Quite simply, a denial of service (DoS) attack is an attempt to get a website or other similar service to crash, thereby preventing legitimate users from accessing it.  These types of attacks are of concern for businesses as they can result in loss of service, money, and reputation.

Quite simply, a denial of service (DoS) attack is an attempt to get a website or other similar service to crash, thereby preventing legitimate users from accessing it.  One way that this is done is through flooding a web server with false requests for information, overwhelming the system and ultimately crashing it.  We’ll borrow the explanation from CNET:

In a typical connection, the user sends a message asking the server to authenticate it. The server returns the authentication approval to the user. The user acknowledges this approval and then is allowed onto the server.

In a denial of service attack, the user sends several authentication requests to the server, filling it up. All requests have false return addresses, so the server can’t find the user when it tries to send the authentication approval. The server waits, sometimes more than a minute, before closing the connection. When it does close the connection, the attacker sends a new batch of forged requests, and the process begins again–tying up the service indefinitely.

These types of attacks are of concern for businesses as they can result in loss of service, money, and reputation.

Denial of Service attacks happen for varied reasons.  Some reasons may include:

• Extortion:  Businesses may be targeted in an attempt for the hackers receive payment, similar to a ransom in a kidnapping situation.
• High Profile:  Hackers may target a high-profile organisation, group or individual such as a political party.
• Grudge:  A disgruntled customer, employee, or competitor wanting to sabotage a business.
• Bad Luck:  A website may have a similar name to that of a well-known / high-profile target.
• No Reason:  Unfortunately sometimes there is no particular reason!

Many larger organisations – such as banks or government applications – have safeguards in place to protect themselves from these attacks.  These safeguards may include security technologies, extra server and connectivity power.

It’s not because we’re naturally morose or negative people.

(In fact, we’re naturally positive people who believe that our clients deserve attention and that we’ll produce stellar communication strategies. Someone has to believe.)

We’re doomsayers because we are tasked with building and protecting reputation – and that often means forecasting what might possibly tarnish that reputation. We’re also tasked with staying abreast of any issues which may affect clients and managing any crises.

My default position is to be optimistic, to encourage client ideas, to have solutions on-hand, and to embark on a positive PR strategy which I can be confident about. But at the same time, I know it would be remiss of me not to don my Black Hat (thank you Edward de Bono’s six hats) and caution clients about possible outcomes.

What does this mean in practice?

The most experienced PR professionals will do the following (especially when they are full-time and in-house):

• During strategy meetings, ask “what if this goes wrong?” This question can be applied to everything from the appointment of a new celebrity ambassador, to a new brand name, a partnership with another organisation, a change in suppliers, a promotional launch in a public place and more. So much more!
• Undertake continual environmental scanning and advise the client of issues in their sector (and how to manage them)
• Devise a crisis communications plan (including a list of potential scenarios and how these will be managed)
• Check, double-check and triple-check that any of your PR events have a safety plan, appropriate government permissions, a fall-back if the weather turns bad. And so much more!
• Maintain good relationships with other managers particularly in Risk Management, Human Resources and any legislative management roles. A PR professional will want to ensure these other professionals are ticking all the boxes and, together, helping to manage an ethical organisation which can be proud of its reputation.

The irony is, that while PR professionals work hard to avoid issues and crises, if they do occur they can be quite exciting and rewarding to manage. But that’s a story for another day …

Infographic by Lebara

Source: Lebara Mobile

As an Australian business, the .com.au domain should be registered regardless.  It is the preferred option for Aussie businesses, and if a user is searching within Australia, websites with a .com.au domain extension will generally be given priority in the search engine results.

However we would also recommend registering the .com version of your domain name as well.  Why?

Protecting Your Brand

By registering both versions you are protecting yourself from someone else registering it.  This other party could be a completely different business from another country, but their website may cause confusion for people who might be looking for your business online.  OR it could be a cheeky competitor, a disgruntled customer (it’s happened before!), or domain squatter looking to make some money from you.

Eliminating Confusion

Someone else may start a business using the same business name as yours, and take out the .com version of the domain.  This may be unrelated, or it could unfortunately be in the same industry.  Your potential customers don’t always type in your website address, in fact they probably just Google your business name – and if that happens there’s the potential of this other company coming up in the search engine results too.  It’s ideal to avoid confusion and get them straight to your website where they can engage with you (and hopefully only you).

So if you’re thinking of launching a new business or brand, hop onto a domain search service like MelbourneIT or Expeed to first see whether your preferred domain is available in both the .com.au and .com versions.

And if you’d like to  know more, or have a particular question – please leave us a comment or get in touch with us directly!

So what is domain squatting, or WHO is a domain squatter?

Also sometimes called ‘cyber squatting’, domain squatters are people who register domain names that they don’t intend on using, and who then try to sell them off to people who want or need them.  Their “intent is to profit from the goodwill of someone else’s trademark” (NOLO.com).

This practice was rife some years ago, before businesses started getting savvy about their online reputations, however we now see it occurring more so with individuals registering keyword-rich domains and trying to sell them off to people operating within that industry.  Examples of keyword rich domain names would be www.HomeInsuranceAdelaide.com.au, or www.PropertyInvestingMelbourne.com.au.

Let’s look at a local example of domain squatting….

In 2011 when Groupon was gaining a lot of momentum in the US, two Australian brothers who created the local company Scoopon, registered the Groupon.com.au domain name, it’s associated trademark and business name.  All of this was before the US company had even revealed plans to enter the Australian market.  When Groupon did decide to launch in Australia, they were unable to get their domain name, and had to instead enter the market under a different name:  Star Deals.  Eventually the domain and trademarks were handed over, but not before legal proceedings, and a payout of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Aussie brothers.

Now while this may not have strictly been a case of cybersquatting (as it would appear the brothers were simply looking to protect their own business interests) – we can quickly see the trouble that can arise when you don’t own the right versions of your domain name!  We discuss this further in another blog post:  Domain Names: Which extension should you register?

Most businesses are familiar with the concept of advertising and marketing – but public relations can be misunderstood.

As a business, you know you need to let your customers (or stakeholders) know what you have to offer.

So you might advertise to let customers know about your products, your prices, and where to buy.

Sounds straightforward enough. So where does PR come in?

When you’re making your products, you might need to:

• Gain permission from legislators
• Inform the local community that you’re setting up shop
• Attract and keep employees
• Stay in touch with your suppliers
• Give back to the community through a philanthropic program
• Contribute to your industry through support, commentary and lobbying
• Handle a company crisis
• Listen to what the community is saying and understand what your future customer might want, the sentiment towards your product, and any issues that are brewing

PR can also supplement your advertising and marketing campaigns.

Do you have a big advertising spend coming up? Maybe that new product you’re launching is worthy of a news story. Maybe the public would like to hear about how you came up with it, how it will improve their lives, where the components were sourced and so on. There are a range of PR tactics to help with that.

Do you have a public education campaign happening? Are you taking out advertising to give notice about an upcoming event or to  warn the public about something? Again, PR can help you reach out to the people you’re trying to talk to, using language that is clear to them, in media they frequent.

Public relations helps with all of the above, and more.

The Oxford Dictionary language reference site recently added ‘bae’, ‘selfie stick’ and ‘cyberwarrior’.

It was thrilling to see the term ‘concern troll’ listed on the site too because I’ve been thinking about new terms recently. (Clearly, a concern troll is “A person who disingenuously expresses concern about an issue with the intention of undermining or derailing genuine discussion”).

If you spend enough time on social media (for me, Twitter in particular) you see regular patterns of behaviour and I want to be able to name them. So ‘concern troll’, to me, is a terrific.

Now I need some help.

What’s the term for:

1. When you’re not sure when to end a Twitter conversation. If you end it, you feel rude, if you continue the conversation, you’ll look needy. It’s awkward.
2. When you see a funny or controversial tweet in your tweetstream and you make a mental note to respond or, at least, retweet. By the time you think of a response you’ve forgotten who posted it, you can’t find it and it’s lost in the Twitter ether.
3. When you think someone is using a Twitter hashtag just to be part of the hashtag – jumping on a bandwagon to be noticed, but not adding anything creative. (“So what is #thisnewhashtag all about?”)
4. When a tweet that includes your @handle is relentlessly Favorited or Retweeted by a bunch of others. It’s like being caught in a Reply All email trap.
5. When you think you’ve tweeted something quite useful and intelligent and look back six hours later to spot the rediculous typo. (And others have already tweeted it).

If you know of an existing #sosheterm or, better yet, would like to make one up – please pitch in below.

A good media release can contain most of the information that a news article requires, especially if it is a straightforward public announcement. I have trained as a journalist and of course I would prefer that all media releases are fact-checked and any resulting article offers an alternative point of view. At the same time, I understand that newsrooms are shrinking and, where a reliable source of media releases emerges from a trusted, reputable organisation, some media outlets will use media releases verbatim.

I know that many PR practitioners carry out work which is immensely useful to journalists. This includes:

• Rewriting poorly-written media releases which their clients have been poised to distribute
• Advising clients that their media release is, in fact, not news or worth sending to the media
• Advising clients that what they are saying is misleading and should not be shared in a media release (yes, it happens)
• Helping journalists source spokespeople or ‘talent’ when they are approached to do so (and believe me, some of these can be very last-minute and quite obscure requests. Eg, “do you know of a 32 year old woman living in regional Australia who has started her own IT company?” )
• Helping journalists dissect research, trends or statistics (often under tight deadlines)
• Building a story idea with a journalist

Twenty years in the industry means that I can’t agree with Raeburn that “philosophically and morally” news and public relations “seem diametrically opposed”.

Professional PR practitioners are ethical, in fact our industry encourages us to be the conscience of our organisations.

This is something that is not well known (and I can hear laughter from newsrooms now) but look at any university’s PR curriculum, or the papers produced by PR professional associations around the world, and you will see ethics forms a fundamental subject of importance.

PR practitioners are in a unique position to not only be able to help their employers or clients communicate, but to question employers’ practices. “What would this look like if it was on the front page?” has morphed into “This is the not the right thing to do … this company needs to change its practices and I can help you map out the steps to get there”.

We advise clients on being honest and upfront as soon as possible when “things go wrong”. We advise clients to apologise and be accessible. But our recommendations aren’t always accepted and our advice is sometimes ignored in favour of advice from legal and political advisors – or even quashed by a nervous management.

Not all PR advisors have high ethical standards or professional pride – and in this, the PR industry isn’t alone. But by and large, long time PR practitioners can work with journalists in a symbiotic relationship, to ultimately produce stories they can be proud of and that the public needs to read.

Many years of public engagements have assured me that I won’t collapse in front of an audience and I’ve grown to enjoy presenting.

There’s a lot of shared wisdom about what makes a good public presentation but today I’m focusing on one aspect that fascinates me  …

The beginning and the end

Whenever I counsel somebody about public speaking, I have some simple advice to share. For friends and family, including my sons, I urge them to have:

1) a strong opening and
2) a strong finish.

That means a confident hello and introduction, and a clear, definitive ‘thank you’ at the end.

Sounds easy enough, right? However too often, I’ve been in the audience while a speaker opens with a nervous joke about the technology they’re using, points out a mistake that the MC made in the introduction, or forgets to thank the audience for being there. It’s as uncomfortable as wearing itchy socks.

A welcome smile and a simple, warm thank you goes a long way. (But hey, if you’re an expert speaker and you can open with a compelling conundrum, or a sure-fire joke, go for it).

Also, too often, I’ve seen a speaker finish with a whimper.

If you aren’t prepared for your conclusion, your presentation can taper off with a lame shrug, a giggle, or a “So ..that’s all.”

Most often this happens with inexperienced speakers but it can also happen during group speaking sessions or a team introductory session. This leaves an awful last impression, yet can be so easily avoided with eye contact and a clear “thank you”.

Lead your audience firmly through the wrap-up. (Occasionally you might have an MC who is good at that task and if there is a session host, make sure you are both aware of your roles). This is important because an audience likes to know what to do next.

For example, if you are going to have a question session next, you might say “Thank you so much for listening, now, I would welcome any questions.”

If there is no question time, you can give a lengthier thank you “Thank you so much for your time today; I did appreciate the opportunity to be here. And remember my [key point]. My contact details are on the screen if you would like to stay in touch. Thank you”.

The more experienced, confident presenters might get away with a simple pause – followed by an emphatic ‘thank you’, perhaps a bow, or catching a bouquet thrown from the crowd, as has (not) happened to me many times.

Now … I must thank you for reading. I hope you found these two tips useful.

(And as always, I welcome your comments below).

What happened next?

Did you bask in the glow for a while? Tell family and friends? Did you keep a copy of the news article, or had you already told your connections in advance to watch the television to catch your seven seconds of fame?

Media coverage can be an important part of your promotional plan. Reaching a lot of people at once can be a great means to raise your profile, get your message across, and become a little more well known.

But when you’ve achieved that media coverage, I’m here to tell you: close the loop!

Leverage it for all it’s worth.

If you’ve achieved some media coverage, that doesn’t mean ‘everyone has noticed you’ and that it’s time to put your feet up (though you may want to for a short time). It means it’s time to do the following:

1. share your media success on your website
2. share your media success on your social media channels
3. save a copy of any newspaper clippings; consider displaying them in your office
4. save your media coverage to mention during public presentations and pitches for work
5. use that media coverage within a blog post on the topic
6. if you gain a lot of coverage, save a list for a ‘as seen in the media’ section of your website or CV

You can also consider sending a note (email, tweet, whatever) to the journalist who produced your story, to thank them. This is especially important when you come across a journalist who had done a remarkable job in understanding your story/industry/issue in a way which hasn’t been captured well before.

Prakky public relations presentation at X-Pol

‘The making of’

When a story is in production, you may even be able to take ‘behind the scenes’ or ‘the making of’ images. If you’re the guest at a radio studio, take a photo of yourself behind the mic or with the interviewer. If you’re being interviewed for television, take an image of the camera setting up, and let your stakeholders know you’re working on something which will go to air soon.

Please be aware of copyright rules when it comes to sharing media clippings. You  don’t own the content. You may:

• Be able to reshare the story if that media outlet has already produced it online – eg, retweeting a journalist’s tweet, linking to an online story, or embedding a YouTube clip
• If you ask, the media outlet may supply you with something to share (especially if you are going to redirect audiences back to them, acknowledge them and so on), including audio of a radio interview

I’ll end with one more useful tip:

Occasionally, you may be disappointed if your newspaper print story doesn’t subsequently appear in the newspaper’s online version. Don’t despair. Journalists can be extremely time poor and not everything automatically appears online. If you ask nicely, you may find that they can get the story online for you – especially if you explain you’d like to reshare it (thereby gaining more readers for their story). I’ve asked before. Given time, newsrooms will be as amenable as they can. It’s a win-win.

Thanks to the X-Pol networking group for reminding me of my mantra of “closing the loop”. It’s something I mentioned during my recent public relations presentation to the group.

Have you got another tip on this topic of “closing the loop” with media coverage? Please share in blog comments. Perhaps you’ve got an example of when you’ve done something similar – I’d love to hear from you.

These days, I don’t take to the stage as much. So I’m very excited to be presenting a session on public relations next week.

Public relations is a fascinating, broad field that encompasses reputation management, stakeholder engagement, issues and crisis management and events. For my session, I’ll be focusing on the promotional side of PR and what South Australian businesses can do to raise their profile via the news media.

I’ll share some insights on how to craft good material for journalists, how to find stories within your own organisation, as well as some concrete ideas for ‘media spaces’ to target.

This session will be particularly useful to smaller organisations who perhaps cannot afford to employ a PR consultant or manager, who haven’t received a lot of media coverage, but think they have a good story to share.

Register now

I’ve worked in the PR and communications field for more than 20 years, I’m a former PR consultant, now working in a corporate communications and PR role, and I sit on the PRIA SA Council.

My hosts will be [X]POL (short for cross pollinate), a networking and business advisory group run by Joe Rossi.

Joe  is Managing director of Epic Projects and Consulting. [X]POL is about getting inspired by ideas and solutions from different businesses at a networking event. I attended my first session last month, listening to “Serial Entrepreneur” Matthew Michalewicz, who was absolutely fascinating. What I also enjoyed at [X]POL was the platform Joe provides for other organisations – two had the opportunity to quickly stand and present a few lines about what they do. It was refreshing to hear from more than one speaker.

If you’re in the Adelaide region and interested in what promotions can do for you, you can register for the event here.

Google’s algorithm (the way in which it determines what sites rank higher than others) is made up of over 200 different factors or ‘signals’, and this algorithm often changes more than twice a day!

The team over at HubSpot.com have put together a graphic outlining when and why Google has rolled out its more notable algorithm changes:

Statewide Appliance Spares is one of Australia’s leading suppliers of appliance spare parts, based in Adelaide and shipping spare parts daily to the rest of the country.  Statewide Appliance Spares have been a client of DBG’s since 2013, when we first launched their completely integrated ecommerce online store:

The Brief:

With Google’s pending algorithm update pertaining to mobile-friendliness, and of course the continually growing numbers of people accessing the internet with their smartphone devices, Statewide Appliance Spares knew there was a need to upgrade their site.

Rather than making the current site responsive, it was decided that due to the complex nature of the Easy Spares Wizard on the Statewide Appliance Spares homepage, that it would be better to design a separate mobile website.

The Result:

Much thought was put into ensuring that the mobile version of the Statewide Appliance Spares website didn’t fail to deliver on the core functionality that makes the desktop website so user-friendly.  Large, clear calls to action were used for buttons such as Add to Cart and View Details on the product listing and individual product pages and this new site has been designed with users who are “on the go” in mind:

]]> http://blog.dbgtechnologies.com.au/dbgs-digital-definitions/404-error-page/ We understand that the world wide web is a big, scary thing for most people, so each month we’ll try to take a word, acronym or phrase and explain to you in simple, ‘non-techie’ terms what it all means. This is DBG’s Digital Definition of the Month! http://blog.dbgtechnologies.com.au/?p=1968 Mon, 11 May 2015 08:14:43 +0000 We understand that the world wide web is a big, scary thing for most people, so each month we’ll try to take a word, acronym or phrase and explain to you in simple, ‘non-techie’ terms what it all means. This is DBG’s Digital Definition of the Month!

So what is a 404 error page?

Well a ’404′ is not a trucker’s call.  That would be a “10-4“.

A 404 is an error message displayed by an internet browser, indicating that a particular Internet address cannot be found.  You might have had this happen if you tried to go to a web page that no longer existed.  Yuck:

It could be because there’s some 301 redirects missing, or it could be because you clicked on a link that had a typo, or maybe you typed the wrong address in?   Either way, the best web practitioners out there will have a customised 404 page built into their website.  The website needs to help the user as much as possible here, as they’ve reached somewhat of a dead end and we don’t want to lose them from the site entirely.  So how can we help users?

You could provide links to popular pages within your site, like Web Design Ledger:

Encourage them to search again, like The Iconic:

Or flick them back to the homepage, like Hootsuite:

These are just a few examples of good 404 error pages, but there are a lot more out there.

We all know that people are using the internet, right?

But what marketers love to know, is what people are using the internet FOR.

A recent report by ICMI has shown that a large portion of Australians are preferring to go to the web to look for information, before contacting customer service:

So how can we provide our customers with the information that they need online to solve customer service issues?  Here are some suggestions:

Frequently Asked Questions – Create a section on your website dedicated to frequently asked questions.  Ensure that these questions are clearly categorised and the answers are short, yet definitive.  Ask your customer-facing team members to provide input into keeping these FAQs updated on a regular basis.

Returns Policy – If you sell products (offline or online), you can guarantee that there will be customers looking for information regarding returning a product.  If you do sell online, then provide a facility for your customers to initiate their returns online too.

Shipping / Delivery Information – If you sell products online, include a page detailing shipping costs, and delivery time frames.  If you have special offers on shipping them display them clearly around the site:

Users also love a Track Your Order facility, which the Snowys website team have incorporated into their website.

Opening Hours – Ensure that your website has clear information (preferably on the Contact page) regarding your hours of operation.  Ensure these include public holidays (if you are B2C), and put something custom up around Christmas time.

Online Payment – If you’re a small business that doesn’t usually transact online, you may wish to include a PayPal ‘Pay Now’ button that will enable people to pay their invoices online via the security of PayPal.

Careers or Employment – depending on your industry, there’s a good chance that your website may be used by  jobseekers looking for work, or students looking for work experience.  If you’d like to cut down on the number of unsolicited emails and phone calls you receive, place a page of information on your website.  You might be looking to tell people that you’re just not hiring at present, or you may be encouraging applicants on a regular basis.  Use your website as a communication tool with these people!

Trade Inquiries - If you’re a business that sells to trade customers (e.g. you’re a manufacturer who sells only to retailers, not end users), you may wish to have certain things on your website such as a Trade Enquiry Form, or downloadable information packs and credit applications.

Online Bookings – If you’re a restaurant, you could consider embedding an online booking facility such as Dimmi.

And last but not least – please make sure your website is mobile-friendly!  A large group of users looking for customer service assistance will be doing so on their smartphones so we need to make it easy for them.  And of course you don’t want to be penalised by Google for having a non-mobile friendly website.

We would also recommend, where possible – providing alternate means of engagement for your customers.  This could include manned social media channels, a live chat facility on your website, a contact form they can fill out online, a customer service email address, and more.

What other things can you think of for online customer service?  Who have you seen doing it well, and not so well?

This is a big deal, because Google doesn’t usually tell us when it’s making a change – it just changes the algorithm and explains later when we’re all questioning why sites have been affected.

So what is the change?

From Google themselves:

“This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results.  Consequently users will find it easier to get relevant, high quality search results that are optimised for their devices.”

What this means is that if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, your placement in the search results will be negatively impacted and your competitors who are mobile-friendly could very well rank higher than you.

Some commentators are predicting websites that aren’t mobile-friendly could suffer a drop of up to 30% in traffic (Source:  Search Engine Land).

How do I know if my site is mobile-friendly?

There are a couple of ways.  One way is to grab your smartphone device, open Google and type in your company name.  In the results you want to see a little ‘mobile-friendly’ note next to your listing (highlighted in yellow below):

The second way to test is to use Google Webmaster Tools’ Mobile-Friendly Test.  This allows you to enter the URL of your website, and it will produce a result on whether or not your site is deemed mobile-friendly:

So when is the big change happening?

The d-day for this update is 21 April 2015.

What should you do about it?

If you’re unsure, use the Google Mobile-Friendly test on the link provided above.  If you find that your website is not mobile-friendly, give your website designer a call ASAP to get this rectified .

If you have any more questions  - DBG Technologies are experts in creating responsive websites for businesses, so give our team a call on 1300 723 618.

Not only is today the first day of the month, it’s the first day of April which means April Fools’ Day.  Each year we see many large, public brands enter the pranking fray – and some of them are pretty darn good.

Here is a selection of our favourites for 2015:

Google Maps – Pacman

Google has enabled an Easter egg in their Maps application that allows users to play the classic Pac-Man game in their local city streets.

Look up your local address in Google (or whatever location you please!), and click the little Pac-Man image in the bottom left hand corner – and go!

Virgin Australia – Premium Paw Door Entry

This morning airline Virgin Australia has introduced it’s dedicated lounge for pets, available only to four legged members of their Velocity Frequent Flyer program.  Looks like a good excuse for a cute puppy video to us!

SAPOL – Cat Operations Unit

Just this morning SAPOL (South Australian Police) have launched their Police Cat Operations Unit – “Naturally curious and highly suspicious, the moggie patrols will be deployed during the hours of darkness to utilise their superior night vision.”

Well done to SAPOL – they might be in the serious business of enforcing the law, but at least they know how to have a sense of humour.

Kogan – Celebrity Purchasers

One of Austalia’s largest online retailers Kogan has today replaced their pop-up customer notifications with celebrity versions.  Among the pop-ups are Miley Cyrus, Barack Obama (see below), Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, Bugs Bunny, Justin Bieber and more.

Have you seen any other excellent April Fools’ Day pranks?

Why then, this strange trend for new hospitality businesses to erect signs on their construction sites which don’t tell us anything at all?

Lately, I’ve seen too many upcoming establishments share ‘watch this space’ and ‘follow us on social media for more’ messages on their temporary signs. They’re a wasted opportunity, insulting and stupid.

Now .. this is a good an example of great signage.

If you’re going to open a café or a microbrewery in a high-traffic location, put up a sign that shares something meaningful with the passing traffic. There are thousands of vehicles and pedestrians passing each week while your outlet is being built and decorated – why wouldn’t you grab that chance to share a few well-chosen words spruiking yourself?

What have I noticed instead?

Businesses sharing social media icons and phrases like ‘Follow us to find out more’ or ‘Who is <name>?’

Let me get this straight. This is what you’re asking the passing traffic to do:

• Remember your business name
• Feel motivated enough to look you up online by searching that name
• Assess the search results and try to find your business (not easy)
• Find your business on Facebook / Instagram / Twitter and follow you – just because you’ve said you’re opening soon and they should follow you to ‘stay tuned for updates’
• Occasionally see your news within the hundreds or thousands of other social media accounts they follow
• Amongst those thousands of social media accounts they follow, they might see news about who exactly you are, what you offer, why they should come to your business

You know, I have a full time job. I have two kids. I have organisations I volunteer for and hobbies and friends and I like to go out. But amongst all that – if I’m curious about your business and ‘want to know more’ you are asking me to make time in my very busy life to seek you out.

How about this instead.

I walk past your business Monday to Friday, to and from work. That’s me going past 10 times a week. How about you put up a menu? How about you write in BIG LETTERS what your business is going to offer. Are you a tapas bar? Will you have live music? Are you a new tea house? Will you have great burgers? Do you deliver? WHO ARE YOU? Stop insulting me by teasing me. It’s not captivating, it’s not hip, it’s not what social media strategies require you to do.

If you think an Instagram logo is going to save you, I’m sorry to burst your bubble. Social media is nice to have as part of your communications mix, but there’s nothing unique about a social presence anymore.

We all know business is competitive and hospitality is especially  so.

The walls of your new site (and current site!) present free publicity.

Use that cladding around your business to communicate.

Doing anything less is plain stupid.

Most of the public would define the “A list” as celebrities and wannabe celebrities. They’re the in-crowd who get invited to glitzy launches, wear the latest fashions, walk the red carpet and appear in the social pages.

But like so much in the PR world, there’s more to an A list than meets the eye.

When you work in public relations, your stakeholders (or the people that matter to you, the ones you have to ‘take care of’) can vary widely.  What works for your A list, won’t necessarily work for mine.

And believe me, your most powerful and influential stakeholders may not be the same as those stalwarts of the social pages.

Most PR professionals know this. They know that the guest lists for the events below are likely to be very different:

• Launch of a new fashion line
• Opening of a new school wing
• Tenth birthday for a popular winery
• Opening of a new car parts factory
• Announcement of a prestigious scholarship winner
• Indie film premiere

For all of the events above, there would be some very obvious names to invite. There’d be a coterie of people passionate and influential in that field – as well as the close stakeholders involved in the project.

But that foodie blogger? They’re unlikely to be coming to the opening of the car parts factory.

It would be rare individual who would appear on the invite list for every event listed above. Though it’s not impossible. Politicians for example, may be invited to all of the above events. A popular entrepreneur or philanthropist could also be on the list for multiple events.

Sometimes however, PR professionals can get it wrong.

They might get lazy with their A list.

I think in this age of celebrity worship and social media, it’s even easier to get it wrong. We can fall into the trap of inviting people with thousands of Instagram or Twitter followers, while forgetting that influential print journalist who has been working that sector for decades. We could invite the most recent reality TV cast member, while neglecting the president of a community group that will be impacted by that new business.

So, what can be done?

How do you ensure you have the right A list?

For starters, remember to regard your invitees as stakeholders rather than party people.

Kim Harrison has an excellent list of typical stakeholder categories in Strategic Public Relations – A Guide to Success (2001). These include:

• Employees
• Chairman, directors
• Local, state and federal politicians
• Global, national, state, local and trade media
• Investors, donors, members
• Educational institutions
• Community leaders
• Suppliers, wholesalers
• Customers
• Environmental interest groups
• Unions

A good PR professional will have developed a stakeholder list for their organisation / client / event.  This stakeholder list will be one of the touchstones of your strategic communications plan. You’ll use it to ensure your communications are reaching stakeholders regularly. And one of the many benefits of the stakeholder list, will be the help it provides when you’re managing an event.

Like so much in the PR and communications world, there’s more to the A list than meets the eye.

Next time you read about the A list and look through all the accompanying photos of women in heels and men in sharp collars, do remember: every industry, every sector, every community has an influential list of its own. They’re people who have a stake in what you’re doing. They may be experts, they may be passionate, they may be antagonistic, they may be enthusiastic, they may be wary. The thing they have in common? The ability to impact your reputation and your ability to conduct business.

So put a concerted effort into your A list. Don’t just invite the usual suspects. Don’t be lulled into inviting the people who “always” to go launches. Look further, look across age and gender and career types, and develop a unique A list that you can be proud of.

It was my introduction to style guides and an early lesson in the value of having a touchstone when it comes to … how you write stuff.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may know that – while I can write – I don’t always get it right when it comes to grammar. I don’t understand conjunctions.  I don’t understand clauses. Just reading those words makes my eyes glaze over. I do understand the active voice. And I understand short sentences.

So this isn’t a post from your favourite grammar Nazi.

This is a post about the value of style guides in organisations.

Most organisations I’ve worked with have a brand guide. That’s the volume that prescribes your official font, official colours, official logo, and placement of that official logo. It’s all very official.

An editorial style guide is a rare beast.

What does it do?

It helps guide your organisation when it comes to writing. And if you’re in corporate communications and your role includes writing the annual report, newsletter articles, web articles, media releases and more, then a style guide is a very useful tool indeed.

Your style guide will outline how you write:

• the organisation’s name, including shortening the name and any acronyms
• titles within the organisation including capitalisation
• committee names, team names, and project names
  • eg, is it the Widget Committee or the Committee for the Building of Widgets or WC?
• Numerals within sentences; the convention is that numbers before ten are written out (one, two, three) and above 9, you begin to use numerals – but that’s up to you.

When it comes to media releases, the plot thickens.

Do you write in the first person? Is it “Spokesperson said” or  “Spokesperson says”? Do you have a spokesman or a spokeswoman, perhaps? How do you include the person’s title in sentences? What tense do they speak in?

• Chief widget maker Sandy Sanderson said
• Or Sandy Sanderson, Chief Maker of Widgets, says …

Your style guide helps protect your brand. It maintains consistency and professionalism when it comes to communicating with the rest of the world. And boy, is it handy for your communications team – internal or external agency.

One organisation I previously worked for had an admirable, detailed style guide which included references to place names, ethnicity, gender and more. This can be particularly important when you prefer to write in a way that would not offend.

There are some advocacy organisations which have produced helpful guidelines that can be referenced in your own style guide.

These include:

Monash University’s Inclusive Language guide

Australian Network on Disability, Inclusive Language guide

If you’re looking for further inspiration, of course news organisations have style guides that are integral to how they work. The AP Style Guide is the so-called “journalist’s bible”. For some media outlets, the style guide is not so readily accessible while others are there in all their glory – the BBC Style Guide has sections including Names, Religion, Numbers and Military. You could spend hours there .. if you like that sort of thing.

Don’t have a style guide in your organisation? Don’t feel like you have to reinvent the wheel.  You could:

1. Make a recommendation that you adhere to an existing style guide (eg, a publicly available news organisation or university style guide)
2. Adhere to an official dictionary like the Macquarie Dictionary, and then agree on a few common principles about titles, numbers and so on – your guide could be just one page. It is better to have a short style guide than no style guide at all.

Again, style guides form part of your brand. They project and protect your image. It’s a fundamental tool of professional communications and worth investing time in.

Does your organisation have a style guide? Or did you take part in developing one? I’d love to hear about it in comments below …

It is with much sadness that I have to retire this blog, due to my ongoing health issues.

Thank you for your time and patience and your audience over the last nine years.

Lee

Chatwing has added some new functionality, including being mobile-friendly. Aaron from Chatwing tells us more.

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With the abundant numbers of widgets being made today, site owners have to be careful in choosing which one use and find out whether they’ll be efficient to the site or not since putting too many on your site will increase its tendency to produce lag. There many widgets out there and each one can help the site in its own way. However, if customer satisfaction is what you’re after, then you might just want to choose a chat widget over the others. Having a chatting tool embedded on your site will greatly increase its capability to support your viewers since you are giving them the opportunity to voice out their concerns directly to you.

There are many chat widgets out there too, and as mentioned before, you have to pick only the best for your site. A great chatting tool will not only create a better atmosphere on your site, it will also provide your viewers a place where they can gather credible information quickly. Chatwing is a tool that can achieve that and more. Here’s a simple set of procedures in making one and embedding it on your site.

What You’ll Need

To make this efficient chatroom, you’ll need three things.

• A valid E-mail
• A Password
• Your creative mind – yes, you’ll need this

Now that you have an idea as to what you need here, it’s time to start the process!

Step 1: Register

You’ll need to use your email and password here in order to make a Chatwing account. This is necessary as it’s the only way you can make a chatroom. Just follow the steps below.

• Find Chatwing’s homepage – it’s on http://chatwing.com
• Now find the TRY NOW button and press it.
• A registration form will show up – there are two blank spaces and a box below.
• Now put your email address and your password on their intended places and check the box.
• Click on the Register button at the bottom of the form to finally create your account!

How was it? Easy right? Normally, one can finish the entire process in less than a minute so it’s a pretty easy process to complete. And no, you won’t need to reconfirm your account or your email – you can immediately start creating your chatroom afterwards! Now let’s head on for Step 2.

Step 2: Creating the Chatroom

This is yet another very easy step for you. You’re now in the Dashboard page. To describe this place in a sentence – it’s where you create your chatrooms and store them. To create a new chatroom, look for the Create chatbox button and press it.

Step 3: Customizing Your Chatroom

Now this is where you’ll need your creative mind. Chatwing’s customization options are vast and have the capability to change your chatroom to whatever suit your preferences. Changing the settings requires no real effort – just simple click and dragging motion of the mouse.

As you modify your chatroom however, you have to constantly save it by pressing the Save button – they’re placed on some of the tabs as well as on the top of the page. As for your chatroom, you can keep track of its changes by looking at the preview window on the right side of the page.

When you’re done customizing, make sure you press the Save button for the last time. Now press the Use Chatbox button at upper part of the page to finally start embedding!

Step 4: Embedding the Chatroom

Now to finally start the embedding process, you’ll need to choose one of the three tabs in the Embedding Page. The best choice for you would be the one in the middle, the Embedded Options tab, so pick it. Inside it you’ll find two scrollbars and two groups of HTML codes.

The scrollbars are used to change the size of your chatroom. See that preview window showing your chatroom? That is its actual size and you can change it using the aforementioned controls.

If you’re satisfied with how big your chatroom is, then you can finally start embedding it. Look for the Javascript codes below. All you need to do now is to copy these codes and paste them into your site, right where you want the chatroom to show up, and you’re done! Save your progress and refresh your site – the chatroom should be there and you can start chatting.

Note: The iFrame codes found at the bottom of the Embedded Options tab can be used as substitute if Javascript won’t work on your site. So if your chatroom won’t show up and you think that you followed the instructions clearly, then just replace the previous codes with this one.

Using the Chatroom

Chatwing has a lot of features that will surely come in handy when you’re chatting with your viewers. They can login easily because of Chatwing’s lenient login methods that allows the use of social media accounts to join in – for now they can use their Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Tumblr, Instagram and even Vk accounts to do so. You can easily manage the chatroom and ban anyone out of it with a simple mouse click.

Chatwing has a lot more to give you, and without a doubt, it will surely make your time chatting with them totally worth it. So give your viewers the best chatting experience they deserve through this nifty chat software.

Guest post by John Terra.

Repurposed content: the leftover turkey of effective SEO

Anyone who’s even remotely an expert in Search Engine Optimization says the same thing: your content needs to be great! But creating quality content is time-consuming and is a drain on resources; necessary evils, sure, but still with a measure of pain. It’s a shame that all of that effort goes into one media, specifically your web content, and then that’s it.

That is unless, of course, you consider repurposing it. By adapting and using that content in different forms, you can leverage your investment and get more mileage out of that costly resource. Consider that content to be like a Thanksgiving turkey, in that after it’s served its purpose as the main event, it lives on in different forms and continues to nourish and satisfy days after the holiday!

Here are some cool ways to leverage that content.

Tweet, Tweet!
Have you considered repurposing your post into tweets? If you think about it, just one tweet per paragraph and you’re sure to get half-a-dozen tweets out of a single article. It’s all a matter of distilling each paragraph into a 140 character recap. Take for example this piece, written by a brilliant author of the Internet age. Here’s a few tweets you could distill from it, complete with hashtags:

• "Try lying about your products now and see what happens. #bustedonline"
• “Something written in the heat of anger will remain a part of the Internet forever.#jumpingthegun"
• "Arguing with trolls online is a historical blunder like an Asian land war #inconceivabletrolls"
• "Walk away from a flame war, let your reputation speak for you #notworththetrouble"

The Attack Of The Pod(cast) People!
Try turning your post into a podcast, or for that matter, take a podcast and transcribe it into a post! Here’s a site that uses this technique.

Let’s Make A Video!
If you’re feeling a little ambitious and you have access to video cameras and editing skills, try turning that blog post into a video. For example, pastors often turn the written word into visuals, as seen in Ed Young Jr Ministries.

Stop The Presses!
This is reversing the process; taking a non-article piece and changing it into a smooth flowing online blog post or article. We’re talking here about taking a particularly informative, relevant, and well-written press release, gutting out the press-related details, and using the main body as a blog entry. Perhaps it will need to be cleaned up a little to fit the blog’s narrative tone and feel, but it sure beats creating a post from scratch.

Unleash the PDFizer!
Take those particularly good pages of web content, create PDFs out of them, and link to them so that visitors can access and download them for their own enjoyment. Granted, not everyone has access to PDFs (or likes them, for that matter), but it’s still a viable way to get some more mileage out of those words.

You Got (E)Mail!
Finally, if your business routinely sends out emails to customers, then why not repurpose some of those better blog entries into a mass mailing? After all, it’s a safe bet that not everyone on your email list managed to see the posts themselves. If they won’t come to the blog, let the blog come to them!
These are just some ways to recycle those valuable words and keep them working for you a little longer.

Author byline: John Terra has been a freelance writer since 1985. He hopes this particular article will someday be repurposed into a puppet show opera featuring singing sock puppets.

Coca-Cola’s announcement late last year that the traditional corporate website is dead created ripples when they said it and those ripples can still be felt today.

Just yesterday I was with a business that is looking to refresh its website and I mentioned Coke’s viewpoint – backed up by data showing traffic increases in the hundreds and thousands of per cent.

“a 106% increase in page views driven by a jaw-dropping 1,247% increase in Unbottled home page visits”

Now, this business doesn’t have the resources or capital of Coke, so it is unfair to expect them to suddenly turn their website into a 24/7 magazine as Coke’s website now is, but it IS fair to expect them to embrace social sensibilities and create content that is user-friendly and user-focused (such as ‘how to’ articles rather than the traditional self-promoting marketing fluff most websites still produce). And it is well known that what happens in the corporate world sooner or later floats down to the medium and small sized business, doesn’t it?

If you would like a focused look at your website and an assessment of your website’s strengths and weaknesses regarding social media, and perhaps even a look at your total digital strategy, why not give me a call?

Call me on 0410 642 052.

It’s an old post, but I recently came across Mark Traphagen’s post about Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s controversial comments on Google and verified online profiles.

Says Schmidt:

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

I don’t think Google would be so silly as to limit their ranking to only those sites who have a Google+ profile, but you can bet that having a Facebook profile is going to figure into things, and if you have time to post to Facebook then you probably have time to cross-post to Google+ as well in order to cover your bases.

Time to reconsider your social media activities, especially if Google features in your marketing. Call me to discuss this further over a coffee: 0410 642 052

Lisa Marggetis has designed a great infographic on contact forms, looking at the balance between quality of lead versus quantity of lead.

You can see the full-sized version of the graphic over on the SingleHop site.

Guest post by John Terra.

Social media offers rich potential for reaching out to new customers, building a relationship with them, and increasing your business’ visibility and brand. Unfortunately, there’s a downside to all of this easy communication.

Much in the same way that customers can get first-hand information about your new products, services, and promotions, they also can get a ringside seat when you mess up, which in turn can damage your online reputation.

Here are five social media missteps that can ruin your good name. Learn what they are, and avoid them.

Being Dishonest
Back in the ancient, pre-Internet days, a merchant, say for example a used car salesman, could tell a prospective buyer that a clunker was "driven only by a little old lady on Sundays", and the lie pretty much remained between just a few people. Try lying about your products now, online, and see what happens.

Jumping The Gun
Do you know that old saying about when you’re angry, you should count to ten before responding? Perhaps the social media version should call for people to wait ten hours before responding. It’s a very natural, very human instinct to retaliate immediately or at the very least put up a rapid defence. The problem is, something written in the heat of anger will remain a part of the Internet forever. Even if you go back and change a hasty response, you can’t make everyone unsee the original post. The best way for people not to see a badly phrased knee-jerk response is by not posting it in the first place. Cool down, revisit the offending post, and come up with something civil.

Responding To Trolls
There are people out there on the Internet who love to stir things up. These are called trolls. Getting involved in an online argument with them is one of those blunders that ranks right up there with never getting involved in a land war in Asia, or go against a Sicilian when death is on the line. But seriously, by allowing yourself to get dragged into a verbal battle with trolls, you get into a no-win situation that only makes you look bad as well.

Being Insulting
Using insults and personal attacks, no matter how much you may think the offender deserves it, is not productive. You are lowering yourself to the level of your critics, and eventually it simply won’t matter to people about who started it, or who deserved it. All they’ll see is a distasteful exchange that doesn’t make either party look good. And let’s not even get into what can happen if someone who criticizes your business has an actual legitimate gripe, and the only response they get is a personal attack.

Not Knowing When To Walk Away
Instinctively, many people like to get in the last word. In some people’s estimation, having that last word means that they have somehow won the argument. But the problem is, many people who indulge in flame wars are perfectly capable of dishing it out for as long as anyone is foolish enough to respond and play along. Let your good reputation speak for itself, and make it a point to refuse to get baited into a prolonged exchange.

An Example Of Doing It Right
A friend of mine, a man named Victor, runs a professional haunted house called Ghoulie Manor. Recently, he and his cast were invited to appear at a Providence, Rhode Island arts festival that was focusing on horror writer HP Lovecraft, so the theme of this city event was horror. Vic and his cast came in costume and makeup, and joined with the other horror-themed participants, and all was well.

That is, until Vic got an e-mail from an irate parent. An e-mail that began with the words "Dear Assholes". Already, this was off to a bad start. Apparently, the small child of the letter writer was upset by the scary people in costumes, and even after the family went home, the child was still frightened. The parent went on to say that he prayed that the Ghoulie Manor people would suffer the same sort of unpleasantness as well.

Rather than ripping into the parent, Vic responded with a courteous, professional letter, indicating that he and his staff never try to scare small children, and he apologized for any trouble. He also pointed out that the entire event was horror-based, and made a gentle observation that if he himself had a four year old child, he wouldn’t take the child to such an event.

The irate parent wrote back, apologizing and taking back all the unpleasant things he had written. He and his wife were unaware of the horror theme, and if they had known about it, they indeed wouldn’t have brought their child to the event.

By not screaming back at the parent, Vic defused the situation and may have actually won over a pair of possible customers (provided the kid stays at home!).

John Terra has been writing freelance since 1985 covering social media and online reputation management. He has worked for three different startups and has the gray hairs to prove it.
Photo credit: stephenpoff

Aaron from Chatwing follows up an earlier article with details on how to make best use of Chatwing’s features if you are a first time user.

Keeping friends close no matter where they are is only possible when you are in constant communication with each other. Through chatting, one can experience the fun of having to talk with everyone even if they are thousands of miles across the world. Using a chatroom is easy, but creating one is much better since being the admin would let you manage the chatroom easier.

Choosing the right chat software to use is also important. And when it comes to chatrooms, Chatwing is definitely one of the best. This tool is complimented by a lot of features which easily makes it one of the most sophisticated chatting tools created yet it’s very easy to use. And making one is definitely a piece of cake.

Here’s how you can do it.

Step 1: Getting a Chatwing Account

You can’t proceed further without a Chatwing account, so make one first. Go to Chatwing’s homepage and open the registration form. Fill it up and check the boxes before submitting it to proceed to the next step.

Step 2: Making the Chatroom

The next page you’ll be in is the Dashboard page. This is where you’ll find your chatroom and where you can create a new one. To do so, press the Create chatbox button. Afterwards, you’ll be instantly redirected to the customization page.

Step 3: Modifying the Chatroom

Next up, you are to modify your chatroom. There are a lot of customization options you can change, all of which are separated into tabs. In each tab, a certain part of the chatroom can be changed or one of Chatwing’s additional functions can be used. You can browse through each tab freely, and go back to the previous one you came from.

However, you have to make sure that you save your settings before going to another tab. You can do so by pressing the Save button. The changes you’ve made on your chatroom will instantly be viewed on the preview window. Now that you’re done with customizing, it’s time to head on to the next step – press the Use button on top of the Customization page.

Step 4: Embedding – Group Chat

Chatwing let’s you decide how you’ll use the chatroom. You can do that here, in the Embedding page. You’ll only need to use the chatroom so go with Group Chat URL. You’ll see two links here – a longer and a shorter version of your chatrooms URL.

Pick one and copy it. Paste the URL into your browser. Wait for a few moments for the chatroom to load up and you can start using it afterwards.

Using the Chatroom

To invite your friends, simply give them the link to your chatroom and have them access it the same way you do. They can login using their Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo or Tumblr accounts – this makes it easier for you to recognize who they are.

As the admin, you can manage the chatroom easily. You can kick anyone out and delete their messages. This is very essential especially if there are unwanted people that will try to interrupt your conversations with your friends – spammers are one of those examples too. Chatwing still has a lot of functions that you can utilize and it will surely help you provide a better place for you and your friends to chat on.

Guest post by Nolan Grayson.

Summary: Businesses have learned that teleconferencing is a very effective tool. It is a way to get people together for a meeting when they are in different locations. It is also an important tool that can be used for business marketing. It is vital to know how to overcome technical problems that can occur.

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The way that businesses operate has changed. They do not just operate locally these days. All of the employees of a business are not housed in the same building. In the world today businesses have to operate globally. They have to be able to extend their business anywhere the customers are located. That means that not all of the employees of a business work in the same place. It is very likely that most of the employees of a business may not ever meet each other in person.

The change in the way that businesses operate means that they have had to find better and more efficient ways to communicate. If you cannot bring all of the employees into a conference room for a meeting, you have to find other ways of getting everyone together to exchange ideas and create marketing plans. Technology has made this easier through teleconferencing. Whether a business uses traditional phone lines for teleconferencing or if they turn to the internet to help, they can effectively bring people together no matter where they are located. Teleconferencing depends on technology and that technology does not always work the way it should. A business should have an idea of how to market, promote and deal with some of the technical issues that can occur while teleconferencing.

Bad Connections

By far the biggest technical issue that businesses face is a bad connection. This can happen with traditional phone lines or over the internet. Even if you can get efficient web conferencing with multi features, that you may still run into trouble. The problem could be the result of the connection of any of the parties involved in the conference.

A few simple steps can be taken to try to resolve this issue. The first is to disconnect from the teleconference and reconnect again. That will often solve any problems that are occurring. If the problem is the internet, try to get everyone to use a wired connection instead of a wireless connection. It is also a good idea to make sure the participants of the teleconference are only using their internet connection for the conference call. If they are doing anything else over the connection during the call itcould cause problems. When all else fails make sure you have a backup option. There are several different ways to complete teleconferencing. If the first method does not work, try something else.

Scheduling conflicts

There will be some people that do not get to the teleconference on time or will have to leave it early. These people are often referred to as drop outs. A business should deal with this in the same way they would deal with it when it happened at a meeting at the office. It is not acceptable for anyone to be late for work and it is not acceptable for people to leave in the middle of a meeting. These situations should be dealt with appropriately if they occur.

It could also help a business to make sure that people are aware of the conference and that they know what time it is as well as how long it will last. This information should be given to the people involved in the meeting in a clear and efficient manner. It could prevent any problems from occurring.

Technologically challenged people

The idea of teleconferencing is fairly new. Some people will not know how it works and will have difficulty getting connected or engaging in the meeting properly. For the people who are technologically challenged the answer comes in using the right service for the teleconferencing. Now-a-days it is being an easy source for business meeting, discussing marketing strategies. It is also a good idea to provide a tutorial for any employees that will be involved in these types of meetings.

Teleconferencing will continue to grow and more businesses will use it to meet the needs of their business. It will allow businesses to compete in the global economy. The cost benefits and the effectiveness of teleconferencing make it a great tool and as long as there is a plan to overcome any technical issues, it will work for your organization.

Author Bio: Nolan is a Technology Enthusiast in Washington and also a tech blogger. He loves to write and share his views on technology, gadgets and applications.

This Infographic is produced by Coupon Audit (provides Finish Line coupon) and Lee Hopkins

.
<br /> <img style="max-width: 100%;" src="http://www.couponaudit.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/How-Smartphones-Use-Continues-To-Rise4.jpg" alt="How Smartphones Use Continues To Rise?" /></p> <p></a></p> <p> This Infographic is produced by <a href="http://www.couponaudit.com/coupons/finishline">Coupon Audit (provides Finish Line coupon) </a> and <a href="http://www.leehopkins.net">Lee Hopkins</a> </p>.<br />

While most users have a good understanding of what it does (track visits and behaviour on your website), there is a big gap between generating and acting on data in isolation as opposed to generating meaningful, actionable insights.

To illustrate what I mean, check out this wonderful ad from Adobe that really cuts to the heart of the problem:

See? Making major marketing decisions based on misleading data.

I had the pleasure of presenting at the October #socadl event on precisely this topic and came up with a few cool tips and tricks I use to make my Google Analytics rock.

While you really do need the talk to go along with slides, this should hopefully inspire you to go research these features yourself or alternatively feel free to reach out.

The holy grail of marketing communications is to serve your customers with timely, relevant, targeted communications. The volume of data that we are now able to capture, track and analyse about our customers means that you no know what they’re interested in, what they’ve bought and the what time they are most likely to buy it. In fact, this is part of the strategy behind the success of several online retailers like Vinomofo and Amazon. But what happens when the data breaks? What happens when what you’re collecting is no longer accurate?

As an example, and not just because I mentioned Vinomofo 25 words ago, let’s use wine. When I first visit the site, I’m only interested in one varietal, let’s say Pinot Noir. I only click on links to Pinot Noir and that’s the only thing I ever buy. The wine retailer correctly assumes I only like Pinot Noir and stops sending me emails with any other offer and prioritises Pinot Noir when I’m on the website. But what if I go our to dinner one night and try an amazing Shiraz and suddenly want to buy Shiraz? All the emails I’m receiving still only spruik Pinots and since the website thinks that’s all I like, I never see the Shiraz deals so I think I need to go somewhere else to buy wines.

As marketers, we must avoid only just going by what the data tells. Here’s a couple of ways to avoid this happening:

Give the option to fix

As the screenshot from Amazon shows, give your visitors a chance to fix the recommendation so you can continually learn as their tastes evolve.

Balanced observed with stated behaviour

Open up your customer profiles and allow customers to self-select what they are interested in rather than just relying on the data. While you can begin just by observing on-site behaviour, you can send a follow-up survey to confirm that what you’re collecting is accurate and ask if there’s anything else they’re interest in.

Don’t hide other offers

While you should tailor your communications to prioritise what the data tells you they are most interested in, don’t hide the rest either. Make other products and categories easy to find if their preferences change and they know you don’t just do one thing and there’s a whole lot more to you.

Photo Credit: Silvio Tanaka via Compfight cc

Just because Radiohead say “pay what you want” for their album and millions gobble it up doesn’t mean it will do the same for you.

Just because Thom Yorke pulls all his (solo) music from Spotify because he doesn’t think the system is fair to new artists doesn’t mean you should follow suit (ironic given his band along with Nine Inch Nails were two of the main acts instrumental in creating the perception digital downloads had less value than a CD or LP).

While there is definitely truth to the fact that musicians have swapped physical media/analogue dollars for digital streaming cents, it doesn’t mean that there is no benefit to your brand.

If, like Thom Yorke, you have millions of fans following your every move, then removing your music from Spotify will barely register as a blip. Your fans will still find a way to listen to your music and will clamour for tickets next time you’re playing in their town.

But if you are nothing like Thom Yorke, then you need to think about how best to get your product – your music – into the market and leverage every opportunity to get it there. True, your Spotify royalties may not amount to more than a few dollars a quarter, but how much were you making before this?

As the saying goes, your mileage will vary. It’s up to you to decide what’s best for your b(r)and, not blindly hop on the bandwagon just because someone famous says it’s right.

• Smartphone and tablet sales are continuing to grow as PC sales decline [1]
• Google and Facebook account for over 70% of mobile advertising revenue [2]

As a long-time citizen of the web, I fell in love with the Internet precisely because unlike the traditional media that it would go on to fundamentally disrupt, it grew from the premise that it is open and decentralised. Anyone could access the network and establish a presence.

It struck me then, that those two stats – particularly when taken together – are a clear signal that things are not like what they once were. While the web is still vast, expansive and continuing to grow, for many users their entire online experience revolves around just two web properties: Facebook and Google.

Facebook users check the smartphone app an average of 14 times a day, while Google handles over 4 billion search queries a day. Not being on Facebook can be seen as either a badge of honour, or being horribly out of the loop (but mostly the latter). I’ve long contended that as we continue to share more and more of our digital selves on Facebook, the gravitational pull of Zuckberg’s network will grow exponentially making it increasingly harder to leave. While in the case of Google, we have simply outsourced our memory while simultaneously gaining access to the entirety of our digitised knowledge.

Add to this the impending demise of Google Reader (and by extension RSS which gave us the ability to consume what we want, where we wanted), the pervasiveness of Android devices (750 million and counting) and the recent launch of Facebook Home, there will soon be no escaping either of these two online behemoths anytime you’re connected – which is already close to ‘always’, especially with Google Glass on the way.

Why the aforementioned mobile ad spend is important is that where the dollars are spent is where innovation and content will follow. Publishers and developers who still primarily look to ad-supported as their monetisation strategy will by default seek to develop closer and closer ties with the networks that control the ad dollars.

The unavoidable truth is that in a post-PC world, Facebook and Google will command our attention more than ever. When two companies have effectively become our gateway to the rest of the Internet, we run the serious risk as marketers of turning it into something bland and derivative as we rinse, recycle and repeat ideas we’ve seen work elsewhere in order to get a higher search rankings, likes, +1’s or shares.

Let’s hope we don’t.

Living in South Australia during Summer, we are no strangers to power outages. When one inevitably hits, the logical first step (to me, at last) would be to visit the SA Power Networks website and check the status of the outage. This is what I saw:

Aside from the initial acknowledgement that they are aware of the problem, very little else is actually of any use. The status and estimated restoration time never changed from what is clearly an automated message and approximate restoration time that left you guessing if anyone was even really there. In other words, it was a signal that their time is more valuable than yours.

While SA Power Networks are undoubtedly one of the State’s largest and most important organisations with enough in their coffers to facilitate and communicate a rebrand from ETSA Utilities, they dropped the ball in this case. The failure to provide timely, helpful updates means that those affected are left not only to speculate, but unable to make any future plans.

This was an opportunity for them to create a connection with their customers. Providing regularly updated information that is both valuable and useful would help to build trust and faith in a brand that has historically been short on both.

In short: don’t underestimate even the smallest messages ability to communicate and reinforce your brand story. Keep it helpful, on-message and above all else, try to realistically address your customers questions at this point.

To say the reaction was mixed would be disingenuous. If a Metacritic score existed for it, it would have an average of 21% based on Adelaide’s reviews. Or to put it bluntly, the natives were really pissed.

There already are a few excellent blog post about the brand (such as Sputnik and Erica Nistico, amongst others) so I won’t bother rehashing what is and isn’t a brand but  summarise what I liked and didn’t like about the logo and the brand.

Things I like about Brand South Australia:

• It’s bold, clear and to the point.
• It’s flexible and actually does work in different contexts. Don’t like the colours? Drop in an image that better represents your organisation (if I were still working at Adelaide Uni, a graduation shot of Bonython Hall would be in there so fast).
• They certainly solved the main problem they identified in the research (“no one outside Australia knows where South Australia is”).
• The projection on the Festival Centre was really quite excellent.
• The insights driving the strategy seemed spot on and the methodology thorough.
• I can get on-board with the doorway idea. We already are in some areas (arts, wine, mining) so hopefully we will also aspire to be in others.

Things I don’t like about Brand South Australia:

• The brand values – “Creative. Innovative. Industrious.” – seem hollow and amorphous. While a staple of corporate brand guidelines around the world, in this context, they feel too intangible nor provide direction.
• It looks like it belongs on the Pope (of Chilli Town).
• What happened to Tasmania?
• It’s geared too much at an international audience. South Australians know where South Australia is. Ultimately we need to be the biggest advocates of the brand so it would have been nice if there was something more than a door for us to rally behind much like the oft mentioned Canadian maple leaf.
• That font is really uninspiring.
• The hashtag was confusing. The original, compact #brandsa devised at the media briefing was replaced by the official #brandsouthaustralia which inexplicably gained a few letters before the event was over #brandingsouthaustralia

For me, the verdict is still out. Although I’m not in love with it right now, I can see myself growing to like, even love it, if we as a state becoming the living embodiment of this new brand narrative.

To the Economic Development Board’s credit, the government agency tasked with this mammoth undertaking, they never said a change was going to overnight and it would take time for South Australians to identify with it.

And whether we like it or not, a stake has most clearly been put in the ground that has polarised the state. But as every marketer knows, if what you’re doing doesn’t piss someone off, you’re not doing it right*.

* Hats off to Central Institute TAFE Marketing Director Kenley Gordon for lending me that one from the Social Media in Tertiary Education Conference. I now use it everytime I’m pitching a new idea.

** Also a big shout out to Adelaide City Lord Mayor Stephen Yarwood who showed me his socially-enabled calendar i.e. every event in his diary now comes with social media notes including relevant hashtags and the Twitter handles of anyone he’s meeting with.

Now marketing automation if you haven’t heard, is the new black. Or at the very least, it’s going to be huge this year and for years to come.

If you haven’t come across it before, it allows you to automate marketing activities such as email newsletters, reminders and notifications, allowing you to more effectively nurture prospects and retain customers. Done correctly, it lets you perform marketing at scale which is pretty vital for small marketing teams that can’t afford to dedicate someone to doing email communications

The number of marketing automation suites has grown exponentially in the past few years with most offering a similar set of features. However, while there were some well-established players who claimed an impressive list of clients, after a fairly lengthy evaluation process, it was clear there was only one for me: Hubspot. Here’s why:

They rebuilt it from the ground up

Hubspot wasn’t always a marketing automation suite. They started life primarily as a unified social media and search dashboard but after acquiring a Performable in the last couple of years, rebuilt the entire system from scratch as an integrated marketing suite. That showed some serious commitment on their end rather than merely bolting on new features.

They’re transparent…

Even before I became a Hubspot customer, I was a huge fan of their content. Their marketing resources are quite possible some of the best in the industry and I’ve been referring to it for years. This also extends into the way they talk about their product. I didn’t just know what they had done to date, they gave me a glimpse into their roadmap so I also knew what was to come. Marketing automation isn’t cheap and this made me feel comfortable I was partnering with someone who was going to stay at the forefront of technology.

Their API documentation was also really well put together and simple to understand, which got our developers seal of approval.

And funny

When you talk about Enterprise software, you instantly think corporate and boring but Hubspot’s copywriting is also outstanding. It’s funny and informative, both very important if you’re going to be spending a large part of your working week in there.

It’s easy to use

Hubspot is probably the antithesis of most Enterprise software in that it’s incredibly easy to use. The compulsory training is actually really good and hardly a chore, but most impressively the UI is constantly being refined making it easier and more intuitive to perform simple tasks without having to jump around to different sections of the software.

Next time you’re evaluating software for your business, look beyond the feature list and look what’s lying beneath the surface. Are they a company that is going to continue to grow with you and aligns with you now and into the future, or is what they’re offering now as good as it gets.

The truth is, I’ve been incredibly busy which isn’t much of an excuse since there are a lot of amazing people who are even busier than I who still manage to pump out great content daily. And since I’m about to embark on a new adventure in the next few weeks (more on that later), I either needed to hang up my shoes or recommit fully to this blog.

So here’s what I’ve decided to do: I’m going to post once a week at a minimum to this blog about the things that are grabbing my attention in digital marketing in addition to the regular Communication Junction podcast – or at least as regular as Sarah, Jason and my schedules will allow.

There’s so much really interesting stuff going on in marketing today that there’s no excuse for not having anything to talk about. Even with so many other distractions competing for my time, I still love blogging both as a way to share what’s on my mind and to force me to think through the issues I’m facing daily. Hopefully it’s a win-win and we’ll both get more out of it.

BTW…. if you read this on the website and not in your RSS reader, you might notice some theme weirdness. I’ve got itchy feet again and am playing around with some new themes including customising some older unsupported themes which I still really like (I’m nostalgic in that way)

Social media is everywhere. Particularly in higher education, every institutions home page now proudly boasts a complement of follow buttons from the ubiquitous Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to the fast growing Pinterest, Vimeo and Google+. Matter of fact, some publications estimate as high as 98% of institutions are active on at least one social media platform.

So how are we going?

While it’s hard to make a call on how effectively we as a sector are using social media, it’s a safe bet to assume that most institutions are struggling to understand exactly where it fits into the existing communications mix and what they should be posting which is ironic given the sheer volume of content we generate. The problem is that social media is often treated like another channel, lumped in with television, radio, print and (to a lesser extent) email without much consideration to the seismic change it has had on society, culture and the way we interact with each other.

Social media isn’t just another channel to broadcast messages. It is more than a specific platform but a monumental change in human behaviour.

To illustrate what I mean, consider the students who are the lifeblood of our institutions:

• They are as old as Amazon and eBay
• They grew up with instant messaging, mobile phones and SMS
• They have always turned to Google and Wikipedia anytime they have a question
• They rely on social networks to stay in touch with their friends and make plans for the weekend

Most tellingly, the way they communicate is in stark contrast to how their parents do. They are no longer ‘locked in’ to a medium but are happy to converse non-linearly across multiple platforms. A conversation that begins in the classroom can spill over onto Facebook and IM before finding its way to a blog a few days later igniting a debate in the comments followed by rebuttal post on another blog. This is accompanied by a back channel discussion on Twitter with complementary photos uploaded to Instagram and indexed using the same hashtag. While this may seem confusing to digital immigrants, for digital natives like them, it is very much the norm.

Free social media

The future isn’t coming; it’s already here.

As a sector, higher education has typically required that people engage on our terms when we are ready. The level of paperwork and hoops prospective students must jump through to study with us not to mention deal with while they’re here sends a clear message: you must do it out way.

For our students, technology and the Internet isn’t something new to be fawned over; it’s been part of their lives as long as they can remember just like electricity, gas and water that’s it’s just expected.

We must take off the kid gloves and fully embrace social media. It must be taken out of development, walled off from the big, bad world and put into production.

In a world where we can pick and choose the mediums we participate, organisations can no longer dictate the rules of engagement. For higher education to continue to engage students and remain relevant, Universities must deliver dynamic, transmedia experiences that respond and adapt to the learning style of each individual student, a la the Khan Academy, or risk alienating future cohorts.

A few weeks ago, I was speaking to a few friends about Apple and how much we all love our iPads, iPods, iPhones in fact, anything with beginning with an ‘i’. Suddenly, it dawned on me that I have thoroughly embedded myself in the Apple ecosystem. We have an iPod plugged into the car, I use an iPhone and iPad everyday, Mark has a MacBook and I use a MacBook Pro. On cosy nights in, we rent movies from our Apple TV and I’ve spent thousands of dollars in the iTunes store over a number of years on apps, music, movies and TV shows. We don’t mind paying a premium to have divine looking products at our fingertips and if one of our Apple products can’t do something we want it to do, it probably isn’t worth doing – so I thought.

Social Media manager at Vodafone Australia, Neil Collins recently invited me (as an influencer) to a super top secret device launch – as you probably guessed, it was the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S III – an event I might’ve turned down in the past. After all, it’s not an iGalaxy S III.

After being picked up from home in a flashy car, taken to Vodafone HQ and then given a Galaxy S III, SIM card and a few other goodies, we headed for the launch where I leant all about the Samsung Galaxy S III and its long list of amazing features. Over the next 4 days, I setup my new S III and compared it to my iPhone 4 every step of the way.

Before I go on, I’m going to call out the elephant in the room: Vodafone. As previously mentioned, I have multiple mobile devices and for whatever reason, my iPad relies on Optus, my iPhone on Telstra and my S III on Vodafone. While I can always get a connection on one or all devices, no single telco can provide me with uninterrupted service in Sydney or when I’m travelling. Optus and Telstra provide good coverage out of major metro areas, Vodafone has proven the most reliable and fastest telco when I’m in and around Sydney and to be frank, its my preferred telco out of the three for service.

Initial Impression

The S3′s screen is big (4.8″), my short, fat fingers might have a few problems reaching the email trash can and Foursquare Check In buttons located in the top right hand side of the screen. Speaking of the screen, HD Super AMOLED make it bright and very sharp. So much so, it makes my iPhone 4′s retina display look like a Gameboy. The S III is light (133g), thin (136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6 mm) and smooth. It fits in my pocket and no one would know its there. Holding the phone is easy, it feels natural but I keep pressing the touch buttons at the base of the phone. In fact, every time I touch the phone, something seems to happen – this might take some getting used to.

Setup

I always enjoyed the plug-and-play like setup of my Apple devices but the way the S III syncs with my Google account, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and cloud services (Evernote, Dropbox, etc…) means my contacts, emails and social platforms are setup, synced and ready to roll after a simple login process. At this stage, I should point out the S III always gives you easy to understand options of how and what you want to sync before doing so.

I’ve always been a fan of creating folders on my iPhone for various groups of apps. It makes me feel organised and allows me to hide apps I might not want everyone to know I use. The S III also allows me to do this on one of seven dashboards but what I love is the widgets I can add. I’ve got a preview of my emails and calendar on one dashboard, Evernote, Flipboard and Droid QR scanner on another, Foursquare and Facebook on another and… well you get the picture. The widgets are intuitive and time saving, they take a few moments to setup and it’s worth taking the time to tweak them over the coming days to get them just right. As for the rest of my apps, they’re in their own section and can be viewed as a list or in a grid, in alphabetical order or custom arranged.

Syncing my stuff

Starting with the basics – my 3 email accounts were super easy to setup. if you know your usernames and passwords, you’ll have no problems. I decided to export my contacts from my Mac address book and upload them to my Gmail account where they seamlessly synced to my phone with Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter credentials for those contacts who have them – simple!

Two attempts and five days later, I still haven’t synced my iTunes library. Partly because I don’t have a micro SD card big enough (I have 11GB of available space on my S III but it’s not enough). I’ll keep trying but if anyone has any tips, apps, tricks, etc… please, please let me know!

Apps

Because I’ve never owned an Android before, I wasn’t sure how or where to buy apps, what’s available and what’s not and how much they cost. I checked out the Play Store where I found everything I was looking for. Free and paid apps, categorised much like the iTunes App Store. Purchasing apps was an easy task with a little help from Google Wallet (did I really set that up?) apps are approximately the same price as iPhone/iPad apps, most of the Top Paid apps are $2-$5 each but there’s stacks of free apps to choose from. All my favourite iPhone apps are also available in the Play Store and look a whole lot better on the S III screen!

That’s all I’ve got for now – I’ve almost finished the 2nd part of this blog where I’ll cover the awesome (and my favourite) features of the Galaxy S III and also a few things I’m not so keen on. In the meantime, please leave any app recommendations in the comments below and let me know if you’d like me to report on any specific features of the Galaxy S III.

As someone who has been in this position, I can share with you a few tips to help you get started.

1. Have purpose behind your product range
Tryvitising is a new phrase slowly climbing the buzzword ladder and basically means advertising by sampling, designed to create word of mouth. Heinz in the UK used tryvitising to test the market with their new tomato ketchup with balsamic vinegar. By making a limited number of bottles and selling them in a pop-up f-store, they were able to not only see if the market liked the product but also if the community trusted the brand enough to buy from an f-store.

2. Transaction fees
One of the simplest ways to process transactions online is via PayPal and most off the shelf f-store solutions will offer PayPal as the only means of processing. But PayPal can be expensive. My recommendation is to gather the details and send a friendly email to your finance department. Problem solved.

3. Setup cost
If this is the first time you’ve setup an f-store, there will be a substantial amount of hours spent researching and setting it up. Remember to take into account; graphic design, web development, time spent adding products and endless hours convincing your marketing department that an f-store is still social.

4. Marketing
Marketing your f-store should go beyond your community stumbling upon it on your Facebook page. After all, only 10% of your community actually visit your page, the rest of them see your updates in their news feeds. Consider adding posts about your f-store to your conversation calendar, add social sharing to products and categories, add a tile on your brand’s website and share the new store opening with your influencers and advocates.

5. Discounts
Once aware, encouraging the community to buy from your f-store is the next challenge. Research tells us that trust is the major stumbling block, research also tells us that most community members are attracted to a page to take advantage of exclusive discounts and offers. Offer incentives to the community to shop in your f-store, these can be fan discounts, purchase add ons or exclusive products.

6. Facebook is still social
Don’t let sales in the store over-ride what the community were originally there for. Ability to buy is a bonus to the community as well.

7. Ever evolving
As with any social platform, an f-store is not a set it and forget it solution. Monitor sales, popular products and the demographic of shoppers compared to your community. Set periodic reviews and include your marketing department in product decisions.

8. You’re competing with people’s friends
Your f-store needs to have cut through and enough clout to pull people away from their friend’s updates to shop in your store. There’s no secret formula to making an f-store a huge success but listening to your community, persistence and commitment will certainly pay off in the end.

[UPDATE] For a slightly different take on an f-store, check out Elle’s Spring 2012 Trend Report.
While you’re unable to buy directly via Facebook, it has all the shareability you can ask for to drive traffic to the page.

Which is funny, because as new media practitioners we spend so much time researching and absorbing as much new information as possible because we know how quickly this space moves. One change to Facebook or Google’s algorithm can force you to rethink your entire strategy.

So we convince ourselves that we need to read every blog post that catches our eye and keep drinking  from the social media firehose, all in the name of ‘research’.

But the reality is that we don’t need to always be consuming content left, right and centre. The voracious near-obsessive consumption of content, while beneficial to a point, is asymptotic as the knowledge you gain becomes incrementally smaller and smaller and never ending as the landscape continues to evolve. This ultimately can have a paralysing effect as you wait for more information to validate your approach, often to the detriment of doing any meaningful work.

I am, by very definition, an infovore. While I’m fortunate that this also happens to be my passion, the very nature of my job means that I need to stay relatively current with my knowledge yet I no longer feel compelled to read, listen or watch everything. In fact, my Google Reader – which would always be cleared out at the end of the week – now routinely sits at 100+ unread blog posts. Instead, I focus on staying up-to-date on a few blogs by thought leaders that deliver me the most value on a consistent basis (think Mitch Joel, Avinash Kaushik, Christopher S. Penn), a single industry e-newsletter that curates the best posts from around the web, and when I have a spare moment, I trawl through a Twitter list of industry leaders for links and commentary. In a relatively short amount of time, I’m able to get a read on what’s happening and hopefully come across something valuable that I can put into action with the rest of time I have left.

Do you think there’s too much information out there? What tips do you have for managing your time and the flow of information?

1. Listen
Almost everyone who works in the social arena will advise you to start listening to conversations taking place around your brand. There are free tools out there like SocialMention, Google Alerts and HootSuite that will alert you to the obvious conversations taking place around your brand and any keywords you choose to monitor that relate to the buying cycle. But when things get serious, start looking to paid monitoring tools like Radian6, BuzzNumbers or SM2. These tools will provide more comprehensive results and allow you to start identifying trends, influencers and which influencers are guiding their communities to purchase.

2. List
As influencers are identified, add them to a Twitter list so you can easily see their conversations and interact with them. Depending on the type of business you have or the brand you’re monitoring, you might want to create lists for different product groups, regions or purchase patterns.

3. Acknowledge
A retweet is not the same as “thank you”, remembering to thank your influencers encourages them to continue advocating your brand. Retweeting their tweets and interacting with them even when they’re not advocating your brand is just as important.

4. Alert
Some advocates won’t follow your Twitter stream or promotional schedule as closely as others. Alerting your influencers to promotions via public tweet or direct message will not only encourage them to buy again but might also result in them notifying their own communities.

5. Reward
You can’t buy genuine peer to peer recommendations so look after your influencers who are advocating your brand. You can do this by offering them a unique coupon code for your online store or simply sending them a small thank you gift with their next order. This will often spark a new conversation thread between you and the influencer. Sending samples of new products to your influencers is a great way of inspiring a Twitter conversation or even an entire blog post!

6. Follow up
One major advantage online retail has above bricks and mortar retail is the ability to quickly, easily and efficiently follow up. Asking how your product is going 2 weeks after a purchase has been made can be the difference between a one off purchase and a loyal customer. Followups can be as simple as a tweet or a quick email but make sure it’s personalised and (even if it is) it doesn’t look like a mass mail out.

Do you have a story to tell about how you’re looking after your brand influencers? Do you have a y tips to add to the list? Let me know in the comments below…

With so many buzz words being thrown across boardroom tables, it’s easy to become confused and lost in what we’re trying to achieve. Right now, I’m having a moment of clarity and I want to share it.

Social Commence

This is something I see happening everyday, especially on Twitter and in forums but also in blogs and now (more than ever) on Pinterest. It’s people seeking advice from their peers on products and services before purchasing them.

Social Commerce has moved ahead in leaps and bounds, it wasn’t so long ago we had to rely on testimonials in a dedicated tab on a website, from people we probably didn’t know. Realising testimonials perhaps aren’t as reliable as they seem, services like TripAdvisor provided us with first hand reviews but again, these are from people we probably don’t know. Now, I seek advice from people I’ve never met but still consider friends because of the relationship we’ve built online. This to me, is social commerce.

f-Commerce (Facebook Commerce)

Examples of f-commerce are on the rise. You can buy your favourite Lady Gaga merchandise on Facebook and even a gun and ammo from Cabela’s! Closer to home, I buy our dog’s flea and tick treatment from Vet Products Direct. The Highway and McLaren Vale Beer Company also use f-commerce to sell products. If I Like these pages, chances are, I’ll receive a discount. If I feel like I’ve been given something exclusive, I’m more than likely going to share the love with my community – this is a great way for brands to grow and gain loyalty from their community.

It could be said that social commerce leads to f-commerce which again, leads to social commerce through the purchase cycle. However, f-commerce is only one way to purchase online which is why we shouldn’t bundle social commerce and f-commerce as the same thing.

There are a number of ways to embrace and increase the reach of social commerce and there’s a few pitt falls to be aware of when it comes to f-commerce. I’ll cover a few of these in my next couple of blogs.

Until then, do you agree with my definition of social commerce? Have you seen any brands embracing what I have defined as social commerce? Share your thoughts and views in the comments below…

It’s been a while since I last blogged (6 months, in fact) and I’ve missed it. But before I kick myself back into gear, I thought I’d let you know what’s been keeping me so busy I haven’t had time to blog.

After moving from Adelaide to Sydney, Twillyon’s client base grew to a point where I had to either employ someone to help me out or I come up with another solution. To be frank, I’m not the type of guy who wants to create a business and have a load of staff because really, if I make a silly business mistake (more than likely seeing as Twillyon was my first business), I’m responsible for more than my own livelihood. So I dug out my thinking cap and fixed it firmly on my head.

Just as I fired up my thinking cap, I received a call from a recruiter asking if I was interested in a Social Media Strategist position in Sydney. With hesitation, I accepted an interview and 4 weeks later I was working as a social media strategist for Suede Digital, a boutique agency in Surry Hills. It was there I managed the social media strategy for Panasonic Australia and some of Nestle’s sub brands. I was having fun working with big, multi-national brands, something I’d wanted to do for a long time. It surprised me how similar brands like Panasonic Australia are to smaller brands when it comes to social media. A lot of the goals and objectives are the same and the face similar challenges when trying to achieve them.

But as Mum always told me: All good things must come to an end. Suede Digital’s end came about 3 months after I joined when the business merged with another digital agency and… well… I won’t go into it but let’s just say, I thought it was best I start looking for another job.

My Twillyon clients were now in the safe hands of their account manager and enjoying the benefits of being looked after by a full service digital agency and it wasn’t long before I was in conversations with Professional Public Relations (PPR) in Sydney. My PPR start date came around 2 weeks after our first conversation and as of 30th of January, I am PPR’s Senior Social Media Strategist.

For the last 12 months, I’ve missed the culture I was part of at the Highway. I didn’t realise how valuable the type of culture that makes you look forward to work each day was until it was gone. PPR has that culture. The daily laughs, the team environment, the right amount of fun that results in increased productivity is important to me and I’m glad I’ve found it again. Needless to say, I’m enjoying my time so far at PPR and hope to be there for a long time to come.

So moving forward, I’ll be updating my blog every couple of weeks with my take on social media. Often it will reflect what I’m dealing with at work with the odd guest blog thrown in for good measure but as you know, opinions published here are my own and not those of my company or clients.

Hit me up in the comments below if you’ve got any topics you’d like my take on, otherwise, I’m glad to be back and I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts.

As most of you will already know, my first client was Adelaide’s premiere hotel, The Highway. After managing its community for 3 years, I enjoyed the highs, the lows and everything in between but as a good pessimist once said “all good things must come to an end”.

When I moved to Sydney, The Highway agreed to begin the search for an in-house community manager who would eventually take up my position. A little clarification to why I couldn’t do the job from Sydney: The Highway’s presence began to seem more and more contrived and less organic and without being in the building, I wasn’t able to answer community enquiries in a timely manner and convey the vibe of the brand.

When Jarrod started working for The Highway about 6 months ago, we had a light bulb and it was obvious who the new community manager would be. Jarrod’s extensive knowledge of the hospitality industry, quirky, amusing personality and knowledge of how to manage a social media community made him a perfect fit.

And so we embarked on the strategy to hand over a community compatible in size to Prospect, SA (source: Wikipedia). Here are my 6 top tips to ensure a smooth transition from one community manager to another.

Set the date
Keeping a date in mind provides a definite point when the community will be handed over. Without setting a date, I can imagine the approximate time of handover becoming more and more approximate. For those of us who started smoking, think of it as setting a date to quit.

Play in the sandbox together
Allowing the new community manager access to the accounts and asking them to spend time in the space provides an overall sense of the posting schedule and what the community is about. Like a small city, each community has a vibe and it’s important for that vibe to be maintained.

Introduce key influencers
Every community has its heroes or brand advocates. Ensuring the new community manager is aware of these members is as important as ensuring the key influencers are aware of the new community manager. A simple tweet or Facebook post will do the trick.

Record conversations
Maintain a list of hashtags used for different events and topics discussed. Maybe they will never be brought up again but just in case, the record of them is there.

Announce the handover
On the handover day, try to hold back the tears and watch your community fly from your nest, to a new nest. If the community is Facebook based, post a Facebook note and also post the link to Twitter, blogs and any other platforms deemed appropriate. In addition, ensure you follow up users who responded to to the post.

Follow up
It’s almost impossible to hand over 3 years of knowledge in a few weeks. To make the transition easier, be on call for the new community manager to contact you. There will be questions to ask and this also gives you the opportunity to steer the new community manager in the right direction.

I must admit, the initial thought of giving up The Highway’s community caused knots in my stomach. I didn’t want to let go of the community members I’d spent so long getting to know and interacting with. Is it possible to get so attached to a community, almost like a puppy dog? Yes it is.

Have you had to handover a community you’ve managed? Did it improve, remain the same, or appear to go downhill after the handover period?

Feeling inspired by this little beauty, I thought I’d share my thoughts on dealing with negative feedback on your brand’s social platforms.

It’s something we all have to accept when we open the social media flood gates: Sometimes we don’t like what other people have to say about our brands. But what do you do when it happens?

One of the most common questions I hear clients ask is “If someone says something bad about my business, I can just delete it, right?”. Wrong.

So how do you deal with negative feedback? Sometimes you’re able to cop it on the chin, apologise publicly and both the community member and you can move on. If the situation requires more than a simple response, how should you deal with it?

1. Monitor your brand
If you employ an agency, monitoring is often part of a retainer package or it might be an add on. If you’re executing your social strategy in-house, try using free services like Google Alerts and Social mention. Or you can pay for monitoring from companies like BuzzNumbers or use add-on services in clients like Hootsuite, Radian6 and SM2.

Whatever you choose, monitoring your brand can alert you to what is being said about your brand away from the social platforms you control. Being notified of positive mentions allows you to thank the consumer, being notified of negative feedback allows you to jump on it before it gets out of control or gains too much traction.

2. Don’t be defensive
When you’re notified of negative feedback, it is very easy to jump into defensive mode. Something you must remember is no matter how right or wrong the feedback is, the person posting it truly believes they experienced what they’re telling you. You must listen to it!

3. Humanise your brand
Instead of being defensive, use this opportunity to humanise your brand and introduce yourself as the community manager or the person who will be dealing with the feedback. Remember, people connect with people more readily than bricks and mortar.

4. Respond (initially) via the medium the feedback was left
It is important to communicate with your community in the space they have chosen to communicate with you in. Most of the time, the first step to diffusing a negative situation is letting the user know they are being heard.

5. Take it offline
In your response, apologise. Not for what happened but for the consumer having a negative experience, empathise with them. Introduce yourself as the community manager or person who will be dealing with their complaint and finally, ask them to contact you by phone. At all costs, avoid getting into a discussion online. It is difficult to portray tone, it can be witnessed by multiple community members and it’s very difficult to take back words once they have been posted.

6. Respect the community member’s privacy
In most cases, other members of the community will also post on your company’s platforms stating they’d heard someone had a negative experience or umping to your brand’s defence. If this is the case, I recommend stating the progress of the complaint. Try something like “Thank you for your comment. Our management team have contacted the client concerned and reached a satisfactory resolution”.

On the plus side, your brand advocates are likely to jump in on the conversation and defend your brand. It’s important to thank your brand advocates but maintain a neutral position and don’t be seen to take sides.

7. Post the resolution
9/10 times, the complaining community member will contact you to discuss their negative experience. When they do, remember not to be defensive and thank them for providing you the opportunity to resolve the situation. Find out both sides of the story and remember, the truth is somewhere between the 2 sides! Upon completing of the call and reaching a resolution, post on the original platform a “thank you” to the user for making contact and how pleased you are to have reached a resolution.

8. Follow up
Do you remember the days when we used to say “people tell 7 friends about a positive experience and 10 friends about a negative experience”? The same concept applies today but we can quite safely multiply those numbers by 1,000 or more. Even if the consumer has been contacted and a resolution has been reached, it is important to follow up the consumer over the coming days. Depending on the relationship you now have with the consumer, you can do this by whichever medium you feel necessary. Why? Because you want them to know you care and when they’re telling their friends both online and offline, you want the positive feedback to outweigh the negative feedback.

9. When can I delete feedback?
Of course, each situation is different and these steps cannot be applied to every situation. Some situations will require you to delete posts from the platform if you have authority to do so. However, refer to tip No. 10 Community Guidelines and make sure community members are aware they have violated community guidelines.

10. Community guidelines
Community guidelines provide you with the grounds to reprimand community members when they violate a guideline. If they continually swear, berate another user or unrightfully slander your brand, you can notify them before removing their post or removing them from the community. I suggest using a “3 strikes and you’re out” rule.

Have you dealt with negative feedback in your community? Have you left negative feedback on a company’s social platform? How was it handled?

I recently went out for dinner with a friend who told me she had entered a photography competition run by a local winery. She had to submit a photo via email in order to win a wine pack. Unfortunately, she didn’t win the wine pack but the winery is now using her image as its Twitter avatar. Does she really mind? No. But should she have been asked by the winery for permission?

Even if there was a clause in the competition’s terms of entry allowing the winery to use any of the images entered, I believe crediting a photographer is just good etiquette.

[UPDATE] The winery have recognised their error and compensated her with a bottle (or 2) of wine. Good on them!

Now let’s take another angle on it. Let’s say you enter your baby or child in a ‘cutest baby’ competition (I know I’ve entered the dogs in similar) and you misread or didn’t read the competition’s terms of entry. Should you expect to see the photos of your child being used on marketing material produced by the company weeks or even years later?

If you want to ensure you are credited for your own media or your photos remain confidential after the competition has been drawn, make sure you read the terms of entry! Every Facebook campaign must have one and if the prize requires a license in your state or territory, they should also have terms of entry available on each platform.

But what about the media we upload to Twtpic, Instagram, YFrog, Facebook, Foursquare, PhotoVine, SocialCam, Viddy etc… etc…? Whether it is for a competition entry or otherwise, who can use it? It wasn’t so long ago Facebook claimed all images uploaded to your Facebook profile are owned by Facebook. A few viral wall posts (and I’m sure a few more emails to Facebook) and the stipulation was removed.

Here’s what Facebook and Twitter have to say about it in each platforms Privacy and Terms:

Facebook
You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook, and you can control how it is shared through your privacy and application settings. In addition:
1. For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

Twitter
Your Rights
You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

[UPDATE] If your media has been used without your permission and you would like to be credited or ask for it to be removed, I suggest start by asking. Here’s what NOT to do [Facebook link]. I’ll come back to how this went wrong in my next blog post.

Do you feel like your media has been unreasonably distributed? Or do you accept what you post on any social platform will become, well “social”?

Most of us receive email invitations from people we may or may not know asking us to join the latest social platform to keep up with them online. Often the headline indicates we will never know what this person is doing ever again if we don’t join the latest and greatest.

That’s what I read when I received (what seemed to be) weekly invitations to join Empire Avenue
. I checked out the site, it looked confusing and more like a game than a social platform and I decided I didn’t need it in my life. Then friends started talking about it at social media gatherings and conferences. Soon enough, I was expected to know how many Eaves I’m worth. So I took the plunge.

After setting up my account and linking my personal and business platforms, I soon saw my share price increase. I drained my Eaves account by buying 200 shares of everyone I know and discovered: the more I engage, the more I’m worth.

That’s what encouraged me to open a Flickr account and start using YouTube more than I did. Empire Avenue suddenly put an Eave value on each Like, comment, thumbs up, tweet, upload, blog post and interaction on Empire Avenue. Although Empire Avenue, in part, lends itself to spam, primarily it encourages me to post content and engage with my community.

My share price continues to steadily grow, I invest in people and they invest in me. Investors have joined my community on other platforms and we have begun interacting, I’ve even bought 2 prints from one user’s online store! Then, after I spent most of the weekend buried in work and not engaging with my community, my share price dropped. I felt responsible for losing my shareholders Eaves – this encouraged me engage my community, pick up where I left off and do my share holders proud!

I find myself questioning what the future of Empire Avenue is. Will it become the next Klout? Will members of the social media community be expected to advertise their Eave value to be judged on how well they engage? Or will it be used as a guide to ensure you’re consistently increasing your social media footprint?

What do you think the future of Empire Avenue is? Do you have an Empire Avenue profile? Leave your details below, I buy back.

Google+1 has certainly been the talk of the social media town over the past couple of weeks but will it stick? Or will it blend?

I was lucky enough to be invited to Google+1 by Michelle Prak and straight away, I built my profile and added users to my circles. I ‘Hung Out’ with Ben Teoh and Michelle, added Sparks and even uploaded a photo album. Google+1 posts were full of tips, tricks, new discoveries and updates to help us familiarise ourselves with this exciting, new platform.

Organisations like Mashable and TNW opened up accounts and started adding content which appears to be very similar to the content pushed through each of their other social channels. I started thinking how my clients and other businesses could use Google+1, what are the advantages and will Google release business pages similar to the roll out of Facebook?

This blog suggests business pages are on their way but there is no release date yet. So let me speculate for a minute: As a business, imagine being able to segregate your following, similarly to how your database is (hopefully) segregated. Unlike Facebook where every page Liker receives every update, Google+1 for businesses might allow us to create circles such as; enquiries, clients and past clients. Or segregate by industry, interests or even events guests attended. Used correctly, this could result in highly relevant content being pushed to your business’s community, content members are likely to embrace more than the current generic content being pushed to other social channels. Hopefully Google Places integrates nicely with business pages too and if businesses have the ability to make posts private or public, they could also offer Google+1 exclusive deals.

However, this is only speculation at this stage. My advice would be to wait until Google+1 business pages have been released before creating a Google+1 profile for your business. God knows we don’t want to end up in the same mess as many businesses are on Facebook with profiles, pages and groups! Having said that, do the tech blogs who currently have Google+1 accounts know something we don’t?

If you’re already using Google+1, what do you think the future holds for personal and business account?

If you don’t have a Google+1 invitation yet, contact us and send me your details so I can forward one to you. Also, feel free to add me to your circles.