For 2012 we’re also blending some short and sweet video blogs into our mix. Check this latest one focusing on the Importance of Listening – a key component for social media success.

So the greatly anticipated ‘Timeline’ is here folks, get ready to see a barrage of negative status updates from your many Facebook friends complaining about the hefty change.

The Facebook Timeline will be featuring on your profile whether you would like it to or not and the social media gods are giving us 7 days to preview your profile before it goes live – giving you some very much needed time to clean up your profile. 

How the timeline works is like this – The new Facebook profile is divided into two main columns, with a line down the middle representing the passage of time. The passage of time throws up any saved status updates, friendships, photos, events or wall comments – going right back to the birth of your profile. Everything is there and everything can be viewed by your friends until you decide to ‘hide it from your timeline’. We, the Facebook public, are being encouraged to add life events which were not captured by Facebook, in particular those that occurred before users joined the social network.

Whatever you love and whatever story you want to tell, you can add that to your Timeline.

Your profile now also contains a large banner that Facebook are calling your ‘cover photo’ – this is a large image, of your choice, that remains public to everyone on Facebook, including non friends – so choose wisely.

If you’re like many of us at Carvill Creative and have been on Facebook for what seems like forever – I would suggest you put aside a good couple of hours to sift through your Facebook past and ensure you’re happy for it to be regurgitated to your present.

Get ready to click “Hide from Timeline” a fair amount in these hours  You can find this very important button under the “Edit or Remove” pencil icon that appears when you hover your mouse over the top right corner of every Timeline post. You can remove anything on your timeline that you would rather people didn’t see by simply using this button.

Remember, it’s not just  photos that Timeline digs out and highlights— it’s every inappropriate status update you’ve ever posted and every message your so called  university ‘friends’  may have written on your wall at some ungodly hour.

You can also remove or hide posts through your “Activity Log,” which presents everything posted on your profile in a more compact, easy to understand form.

In order to ensure that all your Facebook albums have the privacy settings still intact – visit your albums page and look at the tiny icon on the right hand side of each album. This is where you will have the option to change the privacy on your albums; Facebook explains what each symbol means and should ensure that pictures are only seen by the right people.

If you are concerned about what is appearing publicly on your profile then just opt to, ‘View As …’

On your Facebook Timeline, you should see a little gears icon with an arrow next to it on the far right. Click on it, and then choose the “View As” option. This will let you look at your profile as if you were a stranger or let you pick a specific person to see what is viewable to them on your profile.

If you want to get the timeline now, simply click here ‘ https://www.facebook.com/about/timeline

Or you can wait until you see an announcement at the top of your home page.

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design

After reading a brilliant article called ’12 Social Media stats that will rock your world’ – I’ve taken 10 of the most rocking figures and shown you what they could mean for your business.

1.      Over 70% of the internet population are using social networks

• This doesn’t just include Twitter and Facebook and it highlights that social media is now considered mainstream – so don’t ignore it

2.      In Europe 50% of people are a member of just one social network 

• Find out where your customers and clients tend to hang out – is it Facebook? Twitter? Youtube? Or is it all three? Find it and utilise it.     

• Don’t be cliquey in your social networking – incorporate newcomers to the group.  Just because they are new doesn’t mean they’re not good. Remember what Facebook did to MySpace – blew them out of the water!

 4.      Peak usage for Twitter is between 2pm and 6pm

• This is quite a small window so remember these times and ensure that you tweet within them.

 5.      The average Facebook session lasts 37 minutes.

• This is a relatively short time indicating that users have a short attention span when it comes to reading content online. Keep your content – short and interesting.

6.      36% of people have posted about a brand on social networking sites.

• This means that people don’t just talk about their cheese sandwiches and which movie they saw last night on social media. Large proportions are talking about brands – their products, services and customer service. If your customers are talking about your brand then make sure you’re listening.

7.      42% of social media users have actually had a conversation with a brand via social networks.

• This figure indicates that social media users are not afraid to contact brands over social networks. If your brand is on social media do you have the resources in place to ensure that 42% of people are being answered and not ignored?

8.      The average number of Facebook contacts per users is 133 (on Twitter it’s 59)

• While these figures look small remember that ‘people know people’ and that small numbers turns into frighteningly large numbers when the 6 degrees of separation rule demonstrates how friends of friends can balloon your reach. That’s why it’s important to get customer service spot on as bad news travels far and wide.

9.      Only 15% of social media users have been contacted by a company after posting a negative experience.

• This shocking statistic gives you a chance to stand out from the crowd – Listen to your customers and provide a level of customer service that others are failing to offer. 

10.   79% of consumers have passed on a negative experience and 82% will stop doing business with a company because         of a negative experience

• Getting it right clearly matters. Social media can help you turn these potential defectors into your most vocal supporters

The art of retweeting a tweet seems simple enough. On most applications you can simply press the ‘retweet button’ and you’re away…or at least you think you’re away….

However it seems that hundreds of competent tweeters get this simple action very wrong.

In the midst of tweeting excitement, many people tend to forget that they need to tailor the tweet in order to include the entire tweet content plus your ‘RT @handle’.

If you fail to amend your tweet by condensing a few letters or emitting a word or two – you are in great danger of going over your 140 characters and therefore missing out your vital ingredient – your hyperlink.

If you are using Twitter on your android or iphone – it’s less easy to commit this crime. The Twitter app on smartphone really dumbs things down for us and we are given the option to simply retweet the tweet as it is – ‘no RT @handle’ needed. Twitter.com actually allows for us to do this as well.

However if you are a Hootsuite user, for example, things aren’t so simple. You just need to remember to amend the tweet and allow enough character space to write ‘RT @handle’ and then include all the tweet content. It’s also worth noting that most tweets will need some editing as the majority of tweets take up the required character space.

When you hit that retweet button in Hootsuite – it very kindly takes the tweet for you and adds the ‘RT @handle’ in front of your tweet  -  however, that doesn’t mean to say that the whole message will now fit into 140 characters. If you just then hit send – you’ve most probably chopped off the end of your tweet and therefore your link, which is a waste of time for everyone involved!

We hope this small complaint on our part will help to stop people getting over excited with their retweeting and delivering half messages. Please help to spread the word by sharing on this blog  – in the hope to eradicate retweeting errors.

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

As one that loves to blog to share my experiences and tips, then I thought I’d create a blog post that brings together my year of blogging in 2011. Social Media has really come to life for all businesses great and small during 2011 and no doubt 2012 will prove to be a very interesting year.

I’ll be blogging as usual throughout 2012 sharing my news, views, tips and advice – but for now, in case you missed any of them, I’ve handpicked some of my favourite posts. Not all of them made the cut (we really did do a lot of blogging last year) so I hope you enjoy the roundup from 2011.

Don’t forget the business basics… the product has to stand up

Key business basics – this blog post focuses on the fact that your product really should be great. You really can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

Social Media – 12 Questions Answered

I was approached by a business student who was writing her dissertation on how social media channels were impacting marketing.  This post is rather lengthy, but covers my answers to questions such as; What are the reasons behind social networking sites?,  Are social networking sites important and why do people use them? Do they increase business and engagement? Are social networking sites a cost effective way of advertising a business? And more.

Are you promoting your good points? Testimonials, videos, reviews…it all counts!

Many businesses miss out on promoting their great points. We have positive statements and gems waiting to be shared. This post looks at how you can be leveraging the ‘Recommendation Generation’.

5 Social Media Myths well and truly Busted

This was a popular post and resonated with many. I often meet people that say that social media is great because it’s all free. Oh yeah? This post looks at that myth and others.

Do you know the keywords for your business?

When I’m working with clients or running social media training workshops we always cover the importance of ‘keywords’. Effectively, they are your online dna for your business. The words people type into search engines to find your products or services. Know them and use them wisely. This post shows you why and how.

Twitter Stats and Trivia

We all love a bit of trivia and stats are usually pretty compelling reading. This post plays up to those curious needs we all have. Gems such as the lifetime of a tweet etc.

Creating a personalised Twitter background

This post does what is says in the title. It’s the facts and sizes about creating a personalised Twitter background. Some of the logistics for this may need to be reworked in line with Twitter’s new identity – but the ideas around what you can be sharing are still relevant.

Social Media Marketing – Take it seriously or leave it alone!

They are important and far reaching marketing channels – so in the wrong hands, things can get dangerous.  This post takes a look at how you can be leveraging them effectively.

A Practical Introduction to Google Adwords

At Carvill Creative, whilst we certainly don’t specialise in Adwords, it’s important that we understand how it all works. This post is exactly as it says, a practical intro – some do’s and don’ts for successful online advertising campaigns.

In the world of social media – don’t underestimate the power of your profile picture

First impressions count – so be sure you’re making the right impression.

Facebook for Business

In my humble opinion 2012 will be the year businesses (b2b and b2c) really start to leverage Facebook. This quick post offers a bit of a scene setter.

Facebook Statistics that will convert you for Life

Vikki, our lead social media exec, contributed a few posts to our blog last year – this is one of hers, sharing stats and facts about the mighty Facebook.

Blogging – a few fast tips and a definition to clear things up

Blogging is central to successful social media activity. It’s effectively a quick and effective way to share unique, compelling content. This post offers some tips for all to consider.

Content is King. So…what’s your content strategy?

Most businesses don’t have a content strategy in place. Do you? This post covers the importance of content in the social media age.

Cutting through the noise on Twitter – and capturing key conversations

With over 200 million tweets a day how do you find the conversations that are relevant to you? This post shares the why and how.

How to be a good Tweeter – some do’s and don’ts

There’s always something new to learn – and so we keep on sharing.

When did you last check your website’s performance? 5 Critical Checks

40% of websites get zero traffic – and of those that do, 70% of consumers don’t trust them due to poor design and user interface. How effective is your site?

How To Make the Most of your Facebook Business Page – get those ‘likes’ in

Getting people to ‘like’ your page is the first step, as once you’ve got them, you’ve then got to keep them engaged. This post looks at some marketing tactics to assist.

5 Key Elements for Success when Outsourcing Social Media Marketing Activity

It’s an important relationship so be sure you’re in for a successful partnership by heeding the advice in this post.

Creating Social Media Guidelines for your Business

How do you manage a crisis and who is responsible for what? As businesses become ‘social’ a whole new set of guidelines are required to safeguard and manage social engagement effectively.

Leveraging LinkedIn…very simply, it’s about harnessing the relationships you already have

Many people I meet say they have a LinkedIn profile. When I ask if it’s 100% complete it’s rare that they answer in the positive. This post offers tips for getting your profiles in tip top condition and leveraging LinkedIn as a business resource.

Are you down with the Twitter Lingo?

Bit of fun this one. There really is some creative language creation going on around Twitter.  This post was our most Tweeted in 2011 with 226 tweets via the blog.

Content, Creativity and Ingenuity 3 Key Drivers for Successful Social Media Engagement

One huge thing I love about social media is that fact that it drives organisations to be get more creative – this post looks at just that.

Social Media Fears:  But what if someone says something awful about us?

They’re going to be saying it whether your on social media or not – so my advice is start listening.

LinkedIn – Have you got your Products and Services in the Spotlight?

This post looks at the new spotlight feature for LinkedIn company profiles. Certainly worth doing.

Social Media Management – a Practical look at Daily Twitter Activity

We’re often asked ‘How can I fit social media into an already busy day’ – and this post looks at just how you can.

Measuring Social Media.  My Mantra is… ‘Measure What Matters’

Businesses are obsessed about measuring social media activity – more so with social than with any other form of marketing activity I’ve ever known. This post looks at ensuring you’re measuring the right things.

Ten reasons someone might unfollow you on Twitter

There are lots of reasons I’m sure, but this post focuses on some of the more obvious reasons.

And then finally, two blog posts for the Christmas week in December – a silly (yet hopefully) eye catching titled Twit(ch)hikers Guide to the Twitteralaxy Part 1 and Part 2. Effectively, a guide to surviving and leveraging Twitter – covering 20 tried and tested tips.

Here’s to a fun filled, happy, bloggingtastic and healthy 2012 .

From me and the team @carvillcreative

For me Twitter has always been an exciting place to look, listen, connect and share.

However, I am aware from the dozens of social media training workshops I’ve held over the past year with literally
hundreds of people both via Business Training Made Simpleand in-house – Twitter is the one social network that seems to fox everyone.

“I want to use Twitter but I ‘don’t get it’” – is a recurring theme.  As too is – “but, what do I say…”?

So here are just 5 of my top Twitter tips for getting to grips with Twitter in an effective way for 2012.  More Tips to follow in Part 2.

Twitter Tip 1 – Strike the 80/20 balance

Of the 200 million tweets a day – it’s evident that most Twitter users are behaving badly.

Pushing links to self promote is fine – and if part of your overall thinking and planning, perfectly acceptable. However, don’t make ‘link pushing’ the only thing you do on Twitter.  Twitter enables continuous conversation – but effective conversations have to be two way (or multi-dimensional). When starting out with Twitter consider yourself in a strange land. You’ve no idea who lives in the land, are they friendly?, what language do they speak?, who can help you find your way and point you in the right direction?, who can you make friends with? – you get the picture.

In this strange land you’ve entered, would you then stand in the middle of the market square and start shouting about who you are and what you do – randomly ranting, and without even knowing if anyone is listening?

Nope, firstly, you’d use your ears and eyes and listen and watch – suss out the space, listen in to what people are talking about, what are their issues, what are they looking for – can you perhaps help them out too?

We’re equipped with two eyes, two ears and one mouth for a reason – survival. Use them accordingly for your online survival too.

Respect the channels for what they are. They’re not ‘bill boards’.  Get the self promotion balance right – aim for 80% conversation and 20% promotion.

Twitter Tip 2 – Focused Listening rather than Unfocused Publishing

In keeping with Tip1, Twitter is a rich repository for research and listening-in to the sentiment and needs of people.

If you’re using Twitter effectively, as well as ‘conversing and sharing’, you need to be listening in for relevant conversations and needs.  After all, far better to respond to someone, perhaps sharing a link to a recent resource you’ve created or a landing page etc – rather than constantly pushing out noise that isn’t relevant to the audience at large.

Make sure you’re tracking keywords and sentiments that you could respond to in a more targeted and purposeful way.  (Hootsuite is great for this, but other apps are around too to help you track, even basic Google Alerts).

Listening in overcomes the question “but what should we tweet” – if you’re answering a question, or pointing someone in the right direction or connecting them to someone you think could be useful to them, or sharing a blog post, (yours or someone elses) – then what you publish won’t be some random rantings about a new product launch – but instead a purposeful answer to a genuine need.

Twitter Tip 3 – Grow the Trust

Following Tip 1 and 2, you’ll start to grow an understanding of who to follow and growing your followers by proving useful and having genuine conversations with others.

Building a good relationship takes time and nuture.  We’ve all got a ‘friend’ that every time we hear from them they want something from us – and how much do we just love hearing from them?

Don’t become the ‘friend’ that is constantly asking something of others – “please RT,  pls sign this now, take this survey, poll”. Again, it’s perfectly acceptable to do this occasionally – but don’t make it your mantra. Consider how you’d play it ‘offline’ and remember that Twitter is all about two way conversations.  You want to give your followers reasons to know you, like you, share your content – and ultimately generate new business.  But the new business generation may be sometime down the line.

What’s important is that you grow your ‘share of mind’ in a positive and purposeful way.  So when they need to find someone they can trust to deliver a service you provide – you’re top of their mind.

Twitter Tip 4 – Have an Objective

“Yeah, I’ve set up a Twitter account but I never use it – not sure what to do with it”.  I hear this all the time.  Often it’s branded – and out there for all to see – great PR, not!

Ask yourself – would you randomly send out a direct mail campaign without thinking about your audience, messaging, call to action – and importantly, objective?   All campaigns should be about delivering on the objectives of the business. We don’t just do them for doing’s sake. And the same goes for ‘social’.

Before you dive into setting up a Twitter account ask yourself what the purpose of the Twitter account is. Is it customer support, brand awareness,  a specific short-term campaign, garnering support, lead generation?

The objective of the Twitter thread determines everything you do with it, right from the name you use, the picture the bio, the people you target, your influencers – pretty much everything. So don’t start out blindly.

Think, plan and learn before you dive in.

Twitter Tip 5 – Quality over Quantity

At the beginning of every training working, I ask each delegate what they are looking to get out of the day. A recurring theme on the Twitter Strategy workshop is ‘to grow the number of followers’.

This is indeed a credible and relevant objective for Twitter. However, big warning here – focus more on the quality of your followers than the quantity.

What’s the point of having 10,000 followers if not one of them is engaged with you and listens to what you have to say.  They won’t be sharing, hearing or engaging with you.  Therefore, what you are sharing is totally ineffectual. It’s just noise.

Growing a targeted, engaged and purposeful audience takes time.  To own an engaged audience means they’ve got to grow trust in you – and have time to learn that what you’re sharing is 90% great stuff. Therefore, when you say something, they’re more likely to be tuning in.

These are the right type of audience to acquire – key influencers, who, when you share something of relevance – they share it with their audiences, extending the reach, leveraging their audiences and growing more awareness for you.

So, to summarise:

•  Remember the social platforms don’t behave like traditional platforms. It’s not about ‘pushing’ messages out one way – but rather, having a conversation, one to one or one to many.
•  Leverage the social channels to listen in to the needs of people. Social channels enable this like no other traditional media, so don’t waste the opportunity to listen and learn by only spouting forth.
•  Unless you’re Lady Gaga – it’s not about having huge followings – but more about finding the right following.

More to follow in The Twit(ch)hikers Guide to the Twitalaxy  – Part 2.

Meanwhile, do share your views and tips with me too – I’m all ears…

Best wishes for a happy Christmas and a fun filled and prosperous 2012.

Michelle

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  Covering all aspects of online visibility –  marketing strategy, social media marketing and management, social media consulting and training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice as it happens – subscribe to the Carvill Creative Blog

If you’ve noticed that your Twitter followers fluctuate in numbers, perhaps there’s something you’re doing wrong. You might be turning tweeters on and off without realising it.

Take a look at our top ten twitter sins and maybe you’ll discover why people don’t always stick around to see what you have to say…

1. We’ve said it before but we’ll say it again, don’t send automated direct messages– the majority of people dislike them and consider them spammy. They are very impersonal and lead people to believe your Twitter activity will follow the same pattern.

2. You’re giving your followers the silent treatment – if you go a month without tweeting, people will assume you are not reading or engaging with other tweeters either and therefore not worth following.

3. Self centred behaviour – If you only provide links to your own site, this is rather selfish and will put followers off from sharing your content. ‘Do as you would be done by’.

4. Cheekiness – You ask for RT’s all the time…many consider this bad Twitter form and rude, if your content is interesting enough you shouldn’t have to ask for Retweets

5. Being plain boring – ‘You snooze, you lose’ – If you only send links to articles and don’t engage with your followers you’ll put people off following you, we want to hear your own thoughts and views as well as those you agree with.

6. You are an emotionless cold hearted tweeter– this makes people think you’re a robot and stops them from falling in love with your timeline. If you give a little charisma to your tweets, people won’t unfollow. Simples.

7. You’re a celeb stalker – those tweeters who only tweet celebrities are very boring to follow, they probably won’t reply either so you are wasting your time!

8. Being an egg – if you keep your Twitter profile picture as that little egg then we’d be very surprised if anyone even followed you in the first place!

9. It goes without saying really but any offensive language, sexism, racism or swearing will wave farewell to the majority of your followers. Especially at this time of year, it’s not very Christmassy.

10. The biggest sin of all – you mention other tweeters in links that are not relevant to them or part of a conversation. This is just straightforward spamming and asking for an unfollow!

Stay tuned for more tips – follow us @CarvillCreative

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

Social media activity should focus on delivering the objectives of the business.

You have to ask yourself what those objectives are and have absolute clarity so that you can then measure impact from social media.

For example – if one of the business objectives is to improve lead generation – then there would be a mechanism created to deliver that.

Let’s say, that lead generation objective translates through to a campaign which is all about driving people to the website to fulfil a specific call to action to drive leads. In such a case, the website home page or specific landing page would have some call to action in place which entices users to engage with (eg: as we do via our free marketing plan or social media plan on the Carvill Creative home page) – and ultimately capture data.

To drive people to find the call to action, you are likely to embark on a number of activities: Adwords, SEO, Email, Newsletter promo, Email signatures and social media.  Not only sharing and promoting to those following you on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, but you could use social media to listen in and track keywords, capturing relevant conversations and directing those relevant people to your website to get the free whatever, they insert their details, you’ve captured data. Et voila, you can then measure how many ‘leads’ you’ve captured.

Providing there are some Analytics on your website, then you would be able to track exactly where traffic to your site is coming from, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc – and measure activity. Of course, you can also ask the user to tell you in the webform they complete to fulfil the call the action – ‘How did you hear about us.’

Many organisations get hooked on metrics such as the increase in Facebook likes or Twitter followers – but actually, if those metrics don’t matter to the end objective – then it’s futile measuring them.

Just as in good old fashioned marketing – a business should be measuring impact towards the business objective.

What you measure will totally depend on the objective you’ve set – and may differ from team to team.  For example – see diagram below.  You’ll see that the Online Reputation Team are concerned about ‘sentiment’ and measuring positive and negative statements about the brand / products or services. Whereby the Business Development Team are focused on measuring number of new fans / followers, competition signs ups, lead generation.

For our clients each month we do report on metrics such as:

• Number of followers
• Likes
• Klout score (online influence score – however, we’re looking at other metrics as we’re not convinced Klout is an indication of much actually).
• Website traffic / provenance
• Ranking
• Twitter grade
• Website grade

But if these metrics aren’t relevant to bottom line, then you’re not really measuring impact, but rather activity.

There’s an excellent book by @thebrandbuilder – aka Olivier Blanchard, ‘Social Media ROI’, which I highly recommend.

But to finish where I started… measure what matters.

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

Offering and delivering good customer service is fundamental business sense – they teach it in the kindergarten of business school, so there really isn’t any excuse when businesses fail to deliver a decent standard of customer service.

By nurturing your customers, attending to their needs and approaching any problems with care and reason, you should help to ensure that your brand builds a good reputation and legacy that will stand you in good stead for the future.

Word of mouth is still as powerful as ever, if people experience good things with your company, they will tell others. We must remember that ‘telling others’ in a social era – includes – tweeting, blogging, facebooking etc.

In this social era that we’re now in – where anything can be made viral and where the everyman is given a very loud voice (attached to a megaphone that can reach Australia) – keeping your customers happy couldn’t be more important. The Social Era has provided us with platforms that give customers the opportunity to have their say. However, it also gives brands the opportunity to fix any problems, respond to queries and generally offer a high standard of customer service.

Knowing all of this – I was shocked to a hear story this weekend about the internationally respected brand that is ‘Armani’ and their major downfall in Customer Service.

A friend of mine had bought a coat on Friday in the Armani Exchange store in Westfield Shopping centre for £300. After being assured that she could return the coat within 14 days she purchased it, got it home and to her surprise realised that her boyfriend had bought the exact same coat for her for Christmas, knowing that she wanted it. Touched by this unusual display of attentiveness from her partner she took one of the garments back to the Armani Exchange Store in order to get a refund.

Shock horror – Armani’s response was that they don’t offer refunds unless the item is faulty and she was only entitled to a £300 gift voucher or exchange! (Apparently the small print on the receipt explained this).

Tearful and distressed she had no choice but to leave the shop with the coat, in the hope that Armani’s higher powers would view this situation as very unfortunate and see it as an opportunity to offer a high standard of customer service out of good will.

Armani have done completely the opposite by not only denying any form of refund but by ignoring two emails to two separate people – very foolish on two accounts. Being ignored has not only angered her but further encouraged her to take further action in using social media to get heard. She tweeted about her very negative experience with Armani and asked for others to come forward and share their grievances.

Armani have not responded, which we can only assume means that they are not watching social media and therefore are in no way in control of what anyone says or reports about their brand. This is again – very foolish – any praise their brand receives will go unnoticed and any criticism will go unresolved. After reaching out to the masses of Twitter, tweeters came back to her to instruct her on various tactics that they had had to apply to fix the challenge – largely around ‘making a hole in the garment and reporting it faulty’.  Really.

Does anyone at Armani know that people on Twitter are giving out this kind of advice?

Does anyone at Armani know that this blog has been written about them?

If someone from their company was watching social media and listening to what their customers were saying perhaps they would understand that not only are they being bad mouthed across powerful social platforms but that disgruntled customers are encouraging each other to damage their stock in a desperate attempt to be refunded. If I was Giorgio Armani, I would certainly want to know about this.

With social media being so powerful we have made communication not only immediate but also global. Armani’s stock is most frequently purchased by young people, who are the best versed in the use of this media. Any negative experience that any customer has can be blogged about, tweeted about, facebooked about and made viral quicker than any refund can be put through a till.

Armani should be listening to their customers, offering an acceptable level of customer service and building on their brand.

Unfortunately for Armani, my friend is a social media consultant and will be using her expertise to ensure that other social media users are very aware of Armani’s very poor customer service.

Has anyone else out there experienced poor customer service of this kind? Does anyone have any examples of good customer service being utilised through social media? Feel free to share – we’d love to showcase them.

For more tips and advice on using social media follow us on Twitter - @CarvillCreative

Following the social media training that we provide, once teams know what they need to be doing – the next question is…” HOW do we get started?”

Here’s a very quick guide to how to go about effective daily Twitter management  for general  awareness.  This schedule is by no means prescriptive and you can work the timings around your requirements .

Clearly, your activity will focus around the objective of your Twitter account. For example – if your Twitter account was for Customer Support – then you’d refine in line with requirements. But this schedule largely relates to a ‘general’ awareness, daily PR focus.

For each Twitter account:

• 8.30 am til 9.00 am (You may be able to do this during your commute via your smartphone so it may be earlier).

Review account activity:  Check your Twitter streams for @mentions, direct messages and what your followers are talking and tweeting about – respond, thank, RT, engage and react accordingly.  Dependent on level of ‘engagement’ this can be speedy or lengthy – and of course, it depends on how many accounts you have. So you may have to revise your timescales here a little.

• 9.00 – 10.00 am

Scout all relevant trade press, review your Google Alerts, Twitter keywords tracking in Hootsuite (or other apps such as Twilert or SocialMention), Twitter search and relevant blogs and portals that you subscribe into – and review any up to date and relevant news. Speak to marketing / sales team – or if relevant, senior management team and ensure you’re up to date on any marketing activities, business news and promotions that can also be shared across your Twitter account(s).

• 9.00 – 11.00 am

At the same time as researching, be scheduling your day’s tweets into Hootsuite (or other preferred social media management dashboard – ie: Tweetdeck, Co Tweet etc). Don’t schedule all tweets to follow one another so that you block up your audiences feeds, spread them out,  usually with hourly intervals – and if it’s big news, don’t be afraid to ‘repeat the tweet’ but be sure to give it a different ‘spin’. Remember, apps like Hootsuite won’t let you simply cut and paste to repeat a tweet – so be sure you’re using a different context to introduce the link.

• 11.00 am – 11.15

At Carvill Creative, our team keeps their Hootsuite account open all day. So whatever method you’re using, check back into your accounts regularly to review any activity, mentions, RTs etc – and any engagement.

• 11.15– 1pm

Content creation.  This activity and timescale related to it will vary dependent upon how many blogs you’re writing – and what content (if any) you are creating.  At Carvill Creative we manage several blogs for clients – so we write at least one blog post a day for each client – so that we’re building an effective pipeline of compelling, relevant and keyword optimised content.

Set yourself a target to create a content pipeline to ensure that each blog is updated with relevant and keyword optimised content daily.  Keep your website / blog refreshed with new and relevant content. That way you have a place to send your Twitter audience that adds value to your business.

The shift in when we’re busiest on social networks…

Timings for when people are most active on social media are changing. At one point – it was very much that most activity happening in the PM. People were more likely to RT (retweet tweets) in the afternoon – and engagement levels were generally higher.

With the emergence of smart phones and social apps – activity is shifting. Early morning (commuter time) between 6.30 am and 8.30 am is now a busy hub of social activity – lunchtimes, and then another spike at the end of the day – 6.00 pm til 7.30 pm ish.  So be mindful of this when scheduling your tweets and looking at engagement.

Finally…

Remember – each account is an important communication channel – and you are acting as ‘brand custodian’ – it’s not just about pushing messages out – but about sharing the personality of the brand and engaging and communicating with your audiences.

If any challenges arise, then speed to response is absolutely key, so be sure to keep monitoring your accounts throughout the day.

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

It’s always interesting to see how different businesses approach social media. Everyone has their own way of using it and their own style – most obviously because everyone’s looking for different results.

That’s the beauty of social media; it’s flexible and able to deliver a variety of results that can be tailored by you, if you plan your activity strategically.

For example, if you wanted to use Facebook to nurture clients and build on relationships – your approach might be very different to a business that needed to really push their services. It doesn’t mean that one approach is wrong, there is no right answer – as long as you are achieving what you want to achieve from your activity.

This Twitter profile @LeonRestaurants – are using Twitter to build on their company’s success by listening very intently to their customers and their advice, complaints and praises. You can see from their tweets that they are really listening to what people have to say about their business, taking it on board and using it to steer their company in the right direction.

If a customer tweets them saying that they’ve experienced bad service or poor food – they are responding almost immediately with apologies, complimentary gifts and requests for explanations on how they can improve. What better way to achieve perfection than by listening to what you’re doing wrong and fixing it. They don’t seem to be using Twitter to push their restaurants or even their food – they are merely at the moment using it like a customer service tool. If you’re a new company, then this must be an extremely effective way for you to gauge how your business is being received – the results are straight from the horse’s mouth and come with the opportunity to go back and speak to the customer directly.

A business that wants to use their Facebook page to nurture their clients, keep them informed of activity within the company and generally engage and enjoy their customers interaction – might go about it in a similar way to an egg production business we found on Facebook called ‘Castel Farm Eggs’

Carvill Creative stumbled across a really great interview with ‘ Castel Farm Eggs’  who are based in Guernsey – you can see their Facebook page here . You should be able to see from their page that their approach is fun, imaginative and clearly working for them – using amusing photos and catchphrases to engage with their community and in turn build awareness of their brand. You can’t help but think that if an egg farm in Guernsey can make social media work for them, then anyone can!

Castel Farm is already very aware of the benefits of Facebook, arguing that:

‘The great thing with Facebook, for example, is that it is interactive, whereas a website only really tells you how many hits you have had, and a contact link etc…its very one dimensional.’

When asked later on in the interview – ‘How much business can you attribute to social media marketing in comparison to other forms of marketing? They responded by saying:

‘This is really difficult to quantify, but we have definitely had orders from these sort of platforms; we are also acutely aware that our end users are the people of the Island, so to stay in touch with them and let them now what we are all about is great, a sort of “electronic word of mouth”. But what you also achieve is a sense of fun that can really humanise your business.’

You can see the full interview with Castel farm eggs at this page  .

The interview really highlights how much can be done with these channels if they are utilised correctly, it’s not all about using them for direct sales – they can very much help to seal the deal but along the way they serve a lot of other purposes as well.

If you think your company can benefit from social media, think about what you want to achieve from your activity and give us a call. We will help you plan and implement a social media strategy that is right for your company. You can call us on 01628 634066 or email vikki@carvillcreative.co.uk for more information.

For more tips and advice on using social media follow us on Twitter - @CarvillCreative

You may have noticed – due to some regular and shameful Facebook stalking -that you can see pictures on other people’s profiles/business pages that you couldn’t see before.

It has been brought to our attention that many people are wondering why and how this can be controlled.

This is because the default privacy settings on Facebook have changed, giving you the choice to make your photos visible to everyone, friends of friends or just friends.

Do not be alarmed as this is completely in your control and can be managed through the following steps

To edit the privacy settings for photo albums you’ve posted:

1. Go to your profile and click on the Photos section
2. Click See All (next to photos and videos
3. Use the tiny right box underneath each album that has a small arrow in it
4. Choose whether you want the album to be:

• Public (the little globe)
• Visible to friends only (the shadow of a person)
• Customised (allowing you to select exactly who you want to see it – the cog)

When posting your own photo album with your photos in it – this is, of course, all down to you. However we thought we would shed some light on a few things you can’t control.

• The privacy setting for your Cover Photos album will always be public.
• If there’s a photo of you in an album that someone else posted, only the person who posted it can change the album privacy. If you don’t like the photo, you can remove the tag or report it if needs be.
•  If you share a high resolution photo or album with someone, that person will be able to download those photos.

However – do remember that:

• Unlike other photo albums you create, you can choose an audience for individual photos in your Wall Photos and Mobile Uploads albums. Each time you post a new photo, it’s up to you who sees that photo – you can control this using the same method as above.

I recently gave a talk to over 100 accountants discussing the merits of Leveraging LinkedIn.

Whilst most business professionals do have a LinkedIn profile – a high percentage haven’t completed their profile to the recommended 100% – and many aren’t ‘joining’ up the Company Profile.

Whilst Carvill Creative has had a LinkedIn company profile for a while, we’ve not really be doing that much with it.

From an employee perspective, we’re a small team and so we have our relevant team members associated to the profile – and we’ve completed the Products and Services section so that people are able to explore, the range of products and services we provide. However, as yet, we haven’t gone to our clients and asked for recommendations for our company products and services – so we’ll be doing that soon.

LinkedIn has a great opportunity as a professional network to help businesses leverage their online company profiles. Whilst Facebook seems to be enhancing, daily, the features and functionality of business pages – LinkedIn hadn’t introduced any new features for while.

Their recently launched ‘Product and Services Spotlight’ feature – is quite snazzy. It enables you to effectively create up to 3 ‘ads’ for your products and services – which showcase above the service and product descriptions and are clickable through to relevant landing pages.

Also – the information you can add to a product and service page is now far richer – you can add videos, customer recommendations, specific product or service promotions and  offers.

If you get this company profile right – you can see how it can become another effective online presence for people that find you via LinkedIn.

So here’s the quick step guide to creating an effective LinkedIn Company Profile:

• From your own personal LinkedIn profile – click Companies tab.  Scroll down that tab until you see ‘See all’ – hit ‘See all’ and then you will have a screen outlining all the companies you are associated with. In the right hand corner of that screen you will see ‘Add a Company’.  You then add your company name.  Please note that you have to have a relevant company email address when setting up a company profile.  Eg:michelle@carvillcreative.co.uk – was acceptable to set up a profile for Carvill Creative. It’s effectively the way LinkedIn verifies that you are an employee and therefore eligible to set up the profile.

• Once you’ve added your company – then it’s a case of completing the content.  As with all online content relating to your business, you want to ensure that you are utilising your ‘keywords’ when creating the content. If you are a social media consultancy – then be sure to say that throughout your content. Just as people search Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter using Keywords – so they too search LinkedIn – so be sure you have optimised your online content effectively, to give yourself a good chance of being found for relevant searches.

• The content tabs you need to create for your company profile are pretty simple:

•  Overview of the company – here you can provide an overview of what your company does – how long it’s been established, partners, clients etc. It’s your ‘About us’ section of your website effectively.
• Careers – you can showcase any placements that you may have – and details of what people have to do and who they need to speak with if interested in working with your company.
• Services -(more on this in number 4)
• Analytics – here you can review some basics insights into what’s happening with your company profile.  Who’s viewing, which sector, growth of follower trends, page views, followers, clicks through to your products and services page.

• Services Tab

This is where you can really segment and showcase each product / service you provide. For example on Carvill Creative’s page we’re currently promoting 4 key services:

• Marketing and Social Media Consultancy
• Design Services
• Social Media Marketing Training Courses
• Digital Marketing Strategy and Services

For each service we’re able to spell out what we offer – ensuring each service is leveraging the relevant keywords and showcasing what we do. Not only that but on each service page, you can run special promotions around that service – and showcase video relating to that product or service. So making the service page, a great resource

On this tab now – there’s also the opportunity to create 3 ads – so we have ads for

• Ultimate Website Package for Business –  (see ad example below, which clicks through to a relevant landing page).

•  Make Social Media Work for your business – which, again, clicks through to a relevant landing page.
• General Carvill Creative ad – which clicks through to our Home Page.

On this page too – you’ll see in the right hand column the opportunity to showcase promotions: See below the one we created which clicks through to a dedicated landing page.

So you can see – that LinkedIn are giving companies a much richer array of resources to tap into – and I can only see this continuing to improve.

I’ve noticed that for certain searches I’ve done in Google – it’s the LinkedIn products and services pages that are appearing. So I would suggest to all, that it’s time to create an effective Company Profile – which you can share, and indeed get all of your employees to link to and share too.

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

If you live in Europe or appeal to European markets and your business isn’t on the worldwide web – the following statistics should worry you.

The majority of people and business have an online presence these days but these stats. should urge people to ensure that they are making the most of this space. The numbers speak for themselves and are not very suprising but it’s good to see it in black and white sometimes, just to reinforce how powerful the internet really is. 

Population of Europe – 816,426,346

Population of the rest of the world -  6,113,628,808

Population of Europe – 11.8% of the world

476,278,755 of the population of Europe are internet users = 58.3% of Europe’s population

1,634,487,055 of the rest of the world’s population are internet users – 26.7%

Facebook Subscribers

Whole world – 710,728,720

Europe – 208,907,040

UK – 29,880,860

Top 10 Countries in Europe Using the Internet

 Germany – 65.1 million

Russia – 59.7 million

UK – 51.4 million

France – 45.2 million

Turkey – 35 million

Italy – 30 million

Spain- 29.1 million

Poland – 22.5 million

Ukraine – 15.3 million

Netherlands – 14.9 million

Top 5 Countries in Europe using Facebook

UK – 29,880,860 million

Turkey – 29,459,200 million

France – 22,713,240 million

Italy – 19,806,660 million

Germany – 19,459,280

So as you can see  - your audiences are listening and the opportunities to be heard are most certainly out there,

The question is – Are you getting the most out of the internet?

Does your website perform?

Are you leveraging social media correctly?

Are you even on Facebook?

Are you targeting your key audience?

Source - http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm

For marketing and social media advice or for information on how you could be using your online space better visit - www.carvillcreative.co.uk

Or for more social media marketing tips and advice – why not subscribe to our blog .

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

Customising your Facebook business page takes time and understanding – in order to give your fans the most value possible from your business page it’s important to keep your applications updated and functioning.

In case you don’t even know where your apps can be found– they run down the left hand side of your business page and usually have tabs for your wall, friend activity, photos and videos.

If you want to take an easy first step into customising your companies Facebook profile then adding the LinkedIn application to your company page is a good place to start – it’s easy to configure, looks great and encourages activity on LinkedIn.

Facebook have changed the app now so it is only available for business pages and not personal profiles – you can either have you LinkedIn personal profile running through – to encourage contacts, referrals/recommendations or have your company page connected.

You can view ours here https://www.facebook.com/CarvillCreative?sk=app_6394109615  -

We have chosen to feed through our LinkedIn company page as it provides detailed information about our business and is more relevant to our Carvill Creative Facebook business page than a personal profile would be.

In order to connect the LinkedIn app you must have admin privileges for the business page you wish to connect it to.

To get started in configuring your app go to – https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=639410961

• Next –  Go the left hand side of the page  and underneath monthly active users you should see the option to ‘add to my page’

• Choose which page you wish to add it to and you should then see confirmation that it has been added to your page

• Next choose to use Face book as the business page you have just added the app to and then go to ‘edit my page’ and choose ‘Apps’

• You should see ‘My LinkedIn Profile’ in the list of applications, click ‘edit settings’ and under ‘Tab Available’ click add and then okay.

• Next click ‘go to app’ under ‘My LinkedIn profile’ – don’t worry if Facebook asks you to switch back to using it as your personal profile, it’s still configuring it to your business page

• You should now be on the application configuring page and have the option to enter your LinkedIn personal profile or company profile (depending on what you want the application to be linked up to) – just simply enter the URL and then click save.

• You should now see the app appear on your chosen Business page down the left hand side with all your other app tabs.

A short but sweet post from Carvill Creative today informing you of something else you can optimise in your Facebook profile -

Another recent change that Facebook have made is that anybody can now have a personalised vanity url for their personal Facebook page or profile. The old rules stated that you had to have over 25 fans to change your facebook business page url to

www.facebook.com/(insertyourcompanyname)

Now Facebook have opened this privilege to the masses. It’s very simple and worth doing – it makes your business page easier to find and easier to direct people to with a link. All you need do is

Log into your Facebook account (not your page)

Type www.facebook.com/username in the url box at the top of the page

You should then be taken to a page where you can change either your personal profile or any business page url’s that you are admin to.

You can either type in a suggested one or type in your own, then click Availability

If the name you want is available then it’s yours! – simple as that

Do take note that once you have changed the name and it is registered with Facebook you can’t reverse or change the name back, it stays as it is permanently.

Enjoy the post…

Many of the questions I get asked during the social media training I deliver relate directly to ‘safeguarding’ social marketing activity and the implications of employees participating in social media can have on a business or brand.

Rather than a business bury their head in the sand and create a policy of ‘no participation’ – I advocate a business getting involved andhaving a clear communication plan and social media guidelines which all within the organisation can clearly understand.

So – consider creating such guidelines for your business:

Template Guidelines…

These guidelines apply to [CompanyABC] employees or contractors who create or contribute to blogs, wikis, social networks, virtual worlds, or any other kind of Social Media.

Whether you log into Twitter, Google+, Yelp, Wikipedia, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube or Facebook, or comment on online media stories — these guidelines are for you.

While all [CompanyABC] employees are welcome to participate in Social Media, we expect everyone who participates in online commentary to understand and to follow these simple but important guidelines. These rules might sound strict and contain a bit of legal-sounding jargon but please keep in mind that our overall goal is simple: to participate online in a respectful, relevant way that protects our reputation and of course follows the letter and spirit of the law.

1.         Gain authorisation from the Marketing Manager at [CompanyABC] for any social media activity where [CompanyABC] is the brand / organisation you will be discussing.

2.         Always be mindful that there are some topics we won’t comment on such as information about financials, intellectual property, trade secrets, management changes, lawsuits, shareholder issues, layoffs, and contractual agreements with partners, customers, and suppliers.   When getting involved in any ‘online social’ conversations – then always consider the above.

3.         If you have permission to be ‘speaking online’ about [CompanyABC] (pre agreed with Marketing Manager) then always be transparent and state that you work at [CompanyABC]. If your objective is to be the communicator for [CompanyABC] on social networks, then ensure that the profile you create is fitting and on message and clearly states that you are an employee of [CompanyABC]. If you are writing about [CompanyABC] or a competitor, use your real name, identify that you work for [CompanyABC] and be clear about your role. If you have a vested interest in what you are discussing, be the first to say so.

4.         Never represent yourself or [CompanyABC] in a false or misleading way. All statements must be true and not misleading; all claims must be substantiated.

5.         Post meaningful, respectful comments — in other words, please, no spam and no remarks that are off-topic or offensive. Remember, once it’s out there, it’s out there.

6.         Use common sense and common courtesy: for example, it’s best to ask permission to publish or report on conversations/material/research etc that is meant to be private or internal to [CompanyABC]. Make sure your efforts to be transparent don’t violate [CompanyABC’s] privacy, confidentiality, and legal guidelines for external commercial speech.

7.         Stick to your area of expertise and do feel free to provide unique, individual perspectives on non-confidential activities at [CompanyABC].

8.         When disagreeing with others’ opinions, keep it appropriate and polite. If you find yourself in a situation online that looks as if it’s becoming antagonistic, do not get overly defensive and do not disengage from the conversation abruptly: feel free to ask the Marketing Manager for advice and/or to disengage from the dialogue in a polite manner that reflects well on [CompanyABC].

9.         If you want to write about the competition, make sure you behave diplomatically, have the facts straight and that you have the appropriate permissions.

10.       Please never comment on anything related to legal matters, litigation, or any parties [CompanyABC] may be in litigation with.

11.       Never participate in Social Media when the topic being discussed may be considered a crisis situation. Even anonymous comments may be traced back to your or [CompanyABC’s] IP address. Refer all Social Media activity around crisis topics to the Marketing Manager.

12.      Always provide working links to relevant material available on other blogs and web sites. Disclose any sources fully through credits, links and trackbacks unless the source has requested anonymity.

13.       Be smart about protecting yourself, your privacy, and [CompanyABC’s] confidential information. What you publish is widely accessible and will be around for a long time, so consider the content carefully. Google has a long memory.

14.       Ensure that any personal social media accounts that could be construed as associated to [CompanyABC] clearly state a disclaimer in the profile outline. Eg: The views in this thread are my own.

NOTE: Mainstream media inquiries must be referred to the Marketing Manager.

These guidelines are purely that – ‘guidelines’.  You will need to consider what’s right for you and blend with your own internal documentation. Create a set a guidelines that works for your organisation and clearly communicate them to all relevant team within the organisation.

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

Not everyone runs TV advertising – it’s simply not relevant for many businesses. With social media – the media planning is as relevant. The media you select will be determined by your objectives – hence why it’s important to clearly understand them.

For example; if you are recruiting – then Linkedin or Facebook may work better than YouTube.  If you are launching a new service – then YouTube and Twitter may garner more reach.

Then there’s the B2B and B2C element to consider. There’s evidence to show that Linkedin is currently the most effective B2B resource – and Facebook has more success in the B2C arena.

It may indeed be a case of adding all possible social marketing platforms into your marketing mix.  Testing what works and then pulling back on the least effective activities.

However, to be learning by your marketing activity (as we all should be) you have to be monitoring and measuring results.  Again, monitoring effectiveness helps you to plan strategically.

Rather than just diving in and mindlessly doing everything – (mousewheel style), expending lots of energy, but going nowhere – effective planning helps you to better understand what’s working and guides you in leveraging activity and ultimately practice intelligent marketing.

• Know which keywords are right for you…

Typically we associate keywords with putting together an online ad campaign, however,keywords are just as crucial when using your social media platforms. David Taylor @2010mediauk – describes keywords as the DNA of our online presence. Don’t overlook using your keywords in all your social media profiles.

• Make sure you are using your keywords on your:
• Profile pages (Twitter, Linked in, Facebook, About me, YouTube etc).
• Signature sign off in your blog .
• Twitter username (@keyword – rather than @name)
• In your tweets
• In your status updates
• When naming your photos
• Facebook Business Page

In order to find out what your businesses keywords are, you could:

Ask the audience – Ask your customers, friends and family what words / phrases they would put into Google if they were looking for your services

Google Analytics – Review the keywords that people are using to find your site

Look at what you’ve got – Go through your website content, marketing flyers etc – anything that you have that describes your products and services – and look for the ‘key words’ – the main words which can describe your services / products in a fewer words as possible.

• Track your keywords and listen in

By the term ‘keyword tracking’ we 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 we’d recommend.

• Promote Yourself

If you are using these social media platforms and taking the time to leverage them – then you want to make sure that world and his wife knows they can find you out there. Let them know you’re out there and make it easy for them to find you with icons and links.

Promote your social media presence at any given opportunity. If you have a website – make sure you clearly have links to all your social media profiles. So many people miss a golden opportunity and leave off social media icons or shove them in a tiny corner of their website where no one can see them. You can have a giant ‘follow me’ at the top of your homepage if you so wish – make the most of it. You could have a ‘like’ or ‘tweet’ button next to every blog post article you post. One click and they’re yours to impress.

You can also encourage followers/likes/YouTube subscribers/ LinkedIn connections in many other places – All ‘communications’ and ‘touch points’ be they ‘online or offline’ – should also consider the social media channels.  Including follow me@ Twitter names on business cards, letterheads, invoices, promoting blogs on sites and in ads etc.  Email footers in Forums should include links to blogs, twitter and sites:  Follow us on Twitter @handle, Blog (www.blogname.com/blog), Link with us on LinkedIn, Become a fan on Facebook

Shout it from your online rooftops

• And finally….Follow the Ten Twitter Commandments at all times…

The following commandments, if followed, should give you a full and happy existence on Twitter.

• Thou shall not blabber
• Thou shall not follow random tweeters who are of no value, just to increase one’s number of followers
• Thou shall not neglect one’s Twitter account, becoming inactive and complacent
• Thou shall not talk too much about oneself and one’s achievements (or one’s cheese sandwich)
• Thou shall not expect to be retweeted if thou do not retweet in return
• Thou shall not take followers for granted
• Thou shall not spam
• Thou shall not use ‘eggs’ as one’s profile picture
• Thou shall not use Twitter to stalk or harm others
• Thou shall not send out automated messages to new followers

For more social media marketing tips and advice – why not subscribe to our blog .

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

Some people underestimate how important it is to have the right profile picture representing your presence on any social media site. The little box that sits at the top left hand side of any Linked In/Twitter/Facebook or YouTube account is seen by your entire social media community, all the time. Not making the most out of this branding opportunity is not only foolish but could in fact be detrimental to your brand.

Make sure you have your logo or photo on your profile at all times. Seeing the little default egg on Twitter or the default shadow on Facebook as a profile picture – says not committed, not trustworthy and not bothered. When looking for people to follow on Twitter I assume that all the ‘egg’ profile users are not serious tweeters or haven’t been on their account since they set it up.

If you can be creative with your profile picture then go for it – with Twitter having over 300 million users, it really is a case of standing out from the crowd.

There are things you can do to put a quirky spin on a dull profile picture. The iphone has a lot of effects that can be used alongside the camera to jazz up any photo. ‘Toonpaint’, ‘Photoshop Express’ ‘Colour splash’ and ‘The juxtaposer’ create images would grab the attention of any dozy tweeter!

2. Content is King – make yours worth of sharing

Social Marketing channels such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, YouTube and Forums (and many more that I won’t mention just now) are perfect vehicles for sharing content. However, now more than ever, what we share has never been more important. These channels provide excellent opportunities to share compelling content, content that helps others to want to know us, like us, trust us, share our message and ultimately do business with us.

So… we certainly shouldn’t be wasting the opportunity these far reaching channels provide by talking about the latest cheese sandwich we just ate. (Unless of course you’re Pret and it’s a tactic you’ve employed!).

Ask yourself…

• Have you got a strategy for regularly creating fresh and acceptable content?
• Have you got a blog that you regularly update for your business?
• Are you regularly creating videos for your business – how to videos, sharing FAQs, customer testimonials, new product and service features?
• Have you got any research info that others would be interested in?
• Are you an authority in a specific area – can you create ‘whitepapers’, industry reports etc?

Content is all around us – and so it’s a case of ensuring that you employ a mechanism for collating it and using it effectively.

3. Keep on top of your Twitter followings  - keep them relevant

This is a quality over quantity message. It’s very easy to absently click that green follow button on tweeters – in the hope that they will follow you back and boost your ratings.

This is not a good strategy to follow, the term ‘quality over quantity’ could not be truer.

With most tweeters tweeting on average 15 times a day, that makes for a very busy Twitter feed if you follow the masses. It’s so easy to miss out on interesting conversations or good business leads if you’re following hundreds of people. Only follow tweeters that actually interest you or provide you with good content.

Cleaning out your Twitter account might feel like cleaning out your wardrobe – tiresome and time consuming. Fear not -

This is where Tweepi http://tweepi.com/ can seriously help you out. With this very easy and free (you can pay to upgrade) dashboard, amongst other things, you can view your followings/followers in a split second alongside some very helpful stats. Tweepi will tell you when that person last tweeted, if they are following you back, their klout score and how many followers they have. If you think they are worthy of your following then keep them, if not – flush them. Very simple!

4. Work out who your target audience is

Before diving in to social media you need to ask yourself a number of questions –One very important one being -  What do we want to achieve with social media?

Different audiences respond to different approaches. You should be targeted in  traditional marketing approaches – and this still stands online in the social platforms.

The beauty of social media platforms is that if you want to deliver online ads – then Linkedin and Facebook provide you with very granular demographics.  You can really drill down to very specific audience criteria.

You can also target specific ‘Groups’ or ‘keywords’ to review conversations and nurture in a relevant and targeted way.

Social marketing – just as with traditional marketing should be targeted. Understand your audience, talk to them in a way that’s relevant to them, provide them with relevant and authentic offers, news, content, ideas and conversations.

You need to be clear on who your audience is – so you can target them effectively.

Also – remember the little saying… like attracts like. The ‘message’ that you put out is attractive to your audience and so it get’s shared by your target audience – most people have ‘friends or associates’ that are ‘likeminded’ so you grow your targeted audience in social way.  (Hence why Groupon has been such a hit…for Groupon!).

5. Keep your ‘voice ‘ consistent across all your social media platforms

What you ‘say’ and the messages that you communicate need to be agreed as part of your planning.  After all – this is your business, your brand.  It’s irresponsible to just let communications run loose without any prior agreed planning.

As part of your social marketing planning you need to agree what should be talked about and shared, tone of voice used etc. These things are all key parts of communicating effectively.  Resources allocated effectively – eg, if you are going to blog daily about xyz – then who is going to do it, sign it off, ensure it’s on brand etc before its shared.

Of course, what’s great about social marketing platforms is their transparency and authenticity – and when something is overly ‘manufactured’ – it’s very obvious.  You can still have authentic and transparent conversations – but planning what the ‘theme’ of those conversations is – eradicates the ‘I’ve just had a cheese sandwich’ tweet, creeping into the corporate channel.

For any other vital tips – please comment below

For more social media marketing tips and advice – why not subscribe to our blog .

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

• Ask questions

Use your facebook statuses and wall posts to ask questions. So simple but very effective – provide your audience/prospective audience with an easy opportunity to enagage with your page. Facebook users are far more likely to notice you if you pose questions they want to get involved with. If you don’t ask…you don’t get.

• Post games and trivia

Keep things light – remember that you’re trying to sell your page, if you were at an exhibition or show you might have a bowl full of sweets to entice the crowds to your stand. It’s a bit harder to offer sweets online, for obvious reasons, so be creative and lure them with trivia and fun games. It also keeps your already existing fans entertained and reminded of your presence

• Interact with fan engagement

Make sure you answer queries, complaints and compliments on a daily basis. If people see that you’re really listening then they’ll engage more and more. They are far more likely to ‘like’ your page if it’s evident that they’ll be able to contact your business through it. If your page wall is full of unanswered fans it doesn’t look great either – you wouldn’t leave a customer waiting at your till for six days – so don’t leave them waiting on your wall either.

• Incorporate Promotions and sales (vouchers, competitions etc.)

I would say this is probably one of the most successful ways to get the ‘likes’ rolling in. Everybody loves a bargain, especially when times are tough. If you’re offering a promotion or discount solely through Facebook it’s remarkable how supportive people will suddenly become of your business page.

• Incorporate relevant photos

Visuals are evidently effective and this has been proved in many areas of business. Keep your page bright and interesting with photos that will encourage people to get ‘liking’. This is incredibly important if you don’t have a website as people will rely solely on your page for pictures of your products. I stumbled across this Facebook business page ‘Lilah’ – a small clothes business that uses the photo application to their best advantage. You could spend hours dreamily looking at their beautiful clothes and would be far more likely to purchase from ‘Lilah’ than if the page was just text.

• Relate to current events

If it’s Halloween or Valentine’s Day then make the most of it. There are a lot of events in the calendar that can be used to your advantage. Keep your designs, competitions, polls, blog posts in keeping with calendar events, seasons and current affairs. If your page is promoting something Valentinsey and it’s four days til Febuary 14^th then people will be inclined to check you out.

• Incorporate videos

We can’t tell you enough how powerful videos are for your business. For example – say you’re a painter/decorator that has a business page on Facebook and you’ve just finished a job. Ask your client if you can video them for one minute reviewing your service. You can record them on your smartphone and have it uploaded to your business page in seconds. That video will probably be the most transparent and trustworthy piece of information on your page, you can’t get more powerful than that.

• Include links in your status updates and wall posts

This is the perfect way to drive traffic to your website or blog and gives your readers something meaty to read or look at. There’s only so much that you can get across in a status update and updates shouldn’t be too long anyway– so save the in depth discussion for your links.

Any other tips out there? Please feel free to share anything that can help others make the most of their business page

For more social media marketing tips and advice – why not subscribe to our blog .

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

If you are using these social media platforms and taking the time to leverage them – then you want to make sure that world and his wife knows they can find you out there.

Let them know you’re out there and make it easy for them to find you with icons and links.

Promote your social media presence at any given opportunity. If you have a website – make sure you clearly have links to all your social media profiles. So many people miss a golden opportunity and leave off social media icons or shove them in a tiny corner of their website where no one can see them. You can have a giant ‘follow me’ at the top of your homepage if you so wish – make the most of it.

You could have a ‘like’ or ‘tweet’ button next to every blog post article you post. One click and they’re yours to impress.

You can also encourage followers/likes/YouTube subscribers/ LinkedIn connections in many other places.

All ‘communications’ and ‘touch points’ be they ‘online or offline’ – should also consider the social media channels.  Including follow me@ Twitter names on business cards, letterheads, invoices, promoting blogs on sites and in ads etc.  Email footers in Forums should include links to blogs, twitter and sites:

Follow us on Twitter @handle

Blog (www.blogname.com/blog)

Link with us on LinkedIn

Become a fan on Facebook

If your customers, potential clients, business leads, family, friends – don’t actively look for you then they’ll never know you exist. Humans are inheritly lazy – so don’t give people the excuse that ‘they didn’t know you tweeted’. Make it dead simple for them to follow/link/like with you. Provide them with a little bird to click on and then there aren’t any excuses…..Shout it from your online rooftops

For more social media marketing tips and advice – why not subscribe to our blog .

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

Are you 100% sure your website is working  as it should be?

When was the last time you sat at your website with a consumer’s hat on?

Website Performance Checklist

Often, we spend time getting great content together for our website, spend days, weeks and months getting the design right – then it’s over to the web developers to ensure everything is coded and made live to web.

If we’re really prudent, we will already have done consumer and competitor research so that we’re sure the site covers all bases. And those that are really savvy will have undertaken some usability testing (even very rudimentary testing using good old fashioned eyes and ears is better than nothing) with people totally unfamiliar with the site. (Sadly, the testing element is all too often left out of a site build – an element I would say, ignore at your peril).

The site is launched and that’s pretty much it – sit back and put your feet up and expect great magic to happen. After all – it’s got a fresh look and feel and a whole new suite of fresh content – job done.

It’s rare in the world of marketing that ‘one hit wonders’ occur. Effective marketing (be it offline or online) is something that is continuous, intelligent – an ongoing learning process, forever optimising, tweaking and testing.

Given that nowadays a website is a key marketing resource for any business – then the same marketing principals apply – we need to be regularly watching and learning.

So here are my 5 checks to ensure your website doesn’t let you down:

Check 1:

Interact with your website with fresh eyes. Consider yourself a newcomer to the site. Go through the site with a critical eye:

• • Does all the content make sense?
  • Does your homepage tell users very clearly and simply exactly what you do.
  • Is it clear how users can contact you / buy your services?
  • Is the site easy to navigate?
  • What’s your honest first impression?
  • Does it take forever to load?
  • What does it look like on a mobile?

If the site could be better – make notes. You may not be able to make all the changes quickly – but at least you are recording how you want to tweak and progress the site.

Check 2:

If you sell something online – make a purchase. Is it simple to buy from your site? Do all the messages you receive and signposting throughout the site make sense?

Check 3:

Check all your call to action processes are working smoothly. I say this because on one of our sites, a simple email responder wasn’t redirecting correctly resulting in a number of new requests not getting through.  (Reword that into lost business opportunity). All was working fine at launch – but a simple change we made a couple of weeks later clearly had an impact on a process that didn’t get checked again. So be sure to regularly review that your processes are working and that the messaging makes sense.  If I hadn’t have been checking the site (which I do regularly) then this could have got missed and we may have missed weeks, months or years worth of enquiries.

Check 4:

Ask someone you trust to give you an honest opinion of their experience of using the site. Often when you are close to a site and service you use jargon that others may not understand. I’ve witnessed many a ‘forehead slapping’ moment by simply undertaking this exercise.

Check 5:

Understand what’s happening on your site and a simple way to do this is embedding Google Analytics. research undertaken in October 2010 of 10,000 UK websites showed that over 40% of websites get zero, yes zero, traffic.  If we consider the wise statement ‘what you can measure you can manage’ – then any website owner really needs to be aware of what’s happening with their site.

Google Analytics is a free resource, but don’t confuse free with being worthless. It’s an incredible resource which provides insight into a wide range of valuable business information. You can see visits to your site, where they came from, how long they stayed on your site, where they exited, what they looked at, which keywords drove them to visit, whether they came from a mobile or web, which browser, which phone platform – and that’s just the basics. If your site doesn’t have Analytics installed – make it a priority to get this fixed. It’s a must.

Enjoy the post… if so – please share.

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online marketing and visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

If your Twitter feed is anything like mine – it’s probably drowning in tweets that contain precious links to articles that will give you the absolute do’s and don’ts of Twitter.

However, we think that Tweepi’s Ten Twitter Commandments are by far the best out there and should be taken as gospel. They are concise, easy to follow and above all – accurate.

The following commandments, if followed, should give you a full and happy existence on Twitter.

1. Thou shall not blabber
2. Thou shall not follow random tweeters who are of no value, just to increase one’s number of followers
3. Thou shall not neglect one’s Twitter account, becoming inactive and complacent
4. Thou shall not talk too much about oneself and one’s achievements (or one’s cheese sandwich)
5. Thou shall not expect to be retweeted if thou do not retweet in return
6. Thou shall not take followers for granted
7. Thou shall not spam
8. Thou shall not use ‘eggs’ as one’s profile picture
9. Thou shall not use Twitter to stalk or harm others
10. Thou shall not send out automated messages to new followers

Good luck sticking to the Ten Commandments and let us know if you would change any…

For more social media marketing tips and advice – why not subscribe to our blog .

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

The two magazines that we subscribe to in our office – Design Week and New Media Age, have arrived with rather intriguing letters this week.

Both publications have declared that this will be their last week of print as they make the bold move to the World Wide Web. We are to accept that Design Week and NMA will now only appear on our screens. Our monthly subscription fee will ensure that digital versions of the magazines land in our email inboxes, rather than a paperback publication through our letter boxes. Times are a changing – but for the better?

Good move /Bad Move?

The decision that New Media Age would go digital may have been spurred on by stats from other publishers wanting to take the plunge.

Guardian news and media are said to be adopting a ‘digital first’ strategy after seeing a huge rise in online audiences. Andrew Miller, Guardian Media CEO, said it will ‘direct resources from print to digital, in a strategy that could help digital revenues double to nearly 100 million by 2010’

A and N Media announced that The Mail Online will expand its app strategy after its mobile audience grew by 5.7 million in a year.

The evidence would suggest that NMA are not alone in thinking the digital switchover is a good move, suggesting there must be a reason for this shared thinking. NMA have put forward their argument in the following words:

‘Our readership research shows that New Media Age is most valued for its news and authoritative commentary. We believe that by concentrating on just digital we can improve our information service to you, ensuring we can provide better in-depth coverage of new media developments as they happen.

Over the coming months we’ll be introducing a number of digital services to subscribers, including a subscriber-only email service, a revamped mobile site and an iPad app.

New Media Age will continue to run a programme of events dedicated to helping you make sense of digital. We’ll also be drawing much more on our digital expertise for new regular features in sister title Marketing Week.

We believe the changes will make New Media Age even more of an essential read. But please tell us what you think as we develop, and watch out for your personal invitation to sample the new package at no cost.’

So they clearly seem to think that they’re making a good move – but what about their readers?

After researching some conversations on the web it seemed clear that not everybody thinks this digital switchover is a good idea.

‘Disappointed’ and ‘angry’ comments suggested that subscribers will miss receiving a published magazine every week.

Many seem to look forward to taking their NMA to the coffee shop with them and think it presumptuous to assume we can all afford iPads.

There seemed to be a lot of complaints about having to justify the cost of the magazine when no magazine is actually being delivered. As well as comments about having to stare at screens and the internet all day, reading a magazine in the arm chair brings some light relief from a nine to five digital existence.

All valid points that need to be taken into consideration – points that Design Week subscribers will be able to relate to as they received the news that Design Week was to go digital this week.

However, with the success of tablets such as the iPad, it’s no surprise really that there’s about to be a big move towards digital versions of publications.

Design Week has reportedly said that they already generate more advertising revenue through their website than they do their print magazine – suggesting that they are making the right move.

From a marketing point of view, leaving print behind seems like a no brainer.

Digital marketing gives marketers a lot more feedback and control in comparison with print. We can see in black and white what’s working and what’s not. We can tell exactly how effective an advert in Design Week is through how many impressions it’s got, how many clicks, how many hard enquiries and how much business was actually generated through that ad.

It also allows for articles and news to be far more up to date, therefore more reactive and current. Subscribers may often have found it frustrating to read articles in these magazines that were considered old news by the time the magazine was in print. They certainly won’t have this problem with digital publications.

As with any type of change, it’s inevitable that there will be conflicting opinions.

Many people will think that we’re killing off paper without considering the consequences, others will accuse protestors of digital publishing of being dated and narrow minded.

The most important test for these magazines will be in their subscription stats, is the move too bold for the majority? Or will they see a tidal wave of digital adorers who’ve been waiting for this very moment?

Will we ever see this change become fully accepted or will we always miss the smell and feel of paper in our hands?

For more social media marketing tips and advice – why not subscribe to our blog .

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

Another of Michelle Carvill’s favourite social media myths to bust is ‘Social Media is not for kids’. There’s this misguided opinion in those still not convinced by social media, Facebook in particular, that it’s a young person’s arena.

This is a rather dangerous myth. It suggests to businesses that a large proportion of their potential cliental are not using social media sites and therefore won’t be benefiting from any time they invest in social media.

Not only can we argue that this isn’t true but we can prove it with some very interesting stats-

A new study suggests that a fifth of all grandparents in the UK use social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn .

Of that fifth, almost three quarters said that they use Facebook, a third use Twitter and almost 10% were on LinkedIn.

Myvouchercodes.co.uk carried out a survey from its customer database, the results were reported in the Telegraph this week – 1,341 grandparents over the age of 60 responded on their use of social networks.

• 70% said they had joined a social network in the past year
• Over half of those said they had acted on encouragement given by younger people in their families.
• This indicates that 1 in 7 grandparents over 60 use Facebook in the UK
• The UK internet audience grew from 36.9m in May 2009 to 38.8m in May last year – more than half this growth was attributed to those in the over 50 age group.

Exciting numbers – a firm group of statistics that suggest older people are very much getting involved with social media and it’s now market place for all ages. Businesses can’t afford to be missing out and age is no longer an excuse!

If you want to get involved with social media but don’t have any idea where to start then take a look at our social media packages – we offer a range of services that vary from getting you or your business started, right through to managing your accounts for you.

For more social media marketing tips and advice – why not subscribe to our blog .

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

• Allow yourself to be found – Choose a Twitter name that people are likely to associate with you and therefore search for. If they can’t find you then they won’t follow you.

• Make the most of your profile – Write a clear and informative profile description that uses keywords that people might be searching for. Make sure you include a link to your website too.

• Don’t shout – If you use capital letters on the web, it’s often considered shouting. Using full capital letters on Twitter is considered impolite. Think about your grammar and spelling, too— it’s still important to remain professional in 140 characters.

• Provide juicy info - Twitter is a great place to let people know about special menu items, deals and discounts or one time offers. Everybody loves to get the inside gossip, so make your Twitter followers feel special by giving them a look behind the scenes with photos or exclusive tweets.

• Don’t repeat yourself too much – There’s no need to mention your Facebook page everyday —people can find that on their own. It’s good to send out your new blog post link a couple of times a day but don’t bore people or give them the impression that you are spamming them.

• Ask for advice and recommendations – Twitter is a great place for getting recommendations and getting a majority feel for what people like or want: Do they agree with Simon Cowell on the X Factor? Are they excited about Wimbledon? Do they think Andy Murray has a chance? Do they like Italian Restaurants? Which ones do they think are the best? By getting into conversation you could find out valuable information for your business and even recommend yourself or others. By following Carvill Creative’s @iamlookingfora – you’ll find a feed dedicated to all ‘requests’ – look at it, tweet it, respond to it and share.

• Don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t say – Remember that anyone can see your Twitter account and anybody can print anything you write. A tweet is a direct quote from you so be careful not to lash out or write anything you wouldn’t actually express in person.

• Avoid being too corporate – Twitter is supposed to act like a community, sharing articles and opinions, retweeting tweets by others and supporting each other. If you appear too anonymous or corporate you might turn people off. If you can – we’d suggest making about half of your tweets non-self promotional.

• Refrain from sending out auto-DM – This is a personal opinion but we’re really not fans of the auto direct message that people send out to new followers. It’s impersonal and appears too corporate.

Does anyone out there have any other big Twitter rules that they like to follow?

For more social media marketing tips and advice – why not subscribe to our blog .

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

Our last blog post spoke about the importance of keeping your content on social media sites relevant and interesting. We should be applying the same rule to our followers. Keep them relevant and interesting.

It’s very easy to absently click that green follow button on tweeters – in the hope that they will follow you back and boost your ratings.

This is not a good strategy to follow, the term ‘quality over quantity’ could not be truer.

Chris Moyles was speaking on his breakfast show last week about this exact principle. Moyles argues that he only follows 50 people on twitter because he doesn’t believe he can be attentive enough to any more than this.

He makes a very valid point – we’re not saying follow just 50 people – but take Chris’s advice and think about keeping your followings targeted.

With most tweeters tweeting on average 15 times a day, that makes for a very busy Twitter feed if you follow the masses. It’s so easy to miss out on interesting conversations or good business leads if you’re following hundreds of people. It’s very distressing to think that you might miss out on a targeted potential business leady type of tweet because your next door neighbour is tweeting the Andy Murray score every five seconds, clogging up your feed.

Maybe you’re reading this and thinking that it’s about time you had a clean up on Twitter – you’re sick of seeing certain tweets that annoy you or don’t bear any relevance to your interests or life – but you also don’t want to take the time to go through the mass crowd that you have ended up following.

This is where Tweepi http://tweepi.com/ can seriously help you out. With this very easy and free (you can pay to upgrade) dashboard, amongst other things, you can view your followings/followers in a split second alongside some very helpful stats. Tweepi will tell you when that person last tweeted, if they are following you back, their klout score and how many followers they have. If you think they are worthy of your following then keep them, if not – flush them. Very simple!

Remember – quality over quantity. Follow the tweeters that will give you good interesting content and you’ll actually be able to follow conversations.

Does anyone know of any other good platforms out there that will help you flush unwanted followers?

For more social media marketing tips and advice – why not subscribe to our blog .

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

Other related blog posts – Content is still King – http://www.carvillcreative.co.uk/blog/

You may have noticed the #rfr hash tag being used around twitter in the past coming weeks.

#RFR  - Officially stands for Requests For Recommendations

This very simple idea came about because we are constantly finding requests all over Twitter – people looking for recommendations, assistance, opinions and reviews. The #rfr hastag is categorising all these Requests For Recommendations, making it just that bit easier for us to track them all. The #rfr hash tag is taking pull marketing to new levels – these are targeted business opportunities being put into your lap.

These leads could be seriously valuable to your business and should be watched by anybody who wants to recommend their services or business for nothing……. so that’s pretty much everyone then!!

Here as an example of how people are using #rfr on Twitter:

RT @msrfr @bluelightsphoto:

Question - anyone recommend a printer i need approx 1000 leaflets double sided by friday…#rfr

Response from another Tweeter watching #rfr –   I recommend @calverts

In one second @calverts have received probably the best testimonial they could ever achieve – A recommendation to somebody on the lookout for their services.

These requests for recommendations are happening right now, in real time, they are coming from people often with a genuine need or desire to buy something or be referred to someone that can help them. It’s like walking into a room of people that are all looking to be recommended your businesses services. Just put #rfr into the Twitter search bar to listen in on the conversations.

Remember to use #rfr after your tweets if you’re looking for a recommendation or review yourself – as it’s far more likely to get picked up and therefore answered.

If you are particularly looking for a recommendation that is do with social media – e.g. Twitter advice, then follow @socailmediarfr – this account will be releasing tweets everyday that are rich in social media recommendations or requests.

Does anyone out there have any #rfr success stories? If so – please share, let’s get some case studies going to prove how powerful #rfr can be.

For help with blogging or for more information on how we can set about helping you blog for your business – take a look at:

http://www.carvillcreative.co.uk/services/marketing-services-overview/business-blogging

For more social media marketing tips and advice – why not subscribe to our blog .

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

Other related blog posts you might enjoy – Twitter Stats and Trivia , Social Media Glossary, Using Twitter as customer service resource – Don’t just apologise, make your presence count

Michelle Carvill’s favourite social media myth to bust is – social media is free (check out her video on busting social media myths )

It’s her favourite myth to disprove because it’s simply not true. It’s true that many of  the platforms are currently free, but social media takes a great deal of strategic planning and implementing – which we all know takes a great deal of time. We’d say that ‘time’ is pretty much the most precious thing that a small business owner has to play with – therefore ‘time’ is by no means free.

Bearing all this in mind – it may be that you find yourself wanting to be involved in social media but can’t afford the time out of a busy working day to blog, tweet, update pages, listen in on conversations, grow followers etc.

It may also be that you can’t afford the time to learn about all these different platforms – with social media you need to know what you’re doing or your efforts won’t amount to anything. And you have to keep up-to-date with the latest technologies and tools to assist you.

Or maybe you want to focus on what you do best – and are therefore want to outsource your social media needs – and let someone else manage your social media and bring results to your business.

That’s why, from our experience of getting started with Social Media, we’ve created the perfect ‘Social Marketing Package’ for you, a marketing package that will relieve you of your social media stresses and bring you the results you desire. Our expert social media team bring you the:

• Social Media Play> B2B
• Social Media Play> B2C

Both packages are designed to get your social media activity started quickly and effectively:

They both include –

• Phone session or meeting at our offices to discuss your business and your objectives.
• Desk research undertaken by team at Carvill Creative to ensure we fully understand your ‘space’.
• Audit any current profiles (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) and rework with relevant keywords. And if non in place, we’ll set them up for you.
• Your very own ‘social media account manager’ working alongside you to ensure we continually understand your business and objectives.
• Monthly feedback and reporting.

Social Media Play Service B2B :

• Blog for you 3 times a week – and upload to your blog with relevant image and keyword tagging.  (If you need a blog setting up then we can do this for you for additional cost).
• Create and schedule at least 15 info sharing relevant tweets per day (you get to review pending before they go live).
• Monitor relevant keywords and conversations happening in Twitter and use as traction to direct to your profile or blog, and track direct new business generation as much as possible.
• Monitor relevant Linked In Group / Answers conversations – and use as traction or direct new business generation as much as possible.
• Set up other relevant alerts and alert you directly to anything that we consider to be of specific interest.

Fixed set up fee of £300 and a monthly fee of £500.  Additional services such as; Facebook Business Page creation and management, setting up your Blog etc does not fall within these fees.  However, we’ll tailor a program that works specifically for you and your business.  Simply Get in Touch to discuss your needs.

Social Media Play Service B2C:

• Blog for you 3 times a week – and upload to your blog with relevant image and keyword tagging.  (If you need a blog setting up then we can do this for you for additional cost).
• Create and schedule at least 15 info sharing relevant tweets per day (you get to review pending before they go live).
• Monitor relevant keywords and conversations happening in Twitter and use as traction to direct to your profile or blog, and track direct new business generation as much as possible.
• Create a Facebook for Business page – and use as traction and to direct new business generation /awareness as much as possible.
• Set up other relevant alerts and alert you directly to anything that we consider of specific interest.

Fixed set up fee of £300 and a monthly fee of £500.  Additional services such as; LinkedIn business profile creation and management, creation of Blogs etc does not fall within these fees.  However, we’ll tailor a program that works specifically for you and your business.  Simply Get in Touch to discuss your needs.

Take a look at the package in full and all other social media services at – http://www.carvillcreative.co.uk/services/marketing-services-overview/

For more social media marketing tips and advice – why not subscribe to our blog .

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

Facebook is becoming responsible for a very special relationship that now exists between businesses and consumers. The social media site has become a valuable marketing tool and driver of website traffic through the invention of the famous ‘like’ button.

Are you using social plugins/like buttons on your website? If the answer is no…check out these stats straight from the horse’s mouth and perhaps you’ll reconsider the use of them on your site.  

• The average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300% increase in referral traffic.

• Users coming to websites from Facebook spend 85% more time, read 90% more articles and watch 85% more videos than a non-connected user.

• Levi’s saw a 40 times increase in referral traffic from Facebook after implementing the Like button in April 2010 and has maintained those levels since.

• American Eagle added the Like button next to every product on their site and found Facebook referred visitors spent an average of 57% more money than non-Facebook referred visitors

For a very simple guide on how to integrate the ‘like’ button on your website just follow this link - http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/

Now it’s all very well saying that you need to include social media plugins such as the ‘like’ button on your website. However, you need to build the following and ‘likers’ on your facebook page in the first place. Here are some suggestions for your business page that might get the likes rolling in and in return – traffic flowing to your website.

• Ask questions that encourage users to engage with you and ask for advice
• Incorporate gifts/freebies/news/competitions that are exclusive to your facebook fans (polls, coupons, etc.)
• Incorporate relevant photos and videos that will encourage viewers to comment/interact
• Beautify your page with some very basic html coding
• Be sure to include links in your posts that people will want to click on and read more about

Are there are any other tried and tested ideas out there that have proved successful with Facebook fans?

If you need any help with your Facebook page – contact us on 01628 634066

For more social media marketing tips and advice – why not subscribe to our blog .

Enjoy the post… Vikki

Vikki Mills is Social Media and Marketing Executive at  Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

Related blog posts - In the world of social media – don’t underestimate the power of the profile picture , Facebook for business,

Advertising online has grown significantly over the past few years – and is now a multi-billion pound industry.

And with frightening stats around showing that 40% of all websites get ZERO traffic – it’s clearwhy businesses want to kickstart their online visibility by advertising online using Google Adwords.

Pay per click (PPC) advertising has grown in popularity due to its relatively low set up costs and high level of accountability. Unlike traditional advertising media, you only pay for your ad each time someone clicks on it.

And interestingly, this same successful PPC (pay per click) model has been embraced by both Facebook and LinkedIn advertising models.

It’s an all inclusive, ‘everyone welcome’ platform that has certainly flattened the advertising landscape entirely. It was only a few years ago that advertising campaigns were largely dominated by big brands – however, with online advertising via Google Adwords, even small and start up businesses can engage in online advertising – bringing their wares to targeted audiences, without any brand awareness or a huge marketing budget.

However, as with all marketing activity – it should ideally be targeted and therefore, you need to have a plan.

Too many people dive into Google Adwords without any clear strategic objective as to what they are looking to achieve. Remember, it’s all very good getting people to click on your ad – but then what? Have you got the right call to action in place? Are you leveraging the traffic you receive and converting it into sales? Ask yourself – what’s your objective.

And as with many marketing activities – a lot of effort gets put into the actual ‘driving interest’ but then the product (or in this case the website experiences) falls short of expectations.

You can burn a lot of money if you don’t know what you’re doing with Adwords – so here are our top 10 tips to help you along the way:

1 Keyword selection

Targeted marketing is always the most efficientl form of marketing – and therefore, the ‘words’ – or keywords you select for your advertising campaigns are critical. You want to attract users who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. To put it simply – your product and service offerings and descriptions need to match what users are searching for.

When creating your keywords there are various tools you can use to assist you. However, word of caution, selecting too many keywords can be costly and detrimental to a targeted campaign. It’s not just about getting any old traffic to you site – you want quality traffic which has the potential to convert into sales at a cost that achieves a positive return on investment for you.

To help you find your keywords you can use keyword tools such as Google’s keyword tool – which coupled with Google’s Traffic estimator will help you see the scope of likely traffic for particular keywords.  Another simple tactic is to ask your current customers how they found you – what keywords did they use.  And of course, in your Analytics account – you can review the keywords that drove traffic to your site.  So that gives you some pointers to start with.  Plus check out Google’s Wonder Wheel – a very underestimated keyword resource.

To assist with campaign management you can create multiple AdGroups in which you house selected keywords – enabling you to create ‘text ads’ that relate to specific keywords – and track performance more accurately.

2 How to target your advertisements

There are various options to assist you with your ad message reaching a more targeted audience.

• Location: Via Adwords you can specify a geographical location – be it whole of UK, or 25 mile radius surrounding London – or whole of the world! You can specify languages for your ad and also at what time of day your ad is to be shown.

• Network: Most ads target the Google network meaning that your ad will appear on Google and its network of partner websites. There is also the option to advertise on Google’s ‘content’ network which includes all AdSense publishers. Clicks from the content network are usually attained at a lower CPC (cost per click) however, the quality of these clicks from a sales conversion perspective is likely to be far lower – and there is also risk of fraudulent clicks – as it’s a wide open space. However, if your objective is more about gaining traffic than converting sales (as in promotion / brand awareness) – then the content network does offer you more visibility.

3 Competitor activity

It’s always worth reviewing the keywords you are looking to use via simple Google searches and seeing what comes up. This is a simple way to assess competitor activity. For example – with one client, we noticed that none of their competitors were indicating the price of the service in their ads. Therefore, whilst the service was quite a generic one – we were able to differentiate our clients ads by including details of the price – which whilst just a bit more competitive than others – was a differentiator online purely because no one else was mentioning it. So it’s worth reviewing what’s happening in the landscape you want to advertise in – and seeing how your ad can stand out from the rest. If it’s different and engaging – it’s more likely to be clicked.   I read this book one evening picked up on a bookshelf of one of my pals I was babysitting for. Have to say – it includes some gems about competitor watch and competitor ads – and took only a couple of hours to read.

4 Using effective matching options

• Exact Match: For an optimised advertising campaign then using the ‘exact matching’ option on all keywords ensures that you are only bidding against that individual keyword search. Use of exact matching enables a more targeted and efficient approach as you are only bidding on the relevant keywords you have specified – and if your keyword research is accurate – then your CTR (click through rate) should improve. Click through rates (CTR) is an important factor in ensuring your ‘cost per click’ is efficient. You only want to attract clicks that matter – and so by using exact match – you narrow the margins of capturing non relevant search. However, conversely, using exact match does reduce the amount of traffic you are likely to receive. It’s worth testing campaigns using exact match and also broad match (which will include various permutations of the keyword search phrase). Analysis may show that these less specific searches are costing you too much and not achieving anything – however, you could end up stumbling across a keyword phrase which is highly successful!

• Broad Match: Using only the exact matching option can have the negative effect of only receiving a low amount of traffic as you are only targeting a specific audience. In addition, to attract a wider range of searches it may be worth adding the phrase and broad match versions of your exact match keywords. As these are less specific they are likely to achieve a lower CTR and conversion rate but will increase the amount of clicks.

• Negative Match: Including negative keywords as part of your list is best practice when creating targeted keywords. Not using negative keywords means that your ads may show to people who are not interested in your proposition, so including them, enables you to stay targeted. For example: If you don’t want your ad to show when people are searching ‘free trial’ – then you would include ‘free trial’ as a negative keyword. As above – you can include negative keywords on an exact match or broad match basis. Including negative keywords will reduce how many people see your ads – however, again, it’s the balance between traffic and a targeted audience.

5 Managing your budget

Setting a daily budget is a bit of a ‘suck it and see’ activity. Google will automatically recommend a daily budget for you – but I would suggest that the best tactic is to start low – and watch what is happening to both traffic, ads, positions and ultimately conversions. You may find you aren’t bidding on the right keywords – or that some keywords gain more traffic and traction than others – it’s a learning curve. Once you’re seeing the benefits – and a positive return on investment is occurring, then you can start to look at increasing your daily budget.

6 Good, no not good, absolutely great… advertising copy

In my view, advertising copy on Google Ads is the thing that is the most neglected, yet vitally important, element of an Adwords campaign. The ads you supply are limited in line space (text) – so you have to get your message across, clearly and succinctly and in a targeted way. And of course, when advertising with Google, you’ve also got to consider the ‘quality scoring’ elements of your advertising. If you include keywords within the ad title and use call to action keywords such as sign up, register, buy now – so that the user knows exactly what to expect when they click – then all the better – and further, you need to ensure that the page the user clicks through to from your ad is wholly relevant to the ad (see point 7 below). It’s common sense really – but then again, how common is common sense!  The other element of ‘Ad Copy’ is to really monitor which ads are performing and which are not.  My advice is to run with 3 ads initially for each campaign and see which one performs the best.  Then drop either one or two of them – focusing attention on the main converter.  Again, it’s about being targeted.  I also recommend reviewing your ad content on a weekly basis – see if your competitors have changed their proposition. Ensure that your messaging is up to speed with what’s going on within your business. If there’s a price change – or offer – then make sure it’s reflected in the ads.

7 Targeting your destination URL

You can target a specific landing page URL from your ad to ensure that the user will get to a page which is wholly relevant to your ad. For example – if you are advertising ‘red and white striped golf umbrellas’ – then take the user directly to that product page – rather than to your home page – or even your ‘umbrella page’. Be specific and targeted. You know yourself that there is nothing more frustrating than searching, finding a link that appears to offer exactly what you are looking for – and then when you click it, is it totally or partially irrelevant. It’s a total waste of a click – inefficient and bad for your campaign in every way – so be sure to match your ad text to a relevant landing page.

8 Tracking conversions

What you can measure you can manage – and therefore, it’s important that you manage the performance of your campaigns. Tracking actual conversions – be it sales, or sign up – will help you to measure your campaign activity. It’s a balance and good business practice to ensure that you know exactly how much it costs you to convert – and whether that cost is profitable / useful for your business.

9 Campaign Reports

Google Adwords provides you with pretty sophisticated reporting. The reports provide you with a clear and visual overview of activity on your campaigns. Statistics which show you where the clicks are coming from – which ads, what time, which position you were in – click through rates, conversions and costs per click – provide you with very comprehensive and detailed information. Therefore, you can regularly review these reports to make important decisions about your campaigns, and make changes to measure impact, as they are running.

10 Google Analytics

Whilst the Adwords campaign reports enable you to measure what’s actually happening with your ads – Google Analytics enables you to monitor how users are interacting with your website. You can choose which pages on your site you want to apply analytics to (all of them if relevant) – you can also integrate Adwords into Analytics so that you can track exactly what your click leads to. Analytics provides you with data on where your visitors come from; most popular pages on your site, which search engine they use, their locality – whether organic or sponsored traffic (ppc) and also provides you with valuable information on which search terms / keywords are driving traffic. Again, regular analysis of Analytics enables you to steer your online activity in an effective way.

Also for more info, check out Google’s video for getting started with Google Adwords http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFzoM59bIQ8

There’s no denying that the current marketing zeitgeist is described in two simple words – ‘social media’.

Whether people are engaging directly with social media or not – the likelihood is that most people at least now know about it.

The founding platforms that started with sharing information about our personal selves via Twitter, Linkedin andFacebook (three of the still most popular platforms, but there are many others and no doubt more targeted ones on the way…) – have now of course, tipped over into our professional lives.

Whilst some businesses and large brands are now focusing considerable energy in the social marketing platforms – for the majority, the social marketing space is still relatively fertile territory, with the majority of businesses either dabbling half heartedly or simply sitting it out on the sidelines to see whether the ‘hype’ is going to last.

I’ve seen initiatives like those by MySMB promoting the fact that ANYONE can do social media – and the new tranche of freshly sprung social media gurus with previous lives as SEO experts, web designers, PRs, life coaches to name but a few, promoting an array of social media services that promise to ignite new life into a business.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a total advocate of the social marketing platforms – engaging people has always been and will continue to be a powerful marketing tactic – and the beauty of the social marketing platforms is that the ever improving technologies enable;

• Immediacy
• Reach
• Sharing
• Connectivity
• Conversations
• Targeting

And, I’ve got plenty of case study material from businesses of all shapes and sizes that share their successes and have generated new business as a direct result of their involvement.

However, my bugbear is with execution.

As a professional marketer, in my view, social marketing – just like any other marketing activity, should be taken seriously and planned for.  Doing ‘social marketing’ in isolation of any other marketing is really quite odd.  After all – the social platforms simply provide new marketing channels.  However, many businesses don’t seem to grasp this.

Businesses and those tasked with managing social media marketing, should be experienced and conversant in strategic marketing planning.

Whilst these new marketing channels open up new ways to market – the discipline behind the fundamentals of effective marketing planning still stand:

Before diving in – think and plan strategically…

Businesses should be asking themselves some key questions

Q: What do we want to achieve with social media?

• Brand awareness
• Selling
• Recruiting
• Informing
• Innovating
• Gathering support

Objectives need to be defined in advance – whether for the brand generally or for a specific campaign.  That way you are clear on what you are aiming for.

Q: Which social media is right for us?

Not everyone runs TV advertising – it’s simply not relevant for many businesses. With social media – the media planning is as relevant. The media you select will be determined by your objectives – hence why it’s important to clearly understand them.

For example; if you are recruiting – then Linkedin or Facebook may work better than YouTube.  If you are launching a new service – then YouTube and Twitter may garner more reach.

Then there’s the B2B and B2C element to consider. There’s evidence to show that Linkedin is currently the most effective B2B resource – and Facebook has more success in the B2C arena.

It may indeed be a case of adding all possible social marketing platforms into your marketing mix.  Testing what works and then pulling back on the least effective activities.

However, to be learning by your marketing activity (as we all should be) you have to be monitoring and measuring results.  Again, monitoring effectiveness helps you to plan strategically.

Rather than just diving in and mindlessly doing everything – (mousewheel style), expending lots of energy, but going nowhere – effective planning helps you to better understand what’s working and guides you in leveraging activity and ultimately practice intelligent marketing.

Q: Who are our audience?

Different audiences respond to different approaches.  I always preach about being targeted in marketing approaches – and this still stands online in the social platforms.

The beauty of the platforms is that if you want to deliver online ads – then Linkedin and Facebook provide you with very granular demographics.  You can really drill down to very specific audience criteria.

You can also target specific ‘Groups’ or ‘keywords’ to review conversations and nurture in a relevant and targeted way.

Social marketing – just as with traditional marketing should be targeted. Understand your audience, talk to them in a way that’s relevant to them, provide them with relevant and authentic offers, news, content, ideas and conversations.

You need to be clear on who your audience is – so you can target them effectively.

Also – remember the little saying… like attracts like. The ‘message’ that you put out is attractive to your audience and so it get’s shared by your target audience – most people have ‘friends or associates’ that are ‘likeminded’ so you grow your targeted audience in  social way.  (Hence why Groupon has been such a hit…for Groupon!).

Q: What should we be saying?

What you ‘say’ and the messages that you communicate need to be agreed as part of your planning.  After all – this is your business, your brand.  It’s irresponsible to just let communications run loose without any prior agreed planning.

I know businesses that say they are ‘doing’ social media – but really, all they are doing is ‘tweeting’ sporadically and aimlessly and have put out a Facebook page that gets little or no attention..

I love the quote – ‘Those that aim for nothing – hit it with remarkable accuracy’.  Again – this is the danger of just diving in without thinking things through and without a plan of action.

Social marketing activity needs to be well executed and coordinated.  Those tasked with ‘doing’ social media should be trained to do so.  Communicating a consistent brand message is no easy task – hence why so many businesses in the past employed PR and MarComs agencies to do so.

Therefore, you either skill up your marketing team, bring in a professional either recruited in or to train your team or outsource to a marketing agency that understands strategic planning and social marketing.

If you do decide to outsource to an agency – beware if the agency you choose  just want to take your account and run – that’s risky.  Any marketing agency worth their salt will need to fully immerse themselves within your culture, brand and business.  A full marketing audit should be undertaken, gaining a comprehensive view of all current marketing activity and planning, a clear understanding of brand values garnered – and that’s before any social marketing planning can even commence.  And then of course, it needs to be ‘joined up’ with your overall marketing activity.

As part of your social marketing planning you need to agree what should be talked about and shared, tone of voice used etc.  All key parts of communicating effectively.  Resources allocated effectively – eg, if you are going to blog daily about xyz – then who is going to do it, sign it off, ensure it’s on brand etc before its shared.

Of course, what’s great about social marketing platforms is their transparency and authenticity – and when something is overly ‘manufactured’ – it’s very obvious.  You can still have authentic and transparent conversations – but planning what the ‘theme’ of those conversations is – eradicates the ‘I’ve just had a cheese sandwich’ tweet, creeping into the corporate channel.  Would you put such a video out on YouTube?

Q:  What should we expect?

Creating media which is ‘socially attractive’ is no easy task. You are effectively endeavouring to build a social network, a critical mass of people that regularly talk, share or engage with your products or services.

Always keep in mind that for the majority – this level of nurturing and relationship development is a long game.

Of course, it may be that you offer something to a highly relevant audience that flies – and you quickly grow a vast amount of followers or fans.  However, that may be a one hit wonder – and things may die down again.  So, like all forms of marketing, you’ve got to keep at it.

With social marketing – you really do get out what you put in. The level and quality of engagement generally seems to determine the success.  If you have qualified people that are constantly responding, watching, listening, monitoring  questions, comments, issues – then that’s a highly engaged level of conversation.  And if you have the CEO or MD involved too – then not only highly engaged but a ‘high involvement level’ of conversation.

Q:  How do we manage these fast and far reaching channels?

Beyond the day to day implementation – there’s a huge amount of knowledge generated via the social platforms. How businesses tie this all important knowledge and feedback into their operating systems is key to learning and growing.

Dell is probably one of the biggest success story by integrating public ideas about ‘innovating’ their products – (they reported that an estimated £3m in sales were done via social marketing platforms last year and this is likely to rocket significantly this year).

Another case is where Starbucks learned through social platforms that their customers didn’t like throwing away paper cups. So, Starbucks created a campaign focused on reusable containers – promoting a free cup of coffee in return for taking them up.

Whilst there are analytics and management features within platforms such as Hootsuite – (our preferred management resource) and there are a plethora of others out there, these platforms aren’t going to help you plan strategically. They’ll help with monitoring and implementation – but the strategic planning is key.

Q: Why bother with social marketing?

Social media platforms collectively have a massive user base. Over 50% of the UK alone have a Facebook account – and Generation Y and beyond will only continue to focus their communications in a seamlessly mobile way. There will be a cohort of people that won’t understand what it is to visit a webpage without automatically sharing it with someone.

It’s here to stay that’s for sure. But just because the platforms are currently free to sign up to don’t underestimate the strategic importance of them.

My advice to all businesses…

Take social marketing seriously

• Think strategically
• Plan efficiently
• Train effectively
• Learn intelligently
• Monitor vigilantly and continuously.

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing and design agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency covers all aspects of online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice and amusement – view the Carvill Creative Blog

Twitter Background Design Tips

What size should the new Twitter design background be?

The new Twitter layout is wider than the original one. So, if you want to design your background for all to be able to see every detail of your personalised design, then that would only give you  41 pixels of space on each side to personalise.

The majority of users (apparently 72%) will have their screen resolutions set to 1280 x 800. So that gives you a little bit more space each side (approx 107 pixels).  So you can pretty much double your personal branding if you design so that the 72% can see it).

See how we have done things at Carvill Creative and with my personal account – @michellecarvill, we’re playing it safe with just 41 pixels each side in our designs.

The backgrounds you insert are images and therefore, don’t offer ‘click throughs’ on promos and social marketing icons – however, at least they reference that certain elements are available.

Another element to consider is designing the content in a Vertical way – running your content vertically, so it reads ‘sideways’ . As we’ve done with our Carvill Creative logo down the right hand side.

However, that’s good for big words, logos and large statements as you can run it the length of the screen.  But if you want to get detail across, you may need to do use the traditional reading left to right way (as the left hand column of our background.

Hope that helps. If you want a Twitter background designing, one of our design team will happily create one for you – simply email design@carvillcreative.co.uk.

Happy Tweeting.

Related post(s):

Twitter Trivia and Stats

@Michelle Carvill is owner and Marketing Director at Carvill Creative – a graphic design and digital marketing services agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  The agency  focuses on helping businesses with their online visibility – covering social media marketing and social media training, user focused design and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

I always enjoy the posts from @hubspot – and so this evening was reading their latest post ‘10 Essential Twitter Tips‘ – it reminded me that I too have collected some interesting Twitter trivia – and so I thought I’d share that too…

• Between 2pm and 5pm is when most tweets are retweeted.  Here at Carvill Creative we’ve actually been doing some research into retweets and repeat tweets – and so far we pretty much agree that the afternoon slot is far better in terms of tweets getting shared.  Also – re repeat tweets – we’ve found that the optimum number of times to repeat a tweet (albeit you may need to change the wording a little if using Hootsuite) – is 3. It doesn’t turn people off and it gets good reach.

• There is no dip on click through rates on Twitter at the weekend – in fact they are higher at the weekend than on Mondays…so tweet at the weekend as usual.  Now of course, you may do most of your Tweeting from work (particularly if it’s for business purposes) – and even though a large number of us may use our smartphones to Tweet – we may be ‘switching off at the weekend’.  This is when Hootsuite comes in handy so that you can schedule purposeful and relevant tweets to run over the weekend.  (Is that twcheating?).

• The average tweet has a life span of 22 seconds – then it’s gone from the spotlight.  If this is true, this stat has changed dramatically in a year.  A year ago it was 12 minutes (or so I recall reading).  This is an interesting stat – and in some ways rather worrying. If the life span is so short – does that detract from the power of the message? I suppose this is where being targeting and having engaged and relevant followers (quality over quantity) comes into play.   If the life span keeps decreasing however, what will that mean for the platform?  Perhaps it’s not all doom and gloom  - I am querying the stat with the informers to see what they mean from ‘gone from the spotlight’ and whether this relates to retweet and how far reaching the tweet goes?

• Don’t be afraid of tweeting too much – average amount can be anything up to 21 times a day.  Of course, again, this comes down to how you tweet. If I see a whole stream of tweets one after the other, continuously, then it blocks up by feed (particularly when viewing on a smartphone) and that may turn me off the tweeter.  So break up your tweets – rather than bulk tweet.  Again, Hootsuite and other resources enable you to schedule the stuff you want to share.  Also check out bufferapp.com – I’m loving it.

• There are 155 million tweets posted per day – triple the number a year ago.  It’s growing that’s for sure.

• Twitter is rated the best social media platform for building traffic to your website.

Got any more Twitter trivia or stats to share?  Look forward to hearing from you.

Happy Tweeting…

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

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

Why you need to know them and how to find them…

Whilst that’s all been very interesting – one key thing that keeps cropping up is the importance of ‘key words’.

Keywords - the DNA of online visibility

Online… keywords are key

Typically we associate keywords with putting together an online ad campaign. Google Adwords has a keyword tool which suggests additional keywords – and the Google traffic estimator resource enables you to review how much traffic your prospective keywords are likely to get.

All very useful – however, online – keywords run through pretty much everything we do. If you like, they’re (as a training colleague of mine, David Taylor @2010mediauk – described it), the DNA of our online presence.

Where do we use keywords

Keywords aren’t just for ads, ideally, we need to be thinking and using our keywords in a tactical way via a number of mediums;

• Profile pages (Twitter, Linked in, Facebook, About me, YouTube etc).
• Signatures (emails, forums).
• Twitter username (@keyword – rather than @name)
• Websites
• Blog sign off
• Relevant content
• URLs (www.keyword.co.uk)
• Landing pages
• And of course… online ads

So, as we can see from the above – pretty much everywhere we want to be visible online, it makes sense to optimise our presence by using relevant keywords, which ultimately helps others to find us and filter through the noise.

How to find your keywords

There are a number of ways you can go about this.  And here are a few to consider:

• Ask the audience

Very simple, but so few of us do it. Ask your customers, friends and family what words / phrases they would put into Google if they were looking for your services. A quick phone call or email asking this question can prove most illuminating.

• Google Analytics

Review the keywords people are using to find your site. I’m still amazed that siteowners haven’t embedded this necessary resource into their sites.  It’s free, it’s simple to do – and it’s a must for understanding what’s happening with a site.

• Look at what you’ve got

To understand which keywords are valuable to you and your business – you really have to stand back and take a look at what you do – and, importantly, what problems you fix. Go through your website content, marketing flyers etc – anything that you have that describes your products and services – and look for the ‘key words’ – the main words which can describe your services / products in a fewer words as possible.

• Ask a stranger

Recently at one of the courses I presented I ran an exercise where we paired up delegates and gave them a minute each to do their ‘elevator pitch’ to one another. Each was then asked to write a list of keywords that they would use if they were searching for the other’s services.  It was interesting to see that the siteowners had very different views of their own keywords than that of the newly acquainted stranger.

Simple exercise, well worth doing.

• Wonder Wheel

This is another search tool which you’ll find in Google.  When in the main Google browser down the left hand side you’ll see a link stating ‘view more tools’ – and if you click that a link to Wonder Wheel will appear. This is a neat and relatively new Google search resource (launched late 2009 but not many know of it).  It’s effectively a search resource which shows you a ‘wheel’ of related search terms.  Very useful for keyword finding, particularly for developing optimised content.   Here’s a link to Wonder Wheel explained for those of you that are interested…http://www.googlewonderwheel.com/

Of course, as with anything, these activities whilst they will enable you to find relevant keywords – understanding which ones actually work for your business is another matter.

If you set conversion goals then you can start to monitor which keywords best perform for you.

As search and social converge (and this trend is only likely to continue with Google’s commitment to real-time search) – then it makes sense to ensure your online presence is as optimised as possible.

Of course, as always, it’s still fundamentally important that your product and service ‘stands up’, your website is user friendly and offers what those searching for you expect to see – and that you ultimately remember that you are talking to human beings not robots.  However, using the right and relevant keywords in a way that makes sense, will at least give you a better opportunity of being found.

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

Myth No. 1
Social Media is FREE!

Whilst the platforms such as; Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, FlickR, YouTube, About Me etc, are all indeed ‘free’ to join – ask anyone who’s doing ‘social media activity’ – and they’ll tell you it’s certainly not free.  If you’re time is free – then it’s free.  But if you’re time has a value – or you are paying someone who understands how to use the free platforms with purpose, skill and talent, or you’re taking the time to get to understand how to best leverage these platforms yourself, then that takes time – and time is most certainly not free.

If you want to get involved with social media, just as with any other marketing activity – then you need to ask yourself who is the best person for the job.  Are you going to ‘skill up’ yourself, or pay a marketing pro that better understands how to utilise the channels and weave social media into the marketing activity of your business.  Either way – it’s not free.

Myth No. 2
You have to sign up and engage with ‘every’ social media platform.

As with any marketing activity, do what works for you. If you don’t have the budget to run a national radio campaign, then you wouldn’t do it. Similarly, don’t feel that you have to engage with every social medium. Experiment and figure out which platform works for you.  For example – I have a client that set up a Facebook page and two Twitter accounts. We measured activity, feedback and some basic metrics to understand what was the more effective channel. We pretty quickly determined that the Twitter accounts were delivering far more than their Facebook activity – and so we pulled back on Facebook and now their primary social media activity is via Twitter.  Try and test – but don’t feel you have to be manically uploading video to YouTube and Tweeting if it’s not getting you any reach. Do what works for you.

Myth No. 3
Social Media Platforms is mainly for Kids

I’m aware that if you’re reading this on my blog, you’re already into social media (ish) – so you’re already likely to  be aware that social media is most certainly not just for kids. Quite the contrary. If we consider last year alone, Facebook grew 277% in the age category 34-55 year olds.

The business to business use of these platforms is still pretty much fertile territory – and over the coming months no doubt we’ll see more platforms and features within current platforms that really leverage this fruitful arena – assisting both the b2b arena and of course the platform owners.  And if you’re still sceptical – this great video by SocialNomics is a rather powerful way to put things into perspective.

Myth No. 4
I’ll set up social media accounts and as if by magic great things will happen.

I spoke with a chap the other day who advised me that he was doing really well on social media. “I’ve set up Twitter and have a few hundred followers’ – and have some Facebook fans’ – so we’re all sorted with social media.”

When I asked what they were using the platforms for – and how they were engaging with those fans and followers, what his plan was – he went blank.

It’s not just about setting the accounts up ‘and they will come’ – you have to engage and put the effort into using these channels for conversations and brand building, just as you would with any other marketing channel.  That usually involves thinking strategically and planning.

For many large brands – they can start out with great numbers of followers – because they have a large offline reputation which they can take online.  For example – Coca Cola has millions of Twitter followers, but they have millions of offline converts too.

It’s much tougher for the ‘little man’ that has to build a reputation online – and grow followers and fans through genuine exchange of authentic and useful content and conversations. Therefore, the ‘big splash’ stories tend to happen with big brands. (There are of course case studies where little guys have made a splash – which may not have ever happened in the offline arena) but the majority of us it’s a relatively long game.  It’s not ideal to stop and start your marketing activity – ideally you keep a constant trickle.  So effective planning is key.

Myth No. 5
It’s all about listening, you can’t directly sell on social platforms.

As the platforms become more developed I’m sure we’ll see more formal ways in which direct sales can be included.  Right now you can run very targeted pay per click advertising on both Facebook and Linked In – so that’s pretty direct – and Twitter is still playing with sponsored ads.

In the conversations I engage with, both for myself and for clients, I’ve definitely posted direct requests for expertise and am very happy for others in my networks to ‘sell’ their wares.

I agree it’s more about listening first and engaging in a more ‘consultative sell’ – (and no one likes a spammer) but selling is happening and new business is definitely being generated by the social platforms, which attractively, is highly measurable.

There was a very interesting report on @econsultancy this week relating to the ROI of their Twitter activity. And very clearly it’s having a significant impact on sales. Indirectly and directly.  Definitely worth checking out.  View here.

So that’s my social media mythbusting session completed (I could go on).  And no doubt I will in a future post…

Meanwhile – let me know of any other social media myths we can bust.

@MichelleCarvill 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 social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

See Michelle in action – Business Training Course, Social Media for your Business 16^th March 2011, Farringdon.

I read the latest blog post this morning from Seth Godin titled:

No one plays the lottery if there are no winners…

Looking at the title, prior to actually clicking through and reading, I assumed the piece would encourage an underlying message of “in order to attract people to do something, you’ve got to give them a credible reason / or chance of believing they too could achieve it.”

In fact, the post didn’t focus on that – it talked about why most people actually play the lottery – and it’s more about the ‘rush of the opportunity’ that they MAY win.  Rather than really believing they can win.

I read the post – and whilst it had a little subliminal message there, and an angle to think about re the psychology of consumers form a marketing perspective – it wasn’t what I was expecting.

My angle would be more along the lines of why businesses must be ‘selling the dream’ aspect.

If no one ever won the lottery – and we didn’t read about their sometimes credible, incredible, unworthy and worthy stories, then we’d never believe it was feasible. If we didn’t believe it was feasible – we’d be complete idiots to buy a ticket.  We see the reality, we understand it’s a gamble, a long shot etc – but you just never know.

Similarly, in our marketing activities when selling our products and services – we’ve got to make what we do ‘credible’ – believable.  If you can’t show someone ‘winning’ and gaining from your products and services – who is ever going to believe that you can deliver what you say you can.

It’s all very well your features and benefits promotions spouting forth about what you do – and how great your services are.  However, that’s no where near as powerful as someone else, someone ‘who’s won the lottery with you’ – telling them.

This brings me to the importance – now more than ever before, of good old fashioned ‘word of mouth’ – and how social platforms enable that all important factor.

Not only by the viral element of people talking to one another online about your services, or collecting referrals and ratings for your services and products – but also getting your customers views right out there in front of people’s faces via video testimonials, or customer satisfaction dashboards.

If your business has a website – (and let’s face it, if it hasn’t, it needs to get one, and get one fast to catch up).  Then be sure to be publishing testimonials, case studies, videos etc whenever you can.

Here’s a quick 3 tips ‘word of mouth’ checklist to ensure that you’re making your service / product offerings ‘credible’:

1)         Create a system to regularly collect and record how you are doing. Customer satisfaction / customer reviews.  Collect them and publish them.  This adds to the ‘trust factor’ particularly online.

2)         Contact your customers and ask them to provide you with testimonials. Again, create a system where you regularly collect these so that you have fresh comments to post on your website and other marketing materials.

3)         Register with a review site so that customers can create online reviews which you can regularly publish. FreeIndex or Review Centre or you’ll find some business reviews here http://www.marketingzen.com/online-business-review-sites/ .

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 social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

I was recently approached by Anwen Gardner, in her final year at Harper Adams University College in Shropshire, studying BSc (Hons) Business Management with Marketing. Her final year dissertation is the study into the feasibility of social networking sites for businesses. Having assisted her – I thought this was a useful post to share with others too.

Hopefully it will engender debate and comment – so please do join in and share…

Q1. In your opinion what are the main reasons businesses use social networking sites?

The objective of social media is to get people interested and engaged by providing authentic, transparent and relevant information. Hopefully, those that engage with what you are talking about – will tell others – and so they will ‘follow’ your musings, subscribe to your blog etc – ultimately, growing brand awareness, positive word of mouth and share of mind.

For a business  social media platforms can also be useful to -

• Increase awareness of a new service / brand
• Share authority / expert opinion
• Raise general brand / service awareness
• Pull people to your site / blog / landing page
• Is useful for running research / polls
• Can be used to rally support  eg: a client of ours ran a ‘Movember’ campaign via Twitter.
• Can be used as an inexpensive support device eg: @dellsupport
• Find relevant conversations / influencers

Q2. Why do you think social networking sites have become so important to people, and what are the main reasons people use these sites?

From a non commercial perspective, social networking sites have become important to people because they provide a space for people to share insight and connect. Users share their views, news, life info, photos, ideas and advice about something they are passionate about. It’s a way to communicate what’s happening, how you feel about things, provide advice and share – and a quick way for people to keep in touch with friends, family and peers.

People are using social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Linked-In, Bebo, Ning, Buzz (and a plethora of others) – as effectively ‘online social spaces’ to converse, share their profiles, news, photos, ideas, work projects etc.

From a commercial perspective, the key attraction for businesses and marketers is the immediacy and reach that these platforms enable.  What other marketing mediums enable businesses to ‘listen in’ to relevant conversations is such a cost effective way?  Enabling businesses to target individual marketing messages.

If you think of marketing activity from a ‘push and pull’ perspective – push being where businesses literally push messages on users eg: advertisements, direct mail, direct email, radio and even TV – then conversely ‘social media’ activity enables ‘pull’ activity – where users are literally attracted to you because of the conversations you are having via these channels.  Social media platforms enable ‘conversation marketing’ – whereby users don’t feel the ‘hard sell’ – it enables the all important getting to understand the customer, engaging with the customer without necessarily pushing advertising at them.

Q3. Do you think social networking sites help to increase business and consumer engagement?

Social networking sites can certainly help to increase business and consumer engagement – provided they are used properly.

A recent study reported that in the B2B and B2C sectors 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 for many businesses to be out there in conversations merely as part of  brand building – it’s expected that such an immediate and consuming channel should provide a more immediate and direct response.

Social media platforms enable a ‘conversation’ with people you may not have been able to reach before.  It has an amazing power to enable communications to go viral – and engage audiences in conversations about services, products, issues, the company and brand – connecting a vast amount of likeminded people in an often targeted and purposeful way.

They’re also a great resource for seeing not only what’s happening with your own brand or business – but also for engaging in relevant and hopefully productive conversations. And keeping an eye on what competitors are doing.

However, the etiquette is different from traditional marketing – users don’t want to be inundated with sales messages, they simply switch off and see those types of conversations as ‘spam’.  Used wisely, customer engagement can certainly be increased.  Not only by nurturing and sharing relevant and useful information – but also via supporting customers and potential customers.

Q4. Do you think social networking sites help businesses increase sales or are they only beneficial for publicity reasons and providing consumers with new information?

In my view, whether you are using forums, blogs or social media sites – they are not a place to directly ‘sell’ – it’s a place to build your reputation and share opinion.   Whether setting out to achieve a position of authority or ‘expert’ in what you do – or to learn, share and generally participate – social media platforms are now firmly cemented into savvy marketing strategies.

Of course, people do try to use these platforms for direct sales purposes – but as mentioned above, that tends to ‘turn off’ the ‘social audience’.  So whilst it’s part of the end game, direct selling should never be your main objective for engaging.

Having said that, from my own experience of working with these platforms for both my own businesses and for clients that we manage social media activity for – there have been times where we’re tracking keywords and we see open requests from users to connect with someone who provides a service.  For example – we work with an Accountancy practice that has a specific expertise in working with ‘the Arts’ sector.  A thread on Twitter came about from an Artist looking to find an accountancy practice that particularly helped Artists. Within seconds we were able to connect the two – resulting in a new client for the practice – and a happy Artist!  And that’s just one example of many.  So yes, it can increase sales and generate new clients.

Q5. How feasible do you think social networking sites are for businesses?

They’re free, easily accessible and if managed correctly, can fit into the daily running of any business.

In my opinion, social media activity should be part of daily activity however, it needs to be managed in a focused way – as it can be all consuming if trying to do too much.

It’s a case of ‘suck it and see’ to gauge what’s right for your business:

• Twitter
• Blogs
• Forums
• Facebook
• Linked In Groups

It’s useful to schedule all activities into the week.  For example:

• Blog posts get posted daily / weekly
• Each morning relevant channels – Twitter thread, Trade press news sites, general news sites are reviewed and tweets scheduled for the day.
• Blogs you are subscribed to – when alerted to new post, review and comment if relevant.
• Forums you are participating in are scanned at least daily.
• Linked In Group participation (as required – but visit at least weekly to review contacts’ contacts and grow).
• Plus ….review all areas organic and active ‘expansion’.

This is where useful management resources such as Hootsuite come into their own.  Here you can feed all of your social media platforms into one central dashboard – watch, manage, tweet, post etc – particularly useful when managing a number of accounts.

Q6. Would you say social networking sites are a cost-effective form of advertising and do businesses see a good return on investment?

The wonderful world of digital marketing is attractive for businesses because it’s so measurable – businesses can see exactly how productive their marketing spend is.

Hence why online advertising such as Google Adwords has seen explosion in growth – it enables businesses of all shapes and sizes the opportunity to advertise, but only pay for the advertisement if someone actually interacts with it – clicks it.

Nowadays we expect the people we spend our marketing and advertising budgets with to be able to provide us with some outline stats of what we can expect to receive for our money.

I’ve worked on campaigns whereby we ran ads on Facebook – and whilst it didn’t necessarily generate any direct sales – traffic to sites increased and followers grew significantly – so growing reach.  I’ve also tested advertising on Linked In as this medium offers businesses a means of getting their ads in front of a very targeted audience.

That’s the beauty of the channels – the ability to target ads to specific audiences.  However, the product / advertisement and call to action still has to be attractive. Just because you’ve put an ad in front of the right audience, the offer still has to be compelling in order for them to interact.

Most social media sites don’t require any ‘advertising spend’ – businesses can do a lot with their Twitter conversations and audiences, blogs and forum activity that offers ‘conversational marketing’ – which can be very powerful.  They can get recommended via Linked In – which is far more powerful than merely seeing an ad.

Q7. Do you think social networking sites are the most cost-effective form of direct marketing?

Social networking sites offer a means of direct marketing – but as mentioned above, they’re not the right platforms for ‘direct selling’ – that can be a big switch off for social audiences.  Yes, you can run very targeted ads to audiences – and so that’s attractive, as is the immediacy, reach and viral opportunity. And because these channels offer activity at relatively low cost – then if a campaign is successful, from a cost to conversion perspective, they can be very cost effective.

However, whilst I’m a big advocate of a ‘digital future’ – I would never recommend to a business to doing just social media direct marketing – it’s more a case of building social media activities into your general marketing mix initially – and then as all marketing activity, learning what works and what’s the most effective means for your business – and then ploughing more energy into that channel.

I wrote a case study about @themeatwagon – a business that solely used social media channels (Facebook / Twitter) to communicate where their burger wagon was going to be each day. They built up a huge online following, had lots of viral opportunity – and are in the London press pretty much weekly at the moment. Demand has driven them to create a static restaurant site, which is bursting at the seams with interest.

However, they’ve also been doing the festival rounds for a number of years – and their audience is the prime audience for being on Twitter and Facebook.  So there are a number of elements all working for them.  This isn’t the case for all businesses – however, social media channels should be embraced by all – and as mentioned above – built into the general market mix as other channels to market.

Q8. How important do you think social networking sites are to the development of a business?

Social network sites, blogging and forums can bring a lot to business development. If it is focused on correctly it can help in a number of areas

• Customer support and service
• Brand reputation management
• Polling and product feedback mechanism
• Lead generation
• News distribution
• Brand awareness and establishment
• Product promotion and launch
• Humanising the brand
• Public relations

Audience participation has to be considered – if a business’s audience is ‘online’ and participating with these channels – then it would be a missed opportunity if businesses didn’t explore how they could leverage them to assist in the development of the business.  As the example above with @themeatwagon – they had the perfect audience – and that combined with great product and the immediacy of Twitter and the quirkyness of moving their van around and creating a kind of ‘online club’ for burger fans – led to immense success for them.

The key thing for businesses to consider is the continued growth and popularity of these channels – most people – of all age ranges and status are participating with some form of social media channel, and as they grow in popularity and population – then more businesses will be compelled to interact with their audiences via these channels.

Q9. How beneficial do you feel advertising through social networking sites are compared to traditional methods of advertising?

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

As mentioned above, this is not only due to the rise in popularity for audiences that businesses want to connect  with, (making social media channels far more viable from a commercial perspective) but also the attractive element of being able to ‘measure’ return on investment.

Online advertising via social networking sites – adwords and other paid for online advertising, enables clear visibility of what is happening with your marketing budget.

Recently a client of mine ran a radio campaign – the difference was that the spend was much higher – and the effectiveness of the advertising from a ‘direct response’ perspective, was nowhere near as effective as the pay per click online advertising that was running in parallel.

Most traditional methods of marketing just aren’t equipped to offer direct  response mechanisms that are accurate – there are too many ‘intangibles’.  Social media offers direct response measurement resources – that are very accurate and clear – AND the opportunity to brand build at the same time.  From a marketers’ perspective, this is very attractive.

Q10. What is the main advantage and disadvantage you think businesses gain from using social networking sites?

I think the big challenge for businesses small, medium and large is the time management of it all – and getting over the transparency and fear of what to say.

For many, it’s still such fertile territory and people are worried about productivity and how time consuming it can be for everybody involved.

They’re also worried about the ‘wrong messages’ getting out – and how what they say could reflect badly on them, damage the brand reputation etc.

The immediacy and reach – whilst probably one of the most attractive elements of the channels – terrifies many – as there is the scope for a negative element to travel quickly and widely, causing wide scale mayhem.  Once it’s out there – you can’t take it back!

Therefore, there needs to be a clear social media strategy woven into the overall strategic marketing plan – to ensure that all communications are on brand and effective.

Transparency is key – and users like to feel that they are engaging in real conversations rather than manufactured ones, humans like to have conversations with humans – and so the challenge for businesses is finding the right people to manage their social media channels.  There’s a big trust factor – as the brand is really ‘out there’ and exposed.

Those that write about Social Media Marketing (and there are hundreds of good and often opposing articles out there) all seem to agree on one point.  It’s about conversation not direct selling.  Selling is secondary.

Social networking produces conversations – useful, interesting collaborations – sharing information, genuinely conversing – and facilitating information – directing people to resources, people, spaces, places – virtually or off line to where they can achieve their main objective.

Q11. What are your predictions for social networking sites and businesses over the next few years?

Social networking sites are certainly not a ‘fad’ – they’re here to say.  And I expect that in the near future, we’ll see more of them developing.

Vertical:

I suspect social media platforms will look ‘vertical’ – and really harness their ability to target audiences and bring link minded groups together.  Therefore, there’ll be specialist platforms for sectors such as: Legal, Finance, Fashion, Food, Retail, Small Business etc.

Search:

Whether vertical or open – then I suspect that there’ll be far savvier developments with the way people are ‘found’ online.  Currently, Google dominates. However, Twitter and Facebook are starting to chip away at the heels. I suspect there’ll be developments in Twitter whereby you can pay to be listed in a ‘vertical’ – almost a paid for Twitter Directory – and popularity scores / influence scores will be built into the search algorithm to produce searches.

Country Specific:

I believe they’ll offer breakdowns so that you can only converse with people in your own country. This is currently challenging, particularly on Twitter – and so I suspect this ‘vertical’ by country / region / geography – will become more user friendly – enabling users to be more targeted with who they connect with.

Monetised and Enterprise Versions:

I touched on this above with paid search in Twitter etc – but I think we’ll see successful platforms either migrating into an Enterprise version.  And in all cases – there’ll be opportunities to monetise via advertising, ranking etc.

Q12. Any further comments regarding social networking sites and businesses?

Keeping up with social media means that organisations often have to ‘run faster’ than is comfortable – however, just because it’s fast, effective planning, just as you would with any marketing activity, is absolutely necessary.

Businesses shouldn’t ignore social media as ‘irrelevant for their businesses’.  Something I hear all the time. In a digital world, where futurists predict that there’ll be no ‘offline’ media in as little as 5 years – then businesses that want to compete in the future, need to embrace the digital way of marketing and conversing with their audiences.

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 marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

I was recently referred to a company who were looking to grow a strong online presence for their relatively new product.

They had a website and had spent some money promoting it online but to date, it hadn’t really worked – so now theywere looking for some professional steer to really assist them in getting more visitors and ultimately more sales – and overall growing their brand online.

Their brief focused on doing pay per click advertising and search engine optimisation.

When I reviewed their site it was clear that they had spent resources creating an effective website. The product wasn’t one I was familiar with and so to see what was currently out there, I naturally did some very top line research via Google. I wrote down a few keywords, looked at who else was advertising, who was appearing organically in the search listings and checked out competitor sites to review pricing to get a feel for the scope of the landscape.

That top line research must have taken me all of about 15 minutes to do – however, having done this very short exercise, it become very apparent that the owners of the site that had been referred to me must never have undertaken such a simple and very basic exercise.

Very quickly I had observed that:

• There were lots of similar products available – and one could argue, better quality than the ones they were offering – for a 10th (yes, that’s right I said a 10th) of the price this company were selling them at.
• There was absolutely nothing unique about the product offering – and I noticed that other sites had much clearer purchasing processes and visible customer testimonials already in place.

Without going into detail, it’s a difficult conversation to have with an enthusiastic business owner who has clearly spent money and resources building a site around a product they love.

All they were looking for was a plan of how we were going to help them strengthen their online presence – when in fact the conversation I had to have focused on addressing the issues around the product.

Doing business online changes the playing field from doing business at a tradefair or on the high street – even if this product were to be uber optimised for search and purchasing processes were made to be the simplest and most user friendly possible, even if you dominated the top results in Google and were all over the social media platforms leveraging traffic to your site – people online are always going to check out the competitor sites and compare products and prices – all within a matter of a few minutes.  It’s just too easy to do – so why wouldn’t you.

I queried the price positioning with the company – and their reason for being so much higher than the competition was because their production costs to create the product didn’t enable them to price the product in line with the competition.

So effectively they were offering a product that was expensive and widely available for much less from lots of other places which had lots of positive reviews. Er – that’s not great on or off line – but online, where users can quickly browse to another site, it’s a total no no.

Just because the Internet has flattened the competitive landscape and the barriers to entry have been minimised thus opening the doors for budding entrepreneurs to set up a website and market online – let’s not forget that the basic fundamentals of business still very much apply:

You still need to do your research and understand your market and competitors.

• Your cost of goods needs to be determined so that you can clearly identify whether the business is feasible and sustainable.

Doing business online has so many positives – but remember too that ‘online’ you are also very exposed – competitors and alternative information is just a click away.

So, if you have spent time and money creating a website and getting people to click on your site – then don’t lose them simply because your value proposition doesn’t stack up.  The product comes first – make sure that’s great, or has something great alongside it – then take advantage of the benefits of reach the online arena offers.

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

For marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

I was very delighted to receive an Ipad as a gift this Christmas.  It was totally unexpected – and so being a traditional BlackBerry gal – (not an iphoner) so my journey with apps began.

Whenever I mention to anyone that ‘I’ve got an ipad’ – a common response is ‘wow – but what do you use it for?’.

It would seem that from an aesthetics viewpoint, people want an iPad – but there definitely seems to be some level of confusion as to what they are used for.

I have to say, this was my own view prior to owning one too.

I’ve tweeted to my followers ‘Please share great iPad apps – but as yet – the only responses have been from other iPad owners saying ‘Ooh yes – please let me know of any useful ones too’.

I am using my iPad in a number of ways – both for business and personal.  So I thought it would be useful to share some of the apps – and ways that I’m using the iPad for business.  And perhaps – this blog post will encourage others to share their apps and uses too.

1)  Reading web articles – offline

If you are anything like me – you subscribe to useful blogs and feeds and so receive a large number of article links each day.  I have an ever growing folder in my outlook titled ‘Articles to Read’ – where I store these articles with the intention of reviewing each week.  However, the more than come, the more that get added to this folder – where wise, inspiring and informative words sit and wait to be aired.

Of course, when I’m on a train or tube, this is the perfect time to be reviewing such articles – however, there’s no wireless connection and so viewing links is a bit scuppered.

That’s where App no 1 comes in – GoodReader.  Very simply – you copy the url of the article into Goodreader and it creates and stores the html page as text or pdf page (dependent how the page has been set up) – and so viewable to read offline wherever, and whenever.

There’s another App that I’m testing too – Isaveweb – which again, does the same job as Goodreader but ‘says’ you can store up to 3 links deep for each article.  Haven’t tested it yet – but will do and report back.

Goodreader is great – however, I get a lot of articles from Hubspot and for some reason their articles don’t translate into Goodreader – so I’ve emailed them to query – so again, will report back in a later post.

So Goodreader, by large, is proving to be very useful indeed.  Really helping me to keep on top of my reading.

2) Pages – Word for Ipads

So I’ve read the article and I’ve been inspired by a section – and I now want to create a new blog post.  Very simply – I can copy a section of the article I’m reading in Goodreader and copy – and then open my Pages app.  Pages is effectively a ‘wordpressor’ for Ipads – it’s got some great templates and the ‘How to use Pages’ guide is very neat indeed. The app is very simple to use – and you can create either a plain doc or use one of the predetermined templates.

It’s really helping me to keep on top of my blogging – and I have a number of blog posts now on the go that I can simply get to whilst I’m on the train or tube.

3)  Dragon dictation – simply speak and it dictates

Of course, another means for blogging and indeed tweeting is via a very neat little app – Dragon dictation.  The more you use it the more accurate it gets – and again, it’s very simple to use.  For those that find typing on touchscreen keypads a little annoying (have to say I’m becoming fonder of this the more I do it) – then talking into your iPad and getting this app to do most of the typing fingerwork is an ideal solution.  You can then edit any discrepencies – and voila – it’s all there.  You can email the finished doc, save it etc – and there’s even an option to tweet it.   Very clever – and as I said, the more the app gets used to your voice, the more accurate it becomes.

4) Penultimate – sketch, doodle, ideas on the go

When I’m in a meeting taking notes – I tend not to write but to draw pictures and my own versions of mind maps – boxes and squares linking different elements etc.  I understand what’s going on – and given that I’m often talking about website planning and usability – and hierarchy of messaging etc – then typing out notes doesn’t really work.  I need that pen and paper to draw and sketch and lay things out.  This is where the Penultimate app comes into play. It effectively enables you to use your iPad as a pen and paper so that you can do whatever you want to do.  You can save your sketches in folders – and email PDF versions to others – so that they too can share your layouts and doodles.  I’ve only recently started experimenting with this app – and so far so good. I can see that it’s going to make a big difference and save me having to scan in my notebook pages to share and communicate ideas and layouts with colleagues.  Instead, I’ve simply been emailing them a PDF of my sketches.

It’s only been a few weeks – and already the iPad is definitely making a difference. My children are hooked on Boggle and Pac Man, and I’ve also set them competitions with the Explore Maths App! (Don’t call me a pushy mother or anything!).  My husband spends far too many hours flying jets via X-Plane – and I’ve got my Simply Relax meditations fixed to bring some ‘quiet’ into my life.

I’m looking forward to learning about more Apps that assist with business productivity and generally make that part of my life simpler – so if you’re aware of any, do let me know.

So…what’s your favourite iPad App?  And why?  Do share…

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 marketing and social media advice – view the Carvill Creative Blog

8 quick actions to consider to assist with your inbound marketing activity in 2011 – and ensure you keep on top of your social media activity.

1)   Content Pipeline – Create a blog features list, scan all areas of your website; services, faqs, guides and write features around them, creating an extensive pipeline of blog posts to circulate.

2)  Forum Activity – Select 3 or 4  relevant forums. Visit them each day to review threads / conversations – and participate where relevant.

3)  Google Alerts – Set Google Alerts on your company name, competitor names and other relevant keywords to monitor.  Watch alerts and comment, share where relevant.

4)  Hootsuite – Ensure all relevant keywords are being tracked in Hootsuite (or similar eg: Co Tweet).  Track conversations brand name mentions – and respond to any requests. (Simple spreadsheet to track date and people will do).

5)  Monitor – Measure number of Twitter followers, Facebook fans, site visits from social media platforms (via analytics) – track growth and trends.  (Simple spreadsheet which you update weekly/monthly will do.

6)  Promotion – Include links to Twitter, Linked In, Facebook on all comms where relevant. Email footers, sign offs, newsletter, website pages, business cards, landing pages.

7)  Collaboration – Partner up with key influencers.  Select 4 or 5 bloggers that you click with and email them, ask if they want to create a ‘comment and sharing’ consortium – whereby you all help each other’s blogs and sites achieve greater reach.  Comment, tweet posts etc.

8 )  Schedule Activity – Don’t miss out on sharing information via Twitter / Facebook each day.  Set up your tweets via Hootsuite so that you’ve got a steady stream of activity.

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

For more social media and marketing posts and advice visit the Carvill Creative Blog

If you’re anything like me – you’ve got 101 things on the go all at the same time.  Throw keeping up with social media into the bag – and effectively you’re glued to an electronic device (smart phone, laptop, PC, powerbook, iPad – to name just a few) for most of your day.

Having meetings with people (provided they’re not on skype!) offers the eyes some light relief.  But then it’s straight back to the fix of those devices for collaboration, communication and implementation.

Recently, I’ve read a number of blog posts and articles around the theme of ‘working effectively’ eg: is email a distraction, should we turn it off and only check for messages every hour and are social media platforms a help or a hindrance.

Some of you may already have keeled over at the hourly email check suggestion above – so take a breath and consider for a moment the implications of constantly being ‘interrupted’.

For example – this evening, as I write this, I’ve been to a fitness class (ouch) and really should be enjoying my just getting gripping book, The Historian (very good btw if you like history and vampires).  However, instead, I picked up my BlackBerry and saw a couple of interesting links – so then cracked open the laptop with the intention of finishing off setting up a blog for a friend.  Please note the word ‘intention’.

However, in reality here’s what have I done; I’ve read and answered some work related emails – organised my sent messages into relevant client / project folders, forwarded relevant info to some of my team for implementation tomorrow, stored some files into a shared online collaboration system, diarised some activity.  Now, what was I doing again…?  Certainly, didn’t intend to write a blog post this evening, that was for sure.

Even now, as I sit here writing this post – I’m watching the email alerts come up and nearly, yes, just very nearly, clicked to save this doc to my desktop so I could hop off and review my inbox. (Oh dear!).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m an excellent multi-tasker, if I do say so myself, however, I do get the feeling of being ‘swamped and overwhelmed’ and ‘frustrated at things dragging on’ quite a bit too.

However, who’s to blame – is it Twitter, Linked In or Facebook – NO.  Is it the peeps that email me – NO.  It’s, [drumroll]… moi – and my bad ‘online habits’ that I’m determined to break.

I think we’d all got pretty good at not taking a call if we were ‘busy’ – “kindly take a message and I’ll get back to them”.  I recall days back when I’d even advise my team – I can’t take any calls this am, can’t be disturbed – got to get abc project completed, and I didn’t feel guilty or as if I was ‘missing out’ about that – it was the sensible, professional and productive thing to do.  Leaving me true ‘head space’ to complete what I needed to.

Nowadays, I find that the only time I ‘allow’ that space is when I wake far too early in the morning and instead of going back to sleep for another couple of hours, think – well if I get started now, no one will be online to ‘interrupt’ me – and I’ll get so much done.   Bad, very bad.

So I’ve decided to ‘take back control’ and control my bad online habits.  I’m going to ease myself into the old, but now new, way of working by ensuring I stick firmly to the new rules I’m setting myself.

And so, to the rules:

1. On my general ‘to do’ list – ensure that I review and assess exactly which elements I am going to start/complete that day.
2. Ensure all the social media feeds I want to keep on top of are in my Hootsuite account and fix set times throughout the day to review (3 times should be enough – morning, lunch and late pm).
3. When I start out to work on a specific project – whilst I may quickly review emails, I will make a pact not to answer them until the project I’ve started working on is completed or as far as I wanted it to get.
4. Manage expectation – I don’t want to upset people by thinking I’m not responding to them, so I will send a quick email response acknowledging receipt and advising I’ll be back to them later that day, or by eop tomorrow (a quick 20 sec email) – rather than going ‘off track’ for an hour – and getting behind on what I really needed to complete that day.
5. Switch off email alerts and Twitter alerts.  I’m just far too inquisitive not to look and explore.  I just can’t be trusted.
6. Stick to ‘me time’ – I write each year about the importance of energy levels in business – as without energy, we pretty much don’t get anything done.  So when it’s chill out time – no laptops or BlackBerrys to hand. And be sure to make time to do stuff I love – long walks, having fun with the children, yoga and getting out for a run in the fields!
7. Stop saying to myself – ‘They’re just aren’t enough hours in the day’ – there are plenty of hours in the day – careful planning, and sticking to what I set out to achieve, will make my working hours more effective and efficient.

I think that’s all I can manage for now – already getting a bit twitchy about switching off the alerts… so let’s see how I get on.  I’ll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, if you’ve got any tips, hints, real life experience of activities you’ve put in place to combat the multi-message distraction syndrome – then do please share – comments and views greatly appreciated.  Surely, I can’t be the only person in this fast paced media rich world feeling just a little like they need to take back control…?

Over to you…

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, user focused website planning and website design.

Social Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Linked-In, Bebo, Ning, Buzz (and a plethora of others) – are effectively ‘online social spaces’ where people can converse, share their profiles, news, photos, ideas, work projects etc.

Then we have Blogs – online ‘diary style’ platforms where people can share their views, news, ideas and advice about something they are passionate about.  Businesses have blogs, people have blogs – it’s a way to communicate what’s happening, how you feel about things, provide advice and share.

The objective is to get people interested and engaged by providing authentic, transparent and relevant information.  And hopefully, those that engage with what you are talking about – will tell others – and so they will ‘follow’ your musings, subscribe to your blog – growing brand awareness, positive word of mouth – and share of mind.

Similarly, you may participate in ‘online forums’ – here you share your views and advice with others – and ask for help too.  Again, the forum is not a place to directly ‘sell’ – it’s a place to build your reputation and share opinion.   Whether setting out to achieve a position of authority or ‘expert’ in what you do – or to learn, share and generally participate – social media platforms are now firmly cemented into savvy marketing strategies.

Of course, people do try to use these platforms for direct sales purposes – but that tends to ‘turn off’ the ‘social audience’.  So whilst it’s part of the end game, direct selling should never be your main objective for engaging.

Twitter – one of the most successful social media platforms, is a natural ‘communication’ channel for ‘social media’ activity.

Social media platforms enable a ‘conversation’ with people you may not have been able to reach before.  It has an amazing power to enable communications to go viral – and engage audiences in conversations about services, products, issues, the company and brand – connecting a vast amount of likeminded people in an often targeted and purposeful way.  The immediacy of the platform is also attractive.  Take a look at the short recent case study – highlighting both targeting, and immediacy.

A firm of accountants has a specialism in working with artists and galleries – and have set up a Twitter account @WestburyArt showcasing their relevant clients and also commenting on latest exhibitions, news in the artworld, as well as providing links back to useful resources and articles on their website.  In their social media activity platform, they monitor the keyword ‘accountants’.  A tweet appears “Does anyone know any accountants that focus on helping artists and galleries”.  Literally seconds later – they are able to respond.  Not only do they get the opportunity to generate a new client – a number of other artists then start to follow them.

Creating a Social Media Strategy or including social media platforms as part of mainstream marketing activity is still relatively fertile territory for many.

Businesses of all shapes and sizes, as well as superbrands, are only just touching the surface when it comes to understanding where they are heading with their social media activity.  There’s significant ‘fear’ by many as to ‘opening the floodgates’ – they’re uncomfortable with the transparency and reach these channels enable (however, conversely – it’s these same factors which are actually the attractive features).

Keeping up with social media means that organisations often have to ‘run faster’ than is comfortable – however, just because it’s fast, effective planning, just as you would with any marketing activity, is absolutely necessary.

So let’s take a look at how to plan your social media activity:

1       Strategic stance

What are you looking to achieve via Social Media?

• Increase awareness the new service / brand
• Share authority / expert opinion
• Raise general brand / service awareness
• Pull people to your site / blog / landing page
• Research / poll
• Rally support

2          Researching and Understanding your Social Media Audience

With the ‘objective’ secured – then before up jump into ‘engaging’ we need to first ‘listen’ to the conversations happening within your target audience.

• Identify that target audience

3          Engaging

Once you have an understanding of the types of conversations that are happening with your ‘target audience’ or ‘relevant audience groups’ – eg: via Facebook or Linked In – then you need to start ‘engaging’ in an effective way.

3.1 What

For example:

Twitter posts would focus on:

• Relevant advice
• Answer q’s to user challenges

3.2      When

Social Media activity should be part of daily activity – but it needs to be managed in a focused way – as it can be all consuming if trying to do too much.

It’s a case of ‘suck it and see’ to gauge what’s right for your business:

• Twitter
• Blogs
• Forums
• Facebook
• Linked In Groups

It would be useful to schedule all activities into the week.  For example:

• Blog posts get posted daily.
• Each morning relevant channels – Twitter thread, Trade press news sites, general news sites are reviewed and tweets scheduled for the day.
• Blogs you are subscribed to – when alerted to new post, review and comment if relevant.
• Forums you are participating in are scanned at least daily.
• Linked In Group participation (as required – but visit at least weekly to review contacts’ contacts and grow.
• Plus ….all areas organic and active ‘expansion’.

This is where useful management resources such as Co Tweet or Hootsuite come into their own.  Here you can feed all of your social media platforms into one central dashboard – watch, manage, tweet, post etc – particularly useful when managing a number of accounts.

4          Twitter

I would suggest that some keyword ‘search’ is done on Twitter Search (using advanced search) and listening in to the types of things that the relevant audience is ‘tuning’ into.

Resources: Twitter Search, TweetBeep, Twellow directory and Hootsuite can be utilised.  Again, I tend to favour setting streams in Hootsuite to follow relevant ‘keywords’.

Talking of keywords – research also needs to be done into the best ‘keywords’ to search on.

This activity will help you to establish relevant keywords to use in the ‘tactic’ of ‘connecting’ with the right type of people.

• Follow them
• See who they are following and if relevant follow them too
• Watch what they are saying, understand key issues
• Join the conversation
• Start to engage

5          Forums

I would suggest that you select no more than 2 to 3 forums initially to engage with.  Any more becomes unmanageable for one person.  Test and gauge which ones you get the most out of.

Search the forum threads for relevant keywords

• Review the types of questions and levels of advice being put forward
• Join the conversation – not sell, sell, sell, but advice and advise
• Become a ‘trusted’ advisor / experts in service categories.

6          Blogs

Run searches in Google on relevant blogs :

Search blogs for relevancy – and find any that are relevant to the objective – creating a Blog A List.    Then participate:

• Subscribe to their blogs
• Read what they are talking about
• Join the conversation by commenting
• Become a ‘trusted’ advisor / experts in service categories.

Twitter is also useful for finding relevant blogs.  Many users are running blogs – and tweeting their posts – and so when we find relevant people – in their profiles check out the URL links and review their blogs – if relevant – subscribe, listen and comment.

7          Linked In / Groups

There are a number of relevant groups to join and participate in within Linked In.  To research and apply to join relevant groups – similarly, watch conversation threads and participate where relevant.  LinkedIn only works for active users – so be mindful to endeavour to participate.

Linked In is probably one of the most ‘granular’ social platforms – it really allows you to target – in both groups and individuals.

8          Facebook

Whilst Facebook predominantly started as a ‘personal’ connection platform, the growing use for business purposes is enhancing the features available.  Using Facebook’s FBML (similar to HTML) you can effectively replicate a landing page, campaign or web page on your Facebook page – enabling real interactivity.   As with all activity – you need to have campaigns on board to keep your Facebook page ‘alive’ and interesting.  Discussions, unique offers – consider the viral – what’s going to make someone ‘like’ you page and share it with others?

9          Integrate all Marketing Communications

To maximise exposure, integrate social media as part of the general marketing mix.

All ‘communications’ and ‘touch points’ be they ‘online or offline’ – should also consider the social media channels.  Including follow me@ Twitter names on businesscards, letterheads, invoices, promoting blogs on sites and in ads etc.  Email footers in Forums should include links to blogs, twitter and sites. Contact pages on websites to include.

Follow us on Twitter @handle

Blog www.blogname.com/blog

Follow us on LinkedIn
Become a fan on Facebook

10        Measure

As with all marketing activity, you need to be able to measure how your social media efforts are panning out.

Some typical and relatively simple metrics to consider:

• Traction / traffic to blogs
• Users signing up to petitions / surveys (Twtpoll.com)
• Perhap offers exclusive to Twitter with special Twitter code to track
• Retweets and Twitter analytics / Twittergrader improvement
• Google Alerts / picking up relevant activity
• Linked In Visits
• Facebook Fan Growth
• Twitter followers growth
• Google Analytics – sales/conversions coming from social media channels

11        Circle of Social Media

If anyone is still asking, “why focus on social media…”?  Highlight the uses below:

• Customer support and service
• Brand reputation management
• Polling and product feedback mechanism
• Lead generation
• News distribution
• Brand awareness and establishment
• Product promotion and launch
• Humanising the brand
• Public relations

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 user focused website design.

The all important factors to consider to ensure your campaign doesn’t fail due to lack of ‘response activity’.

Working with a new client recently, it brought home to me the importance of ensuring that all your marketing activity is joined up.

For many, there’s still a key focus on ‘marketing’ being the promotional part of a brand or business – largely concentrating around the communications or campaigns that are either pushed out to audiences – push activities, or attract audiences – pull activities, (also referred to as outbound and inbound marketing, respectively).

And indeed, they would be right to ‘label’ these activities under the tab of ‘marketing’.  However, in order for marketing activity to be truly effective – there are other important faces of marketing to consider to ensure the entire ‘process’ of marketing is ‘slick’ and efficient.  Every marketing ‘touch point’ needs to be considered and planned for.  Ensuring all the operational boxes are also well and truly ticked.

I’ve experienced a number of scenarios where a  significant budget has been allocated to a campaign – promotional materials created, data lists purchased, online and offline advertising engaged – radio etc – however, regardless of how much has been ‘spent’ and how much ‘activity’ has been put out there, the campaign hasn’t generated the required results.

There are many reasons why a campaign could fail – bad planning, wrong message, poor targeting, poor execution etc however, the success factors behind these are far more commonplace.  Marketers and marketing planners and creatives get excited about the ‘communication’ side of a campaign – messaging, segmenting and targeting is usually well determined.

One key and fundamental element of a marketing campaign that, from my experience, often gets overlooked ,is the all critical  internal marketing part – the part I refer to as ‘response activity’.

So let’s take a quick look at  ‘response activity’ …

The campaign has been created, all the creative is in place, key messaging and call to actions agreed, materials scheduled, audience segmented and ready to target – radio campaigns planned, event(s) scheduled – everything is in place and ready to go.  By now – a significant amount of resources (budget, people, etc) have been deployed.  It’s the exciting time – the campaign is about to launch – the ball about to start rolling.

Your audience is now going to get the opportunity to meet, greet and embrace your message – so what happens next is the big deciding factor as to whether or not the campaign is a success…

To simplify things – let’s call the visible elements of the activity such as the planning, materials, communications, audiences, advertising etc – front end marketing.

Response activity therefore sits in the back end marketing – the all important internal delivery of what you are pushing out there.

For example:  You’ve revised your website, including a new landing page to focus on a new service /  product.  This promotion is supported by radio advertising, pay per click online advertising campaigns, as well as an offline direct mail piece to customers – together with response mechanism.  The landing page and mailing piece promote a ‘request a sample / brochure.

It’s all looking very positive.  The campaign launches… and the following happens:

• Requests for brochures are received via the landing page – however, there’s no ‘process’ in place for turning these requests around quickly and efficiently.  For the user the experience is negative – the brochure, after 7 days, still doesn’t arrive, the request for a call isn’t followed up effectively.
• The onsite confirmation message when a user requests a brochure has a typo.  (Not a great first impression – was this area thoroughly proof read just as the push materials were?).
• An automated email isn’t sent to the user’s inbox – advising them that their brochure is on its way – and signposting them to other resources eg: in the meantime, take a look at the following links for more information.
• Telephone calls are received, but front line team aren’t fully aware of the promotion – sorry, I don’t know anything about that, can I just put you on hold whilst I find out more about this for you…
• Data which is captured online for the brochure requests isn’t fed through into the prospect database, and tagged accordingly.  Therefore, no scheduled, automated follow up can be scheduled enabling the ongoing nurture of the prospect.
• l  No measurement resources have been put in place to monitor and measure activity / responses. Therefore, often poor reaching campaigns are repeated again and again – a waste of time, money and effort.

Some of the above examples may appear to be rather extreme – ‘of course we’ve got that covered’ – I hear you chant.  However, from personal experience over the years, I can advise you that many haven’t!

So the message here is simple – ensure that all your marketing activity is totally ‘joined up’.

5 Quick Checks to Take

1. Test, test and test again. If you have an online request or online call to action – ensure that all the processes to enable that request are in place – checked, proofed and working.
2. Internal team awareness – ensure everyone who needs to be aware of the campaign is aware of the campaign – don’t just launch externally – launch internally so that everyone knows where to direct enquiries to.
3. Understand what you need to measure – get measurement resources in place – analytics engaged for online, call responses – ensure mechanisms for monitoring are in place and ready to roll.
4. Capture information.  If you’ve gone to the effort of getting people to respond and provide details – make that information work.  Collect, extract and ensure that it’s added to your prospect database.
5. And the follow up? Plan how you are going to respond to those that are interacting with your campaign – not just immediately, but what’s the follow up plan – this is a marketing campaign in itself – so be sure it’s in place.

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.

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.

I was on the train into London on Friday morning and noticed a chap with a plastic carrier bag. It was a festive plastic bag – snow scene of graphic style village – we’ve all seen festive plastic bags before, so no surprises there. The main brand was Phones 4 U – and then the tag line was …. A bag for xmas not for life!  

As soon as I saw this my immediate response was one of ‘questionning’ – so I had a little think about it – was there a clever little message in there that I was missing? Bag for Xmas – not for life…? Hmmm…. But no – I quickly ascertained that this ridiculous posturing is just really poor marketing.

Questions to the Phones 4 U marketing team – where did that idea come from and what possible positive brand associations were you looking to achieve?

Was it really as ridiculous as someone saying – “hey, there are so many bags for life out there messages – let’s look ‘edgy’ and different by clearly stating that our bags are just for Christmas?” – oh dear.

Message for the Phones 4 U marketing team – it’s totally put me off your brand, irresponsible message, ridiculous and trying too hard. If there was any purpose – then I’m missing it. It’s just left me with negative brand associations for you guys… the bags looked great – you just should have left the message off them.

I was totally impartial to your brand before – no negative associations at all – so no reason why I wouldn’t have wondered into your store. Now I have some emotional response with your brand – but it’s not positive. That’s not great marketing is it. Or perhaps that was the intention – targeting those that find recycling and efforts to reduce wastage ‘dull’ and futile? Who knows.

It just goes to show the power of words. A real example as to how businesses and brands need to be careful of what they say – trying to be ‘edgy’ or even attempting dry humour can often be misconstrued and set the brand on the road to negative associations.

For more marketing news, view, ideas and tips visit my blog http://www.carvillcreative.co.uk/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.

I had a rather lengthy conversation earlier today – I won’t mention any names – but effectively, I had been following up a potential partnership where there was specific synergy between a client’s business and the group I was talking with.

Without going into too much detail – what surprised me was their ‘old fashioned’ view on partnerships and reciprocal promotion.

In a day when advertisers have never been more savvy, and have never had as many tools and resources to measure their advertising effectiveness, I was genuinely gobsmacked to hear that my proposals for cross linking and reciprocal

You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours...

promotion (you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours) were completely dismissed, because their modus operandi from an advertising perspective was purely based on paid ad sponsorship.

Indeed – this is why more and more ad spending has become based on a ‘CPL’  or ‘CPA’ – cost per lead, or cost per acquisition basis – because businesses, regardless of size, are hesitant to throw their money at online advertising (banner, content sponsorship etc) without any agreed return on investment.  With a cost conscious market – business should be looking at other ways to promote themselves.

A key area I really to advocate – which is far more mutually beneficial to both parties, is indeed the world of ‘Partnership Marketing’.

By this I mean linking and ‘partnering’ with other businesses that have specific synergy.  You both have the same audience – but offer different services / products.  Find a partner with this specific synergy and 1) you can promote their relevant services to your customers and 2) they will promote your services to their.  Immediately creating a prospect base which is targeted – and is being ‘introduced’ by someone that audience potentially ‘trusts’ rather than a ‘cold sell’.

And of course, rather than do this on a ‘one hit wonder’ basis (which almost never works) – the partnership should continue for a period of time.

So let’s take a look at some examples of what works from a Partnership perspective:

1) Added Value

One great example is one of my clients, The Made Simple Group – who within their group of online solutions for the start up and small business community, have the award winning http://www.companiesmadesimple.com – a company formation site.  Google have partnered with The Made Simple Group for a number of years now, as they clearly see the benefits of offering Google Adwords vouchers to businesses that are just starting out in business – educating and advising on how to get noticed online and providing them with a voucher to try our Adwords.  This presents The Made Simple Group with a relevant added value offering and a great brand (Google) to promote on their sites.

2) Relevant Reciprocation

What I’m talking about here is businesses using each others’ platforms to broaden their relevant messages.  For example – let’s take the start up audience again.   Start Up Community is running a campaign to help new businesses ‘Get Online for Business’  – they are partnering with other players in the start up community – from company formations, to event sites for start ups and advice sites for start ups.  Start Up Community also has their own start up cCommunity – so they too can offer the people that are promoting their Get Online for Business campaign – an opportunity to promote their services / products to their audience.

3.   Expert Promotion

If you have a website or service where there is an accepted ‘expert’ – then partnering with this expert to promote their views, services etc can be very beneficial for your audience.  Similarly, the expert may also be able to promote what you do to their audience, again, via their site, their services, or blog etc.

In a time when businesses are extremely cost conscious about advertising spend – and are looking for a more accountable advertising solution – then ‘partnering’  can provide a mutually beneficial means of getting out there.

There are so many positives – and it’s certainly not a new concept.  Partnership Marketing has been around since time began – people recommending other’s services – finding influencers and working together makes complete sense.

Of course, the key to all partnering activity is relevancy – it’s got to make sense.

So take some time – have a think about who in your arena would be good to partner with – figure out what you want from them, and what you could offer in return.  And then fix up a meeting to discuss your proposition and listen and learn what they want too.

Open your mind to partnering… get it right and it could be the start of a beautiful relationship!

For more marketing information, news, view and advice visit or subscribe to my blog.

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.

Over the past few weeks (probably 6 in total) I’ve been unable to post blogs.

Following the much tweeted about ‘Word Press’ hack – (and yes, my blog was indeed infiltrated and messed upsignificantly) – I thought I’d take advantage of having to reload my blog by moving it to my site (WHAT, I hear all SEO experts stating – she hasn’t got her blog on her site – longtail blah blah blah).  Yes, I know that it’s really poor from an SEO perspective, but my blog wasn’t started as a content and traffic builder for my site – it was a genuine attempt at independently sharing my marketing views, news and ideas and advice without having any ‘sales’ push.

Anyway – back to the blog, it’s now finally moved – so now I can happily post again.

And of course, what I’ve observed is that by not posting to my blog regularly – I’ve noticed that other things related to social media have also started to slow down.

• I haven’t visited / participated in as many of the  forums I usually visit
• I haven’t tweeted as much as usual
• I haven’t been vigilant with my Tweetbeep alerts
• And I haven’t even been checking out who is following me!

This lack of blogging activity, coupled with a few fab days away for a birthday celebration with girlfriends – has meant that over all, my social media activity has slowed from a force 7 to a force 1.

What’s daunting however is that in just a few weeks, as I now get back onto Twitter and the forums – so much activity seems to have happened – there’s so much that I’ve missed out on.  Already there are tons of other people out there – my Tweet Beep alerts are consistently firing new Twitterers – which I am again researching and if relevant then following.  All my blog posts have vanished from the ‘Latest Posts’ on the forums – it’s amazing how quickly you can drop out of the loop.  And there’s been so much activity on the forums – there’s just so much I could have been participating in!

So key things I take from this – which I didn’t fully appreciate before:

1. My blogging activity is the lead in my social media activity – if I don’t blog, I tend not to share my posts and tweet and then get involved with my regular social media environments.
2. If for reasons beyond my control, (life, bugs, holidays etc) I fall out of the loop – it’s as quick to get back on bandwagon as it was to fall off.  That’s the beauty of social media.
3. However, it’s probably best to stick at it and keep building momentum.  As when you stop – others do not.
4. Social media activity is still relatively fertile territory for the majority – so rather than give myself a hard time for not being as proactive as usual with my activity – give myself a break and realise that ‘hey, you’re still ahead of the majority’.

For more marketing news, views, ideas and advice – visit my Blog.

As anyone who has spoken to me in the past few months will know – I keep raving on about the brilliant book, ‘Funky Business’ – written by Riddlerstrale & Nordstrom (see www.funkybusiness.com).

It was published in 1999 – so it is 10 years old – but a decade later and the messages and gems containedwithin are more relevant than ever.

One message which really resonates is about risk – taking risks, daring to be innovative and creative, being willing to be laughed at – to fail – taking it all on the chin, learning and trying again.

Isn’t that how great marketing works? Let’s face it, behind the majority of successful ventures or products – it is likely that there are tens, if not hundreds, of attempts that went before the success.

Even those success stories that just seem to have ‘happened’ and become an overnight phenomena –(eg: Twitter) will have had a previous format in a previous life that failed, was tweaked, tested, failed again, tweaked, tested – taking years to create a formula that works and brings huge success.

Of course, written 10 years ago – their view of a ‘traditional organisation’ – is one where innovation and creativity is not encouraged or nurtured. Failure carries the corporate equivalent of the death penalty – sending a message throughout the corporate system that failure is punished.

Of course, such a message inhibits innovation.

True innovators are prepared to fail in pursuit of the unknown – it may seem like a great idea – but no one’s certain. However, they go for it any way – risk takers or innovators.

In the book – Riddlerstrale & Nordstrom cite examples such as: Mahatma Gandhi’s India, Henry Ford’s Model T, Man Ray’s photographs, Ruben Rausing’s, TetraPack, the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s album, Akito Mortita’s, Sony Walkman – each of these attributing to their unusual ability to combine new technology, institutions and values in unexpected ways. They took risks!

Some risk their lives in the pursuit of creating something new and different. Again, Riddlerstrale & Nordstrom cite the “great value innovator Jesus took risks and was crucified”. And in our times, Nelson Mandela took risks and was almost killed for it. Alfred Nobel took risks and passed away in solitude. Van Gogh took risks, was ridiculed and committed suicide!

For every successful entrepreneur such as Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Richard Branson etc – there are thousands of others who tried and failed. However, rather than us viewing those that try and fail as ‘failures’ – and ridiculing their attempts – we should celebrate their bravery. After all – we all learn from our mistakes – it’s a basic inherent mechanism of human progress. We learn from our own mistakes and from the mistakes of others.

As the boys in Funky Business put it so succinctly – “If it were not for all the fools trying to do the impossible – over and over again – we would still be living in caves!”

The only way not to fail, is not to try. No failures = no development.

I love the quote by Philosopher Lugwig Wittgenstein: “If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever happen”.

Of course, 10 years on – have things changed that dramatically? Given the advancement of technology – and the innovation this enables – then there are certainly more organisations professing to nurture creativity and innovation – and those that appear to be the leading lights in this arena such as; Google and Microsoft (to name just a couple) – are indeed enjoying great success.

Ask yourself:

• When was the last time you took a risk?
• Are you being innovative with your services and product offerings?
• Are you ‘floating in the sea of sameness’ – competiting with the competition or innovating?
• When was the last time you failed – what did you do?  Give up, tweak it and try again?
• How do you feel about failure?  Negative – or positive?  It’s a learning curve after all.
• What can you do to drive innovation in your business?

I totally concur with the boys at Funky Business – ‘companies must become breeding grounds of risk takers’. And more respect should be given to those that take risks – even if it does result in a failure. Failure happens, that’s a given. Give people trust and it will happen more productively.

And just think of what celebrating risk and failure would do to morale!

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

And I highly recommend the book Funky Business, by Ridderstrale and Nordstrom. It’s an excellent read – informed and thought provoking. Visit www.funkybusiness.com or their site www.business-minds.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.

DON’T ask people to register unless it’s absolutely necessary!

I recently read an article on Webcredible – it was about optimising user registration and, of course, enhancing the user experience.  The article went something like this…

“Do you ever get annoyed at having to make yet another password for one more website? Too many websites still force users to register without good reason, or provide an ineffective registration process. You can avoid frustrating users on your website by thinking about the following points:

1. Ask users to login or register only when necessary. Those parts of a website that aren’t personalised should be equally accessible by registered and non-registered users. Only ask people to login or register when it’s required to complete an action, not earlier.
2. Make registration optional where possible. Customers shouldn’t have to ‘create an account’ in order to buy products from an online shop. If a site needs to remember simple previously entered information, this can also be done by using a cookie, which of course requires no effort from the end user.
3. Prominently explain the benefits of registration. Users will be happier to register if they know that they’re getting something useful, rather than if registration is seen as a barrier between them and their task.
4. Avoid lengthy registration forms. Another source of frustration comes from questions in registration forms that look irrelevant to the task in hand. Remove such questions and explain the rest e.g. “We need your phone number to notify you in case your flight times change.”
5. Consider progressive registration. This means asking only the bare essentials in the beginning (e.g. an email address and a password), and enabling users to update and complete their full profile at a later stage.”

Reading this – I concurred with every one of the 5 points.  However, I didn’t feel their warning on the perils of asking people to registere was strong enough!

Having worked on a number of ecommerce sites over the years –  when we monitor where users are ‘dropping out’ of the process – the majority of drop out is around the registration process.

In my opinion – Amazon operate a ‘seamless’ and totally user friendly way of getting users to buy.  It’s simply a case of inserting your email address whether you are a returning customer or a new customer.  Same process – tiny switch of a radio button and that’s it.

It’s only when I go to buy – (psychologically commit to interacting with the site) that I then have to hand over more details.  And, from a consumer psychology perspective, when I’m in buying mode and have committed to the purchase – we are more than happy to share more details – as we recognise that we need to make the purchase and receive the goods.  For that, we will give our address details, our card details, our date of birth – all sorts.  We are much more open to sharing information.

But where we are asked to share details before we’ve even seen the value of the proposition and have committed to buy – as soon as we are asked to share details – the conversation in our head goes something along the lines of ;

” What? Why do they want my email address, date of birth, name etc?  I’m only researching at this point! I don’t want to get email after email spamming me with their sales pitch.  Oh enough of this – I’m off!

If we look at point 2 in Webcredible’s feature – there are still lots of site where it is compulsory to ‘create an account’ – before you can access any information which is required for your decision making process.

I did some research recently in the company credit report arena – and approximately 80% of the sites I reviewed didn’t provide me with basic information such as the price of their reports. Incredulous! And when I called a couple of them to ascertain how much their reports actually retailed for – as I couldn’t find that information on the site – I was advised that it was best I registered and then I would be able to see the information I wanted!  Crazy!  Perhaps they hadn’t bothered to register on their own site and so weren’t too sure themselves!

Plus – the amount of sites asking for an email address – without a ‘why we need this’ link explaining their email policy – is incredibly high!  C’mon – it’s pretty simple to do – and an excellent way of being transparent with your customers and nurturing the all important trust factor.

I always remember, in a previous consulting role, being lectured by my CEO:  “Make it as easy as possible for the customer to buy”.  Online – it’s imperative that our information pathways and signposts and processes are not prohibitive – but welcome the customer on board – which makes engaging with us, or buying from us – a simple and positive experience.

Progressive registration is indeed the way to go. Taking only the bare minimum and then progressively extracting more when the customer is in sharing mode.  From a consumer psychology perspective – once a customer is engaged and in buying mode – they are more than comfortable to share heaps of information.  And if it’s really necessary for your customers to create an account – as that’s where they need to return to access the thing they’ve consumed from you – then fine, but do this as part of the purchasing process – post commitment – NOT before they’re even sure about purchasing from you.  Done too soon – it will most certainly kill the commitment!

“It’s the crazy messed up world of E-commerce videos” from the fab GetElastic – hit the nail right on the head – this amusing video gets the message across – oh so well… Have a giggle!

Enjoy…

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

The creation of your business may have been down to many factors – timing, a brilliant innovative idea, discovering a gap in the market, an invention – however, whatever it was, to bring your business to life and ensure its longevity, then knowing where your business is heading and having a vision, which you can ‘share’ with employees, investors and customers – is an all important, yet often overlooked, part of the business planning process.

The Visioning Process is really the critical starting point – if you’ve clearly set out a vision for where your business is heading, you have something that you can live by – and any other stakeholders, can easily understand. After all, if you have everyone associated with your business singing from the same hymn sheet – all clearly focused on the direction of the business – then you are ahead of the game in getting there…

Visioning isn’t simply about creating an inspirational ‘tag line’ such as ‘Be the best’ – it’s about the processes which are implemented and the values that underpin what ‘being the best’ means.

I recently read a case study about the vision at Motorola – their vision is very simply ‘wireless’ – simple, yet hugely ambitious. 3M focuses on ‘solving unsolved problems’. These statements are simple enough to be shared by all team – and they are clear in saying what the companies should not be doing. Try showing up at Motorola with a wire and see what happens!

Visioning is an important strategic process – which whilst may take a bit of time to implement, is certainly worth doing – to ensure that you are 100% clear on where you are heading.

There’s a great saying; “People who set out without a target hit it 100% of the time!” – so let’s take a look at the Visioning Process – to ensure that you have a Vision to live by…

Step 1: Where are you now?

1. Do you have a vision?

2. Could you write a brief statement of your own vision?

3. Do you or your team have a mission of purpose statement? (Do they know what the business is focused on?)

4. Do you have a unique competence? (And unique is the word here).

5. What strengths, weaknesses, and areas of special skill do you or your team bring to the business?

6. What is the scope of your business? (Current products, services, markets and customers).

7. From number 6 above, can you identify what will be expanded or dropped in the future?

8. What distinguishes your business or products/services you provide.

Going through the ‘Where are you now’ questions helps you to consider a framework for your Vision.

Step 2: Preparing for Change

You’re now into the design phase of your Vision. You’ve probed and asked questions of yourself and your business – and now you need to create a vision which is clear and focused. So some more areas to consider helping you drill down into your focus:

1. What is the direction of your future?

2. What future range of responsibilities, skills and new or expanded services will you consider?

3. How will the current and future ranges of skills or products differ?

4. What key capabilities and resources will you need to succeed?

5. How will your vision impact your businesses growth?

6. If you could create the future, what future would you create for yourself?

7. How many categories of future development can you identify that will impact your vision?

8. Can you make a list of expectations for each of those categories of future development?

9. Can you prioritise that list of expectations for each of those categories that would have the greatest impact on your vision?

Step 3: Pulling together your Vision

With all the ‘background’ analysis undertaken – you are now in the position of putting your vision together. This is the combination of your intuition, personal vision, experience, judgement, information, values and culture.

Of course, your vision has to be shared with those associated with your business. Therefore, the vision must be distinctive and establish standards that employees and partners find necessary to follow. Doing this is no easy task – but the steps below provide a useful model for ensuring you have considered all areas:

1. Review all the information and materials you have compiled. This information is valuable and insightful – however, don’t ignore ideas you may be avoiding – consider all possibilities.
2. Consider all your driving forces:
   1. Products or services offered
   2. Users/customers
   3. Markets served
   4. Low cost production, capability, capacity
   5. Marketing/sales methods
   6. Technology
   7. Method of distribution
   8. Return/profit
   9. Size/growth
   10. Natural resources
3. Prioritise the key elements within your vision. In your view are your strengths, driving force and culture and values consistent? Is consistency important – or is change a higher priority?
4. Having prioritised, and satisfied yourself that this is the vision you really want, you are now ready to create your vision focus. By this stage, you should be able to put it into a really short, easily understandable statement that focuses and reflects:
   1. An exciting future
   2. The creation of value for you and your team
   3. Standards of excellent and reflect high ideals, standards and uniqueness to everyone that you and your team interact with
   4. Clear criteria for decision making and evaluation
   5. Enthusiasm and commitment

Step 5: Cementing your thinking

You’ve gone through the information gathering and analysis process – and created your vision for a new direction. And so at this point – it’s a time for reflection:

1. Is this the best vision?
2. What are the chances for its success?
3. If it fails, what can I salvage?
4. Should we even try?

Whilst these questions may seem hard-going – it’s important to ask yourself these questions in order to remove any doubts that your vision inspires commitment and enthusiasm. Do YOU really believe in it? It is right for everyone who will interact with it, will it lead to business success and improved performance?

Doubt and uncertainty are inevitable when considering a new direction – so resolve this doubt by asking the following:

1. Does everyone clearly understand the vision?
2. How does the current situation compare with the new vision?
3. How will the vision affect the business and team?
4. What changes, if any, will be required to make the transition to the new vision?
5. Will your new vision require new or additional resources, technology, skills?
6. Have you set a timeframe – it is realistic?

And of course, if you are not wholly confident of your Vision – test it – get a small group of people you trust to be honest to act as a sounding board.

Step 6: Implementing your Vision

Of course, your Vision Statement is nothing more than words until it is put into action. Whilst the words are important – it’s implementation that changes your business direction. So many times, time is given to an important strategic process – be it, business planning, strategic planning, marketing planning etc – and yet the all important implementation – the getting on and doing it, just doesn’t happen. It starts – but then fizzles out… loses energy.

There used to be a ‘mantra’ – lead by example. And indeed – for any change of Vision and business direction to happen, you have got to ‘live’ it. And I suppose this is where passion comes into it – because if you are truly passionate about something – then you are more likely to pursue it than let is ‘fizzle out’.

In the important ‘Futuristic’ business book – Funky Business (written some 10 years ago I must add, but still highly relevant) – they cite examples of organisational vision being driven top down – such as: the multi-billionaire founder of Ikea still travels economy and stays is ‘value’ hotels, rather than 1^st class and 5 star – as some may expect. Is it okay for senior management to travel first class when those not part of that tranche are tasked with saving money on paperclips? Over to you… But at Ikea – the founder is living the vision.

To put the new vision into action you need to:

1. Demonstrate a personal commitment to the vision. You are the direction setter, the change agent and even coach. You are the visionary leader – and therefore, you must consistently apply the vision to all your actions and decisions.
2. Commit to communicating the significance of the vision to everyone. Your team need to know that your vision is working – and know that your commitment is true. It’s important to regularly communicate and demonstrate how the vision is impacting the business.
3. You are the primary communicator of the vision. Beware! It is doomed if your actions and words fail to reinforce it.

Step 7: Keeping your vision alive!

There are no set rules as to when to re-evaluate a vision – but 6 monthly reviews are probably sensible. Of course, by definition, all visions are always ‘just beyond reach’ – and therefore, you need to be assessing that this is the case – refining and revising in line with ongoing environmental changes. Remember, your vision needs to be keeping ahead of the rapidly changing times and technology – so reaffirmation and support for the vision are crucial.

Clearly, a vision statement is far more than a ‘paragraph’ – it’s the starting point for quality management and continual improvement. It captures as ideal, unique and attractive image of your future and answers the question, “What do I want to create”.

For more information about the Visioning Process – Building a Shared Vision, by C Patrick Lewis is a great resource. Many of the stages of the visioning process included within this article are gleaned from his book, which provides a practical framework for effective vision creation.

For more marketing advice, news, ideas and tips why not subscribe to my Carvill on Marketing blog – or 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.