So, you’ve jumped on the social media bandwagon and set up a Twitter account, perhaps have a Facebook page and are active on Linked-In… however, are you really ‘getting’ social media?

Whilst we are all spending time tweeting and updating pages – there’s still considerable uncertainty about any ‘return on investment’.  However, that doesn’t seem to be deterring our ‘faith’ in social media activity.

A recent study (SEMPO June 2010) study reported that marketing budgets are shifting – reducing allocation on traditional media (exhibitions, offline advertising) and providing more to the social media pots.

However, the same study reported that in the B2B and B2C sectors organizations 38% of businesses stated that their biggest challenge to getting started with social media was ‘building a sufficient business case’

The challenge in building that business case is the all important ‘return on investment’ factor – it’s not enough to be out there in conversations as part of  brand building– it’s expected that such an immediate and consuming channel should provide a more immediate and direct response.

So, what can businesses be doing to ensure that they are leveraging their ‘Twitter’ activity?

It’s likely that tools to help you target and receive targeted traffic from social media platforms will improve over the coming months and years – however, for now – there’s a simple way to leverage your efforts on Twitter and other platforms.

Many Twitterers and brands are missing out on ‘keyword tracking’.

By the term ‘keyword tracking’ I simply mean setting alerts against relevant keyphrases that are being ‘tweeted’  and shared in the socialmediaosphere.

Brands and businesses often use this approach to track mentions of their products and companies, and developers can use it to track mentions of their favourite languages, frameworks, and open source projects.

It’s a great resource for seeing what’s not only happening with your own brand or business – but also for engaging in relevant and hopefully productive conversations.

Tracking keywords need not be complicated, particularly if you are using a social media platform such as – www.hootsuite.com – a total social management resource where you can align your Facebook profiles, Twitter Accounts, Linked In and others. There are other platforms too eg: Tweetdeck, Tweetbeep etc – but Hootsuite is the one I personally favour.

TweetBeep is useful too - sending email alerts based on the tracking of specific keywords in Twitter, and can track specific URLs, even if they have been shortened.

TweetLater, allows you to “schedule a tweet for posting at a later time” and it also provides a feature they describe as “Track keywords on Twitter”. The not so great features include

1. Automatic DM to new followers, which can be annoying
2. Automated following of people who follow you, which isn’t always necessary
3. Automatic un following of those who un follow you (jury is still out on this feature)

And there’s Twilert too – (I used this when Tweetbeep was being revamped – useful).

Another platform, which does include a paid for enterprise option is CoTweet – which seems to do everything that Hootsuite does.

Hootsuite, however is brilliant and I would highly recommend as you can track keywords, bring in your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, set up pending tweets in a very neat and easy fashion and you are totally in control of who you follow/unfollow/DM etc.

There are a number of ways you can be tracking keyword and keyphrases – for example:

1. Tracking keywords which are relevant to finding new followers – for example, in my case, I want to follow people who are talking and sharing about social media, professional services marketing and user experience, usability.  Therefore, I track these keywords to help me tune into relevant conversations. In my efforts of doing this, I’ve been able to follow some really useful experts, been invited to guest blog and also been able to grow my blog subscription by sharing relevant and helpful posts, all thanks to tuning into relevant conversations.
2. Tracking keywords for clients – similarly, watching what’s happening in their ‘keyword’ space and alerting them to relevant followers, influencers and conversations.
3. Tracking your own brand / product names.
4. Tracking direct response keyphrases.  By this I mean keyphrases which not only house the keyword – but also include a direct response element such as ‘looking for help with’ – ‘can anyone help with’ – you can string these keyphrases together with keywords to assist with targeting on relevancy.

These are just a few ways that you can be starting to leverage the conversations that are taking place. So my advice is to get watching those keywords and keyphrases – and then start considering how you can leverage these highly relevant requests and conversations

So get tracking…

Michelle Carvill is a professional services marketing consultant and owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – assisting practices and businesses with marketing strategy, social media planning and implementation, online marketing – website planning and website design.

Wearing my ‘professional services’ marketing hat, I recently attended a meeting at an accountancy practice with a number of their partners.

To provide some context, I’d already met with the Partners responsible for marketing a couple of times and this was now my presentation to the entire partnership, sharing with them, my views and ideas on the development of amarketing strategy for their practice.

The presentation seemed to go very well, the audience appeared engaged and there were a number of really practical questions – and so I thought things had gone well – but often these ‘pitches’ tend not to generate too much discussion or feedback there and then, so you’re never quite sure.

At the close of the presentation – one of the Partners I’d now met a few times rose from his seat and, thanked me for the presentation – and said, most unusually – “that was great work, 10 stars to you” – to which there was laughter and giggling by pretty much everyone in the room. (Even more unusual).

Of course, whilst a little bewildered – I composed myself, joined in the laughter (unknowingly) and advised that I was pleased that they had enjoyed the presentation so much.

However, then it dawned on me – ‘Great Work – 10 Stars’ – weren’t these the very words printed on the oversized sticker that my 4 year old had received from nursery the day before and just that morning as I was frantically unplugging laptops and packing bags to make my train, was again, sharing with me as to how well she had done.

And yes, as I then looked about myself – I realised that stuck to my left shoulder – was the very said sticker.  Of course, the ‘do you want to wear my sticker mummy?’ question now made sense.

Aha – now I got it.

Having attended a number of presentations, instead of the usual post presentation formal mutterings and perhaps queries on some of the areas I’d discussed – the Partners were far more open and warm towards me.  My daughter’s sticker dominated the initial conversations – and it felt really quite good to be very transparent about my lifestyle – that as well as being dedicated to running my own business, I successfully juggle being a dedicated mother of two.

Of course, the ‘holiday snap’ icebreaker – is now terribly passé – (as well as terrible)!  But there’s definitely something to be said for sharing a bit of who you are with your audience.  I find that all too often we’re very guarded about who we are personally – as it’s not very ‘professional’ – however, we mustn’t forget that it’s people we build relationships with.  And after all – people do business with people they like.

I suppose social media platforms such as blogs, Twitter, Linked In and Facebook – can be great for transparency provided we put out there who we are – but I guess we only tell people what we want them to know.

The ‘sticker’ incident was a pure accident – however, from now on – when presenting, I will certainly be thinking of ways that I can share a little bit more of who the person is behind the voice.  It certainly warmed things up – and broke down barriers.

So what’s your ‘Icebreaker’ going to be?

For more marketing tips, tactics and strategies why now follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my blog.

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

As a marketing consultant working with a number of clients across a range of different projects – it means that I am often working in parallel with different groups of people, from different businesses.  Some of these team will be part of the same organisation – some won’t – some will be part of the same organisation but from different divisions that have been brought together for a specific project etc.

Wonderful to be working in such a diverse way – I really do thrive on that aspect of it – however, what’s not so great is the physical management of all the different groups emails and threads of correspondence.

For example – with one particular client, I am working on no less than 6 different projects which need constant communication and collaboration and project management.   There are 6 different groups of people working on these projects with me – some from my team, some from theirs – and sometimes a couple of external people too.

Now I’ve always considered myself to be very efficient – however, even I get bamboozled with the myriad of emails to-ing and fro-ing .  In the past, I have spent far too many hours than I dare to imagine, scrolling through pages of email correspondence – waiting for an outlook search to narrow my despair – desperately searching subjects for a glimmer of hope in finding the email that held that all important bit of info.  I know you’ve been there too!  We all have.

Technology has enabled such incredible turnaround times that us mere mortals struggle to keep up with it.

So that led me on my quest to find a solution.  And, by Jove, I think she’s got it!

For about a year now I’ve been using http://www.bizzbug.com – initially, it took me a bit of time to understand it’s nuances and quirks – I considered it my useful yet rathereccentric friend.  However, over the past year – the very clever computer scientists that have put this beast together – have been refining it more and more.  Whilst a little different to how I remember it – the system has certainly lost its quirks and eccentricities – and has become a stable and robust necessary business resource.

I now ponder how I ever coped – or indeed would ever cope if anything were to happen to my dear, dear Bizzbug.  It’s become part of how we operate.

So what is it and how does it help?

Well, firstly – let me clear things up – and categorically tell you what it is NOT.  Bizzbug is not a ‘linked in’ or ‘facebook’ for business or anything to do with networking and joining up or making friends – or keeping people updated on daily musings.  It is most certainly non of these.

What it is in my view is a highly practical, useful, brilliant and time saving resource for any busy person – whether working with one or many at the same time – Bizzbug is highly effective.

How I use it:

I’m working with a client on a new project – let’s say, it’s a new online company secretarial portal for professional services clients.  The project involves the company secretarial team – the website planners, the coders, the designers, some researchers, marketing team etc.  Regardless of where that team is based – I simple create a space ‘Co Sec Portal’ on Bizzbug – and then invite the relevant team to join that space.  The space includes:  Folders – for us to store documents (much the same as you do in ms office) Blogs – in case the project manager wants to share updates this way.  Forums – a collaborative approach for feedback, views, capturing the continued discussion.   Plus I can create a simple home page for the ‘space’ – so I will have an outline of all members of that space – perhaps some useful links to resources – perhaps a relevant rss feed coming in – images – action lists – you name it – you can very simply create a relevant and useful home page for the space in a matter of minutes.  It’s all pre planned modules you just bring in and edit.

Bizzbug Dashboard

Permissions

Also – let’s say, I don’t want the person or persons from the marketing team to see the budget folder – that’s fine!  I simply don’t make that particular folder or document within that folder available to them – even though they see everything else in the ‘space’.  The opportunity to be very granular with who sees what is very simple to manage – so it’s easy to control and manage who sees what.

The design arm of our business also now totally rely on Bizzbug as their way of sharing designs and concepts and artwork with clients.  We are able to give clients their own access to their own ‘space’ which contains their logos, artwork, brand guidelines etc – so that they can access it whenever they need to.  And it’s great for managing group feedback on a design concept.  The design gets uploaded – an email automatically advises all members that there’s been new activity in the space (via a beautifully useful yet very simple dashboard) – the members view the design and make comment in the forum – everyone sees everything – the designer gets the feedback – tweaks etc – and re uploads.

Also – from a design agency perspective – it’s wonderful to then invite the printers or coders to join the space too – so that they can simply take the relevant files directly from the space – and print / code up etc.  Again, only giving them access to what you need them to access.  All very seamless.

And then all the info lives in the space for ever more.  If you or the client or anyone else needs to access it – there’s no scrolling through back up files or folders – it’s simply a case of going online and finding the relevant space with everything nicely all in one place!  Bliss.

Another accountancy practice client of mine are using Bizzbug as their intranet – and have created a ‘guest’ area for each of their clients.  Effectively, their clients have a secure ‘space’ (each client has their own secure space) – and different team within the accountancy practice can liaise with the client via that route – uploading their accounts, the client can go and view, review, edit, sign off etc – discuss issues via a forum etc – with perhaps other relevant members of their team – effectively – each client has their own secure space – saving the accountancy practice, time, and providing a unique online accessible 24/7 ‘true cloud computing’ collaboration – client management service.    Great.

I’m aware that the British Chamber of Commerce are also using Bizzbug as their intranet – however, I’m not so sure what they’re doing with it?

So – I’m shouting about www.Bizzbug.com – as it’s a truly wonderful and truly understated piece of kit.  It’s free to use www.bizzbug.com – and having investigated a private intranet solution via Bizzbug, the cost is in the hundreds (rather than the tens of thousands often associated with intranet solutions).

In my role I get involved a lot of social media platforms – those that have had massive success such as linked in and facebook – and I have to say, the developers of those platforms should seriously have a word with the developers of Bizzbug – as it’s a far more user friendly platform than these other free online platforms.

An example of what a space can include

As I said – Bizzbug is not about ‘social networking’ – it’s a really pragmatic and useful business resource – it’s got loads of features – it’s simple, unclunky – I don’t really have anything negative to say about it at all.

So here’s to Bizzbug.  In this day and age – it offers respite from searching bulging inboxes, keeps everything neatly in one place – and is a true friend for anyone managing a project collaborating with one or many!

I’m what you would call a true advocate – I have more than 40 spaces I manage so far – including my babysitting circle and bookclub – but the others are all business spaces.

I’m shouting about what I believe is a truly useful and pragmatic system – if you need to keep everything in one place – yet have others able to see it too – 24/7 wherever, then it’s worth checking out the many wonders of www.bizzbug.com.

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

Follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her blog for more marketing and business development news, views, tips and advice  - and check out my own Bizzbug Profile – forgot to mention you can create your own ‘personal profile’ too.

Create your own personal profile too!

When I started blogging about 18 months ago now – I wrote a post sharing tips on what I was doing.  Down the line, I thought it would be useful to update those tips and share some other pointers.  I say 20 Tips – but  it may extend beyond that.  Some 18 months later my passion for blogging is still there.  I’ve learned quite a bit about blogging over the past year – and keen to continue on this learning curve.  But meanwhile, I thought I’d share my ‘hands on’ Top 20 tips with you:

1) Keep your posts relatively short. Having researched blogging to a good degree – then 500-800 words seems to be a good benchmark.  Short and concise is ok.

2) Keep your posts varied. Have some posts that are very factual – drawing on information that will help the users. Make some light and humorous so that the user understands that whilst you know your stuff, you’re not taking life too seriously. And they get an insight to your personality. Make some posts a little controversial or challenging the user – to stimulate conversation.

3) Always watch your spellings. Poor spelling really does hinder credibility.

4) Use images in a post to break up the text and add some relevant interest. Check out www.flickr.com or www.istockphoto.com or www.fotolia.co.uk for some cheap yet very good quality shots.

5) Create attention grabbing headings. The piece of advice I came across (Hubspot webinar which was pretty useful) advised that you should write the headline imagining that the user won’t even see the article. So the headline has to grab attention and tell the story.

6) Use keywords where you can – in headers and throughout the content of the article.

7) Keep it going. Stick to a tight publishing schedule. Blogging pays off over time – it’s a marathon rather than a sprint and it takes time to build up relevant and optimised content. In my early days of blogging, I set my schedule to publish 3 times a week.  However, once a week would be great.  The challenge is that I now manage blog content for clients – and so whilst I have assistance from other writers – it’s not necessarily writers block that stops me posting – but more a case of having interesting and relevant comment to share.  I follow Seth Godin – and I’ve blogged about the fact that it’s not really ‘me’ to just chirp on about philosophical snippets each day.  However, I’m conscious that whilst first and foremost I write for an audience – it’s definitely useful to write for the ‘bots’ too – so to assist with SEO – I am going to try and pick up the frequency – without damaging my credibility for writing with integrity and authoritative content.

8) Insert a call to action such as Subscribe to Blog on the site so that users can easily subscribe. I use www.feedblitz.com but there are many others www.feedburner.com is popular too.  And of course – you can subscribe to my blog here…(smile).

9) Claim your blog on Technorati – Google Blogsearch and Technorati are the two main ways that people search for blogs. That way others can find your blog.  The Blog paper is another good one to sign up to – I’m loving what they are doing at the moment.

10) Promote links to your blog on your website and in email footers, businesscards and other off and online relevant marketing materials.

11) Get your blog noticed by publishing links on social media vehicles such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Linked In (all social spaces relevant to your industry).  (See my Social Media posts for more on this).

12) Try and provide one piece of practical ‘how to’ advice in each blog post. That way the user will learn that you are always going to provide something useful.

13) Don’t focus your posts around selling your products – users will switch off to this. What you should be focusing on is positioning yourself as someone, or a business, that is able to share advice, news and information which will prove useful to your readers (growing authority in the space). Remember, blogging is not about directly ‘selling’ your services – it’s a platform where you can advise and share information and knowledge about your products, services or expertise. Perfect ‘conversational’ marketing.

14) Be creative with where you procure your content – if you have published materials offline, then recreate them online. Duplicate content is a spiders web and I’m still figuring out what you can and can’t do, but what is clear is that you can post links to your site – and encourage the user to read the entire post via your site. (Hence why a great attention grabbing headline is necessary!). Top 10, 20 lists are good (hey, I’m practising what I preach) – but keep your posts mixed, don’t make every post a list! (Back to point 2 above).

15) Write short excerpts of your blog post – not duplicating the content – but summarising what your post and blog is about. Creating a short excerpt which is unique content each time, is a good tactic for giving users a taste of what the blog post is about, enables you to use keywords within the excerpt – and you can post this to social media sites to share news about your blog in a safe (non duplicate content way).

16) Follow the leader – if you find a respected and popular blogger/expert who focuses on areas you are interested in, your business area, subject etc – then write a post commenting on their post. Always cite the name of the author and provide the url directly back to the post you are talking about. This way you are joining ‘high volume’ and relevant and targeted conversations. And if you’re views matter – then they will be picked up on by others reading the ‘leaders’ blog.I have done a little of this  and have grown my blog subscription and my Twitter followers with some highly relevant and influential people.  And it’s amazing how far reaching your blog post can get – set Google Alerts on your name – and you’ll see where your posts turn up (be sure to include your name in your sign off signature on each blog post of course) .

17) As well as having a formal call to action – such as subscribe to blog, always ensure you include a link at the bottom of your blog post encouraging the user to subscribe and citing your blog’s URL.  And your name and perhaps a short bio! You’ll see that I do this below… (don’t forget to use the http:// before the www. url to ensure it links).

18) Be prepared to review lots of blogs, see what’s working for others and learn about blogging the hands on way. Whilst I’m no longer a newbie to blogging, I still learn new things about it every day… I don’t have to accept everything I read –but remain open to learning.  Best to try a tactic and see if it works for you.

19) Join relevant forums and start joining in conversations – I’m a regular participant on http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk – and I regularly throw in a blog post thread into the forum for debate. I once posted a piece titled: Is your ringtone part of your personal brand. It caused quite a response on the forum – and is still adding traction to my blog. Warning: I don’t recommend doing this every time you are on the forum as people will think you are just there to flog your blog – but you can throw a post in occasionally, particularly if it’s worthy of debate – or relevant to a topic – and provided you position it correctly – ie: you’re looking for feedback, doing research etc – then it can work in a forum arena.

20) Always keep the user in mind. Remember, people are far more interested in what you can do for them than what you do – so always aim to add value via your blog posts.

Happy blogging.

For more marketing news, views, tips and advice why not subscribe to my blog

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

When conducting a recent offer mailing for a client – we ran with a rather ‘safe’ subject line.  I say safe – in that, it wasn’t very specific to the mailing.  For example – the offer we were running was a 24 hour only offer – all company credit

reports £1 for 1 day.  However, best practice preaches that the use of numbers and symbols cause issues with deliverability.  And therefore, we always steer clear of using them.  So instead of running with a symbol loaded subject, we ran with a headline of ‘ 24 hours of winter madness’.

So, 1) no mention of company credit reports,  and, 2) no mention of the actual offer.  However, we hoped that we’d intrigue people into opening to find out what it was about.

The open rates pretty good (avg 25%) and in some groups, the click throughs were very respectable.  However, with such a great offer, we were expecting better things.

Following that mailing, we tuned into a webinar, ‘The five best ways to optimise email response’

by Dr Flint McGlaughlin.

Many of the lessons within the webinar were as expected, however, it did provoke thinking.  In particular, when they were going through a series of subject lines and looking at how the campaigns could be improved – one recommendation was to change the subject line of the mailing from ‘Thank you for Making us your Florist of Choice, to ‘15% offer – Our way of saying thank you!’.

(http://www.marketingexperiments.com/images/multifiles/articulate/miami-summit-2010/player.html)

Now of course, any marketer utilising basic best practice techniques is going to be aghast at such a recommendation – let’s see, how many symbols in the subject line – errr…% – and ! =3!

Now of course, from a marketing message – I totally agree.  Communicating very clearly what you are offering right up front is key to successful marketing messaging.  However, what about the spam filters and deliverability – what’s the point of going to all the effort of creating the piece, if it isn’t going to make it through to the recipient.

So we decided to query this point with Dr Flint McGlaughlin – and his response is detailed below.

QUESTION:

How much validity is there to the conventional wisdom that, in the Subject line of an offer email message, numbers, certain symbols (especially £/€/$, %, and !) and “SPAM words” such as “Free” and “discount” will cause a dramatic reduction in deliverability, and consequently effectiveness?

ANSWER:

In the case of the particular company and study referred to on Slide 22, that was precisely one of the questions we set out to answer.  What you couldn’t see in the context of Dr. McGlaughlin’s Email Summit presentation is that this particular 2-treatment comparative vignette was just a tiny part of a much larger and broader study intended to test that specific widely-accepted presumption along with a host of others to see how valid they remained through the evolution of regulatory and ESP-technical filter changes since the time they were first introduced and anecdotally adopted; around 2003-2005.  This was important because we know from our foundational Offer/Response-Optimisation principles of “clarity trumps persuasion” and “specificity converts”, that the clearer and more specific subject line—i.e., the one with the “15% Off…” copy—should convert better.

What we found was that there was, in fact, a small but significant difference in deliverability—interestingly, it was more pronounced among the smaller ESP’s.  In addition, as we had predicted based on the “eme” heuristic, the Open Rate actually declined (…by more than 25%).

In the end, though, the central research question was “Which email subject line will result in the greatest projected net revenue?”   As revealed in Dr. McGlaughlin’s presentation,  despite the slight dip in Delivery rate, and the (what would otherwise have been alarming) drop in Open rate, the Clickthrough Rate (CTR) to the landing page was 60.3% higher.  What he may not have mentioned is that, in direct answer to the research question, the Treatment subject line yielded a 56% increase in projected net revenue vs. the Control.

So, while it appears there is still at least some validity to the commonly held belief that special characters in the email Subject line reduces deliverability, our research—this test two others conducted in different products and industries—suggests that when they serve to do so, these negative factors are dwarfed by the power of clarity.

Interesting eh – I’ll certainly be split testing the subject line in our next offer against this view – and will report back results.

For more marketing news, views, ideas, tips and suggestions – why not subscribe to my marketing blog http://www.carvillcreative.co.uk/blog

Or follow me on Twitter – I’m always sharing useful stuff on there too.

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

There’s no denying that we are in a digital age.  Right now, it’s pretty advanced already – and we have digital experts and respected futurists making statements that in just 5 years time tangible media will no longer exist.

So please tell me what’s going to happen to banks?  In my experience of banking with banks, both personal and business accounts – and in working with banks in partnership arrangements – there seems to be a common challenge.   And that challenge is, they’re too slow!

As typical with any enormous organisation – there are just too many hoops to jump through – too many processes, too many lines of management and therefore, everything takes too long.

For example – I recently made a complaint to my bank (I have to say, I can’t remember the last time I’ve had any reason to complain to them).  I made my complaint via email (which was never allowed to happen in the past – ooh progress).  24 hours later I received an email from the relevant team (it was looking promising) advising that my complaint was being looked into – attached was a lengthy PDF – and I was referred to the customer complaint process, informed to read said lengthy PDF, and advised that I’d receive a written response, together with a hard copy of the lengthy complaints process brochure within 14 days.  (It couldn’t be emailed in case someone intercepted the email).

I then queried why it was going to take 14 days to respond – to be advised that it was procedure and if I read page 14 of the Customer Complaint Process brochure, it was clearly documented – blah, blah, blah.

Now as a small business – highly responsive to clients, I can’t for one minute imagine asking a client to wait 14 days for anything – let alone to address a service recovery procedure.  It just a) wouldn’t  and b) couldn’t happen.

As a small business, we don’t have a Customer Response Team (probably a team of a minimum of 20 perhaps, even 80+?).  Instead, we have a small team that does everything they can to deliver services and service to our clients.   And let me tell you, there’s no ‘we’ll get back to you in 14 days’ amongst our vocabulary.

So in an age where everyone expects high levels of responsiveness and service (after all technology has enabled it – right! and so we do out best to keep up) we just sit back and accept the prehistoric practices of banks.

It must be hugely frustrating to work in a bank and want to make a difference – red tape, bureaucracy, 5000 meetings and procedures to work through, 150 different types of line management decision makers – yet no real empowerment to actually DO anything.  By the time a decision is made, the opportunity is probably lost.

I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago about ‘keeping things simple’ and for those businesses that do so – they’ll have cracked it.

What I’m hoping for is a bank to perform as if it was a nimble and responsive small business.  Quick decisions, minimising red tape, form filling and bureaucracy.  I saw on the tube the other day, an advertisement for www.wonga.com – ok the maximum lending is £400 – but everything is done online – and they’ve even made a mobile app for it, so you can order from your phone.

The large high street banks certainly have considerable budgets to create the right vehicle – so why don’t they take a look at offering a truly online, responsive, non bureaucratic, decision making off-shoot – small, nimble, responsive, immediate decisions – online, convenient. (A small business within a big business without all the red tape).  Instead of ploughing their money into ‘candid’ and expensive advertising campaigns that push dated information and ideas down out throats.

I’m sure there are nimble divisions such as I desire within banking groups – but are they truly independent – or still dogged by the shadow of the ‘brand’ – and all the stifling controls that come with it.

There have been some success stories – First Direct service was the first to really look at servicing clients in a different way.  And more recently, I notice that Santander are really pushing responsiveness – opening business accounts via the telephone within hours and online loan applications – immediate decisions and money in your account within 4 days!

In my opinion banks should get real and close to what is really important to the majority of their customers (and let’s face it, we’re not all big commercial companies hindered by the same prehistoric processes) – look at the true business demographics.

“What’s important to busy people and small businesses” are simple questions that banks may spend fortunes on market research to understand but certainly don’t gear themselves up to servicing very well.  To put it simply, we’re looking for services that help rather than hinder.

I’m waiting for a new solution to banking – a solution such as the one I saw on the tube – but with a broader range of services, a banking solution that really does understand what’s important to people and small businesses in this day and age. Wake up – its 2010 not 1910.

Times have changed – and all businesses have to appreciate that and get on board with the what’s happening right now in order to succeed in this digital future.  I’ve said it before – small businesses, well leveraged and savvy are agile and responsive to change.  Large lumbering dinosaurs – just can’t get there as quickly.

Hope I won’t be disappointed and that a nimble and savvy online banking solution will appear in the not too distant future – and of course, the main focus – to keep things simple!

For more marketing news, views, advice and tips (oh and rants too) – why not subscribe to my blog http://www.carvillcreative.co.uk/blog .  And follow me on Twitter too.

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

For those of you that follow me on Twitter, then you may have been alerted to the fact that I was not too happy with the service levels at Symantec last week.

To provide a bit of context – I had a very simple query.  I received a notification advising me that I needed to renew my Norton 360 license with them – simple – and I did that no problem.

However, the license I have is for 3 machines, and I wanted to switch one of the licenses and see whether Linux platforms were supported in that license.  A quick call – or live chat query, or even email support would have sufficed.  The query could have been resolved in, say, 2 minutes.

I searched on their website for answers to my queries – but nothing was evident, and so I hunted down a number to call and eventually found an office in Reading.  I called them and having completed at least 4 rounds of call selection – I was then put into a queue.

It was interesting, because in the queue, I wasn’t notified that it was going to take me an hour and a half to get through – instead, I was repeatedly advised to hold on the phone, as if I hung up, I would lose my place in the queue and have to start again.

I waited, and waited – after 40 minutes, I started to get really fed up – but the, by now, terrifying mantra came at me again – hang up and I’ll lose my place!

Of course, I wasn’t just sitting there winding myself up during the long wait – oh no, I tried to be as productive as possible.  I visited their site again, hunted down the FAQs, hunted down a search facility, inserted the keywords relating to my query etc etc.

Pages upon pages of results returned – totally off the mark – and now I’m getting more and more frustrated.

After 90 minutes on hold – I was now uber twitchy – of course, my Twitter app was open, so I posted; ‘Can’t believe I’ve been waiting on hold at Symantec for an hour and a half, disgusting.’

Fortunately, or unfortunately for the poor chap I did eventually get put through to, they answered the call shortly after, (1 hour and 38 minutes on hold.  That’s got to be a record!)  Flabbergasted, I wanted an explanation, why, what… however, the very nice chap I was now through to in the Philippines had no answers.  Sorry – we’re busy, that’s all I can say.  He answered my query and worked through what I needed to do – and all was fixed.  However, I was still finding the whole waiting on hold for that amount of time, incredulous.

Interestingly, just 10 minutes after I’d posted on Twitter – I received a message on Twitter from NortonOnline asking how they could help me.  Had my problem been resolved – sorry to hear I wasn’t happy?

I’d also received a few Direct Messages from others advising me that they too thought Symantec were terrible.  Poor service levels – not responsive.  One chap had been trying to cancel a standing order with them for months!

I tried to Direct Message NortonOnline, but because they weren’t following me, had to post to all, advising that yes it had been fixed – but did they really think that 90 mins on hold was acceptable?

I also queried, the point as to why they hadn’t they promoted their Twitter support on their website?  Had I seen that, then I’d have been on them like a shot.  And why no live chat – particularly as they clearly don’t have the mechanisms to handle calls responsively?

They thanked me for my suggestions and my great feedback!  Hmmmm.

What’s clear, however, is that Twitter and no doubt Facebook, are being closely watched by the corps.   Brand reputation is clearly being managed very closely online – with the remit to capture any negativity before it spirals out of control – and turns into a Dell Hell.

Let’s hope that more and more businesses start to utilise Twitter as a means of responding to customer queries – but actually adding real value.  I’d much rather be dealing with a 10 minute response than a 90 minute one.  That would speak volumes for a brand – the fact that they are actually servicing customers, rather than simply looking at preserving their brand reputation – the two are interlinked.  The fact that NortonOnline came back to me quickly online via Twitter, didn’t temper the negative vibes that had manifested whilst waiting on hold for 90 minutes.

Being responsive in the social media arena can’t just be about apologies – it’s got to be about servicing the consumer.   So take heed all you corps that are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon.  Don’t just pay lip service and make your presence all about managing your brand reputation, but get real service running via Twitter and really make your presence count!

For more marketing news, views, rants, tips and advice – why not subscribe to my blog or follow me on Twitter.

Best wishes

Michelle Carvill

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

Ok – I’m pretty IT savvy, and yet why is it that I still end up tearing my hair out when it comes to undertaking what should be a really ‘simple’ task.

I simply want to transfer the photos from my Blackberry to my laptop.  Now that shouldn’t be difficult at all should it? Surely the current Blackberry Desktop Manager has a simple resource for doing this – surely, it’s just a simple case of syncing my device and voila!  Er – no.  Not that simple.

Ok – I won’t be defeated, rather than email each photo to my outlook account (tedious) – I’ll send via Bluetooth.  Simple!

So, I open the Bluetooth access on my laptop – my laptop and Blackberry run into the arms of one another – very painlessly – and connect.  Great – so now it’s just a simple case of sending my photos via Bluetooth.   Er – no.  Not that simple.

The software is not compatible.   Bit of a pain – but shouldn’t be insurmountable – I will simply visit the Blackberry.com site and get the relevant update.

By now I’ve spent the best part of 2 and a half hours trying to complete what should be a really, really, simple task.

So, I open up my Desktop manager – and request updates – again should be simple – and it pretty much is.  I access the relevant updates, upload – message that it may take 30 minutes for everything to configure.  Oh, oh – there’s now no way to stop this progress, as if I do I’m warned I disrupt the data and so I am now left wondering what exactly it’s up too – and keeping everything crossed that it hasn’t reconfigured my email accounts (as it did last time)!

What should I be doing now – well actually, enjoying the snow with my children at the ‘community built’ ski and sledge runs at Punt Hill.   A task that I thought would have taken me minutes – has taken hours!

How much longer…

The statement ‘why is nothing ever simple’ – isn’t just my continual mantra.  I hear it all the time from friends, peers, family – even my children.  And hence why those businesses that have a sole purpose to ‘make things simple’ – and really deliver on that – are destined for big success.

Oh – have to pause this post – got to restart my ‘systems’ to implement the changes.   Back soon.

Pleased to report that I eventually managed to get my Blackberry photos uploaded onto my laptop.  In fact, having battled with the Bluetooth access – it transpired that the lated Blackberry desktop manager had indeed included a Media Sync function in their latest release.  So there it was…

Customer service has nothing to do with simplicity

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about the Blackberry service – indeed their customer service has always been responsive and excellent.  This isn’t what I’m talking about – it’s more to do with the fundamental way things are designed.  Create products and services that are so intuitive – and customer support becomes almost unnecessary.

There’s a business model right there – make or provide access to a product or service, which is as simple as possible, and you’ll thrive.

For example, The Made Simple Group have a number of online services for the start up and small business communities – which each site offers something different, the one similar key factor – making simple.  It’s no wonder that their www.companiesmadesimple.com site is one of the leading online company formation sites in the UK.  They’ve made the process of forming a company (I’ve done this a few times now on other sites and with my accountant and have to say never, ever, found it a simple process previously) – but with Companies Made Simple, it really is a very simple process.

Another service I came across, www.enterprisemadesimple.co.uk – focus on getting access to all the grants and funding available for businesses – simple.  There’s so much red tape involved, that it becomes such a time consuming exercise for businesses, that I’m sure there’s always surplus funding left over at the end of each day.

Businesses that focus on making things simple – designing products and services, and websites – that are so intuitive, are totally on to a winner.  In an age where time is our most limited resource – those services that make things truly simple will win through.

One of our own sites – Logotastic, an online logo design service, was created just for this purpose too – the brand identity and logo design process can often be a very lengthy, time consuming and expensive process.  Logotastic focuses on getting the user to put their brief online in a succinct way – and then they work through the design iterations with a professional designer online – cutting out the often unnecessary, design by committee and meeting after meeting elements.  The ethos – to simplify and make professional design affordable to all.

There’s a great book I recommend, The Design of Everyday Things, which is a bible for anyone interested in usability – not just online usability – but service design and product design.

I do find myself always saying – why is nothing ever simple! As things never seem to be as clear cut as they should be.

In fact, this morning, (now a day after the Blackberry case) I had to wait at my house before going to the office for an Engineer to drive all the way from Kent to deliver a new knob for my cooker (using up fuel and increasing carbon footprint)!  I had told them the model number, serial no etc – in advance and explained that the two spares I had been given on delivery of the cooker some 18 months ago, had been used up – one other knob had cracked (design fault with the original design I suspect) – and could I have a few more in case of further incidents.  However, rather than simply packaging up the knobs and posting them to me – I had to take time out of my working day, the engineer had to drive from Kent to Berkshire – for what was a ridiculous ‘call out’.  He was here no more than 5 minutes – he opened a DHL bag (which had been posted to his office) containing the knobs – took one out and put it on the cooker!  No skill required whatsoever.  So why all the hassle – why not simply send the knobs directly to me!  Bonkers.

My mantra for 2010 is to ‘keep things simple’ – and to look for the most ‘plug and play’ products, and simple services I can.  They save me time and keep my stress levels in check.  I’m not prepared to battle any longer.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not about dumbing down – as often it takes a whole lot of complex thinking and backend structures to make a process as simple as possible (think Apple and you know what I’m talking about).  Hence why many cut corners – and we’re left with unnecessary customer support calls (which again, tend to take hours to rectify – particularly when related to IT).

So come on you corps out there – make things more simple… a bit more effort at the design and service delivery conceptualisation stage will reap huge rewards.   Those businesses that are already doing it – are doing well.

It’s not rocket science – so I’ll end this post with a KISS… (keep it simple stupid)!

For more marketing views, ideas, news, tips and tactics – why not visit my blog – you can subscribe and get regular posts delivered to you via email.  Also – follow me on Twitter – always sharing useful resources on there too!

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

September 08, just as the ‘credit crunch’ was taking over the universe – I wrote a post about keeping energy levels up amidst the doom and gloom.

Whilst many of us have really great intention – it is often zapped by people we meet, work with, live with – and the reality that our most precious resource, time, just seems to run away with us – there simply are not enough hours in the day.

Optimism, passion and energy are really key fundamental success factors we need to personally harness as, when you think about it – it’s energy and enthusiasm that keeps us all going – the sense of purpose that motors us on.

Think back to how you feel when you’re not 100% – I know myself that I can’t think straight – and often feel overwhelmed by the usually manageable everyday tasks.

Whilst the 2009 media was dominated by the ‘doom and gloom’ relating to the economic climate – so many of us were keen to get into 2010 – and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling really optimistic about 2010.  And, of course, optimism is infectious – perhaps that’s just the way it works – a self fulfilling prophecy – resign yourself to D&G (and I don’t mean Dolce and Gabanna) and that’s what you’ll get heaps of.

So if optimism is infectious – let’s spread it.  And to keep ourselves keen on spreading it – let’s ensure our energy and enthusiasm levels are maintained too.   Revisiting my September 08 post – much of what I stated, remains…

1. Watch out for ‘energy vampires’ – and by this I mean those people that ’suck’ the life out of you.  We all have them in our lives – these are the people you are around for a period of time and you come away from feeling ‘low’, ‘negative’ or hugely frustrated.  Try to avoid these ‘vampires’ as much as possible.  If you have to be around them, zone them out as much as possible.  And counteract their negativity with positivity.  You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel.
2. Counterbalance the ‘vampires’ by being around ‘energy boosters‘ – these are people that really excite you – get you enthused and positive about what you do.  They ooze energy and when ‘boosters’ get together – energy is shared – and it generates more energy so everyone comes away feeling ready for anything.  You know who these people are – so spend more time in their presence.
3. Get fit - mentally and physically.  At the time I wrote the original post, I had just run my first half marathon (have to say that I haven’t run another one since, but do regularly run 6 miles at least a couple of times a week).  Whilst a person who has always been very sporty and active, running was something that I had done down the gym for 10 minutes at a time – but long distance was not my bag.  Preparing for a marathon (or half marathon) is hard work – and it takes dedication, commitment, resolve, determination and self belief.   You really question whether you’ll make it round, will you fail, will your heart give out!    But in your heart of hearts – you know you can do it.   Coping with the doom and gloom of our economic climate is somewhat aligned to running a marathon – nothing is going to happen quickly – and so you need to prepare yourself for the long run.  Stay well – keep focused on the end goal – and keep going, be determined – you will get to the finish line…
4. Me time –  get into the habit of  making some ‘me time’.  There’s nothing clever about working and worrying 24 hours a day.  You’ll burn out, lose momentum, become low and energy and enthusiasm will slip far from your grasp.  Don’t let yourself get to that stage.  Take ‘me time’ – and by this I mean doing whatever it takes to ‘recharge your batteries’.  Whether it’s a long walk, training for a marathon, yoga, meditation, hanging out with the children, feeding the ducks, dog walks, listening to music, dancing, going down the gym, reading a book etc - whatever it takes – be sure you do some of it regularly.   I recommend at least 1 hour of ‘me time’ a day.  Sounds like it should be simple to fit in just 1 hour a day – but you’ll find that it isn’t.  So start with setting 1 hour as your benchmark – and see how you go…

In my viewpoint – there’s no reason why 2010 shouldn’t  be the year of the small business.  As market confidence returns and businesses start to come out of hibernation, this poses opportunity for smaller organisations that have ridden the storm to push ahead of those that may still be struggling:

• Small is responsive, fast and nimble
• Small is very price competitive
• Small provides excellent service levels (often direct from the people who own the business)
• Small is willing to tailor services and innovate

So if the time is right for small businesses to push ahead and steal away business from larger organisations – what types of things should we be thinking about:

1. Well – for one, where possible we need to ‘unbundle’.  If consumers are focused on just buying the ‘basics’ – then don’t over complicate the purchase.  Strip back all the ‘frills’ – and provide a ‘basic’ offering.  You can always hedge your bets by providing the consumer with the option to ‘add on’ if they wish to – but keep it simple.  If they want a sofa – just let them buy a sofa (without the chairs, lamp and side tables thrown in)!
2. Market hard and direct – we know we can compete against the bigger players – so it’s time to market hard.  Create a list of target businesses you want to work with and create a campaign.  My suggestion is that you do the research in building the list based on your own client criteria (what’s currently working is always a good platform to build on) – build a list and then build your selling proposition – and then get on the phone (either directly if you’re good at telesales and have time – or appoint a professional to help) – and make some appointments to get in there to let them see how you can provide exceptional value for money, provide excellent service levels without any compromise on quality. In my opinion, marketing now, as we come out of the really negative climate into a slightly more confident one still needs to be ‘direct’ – so focus efforts on winning new business and not just brand building.

So that’s it – simple eh – keep optimistic, energised, enthused and focused on what you want to achieve in 2010.  At the end of the day it’s you that matters – with your mental and physical energy levels in tip top condition,  that’s  what’s really going to help you stand out in a crowd!

For more marketing news, views, tips and advice – why not subscribe to my blog and don’t forget to follow my tweetings on Twitter

Here’s to an energetic, happy and successful 2010!  I’ve got a good feeling about this one…

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.

Ok, so I only started blogging in mid 2008 – so that’s only around 18 months – and I opened my Twitter account in October 08 – so again, only just over 12 months of activity.  Have dabbled with Facebook – but still can’t get my head round the business side of things.  However, I’ve been with LinkedIn for a while and have been a regular participant on a number of online forums for a good few years.   In fact, one started over 10 years ago.

Whilst I participate on and am very comfortable with social media platforms – what I am not, is a ‘social media expert’.  What I am, is a pragmatic and experienced marketer (both off and online) – open to and keen to leverage new channels of communication as you would imagine any decent marketer would be, particularly if those channels enable more targeted activity.

Twitter certainly seems to have dominated ‘social media’ platforms and media during 2009 – and piggybacking on the success of Twitter are at least 5 or perhaps even 10 million (or perhaps even more) social media experts!  Where did they all come from?  And what is the definition of a ‘social media expert’?

In fact, without mentioning any names, I recently met a ‘social media expert’ at a networking event – their business card actually stated Social Media Expert underneath their name.   So, in the name of my own personal quest to determine the route and core of social media expertise, I honed the conversation around developing a greater understanding of the competence involved.

What, very quickly, became apparent, was that this expert was participating with social media platforms in a very similar way to me – and had been doing so for a similar amount of time.  Prior to that, they mainly focused on SEO!  ITheir role was to share their social media expertise with clients – assisting them in setting up these channels to market.  Effectively, setting up accounts, setting alerts to make them aware of activity in their particular sector (if relevant).   On a positive note – I suppose labelling yourself as a ‘Social Media Expert’ regardless of your background does indeed communicate a very targeted and relatively still niche expertise – regardless of how ‘young’ that expertise may be.

I wrote a blog post some months ago now – about Implementing a Social Media Strategy – the post was born from activity I’d been undertaking with a client I’ve been working with for about 7 years.   As part of their ‘umbrella’ marketing strategy which covers a whole range of marketing activity (both inbound and outbound) – it was clear that new ‘social media’ platforms were out there for us to leverage.  So, in just the same way, we’d approach any new activity, I researched, strategised and created a social media activity plan which we would look to implement – and nurture.

I follow the words ‘social media’ in my TweetBeep alert and so am always watching what’s being ‘talked about’ in the social media context.  [In fact this resource is really useful for targeted activity see this post] .  From months of observation, what’s very clear is that many organisations are not ‘on board’ with social media – and those that are, it’s all still very fertile territory.

Recently, I’ve noticed that there are definitely more resources out there springing up from marketers and others who are charged with putting together a social media strategy for organisations – however, it’s still very fragmented – people borrowing theory and practice from one another (which is pretty great actually).

I then researched ‘requests’ and ‘job specs’ for what companies are looking for from a ‘social media expert’ – and it pretty much seems to be the following:

1)         Help to set up the various accounts and manage them ongoing

2)         Set up a blog and assist with writing content and share on social media platforms

3)         Brand management – watching what’s being said about their brand(s)

4)         Include social media platforms in campaigns

I haven’t done ‘extensive’ research, so I’m sure there are other elements to add – but enough to get a flavour for what seems to be the general remit of a ‘social media expert’.

Anyone participating on social media platforms is likely to agree that participation and monitoring and keeping on top of the game can be quite time consuming.   In fact, from my own personal experience with clients, it’s the time consummation which seems to be a big turn off for many companies.  ‘How are we going to manage it all?’ – and ‘tada’… hence the rise of the Social Media Expert.

Of course, when things seem too consuming, it’s useful to break them down into bite sized chunks by ‘compartmentalising’ them – and therefore, organisations may well be on the hunt for social media experts to bring into their marketing teams.

In 2010 no doubt more and more digital agencies will be ‘all over’ social media – providing the ‘full social media service’ as an inherent service – indeed, many have already added this to their menu of services.  So not only will Social Media Experts continue to grow – but Social Media Agencies will have a life of their own – swallowing up many of those with social media competence and experience.

As a pragmatic and experienced marketer, I will continue to remain just that – of course, where relevant, as part of the ‘marketing mix’ social media activity will be leveraged – in my view, the platforms are channels for us to leverage.

Social Media activity isn’t something that is done in isolation – it’s part of the marketing strategy and brand communications – it’s got to be joined up, thought through and implemented with the same thought and care as any marketing activity should be.

In my view, social media platforms sit with marketing – part of the marketing mix – and marketing enables strategic planning.  So all in all – be careful how you execute your social media activity.  It’s your brand and reputation out there – be transparent, considered and think it through…

Here’s to watching what happens in 2010!

For marketing news, views, tips and ideas – why not subscribe to my blog http://www.carvillcreative.co.uk/blog – oh and you can always follow me on Twitter.

Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of graphic design and marketing – covering social media marketing and website planning and website design.