Here at a very sunny HM towers, apart from enjoying the weather and scaring away the seagulls from our sugar frosted donuts, we are experiencing a new phenomenon surrounding the joy of office, sorry, coffee politics. As the team has grown in the past few weeks, the simple friendly gesture of offering a coffee to your valued colleague has taken on a sinister new meaning. It’s not unlike that dreaded moment in the pub when you politely offer a drink to the group, expecting everyone to say “I’m fine thanks” but instead everyone orders a triple mojito with turbo shandy chaser.

If you are first into the office, it’s easy – make yourself a nice coffee, read the twitter and other social media feeds, catch up on the latest event organiser and internal communications news, then crack on with marketing the shiny new event CMS. However, come 11 am, and you need that second hit of caffeine, the problems arise.

Do you politely ( but quietly in a low voice, preferably in a foreign language that no one else speaks) offer to make everyone a drink knowing it will take 30 minutes of your day, or do you walk purposefully to the coffee machine and get yourself one?

If you choose the second option, can you stay immune to the sideways looks and barbed comments across the desks – “ My throat is dryer than a Stephen Fry joke”?

As the winner of the Harrington McDermott Marketing tea making league for 3 months running, I think I am entitled to stick to my guns and make my own….
But how to cajole erstwhile colleagues (who are equally ‘late’ to the bar on a Friday evening) into making their fair share?

Ideas include:

• Threats of extreme violence
• Threats to post those pics on your favourite social network of the time when we all agreed “what happens in Skeggy stays in Skeggy”
• Super-gluing a one week old coffee cup to their chair to remind them

Answers on a postcard please ….. we’ll publish the best ones….

(These are entirely Tim Harrington opinions and are really quite separate from the peace loving Harrington McDermott philosophy)

Here at Harrington McDermott we have discovered a whole new world of fun and games in the guise of rapid development tools. Just in case you haven’t heard of rapid development tools here are some of their advantages for your business:

1. Rapid development tools (sometimes also refered to as elearning software) can be used for producing internal communications, employee training packages and elearning solutions, online learning experiences and interactive support material (eg Flash, Video).
2. They can be used by content producers, developers, training managers etc within a business to produce powerful courseware with minimal technical requirements.
3. Development time of these learning solutions can be significantly reduced from months to weeks or even days.
4. Authoring complicated material is made far more intuitive as these tools offer a highly visual interface to simplify complicated  or indepth subject matter.

We have just finished two client projects using one of the host of rapid development tools available to companies like us and in-house development teams. Like any tool or platform, understanding the logic of how it works is important to get the best out of it, but above all, it is the content that dictates how good the end result is.

The Message Not the Medium

This has never been more important. None of the tools such as Captivate, Lectora, Atlantic Link, Articulate et al will provide you with a magic bullet to producing quality content for your internal communications or elearning project.

More than ever, a focus on how to define and write quality content that engages users is the most important aspect of any elearning project. What underpins this is the process of identifiying content ‘owners’ and providing them with the tools and processes to quickly produce relevant and defined content that can be used by production teams/individuals. This core skills should not be underestimated, and we will be talking about this vital element of the process in a following blog

As an agency of web developers and designers using our content management system, we have a series of tips on making the most of rapid development tools to produce engaging content to inspire your audience:

1. Build a course that meets your learning and communication needs: identify your learning objectives.
2. Identify those objectives from the outset to dictate the level of interactivity required. Flash is a powerful tool but sometimes bullet points are enough to present basic information. However…
3. Graphic design and visual communication are very important parts of any learning process. Visual communication is perhaps your most powerful learning tool.
4. Pay attention to the user interface, graphics and overall design layout to communicate your learning objectives and allow the user to explore easily and intuitively.

Using rapid development tools to churn out endless amounts of content ‘because it is rapid’ gives a bad name to learning and internal comms. Worse still it may also makes it harder to convince your users to return and take a new course.

We will be writing about how to market your project internally in a following blog. In the meantime, if you want to know more about how we solved the problem of defining quality content please get in touch and we would love to show how we can help….

This week Harrington McDermott look at 5 simple social media tools you can use to listen into what others are saying about your brand across the social media web. These tools may not be groundbreaking news but will give your business measurable information.

Using social media to track how the internet and ultimately how people perceive your brand is one of the biggest advantages of social networking. From real time results to a daily email newsletter digest, there are many free tools to get you started in social media monitoring.

Are you paying attention?

Google Alerts – Choose your keyword (eg your brand name or keyword target) and receive daily or real-time alerts, emailed to you whenever your specific keyword is mentioned.

Twitter Search – there’s no doubt that twitter has revolutionised online conversation and the ability to monitor hot trends and topics across the web at any time of day. Take advantage of Twitter’s own search tool. This is a great resource and you can even subscribe to your search as an RSS feed.

Twitter Lists – keep an eye on your Twitter lists. Twitter lists are how people define you on Twitter. If you’re using Twitter as a marketing tool you want to make sure your business is on relevant lists for your services or keywords. Lists are seen by you and the person who created the list obviously. They are also seen by people who follow the person who created the list and by anyone who lands on your Twitter profile. That amounts to many.

Social Media Interfaces eg Tweetdeck & Hootsuite – these interfaces allow you not only to keep on top of Twitter following, followers, #trends and @mentions but also your other social profiles including Facebook and Linked In. Which one you use, Tweetdeck or Hootsuite (and there are others obviously) is down to personal preference. Whatever your needs, they are a good one stop solution you should take advantage of.

Social Mention – for those of you that like stats, this is a powerful real-time social media search tool and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the net into one page of statistics. You can easily track your business, a new product or topic across the social media web. What’s more social mention analyses HOW people are talking about your brand both positively and negatively (sentiment), looks at your top keywords, top users and hashtags.

“Create your competitive advantage”

It’s also a well known fact by social media marketers that you can use these tools to monitor your competitors, your target market, potential niche areas and simply keep abreast of potential opportunities. Listening to someone else’s conversation has never been more important to your business.

This week we’re blowing our own trumpet. Benefit from the design and marketing expertise of a design agency but keep the costs low by being able to easily update the content yourself with our Content Management System. Many of our clients involved in the events industry have found the Harrington McDermott CMS invaluable and we want to shout about it.

The Harrington McDermott CMS has undergone extensive research and development. Although this is built around standard Microsoft technologies (ASP.NET), as a full service design agency, we can customise the system to your suit your individual event or business requirements.

So what it a CMS and why should you use one for your business?
A Content Management System used to manage web content in very basic terms, does 3 main things:
• provides a system to create web pages with content on
• publish that content
• archive the content

Most importantly it can benefit your businesses web presence by:
• creating design consistency
• streamlining the web production process
• allowing multiple authors to administrate the website
• little or no technical knowledge required
• more coherent navigation
• easier SEO
• reduced website maintenance costs

Why Should Event Businesses Use Our CMS?
Harrington McDermott’s aim is to help you make your event as successful as possible.

Here are some examples of Event / Exhibition websites we’ve recently delivered for HM clients:

Zayed Future Energy Prize ’11
European Future Energy Forum ’10
Middle East Wast Summit ’10
SIAL Middle East ’10
IPA Middle East ’10

Our CMS can help you in the following ways:
• improve the effectiveness of your promotional campaign
• position your brand professionally and consistently
• reduce your work-load as an organiser
• encourage your exhibitors, sponsors, speakers and partners to promote themselves on your website
• use statistical tools to track what works and what doesn’t

The Harrington McDermott CMS enables you to track statistics and SEO effectiveness, implement email and SMS marketing tools, build multi-lingual sites within one back office system including right to left languages eg Arabic. In addition we will help you to track the effectiveness of your online and offline marketing campaigns by using a combination of our web tracking tools and Google analytics.

What Makes Our Event CMS Stand-Out?
Harrington McDermott have extensive experience working with event management companies. We have developed some specific event features to our CMS. These modules help you to better manage your event website:
• The Conference Module: the highly flexible Conference module allows you to organise a full programme of sessions – this can include different programmes and attractions such as round table sessions, workshops, keynote sessions, panel debates and even one-to-one meetings. You can also ‘stream’ your conference programme quickly and efficiently.
• The Press Release Module: the PR module allows you to manage both your event-specific and exhibitors’ press releases via a central management CMS console. Efficiently manage and communicate all event-related press releases to your target media and key event stakeholders.
• The Exhibitor and Sponsor Zone: the Exhibitor module is designed to save you time and effort in managing your exhibitor data and promotional material. This results in giving your clients fantastic added value and return on investment. If you already have your exhibitor data in an external platform such as a CRM system, sales booking system or Excel spreadsheet our CMS can import or even synchronise with existing systems.
• The Advertising Module: your business can create extra revenue though your event website and help you manage existing sponsors, exhibitors and media partners. Our advertising module gives you complete control over the visibility & format of all ad banners, 3rd party content and logos across your website.

We’ll be announcing more features and the launch of a dedicated website for the Events flavour of the HM CMS in the next few months so sign up to our blog to keep updated.

What is the value of social media as a marketing tool? It seems everybody is talking about social media but do business owners really understand the potency of social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook or YouTube for marketing their business?

The truth is social media is a low cost, high return, effective marketing method for promoting a service, product and brand over the web. It is a powerful method of marketing that can generate more links to your website, more attention and more traffic.

4 Reasons to Use Social Media Marketing For Your Business

Brand Recognition: social media and blogs can enhance a company image. They allow businesses to share information about their products and services in a controlled and targeted manner. Word of mouth marketing is a valued marketing method and social media enables a company to spread the word about its services and products to a wide range of users.

Niche Marketing: with careful research businesses can find almost any niche group of users to target their campaign or services to. Excellent content and the willingness to share expertise can quickly generate supporters and valuable visitors to your website.

Improved SEO: social media has the ability to complement and improve SEO. Keyphrases in blog content, in descriptions or title tags, internal hyperlinks, links from other websites to your company blog, are all natural and powerful methods of improving ranking and visitor traffic. Utilising bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Digg for newly published content, generates a link to that content and therefore the potential for a tremendous boost in traffic.

Monitor & Respond to Customer Feedback: monitor brand mentions and respond accordingly with social media monitoring tools such as Google Alerts. Positive feedback is great but a business can also respond to negative comments quickly and efficiently. Social media tools also come with a myriad of statistical tools which allow a business to monitor effective content, the most successful social media channels for referrals and those all important keywords and key phrases.

Will Social Media Make A Business Money?

Not directly. Social media is a marketing tool. To expand and promote a service or product, a business needs a core group of targeted users or ‘supporters’ who will then spread the word. Social media marketing will help drive traffic to your website, encouraging users to look at what your business is offering.

Social media marketing requires dedication and time. It should be an integral part of a marketing plan. From sole traders to large corporations, if a business offers its product or service with expertise, passion and quality content, social media marketing will help reap the rewards.

At Harrington McDermott we firmly believe in the importance of social media in any marketing plan. As a result we have teamed up with Sodaworks, a social media and digital marketing consultancy, also based in Brighton. Sodaworks will be consulting on a number of projects. To find out more about our full marketing services, contact us info@hm-marketing.com

This issue is a common one faced by all design agencies and their clients. There are clearly grey areas to legal ownership and the legal precedents are constantly challenged and evolving. Harrington McDermott look into the moral and legal issues surrounding giving clients computer files of work done on the clients behalf.

The Legal Position

Tools used to produce work, remain the property of the producer. Clients are purchasing the end product from a design agency, not the tools which produced it. Therefore these ‘production tools’ remain the legal property of the design agency. Tools include:
• Software
• Film ie both a digital file and a negative
• Artwork
• Computer files

Latterly, website design and production has created confusion in the area of ownership and copyright. Logos and branding will be protected by trademark laws (if applied for). However unless an agreement has been signed to the contrary, a website design remains the property of the creator, the contractor, the design agency.

Maintaining Good Client Relationships

Design agencies want to maintain good relationships with their clients and Harrington McDermott pride themselves on providing clear, concise and excellent customer service to clients.

We advise preventative action from the outset. When a design agency submits a proposal or estimate to a potential client, it is good practice to include a paragraph explaining who owns the material, in the terms and conditions of a contract.

Files That Should Never Be Given To Clients

• Fonts and Software – these products will be subject to licenses and are non-transferable. Clients will have to purchase their own fonts and software.
• Photos (digital and analogue) and Illustrations – permission must be requested from the owner of the copyright (eg the artist).

Exceptions?

Design agencies with good client relationships will clearly exercise an element of goodwill.  For example a client might require the files for a job the design agency is not involved with. Perhaps the cost of handing over computer files will be insignificant compared to the potential new work from maintaining happy client relationships.

The Moral Position

Design agencies spend many hours, talent and expertise laboriously preparing files that can be challenging, detailed and complex. These services give a design agency their competitive edge and are why a client contracts a design agency in the first place.

Therefore, from a moral perspective design agencies should be confident to say ‘no’ to a client request for working files. Alternatively a charge could legally be levied but that would be at the discretion of the agency. Whatever the outcome, clear communication between a client and a design agency is the key to maintaining excellent client relationships and to the production of quality work. That way we’re all happy.

(Please note: Clients and agencies are always advised to take legal advise on the matter of ownership and copyright.)