you monitor your website for traffic levels, unique visitors, time on site, bounce rates etc (and if you don’t, you should!), any reputable analytics package will also let you monitor your referring sites – sites that are sending you traffic. This lets you monitor how much traffic you are getting from social media sites. If you want to be sure the figures you’re getting are accurate, take an average pre-social media campaign and compare this to your stats whilst on-campaign. If you have a more advanced package, then you’ll be able to track right from referred site through to conversion – giving you a quantifiable and directly attributable financial result from your social media campaign.
- More quantitative measurement
There are also an increasing number of online measurement tools that can help to justify your social media spend and give you a guide as to the effectiveness of your social media efforts. A couple of examples of such sites are:
- PostRank – gives you statistics on your news / blog feed and ranks popularity based upon how often and where they are shared on social media sites
- Xinu – a goldmine of information providing a huge range of stats on your website from backlinks through to social bookmarks and much more. Best used as a guideline and benchmark to improve your online presence.
So the fact is, you can measure social media ROI, but it needs to be relevant to your objectives and KPI’s. Without relevancy in your social media activity, there are limited gains to be made.
When deciding on what you should measure, give consideration to the following three key metrics:
- Outputs – share of voice, tone of voice, site visits etc
- Outcomes – behaviour change, attitude change, increased brand reach
- Business results – the £££!
Embrace social media, enjoy social media and engage with social media. Given the opportunity to engage on a level never before possible, why would any marketer say no?!
JocelynMarketing & Business Development Manager
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Top Digital Tips - promote your business free online
Marketing budgets are getting slashed and re-allocated all over the place. So, how do you go about promoting your brand without making a dent in that valuable marketing budget?
Read on for our top ten recession-beating tips to promote your business online for free this year. There’s nothing really new here, just simple, great advice for promoting your business without spending a penny.
Read on for our top ten recession-beating tips to promote your business online for free this year. There’s nothing really new here, just simple, great advice for promoting your business without spending a penny.
1. Crowdstorming – get free ideas from your clients on what they want to see you doing next – check out what Dell are doing for more of an idea
2. Linkedin / Xing - Create a profile and join in with professional online networking – don’t lose touch with your business network, especially if they’re moving jobs this year!
3. Twitter - Get your message out there, be it promotions, news and info. Word is that Twitter is planning to charge companies for its use though. Great for monitoring what people say about your products or services.
4. Online PR – create more news stories for your website and build up a network of free PR distribution sites such as Pressbox.
5. Social networking presence – create free pages on the social networking sites, such as a fan page on Facebook.
6. Build your customer email database – sounds obvious, but you’ll be amazed how many businesses still aren’t doing this. If you already have one, use it! Start segmenting your messages to your audiences.
7. Be authoritative and authentic – have your say on opinion pieces, articles and user generated content relevant to your business to get your voice heard and to give your website an authentic presence.
8. Blogger / Wordpress - create a blog and get information out on the www – no time to blog? Why not share it amongst your team?
9. Social sharing – add a social share tool to your website and get your content out there – you could get over 10% increase in traffic by doing this- sharethis or addthis give you the tools to do it for free.
10. Create a mash up – pull free content into your website, use Yahoo Pipes to pull in RSS feeds for your industry news as we did on wetisdry.com or create videos for YouTube and feature them into your website.
Enjoy putting these into practice and if you do all this and still want more, give us a call!
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Everyone's talking about Twitter
To Tweet or not to Tweet? That is the question.
But what is the answer?
It is a much discussed topic in today’s blogs, news, TV and even radio, with Chris Moyles touching on the subject on this morning’s show. And despite my reluctance to follow the masses, even I have given in to writing about it. So just why is Twitter so newsworthy?
For those of you that haven’t yet come across the phenomenon, Twitter is a micro-blogging service, that allows you to tell your ‘followers’ what you are doing in 140 characters or less – a little like updating your Facebook status.
Launched in March 2006 and probably partly due to its ease of use, its rise to fame has been rapid and it now finds itself ranked in the top 600 websites on the planet! (according to Alexa)
Its popularity has spawned a whole host of ‘bi-products’, making it even easier to post your tweets, keep up to date with the people you are following and post pictures. We’ve written about a few of them in our previous post, The Twitter Revolution.
The question that everyone is asking at the moment is – should you tweet?
It’s not a tough question to answer – YES!
Twitter is great fun and a fantastic communication tool, for personal and business use.
At Bluhalo, we find it a great way to keep up with what our colleagues are working on, what colleagues in our other offices are working on and a superb way to knowledge share – one person finds a great new site that can save them time, they post it to Twitter and now we all know about this great new site and we’re all saving time.
So aside from keeping up to date with friends and colleagues, how else can you make use of Twitter?
It brings huge value to online PR. Not only does it give your brand a way to communicate with its public, it also allows you to glean hugely valuable information on public opinion of your company and products, by monitoring brand chatter across Twitter users. Huge benefits have been seen by the famous, with Obama’s election campaign proving to be a seminal moment for both Twitter and social media. It's worth checking out what we did with a Twitter integration to Andy Murray’s website.
I could write about Twitter all day but in short, the main benefits are:
Some argue that Twitter just shouldn’t be used as a marketing tool.
And in a world where your thoughts are published to the world, you'd be forgiven for agreeing with this view. However, a simple degree of censorship when tweeting means you can make the most of this great comms tool without fear.
Here are some general rules which should not be broken and will keep your Twitter experience a pleasant one and not a business faux pas!
But what is the answer?
It is a much discussed topic in today’s blogs, news, TV and even radio, with Chris Moyles touching on the subject on this morning’s show. And despite my reluctance to follow the masses, even I have given in to writing about it. So just why is Twitter so newsworthy?
For those of you that haven’t yet come across the phenomenon, Twitter is a micro-blogging service, that allows you to tell your ‘followers’ what you are doing in 140 characters or less – a little like updating your Facebook status.
Launched in March 2006 and probably partly due to its ease of use, its rise to fame has been rapid and it now finds itself ranked in the top 600 websites on the planet! (according to Alexa)
Its popularity has spawned a whole host of ‘bi-products’, making it even easier to post your tweets, keep up to date with the people you are following and post pictures. We’ve written about a few of them in our previous post, The Twitter Revolution.
The question that everyone is asking at the moment is – should you tweet?
It’s not a tough question to answer – YES!
Twitter is great fun and a fantastic communication tool, for personal and business use.
At Bluhalo, we find it a great way to keep up with what our colleagues are working on, what colleagues in our other offices are working on and a superb way to knowledge share – one person finds a great new site that can save them time, they post it to Twitter and now we all know about this great new site and we’re all saving time.
So aside from keeping up to date with friends and colleagues, how else can you make use of Twitter?
It brings huge value to online PR. Not only does it give your brand a way to communicate with its public, it also allows you to glean hugely valuable information on public opinion of your company and products, by monitoring brand chatter across Twitter users. Huge benefits have been seen by the famous, with Obama’s election campaign proving to be a seminal moment for both Twitter and social media. It's worth checking out what we did with a Twitter integration to Andy Murray’s website.
I could write about Twitter all day but in short, the main benefits are:
- ease of use
- access to your public
- ability to informally communicate
- contribution to online PR
- brand monitoring
Some argue that Twitter just shouldn’t be used as a marketing tool.
And in a world where your thoughts are published to the world, you'd be forgiven for agreeing with this view. However, a simple degree of censorship when tweeting means you can make the most of this great comms tool without fear.
Here are some general rules which should not be broken and will keep your Twitter experience a pleasant one and not a business faux pas!
- Anyone could read your Tweet. Is it suitable for public reading? Could what you are about to tweet offend someone, especially a client?There’s a great story on this which is worth the read if you have the time.
- It pays to stay positive. If all you do is moan, people won’t want to follow you. Try to keep it upbeat and if you do feel the need to gripe, at least make it comical!
- Keep it interesting. Who really cares what you just ate for breakfast? Keep your tweets interesting and informative. The wider the appeal of your tweets, the more followers you’ll get.
- It’s not a sales tool. It’s great for brand presence and communication, but don’t use it as a tool to hard sell. It will turn your audience off pretty quickly.
- Be genuine. If you’re a celebrity, your fans want to know it’s you and not your PR guy posting to Twitter. If you’re a brand, followers want to know they’re getting the real story and ‘insider knowledge’, not PR spin.
- Know your objectives. Understand why your are using Twitter, whether it is simply for personal communication, building your professional reputation or representing a brand. Confused messages make for confused followers.
So, that’s it! Rather longer than anticipated, but my take on the phenomenon that is Twitter.
Jocelyn
Marketing & Business Development Manager
Twitter @JocelynKirby
Wednesday, 28 January 2009
‘The Customer’s Always Right’
Leaflets, binned. Posters, graffitied. TV, viewed once, missed it – too late.
Digital is the window that shows the same weather everyday. You don’t open a screen and get grey, you don’t open a tab and get storms, you open a new window and get exactly what you want and what you expect sat neatly in front of you.
You’re engaged, because you returned – that’s why you’re here.
And it’s not just you that’s cottoned on to this trend. The web is saturated with those in the know, and is making space for those that are ready to board.
When the dreaded ‘crunch’ word leads companies to cut the newspaper ad, reduce the magazine spend and cut radio out altogether, the digital age continues to flourish.
Money must be spent to get recognition, to repeat, educate and inform. But much more tactical and planned execution must be employed to use this spend wisely. As a company you’ve got to know where to put your money and cash it in quickly. Putting up a website, a microsite, sharing information on social networking sites, blogging, feeds – all these media get read not once, not twice, but hundreds of thousands of times. And ‘technically’ you’re only really investing that once, with top ups along the way. Surely, this is wise investment.
But who started it, the consumers or the companies – are we voting chicken or are we voting egg?
For my money, ‘it tastes like chicken’!
Social networking sites like Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, and sharing spaces like Digg and Del.icio.us are cramming in members, fans and exchanging media like it’s going out of fashion – except it’s not, it’s striding the catwalk like a diva! Just recently we’ve been approached by several global corporates, ‘we need to be on Facebook; we’ve got to get to the consumer market’. They are effectively buying shoppers. But are the shoppers buying them?
Yes, the companies are coming to the consumer, they’re letting them shop online and even receive their purchases online or at least within a reach of the postbox. The consumers may have prompted businesses to increase their investment in digital. But it’s not like the businessses feel ashamed, oh no – they’re feeling pretty ok about it.
Joining a page as a fan gives you affiliation, exclusivity and better still if you ‘buy into’ (in the true sense) the products on offer, as a ‘member’ you get even more rewards.
They’re paying for you to be happy, and you’re saying thanks, and they’re saying thanks back.
So, as a business you’ve got your Facebook page, your MySpace banners, your Twitter – what next, do you sit tight, are you done?
No, and since the customer’s always right, you’ve got more to do. If you really want to be up there, right at the front, stretching like a child in a classroom with their arm waving in the air, then read on.
It’s ok having placements but you need people to know about them. Everyone, and I mean everyone visits a search engine. Some once a day, some ten times a day, some just keep the browser open.
You’ve got your consumer at their desk, you’ve got them typing, but when they click ‘Search’…….er, you’re not at the top of the list. You’re not even on the first page. And even if you’re no maths whizz, you know that no one clicks past the first page.
So there’s work to do, and this must be done alongside the build of your projects. It must be planned concurrently. Get media buy, employ quick campaigns, do seeding. Plant that site, banner or advert firmly in its pot and water it!
Let’s conclude.
Digital is booming and companies and consumers are starting to align in their presence online.
But one of them’s playing catch up.
No one wants to be the one that’s left behind - Because the customer is always right!
Katherine K
Digital Account Manager
Digital is the window that shows the same weather everyday. You don’t open a screen and get grey, you don’t open a tab and get storms, you open a new window and get exactly what you want and what you expect sat neatly in front of you.
You’re engaged, because you returned – that’s why you’re here.
And it’s not just you that’s cottoned on to this trend. The web is saturated with those in the know, and is making space for those that are ready to board.
When the dreaded ‘crunch’ word leads companies to cut the newspaper ad, reduce the magazine spend and cut radio out altogether, the digital age continues to flourish.
Money must be spent to get recognition, to repeat, educate and inform. But much more tactical and planned execution must be employed to use this spend wisely. As a company you’ve got to know where to put your money and cash it in quickly. Putting up a website, a microsite, sharing information on social networking sites, blogging, feeds – all these media get read not once, not twice, but hundreds of thousands of times. And ‘technically’ you’re only really investing that once, with top ups along the way. Surely, this is wise investment.
But who started it, the consumers or the companies – are we voting chicken or are we voting egg?
For my money, ‘it tastes like chicken’!
Social networking sites like Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, and sharing spaces like Digg and Del.icio.us are cramming in members, fans and exchanging media like it’s going out of fashion – except it’s not, it’s striding the catwalk like a diva! Just recently we’ve been approached by several global corporates, ‘we need to be on Facebook; we’ve got to get to the consumer market’. They are effectively buying shoppers. But are the shoppers buying them?
Yes, the companies are coming to the consumer, they’re letting them shop online and even receive their purchases online or at least within a reach of the postbox. The consumers may have prompted businesses to increase their investment in digital. But it’s not like the businessses feel ashamed, oh no – they’re feeling pretty ok about it.
Joining a page as a fan gives you affiliation, exclusivity and better still if you ‘buy into’ (in the true sense) the products on offer, as a ‘member’ you get even more rewards.
They’re paying for you to be happy, and you’re saying thanks, and they’re saying thanks back.
So, as a business you’ve got your Facebook page, your MySpace banners, your Twitter – what next, do you sit tight, are you done?
No, and since the customer’s always right, you’ve got more to do. If you really want to be up there, right at the front, stretching like a child in a classroom with their arm waving in the air, then read on.
It’s ok having placements but you need people to know about them. Everyone, and I mean everyone visits a search engine. Some once a day, some ten times a day, some just keep the browser open.
You’ve got your consumer at their desk, you’ve got them typing, but when they click ‘Search’…….er, you’re not at the top of the list. You’re not even on the first page. And even if you’re no maths whizz, you know that no one clicks past the first page.
So there’s work to do, and this must be done alongside the build of your projects. It must be planned concurrently. Get media buy, employ quick campaigns, do seeding. Plant that site, banner or advert firmly in its pot and water it!
Let’s conclude.
Digital is booming and companies and consumers are starting to align in their presence online.
But one of them’s playing catch up.
No one wants to be the one that’s left behind - Because the customer is always right!
Katherine K
Digital Account Manager
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
The Twitter Revolution
The phenomenon that is Twitter.com goes from strength to strength, but what is amazing with such a simple concept is the number of “bi-products” it has led to being created. The list below is by no means exhaustive but is a good example of how one site inspires many…
Useqwitter
If someone stops following you on Twitter, it tells you who. I’m not sure why you would want to know though!
Cursebird
Tells you who is swearing on twitter and about what. Can be very amusing.
Twitterfone
Available in the USA only at the moment, Twitterfone lets you leave voicemail messages which are posted as text to your twitter account.
Twitterfeed
Get your blogs onto twitter, a very good product.
Tweetbeep
Alerts you when certain phrases or keywords are tweeted. A great application if you are after general knowledge on certain topics, but best used with more niche keywords.
Twitterholic
Lists who is popular based on the number of subscribers.
Tweetrush
Provides stats on twitter usage based on users, interesting to find the “auto” users - those that are bots that report news stories for example.
Tweetdeck
Not a website but a cool Adobe Air based application that runs on your desktop and shows the latest activity in your account.
Steve Furminger
Head of Digital
Useqwitter
If someone stops following you on Twitter, it tells you who. I’m not sure why you would want to know though!
Cursebird
Tells you who is swearing on twitter and about what. Can be very amusing.
Twitterfone
Available in the USA only at the moment, Twitterfone lets you leave voicemail messages which are posted as text to your twitter account.
Twitterfeed
Get your blogs onto twitter, a very good product.
Tweetbeep
Alerts you when certain phrases or keywords are tweeted. A great application if you are after general knowledge on certain topics, but best used with more niche keywords.
Twitterholic
Lists who is popular based on the number of subscribers.
Tweetrush
Provides stats on twitter usage based on users, interesting to find the “auto” users - those that are bots that report news stories for example.
Tweetdeck
Not a website but a cool Adobe Air based application that runs on your desktop and shows the latest activity in your account.
Steve Furminger
Head of Digital
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Feedmyinbox.com - site of the month
It's that time again already for our latest 'site of the month'! This month we've singled out FeedMyInbox...
"FeedMyInbox is a very simple service that attempts to bridge the gap between feeds (RSS, XML, Atom) and email." FeedMyInbox.com allows user to enter an address (URL) and to then finds the feed(s) available. Updates of the feed will then be sent to the user via an email. If you would like to know more about feeds then check out wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_feed
But why would you need a service like this?
FeedMyInbox tells us that "only 3% of computer users are familiar with how feeds work, and are using feed readers to get up-to-date information from their favorite sites. We don't think the other 97% should be left out in the cold, so now you can subscribe to a feed with your email address."
This is a great way to get users to subscribe to your blog, news site or twitter feed, helping the user get the latest news from you directly to their inbox. This will not only increase the number of users receiving your outgoing messages; it will also enhance your reputation as a forward thinking, flexibile business that really thinks about how its users / target markets need to be treated.
Are there any bad points?
The service itself is a great way for users to subscribe to feeds on websites but there are some issues:
- It would be nice to have a way you could manage your feeds. Currently they have a simple unsubscribe on each email but it would be nice to have a way of merging feeds together into one email and labelling the email with a unique subject. For example, I may find several feeds regarding technology and would like to group them together in one email called "Technology Feeds".
- It does not say how often you will get an email from a particular feed. Is it every time a new article is added? Or once a week? Again, it would be great to have control over the frequency of emails received.
- It's a shame they don't have a simple way of adding the feature to allow users to subscribe directly from a website much like the 'Share' or 'Add This' links you can find on many sites.
All in all I think this is a great service and I am sure features will grow over time, we'll just have to watch and see how the service evolves.
If you want to keep track of sites I find follow me on twitter @kunji.
Kunji
"FeedMyInbox is a very simple service that attempts to bridge the gap between feeds (RSS, XML, Atom) and email." FeedMyInbox.com allows user to enter an address (URL) and to then finds the feed(s) available. Updates of the feed will then be sent to the user via an email. If you would like to know more about feeds then check out wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_feed
But why would you need a service like this?
FeedMyInbox tells us that "only 3% of computer users are familiar with how feeds work, and are using feed readers to get up-to-date information from their favorite sites. We don't think the other 97% should be left out in the cold, so now you can subscribe to a feed with your email address."
This is a great way to get users to subscribe to your blog, news site or twitter feed, helping the user get the latest news from you directly to their inbox. This will not only increase the number of users receiving your outgoing messages; it will also enhance your reputation as a forward thinking, flexibile business that really thinks about how its users / target markets need to be treated.
Are there any bad points?
The service itself is a great way for users to subscribe to feeds on websites but there are some issues:
- It would be nice to have a way you could manage your feeds. Currently they have a simple unsubscribe on each email but it would be nice to have a way of merging feeds together into one email and labelling the email with a unique subject. For example, I may find several feeds regarding technology and would like to group them together in one email called "Technology Feeds".
- It does not say how often you will get an email from a particular feed. Is it every time a new article is added? Or once a week? Again, it would be great to have control over the frequency of emails received.
- It's a shame they don't have a simple way of adding the feature to allow users to subscribe directly from a website much like the 'Share' or 'Add This' links you can find on many sites.
All in all I think this is a great service and I am sure features will grow over time, we'll just have to watch and see how the service evolves.
If you want to keep track of sites I find follow me on twitter @kunji.
Kunji
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
Ping.fm - site of the month
“Ping is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.” In simple terms, Ping.fm is a tool that allows you to send updates to all of your favourite microblogging sites at the same time.
Ping is currently running a beta version but all the essential features are there, the main benefit being the ability to send updates to other social sites.
So why would you use Ping?
The answer to this question depends upon how much you use social networking sites. Ping is a great way of sending one update that covers all of your social network and microblogging sites. It has a pretty comprehensive list of sites that are covered including:
- Bebo
- Blogger
- Brightkite
- Custom URL
- Facebook
- FriendFeed
- Hi5
- Jaiku
- Identi.ca
- Kwippy
- LinkedIn
- LiveJournal
- Mashable
- MySpace
- Plaxo Pulse
- Plurk
- Pownce
- Tumblr
- Twitter
- Wordpress.com
- Xanga
It can also be used for messenger services such as Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger.
Now unless you are a serious fan of social media, it’s doubtful that you have accounts with anywhere near all of the above. However, you do probably own accounts with a handful of these sites.
With one easy update, you can ensure your contacts at all of these sites keep up to date with what you’re doing and more importantly, keeping them remembering you and what you do.
How is this relevant to business?
Aside from being a nice way to stay in touch with friends, Ping.fm enables you to very easily (a matter of minutes, if not seconds) let all of your contacts know what you’re doing. This doesn’t have to be ‘having a cup of tea’ or ‘upset with the world’ but could be something meaningful that reminds people what you do such as ‘trying out new social media site Ping.fm’ or it could prompt a response, for example ‘know anyone that needs a new website?’ or even to seed a viral campaign or company news article – ‘thinks everyone should read http://www.bluhalo.com/blog/view/152/sports-website-design-its-all-about-engaging-fans’.
If you think this isn’t relevant to your business, then think about your personal business relevance. LinkedIn is known for its ability to open up job opportunities to its members – maybe your next job offer will come from a recommendation from one of your contacts…
Back to business and it’s also worth considering your brand personality. If you’re a B2C brand, it may be worth creating identities for your brand on some of the sites above – Ping can make managing these identities a more streamlined process and assist in retaining consistency across different sites.
One of the best features that Ping offers is the ability to include or exclude certain sites from your updates – great if you fancy a rant but don’t want colleagues to see!
Are there any bad points?
There aren’t many!
There doesn’t appear to be a way to send your updates via text message – only via email, which can cost more if you’re updating via mobile – dependant upon your tariff. The exclusion of certain sites from your updates requires you to learn various triggers such as yourcode@tt to post to twitter. However, it doesn’t take long to learn the triggers you need.
All in all, a very interesting site that could see some serious member numbers once out of beta version, or even before. Due to the fact that it’s currently in Beta you need a code from a member to get in on the action. These are quite easy to find by searching online or email me – I’ve already joined up and can send you the latest code.
Jocelyn Kirby
Ping is currently running a beta version but all the essential features are there, the main benefit being the ability to send updates to other social sites.
So why would you use Ping?
The answer to this question depends upon how much you use social networking sites. Ping is a great way of sending one update that covers all of your social network and microblogging sites. It has a pretty comprehensive list of sites that are covered including:
- Bebo
- Blogger
- Brightkite
- Custom URL
- FriendFeed
- Hi5
- Jaiku
- Identi.ca
- Kwippy
- LiveJournal
- Mashable
- MySpace
- Plaxo Pulse
- Plurk
- Pownce
- Tumblr
- Wordpress.com
- Xanga
It can also be used for messenger services such as Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger.
Now unless you are a serious fan of social media, it’s doubtful that you have accounts with anywhere near all of the above. However, you do probably own accounts with a handful of these sites.
With one easy update, you can ensure your contacts at all of these sites keep up to date with what you’re doing and more importantly, keeping them remembering you and what you do.
How is this relevant to business?
Aside from being a nice way to stay in touch with friends, Ping.fm enables you to very easily (a matter of minutes, if not seconds) let all of your contacts know what you’re doing. This doesn’t have to be ‘having a cup of tea’ or ‘upset with the world’ but could be something meaningful that reminds people what you do such as ‘trying out new social media site Ping.fm’ or it could prompt a response, for example ‘know anyone that needs a new website?’ or even to seed a viral campaign or company news article – ‘thinks everyone should read http://www.bluhalo.com/blog/view/152/sports-website-design-its-all-about-engaging-fans’.
If you think this isn’t relevant to your business, then think about your personal business relevance. LinkedIn is known for its ability to open up job opportunities to its members – maybe your next job offer will come from a recommendation from one of your contacts…
Back to business and it’s also worth considering your brand personality. If you’re a B2C brand, it may be worth creating identities for your brand on some of the sites above – Ping can make managing these identities a more streamlined process and assist in retaining consistency across different sites.
One of the best features that Ping offers is the ability to include or exclude certain sites from your updates – great if you fancy a rant but don’t want colleagues to see!
Are there any bad points?
There aren’t many!
There doesn’t appear to be a way to send your updates via text message – only via email, which can cost more if you’re updating via mobile – dependant upon your tariff. The exclusion of certain sites from your updates requires you to learn various triggers such as yourcode@tt to post to twitter. However, it doesn’t take long to learn the triggers you need.
All in all, a very interesting site that could see some serious member numbers once out of beta version, or even before. Due to the fact that it’s currently in Beta you need a code from a member to get in on the action. These are quite easy to find by searching online or email me – I’ve already joined up and can send you the latest code.
Jocelyn Kirby
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
