Archive for November, 2009
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 30th, 2009
Its almost the festive season, the sun finally came out in Vancouver today after three weeks of rain and there is lots going on online. Check out our new media reasons to be cheerful for this month:
Grooveshark – groove to your favorite music while you work.
About Men – a new men’s health site in BC.
Twubs - making sense of Twitter hashtags #.
Twittersheep – see what your followers are Twittering about.
Sprouter – collaborative networking tool.
Slickplan – Create flowcharts and site maps for free.
SiteScan – verify your Google Analytics tracking codes.
Enjoy!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 26th, 2009
There have been a slew of changes to Facebook recently and there are more coming. I wanted to document the most notable of them from a business use perspective.
Competitions
The first is the new rules regarding competitions. Earlier this month Facebook announced that you could no longer run any kind of competition on Facebook without getting prior consent from the company to do so (and good luck trying to get that). For more on that check out Mari Smith’s post – thanks Mari! Also check out Facebook Promotions Guide.
Page Updates
Wondering where the update fans link went to? Up until a couple of days ago if you wanted to send an update to fans you would click on the link just below the image on your Facebook page. Now its gone but the capability is still there, you just need to look in another place to find it.
Click to edit your Facebook page. In the admin screen look on the right hand side bar then scroll to find the promote your page heading then click on “send an update to fans” there. The process is the same from there.
Privacy
Changes are also ongoing in the form of privacy settings. The goals is to make them easier to understand. Here is some more info taken from the Facebook blog:
* Most of you liked that we removed more complicated technical and legal terms and replaced them with simpler language that everyone can understand.
* You preferred the structure of the new document, which provides key points at the beginning and easy links to jump to the different sections.
* A few of you asked for a redline version so you could compare the proposed revision to our current policy and see exactly what’s changed. We weren’t able to provide one this time because the policy was completely rewritten, but we think it’s a great idea and are committed to doing it for future proposed changes to our governing documents.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 23rd, 2009
If you subscribe to Wired Magazine you may have noticed what they are hailing as the future of advertising – and they could be right (again). A number of adverts contained in the publication are smart phone enabled using an application called Kooaba. Once you’ve installed the Kooaba application on your smart phone you can take a photo of the ad, launch the app and it takes you to a specific landing page online.
The app is quick and easy to install but I did have to take 2 photos before the image was recognised. I scanned the Glenfiddich ad and was taken to their landing page. I had expected to be taken to a Wired specific landing page rather than the main page but with the approach still in its infancy and I guess that specific landing pages are yet to be built in.
Another example of smart advertising in use is at Metro News, the free newspaper, where 2D bar codes appear on the print version of the paper allowing readers to scan using their smart phone and be taken to a mobile specific version of the article. To do this you have to go to their mobile site text GETMETRO or download the app and you are off to the races.
Here at Out-Smarts we are always keen to try out new technology so above you will find a 2D bar code allowing you to access this article on your phone. To scan it, download the Scanlife app for your phone, and scan using your smart phone to be taken to this blog on your phone. Neat huh? And it took only a few minutes to set up.
It can be a bit convoluted from the end user perspective but change is coming soon with the advent of NFC (near field communication) technology which promises to allow you to interact with print and TV ads in a highly streamlined way.
Making the user experience interactive and richer may be what will save traditional media, especially since they rely so heavily on advertising revenues.
Related articles:
NFC Enabled TV and Radio
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 20th, 2009
If only real life had an undo button …. Another Friday Funny from our friends over at Social Signal. Enjoy and have a great weekend!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 16th, 2009
Understanding the traffic visiting your site is a key metric, not just in terms of your Internet marketing efforts but also for building a effective social media campaigns. Too many clients come to me wanting to bring more business through the website but without knowing anything about the traffic they are currently getting.
Do you know how many visitors your site gets as a result of your Facebook or Twitter presence? Which blog posts or comments drive the most traffic to your site? How much traffic your site gets overall and is it from your target audience?
Fortunately our friends over at Google have just the solution. Google analytics is a free web site traffic analysis tool that tracks traffic to your website. It works by having you enter some code on your web site and it should be the first thing on your to do list before embarking on any Internet marketing or social media marketing effort.
Using Google is a great way to understand your on-line community: how they find you; how they navigate your site and where they come from. Website owners can monitor and improve web site results by honing in on their specific community. The service includes a dashboard containing vital visitors stats and the ability to drill down on these to find out more; score cards to assess traffic; conversion rate tracking analysis for keywords targeted; targeting by region (for example); the ability to create and share (send and schedule personalised e-mail reports) and export data.
Analytics is a free service that is used to attract customers to Google’s fee paid Ad Words and Ad Sense offering but those are optional – the benefits of this free data at our marketing fingertips are unquestionable.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 09th, 2009
I recently had the opportunity to attend a leadership round table headed up by Judy Bishop of Bishop and Associates. Judy has been a key player on the Vancouver business scene for 20 years and her discussion surrounded building your personal brand.
During the conversation Judy pointed out that “branding” is not a term that should be used in a business context and that it in fact should only relate to cattle or livestock. Its an interesting point and got me thinking about the process we go through as marketers trying to influence our audience. A mistake is often made in focusing on “us” (ie the company, product or service) and not “the audience”.
Taken literally as a verb, using -ing to form the progressive tense: branding, is grammatically correct. However, I think its not the grammar that Judy has a bone of contention with but the implication. Branding implies that we actively seek to make our mark on the audience when in actual fact its not marketers who are in control of our brands but the audience itself. Many marketers fail to recognize this and go about building their brand from the inside out without giving too much thought to the audience who is on the receiving end.
So what has all this got to do with social media I hear you ask. Well, since you asked, I think its vital. You shouldn’t go about using social media as a means “to burn your brand” into the minds of your audience. Social media users are particularly sensitive to manipulation. Rather, look on social media as a great tool for making contact with your audience, to understand them better (what makes them tick)and to allow you to build better products for them. Use it as a tool to build better relationships with them so that they, in turn, build a great perception of your company in their minds and are more likely to turn to you when in need. The best way to do this is to constantly be on the look out for ways that you can help your target audience and add value for them. The key point here is that it is all about them not all about you.
Unlike Judy, I may use the term branding from time to time to categorize the efforts we make as marketers to build awareness but I do see her point. Branding is something that is done to something else – the word implies a lack of respect. Building a brand is all about respect: understanding your audience and catering to their needs. By placing your customer front and centre and catering to their needs not yours, your marketing efforts will be more likely to succeed.
Related posts:
Branding – with Isabelle Mercier
And thanks Michelle for the great Highland Coo image!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 05th, 2009
I am excited about Entrepreneurial Woman an online magazine for and about women entrepreneurs in Canada. It launched this week and already contains a wealth of information aimed squarely at aiding and inspiring women entrepreneurs.
Cathy Waters, co-owner of Entrepreneurial Woman, explains that the goal of the magazine is to help women at all stages of their entrepreneurial journey, whether they thinking about starting a business or are already running one, or are retiring from a career job and are ready to transition into self-employment.
“The magazine provides thought-provoking articles on branding and marketing, customer retention, how-to basics, style tips for todays business woman, creating life/work balance, and more.”
Each month, they will feature successful entrepreneurs with inspirational stories. This month Catherine M Ann is featured in From Homeless to Millionnaire: a really heart warming article about how, against all odds, she built her company, Consumer Connection Inc., starting out with, literally, nothing.
Our motto is “inspiring successâ€, says Waters and this article certainly attains to that.
Also in this month’s edition, articles on how to structure your business, creating customer experience, tech talk, getting connected and an interview with yours truly where I talk about the approach I have taken to building Out-Smarts Marketing Inc whilst balancing life’s responsibilities.
To Cathy and the team at Entrepreneurial Woman – all the very best. I am looking forward to enjoying and learning from future editions!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 02nd, 2009
This year’s State of the Blogosphere report by Technorati took a different format from previous years which is why it has taken me a while to post about it.
In the report there are a number of very valuable interviews with industry leaders (like Seth Godin) that you should check out in addition to the findings of the Technorati research contained in the report. However some of the gems of information I expected based on past years reports was buried in the new format or not apparent at all:
Highlights:
Only 13% of those who responded to Technorati’s research had found no benefit in blogging with 65% saying that the blog has helped their company to be seen as a thought leader in their industry.- Only 1% of businesses update their blog less than once a month – the rest post more frequently.
- Bloggers are a highly educated and affluent group predominantly male and they listen to the radio.
- 33% of respondents had been blogging for 2-4 years.
- There is a correlation between top ranking bloggers and blog frequency.
