Yesterday I attended the Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp 2010 (#msmbc10 on Twitter) It brought home to me the complexity of the market for social media monitoring tools, and the language used in social media.

Having worked in financial services in my past job, where complexities are common and it look legal changes to bring a common definition to terms like APR and AER, all the talk about social media monitoring tools can easily have you in a spin in just the same way as a non financial person trying to work out how much their credit is really costing. 

Here in social media land, we have no set standards for the terms, plus the complexity of the fact it is still in many ways an emerging marketplace. In "social media land" we not only have our own language of influence, retweets, sentiment but different ways of measuring what that all means.  Oh yes, and did I mention the complexity in comparing different tools?  Not only the different terms, but different priorities, and very different ways of pricing.

What does it all really mean?  Philip Sheldrake gave a well timed talk yesterday on the way different firms talk about Influence on Twitter, and how this is often hidden behind a wall of �science� and �maths� that stops us recognising that influence can only really be shown when as a result of our interaction,

• We think differently

OR

• We act differently

Context is King

When this is our plain and simple understanding, what it takes is more work to understand what this means to our business. Context is king. We need to know more about who we want to influence, and what changes we need to make. We need to understand more about the people we do and did business with, to help us truly understand how we influenced the purchase, the decision to work with us and we can use this insight to work more productively with our customers at the heart of what we do.

From my perspective as a user, social media monitoring tools aren�t yet customer centric. Here, my definition of the customer is:

• The agency attempting a simple comparison of what is best, how prices compare for what you need
• The business who want a monitoring solution but is put off by high costs and complex definitions and who can only compare to Google Analytics (free)
• The end user of the �social media report� who just wants to know �What does it mean to me?� and �What does all this social media stuff mean to my bottom line, anyway?�

What do we need to do to think and act differently?

Maybe as a result of yesterday, at #msmbc10 we can start acting and thinking differently. We can start a conversation within the industry about:

• How we help make the buying process easier � after all, isn�t that a win-win for all? If we understand what the tools do, how they can really help us, then aren�t we more likely to sign up and use the right one for us?
• What key terms such as influence and sentiment mean, and how they are calculated
• How we talk about all this so it makes sense to our end user of the data.

And with our customers, maybe here too we need to think and act differently. Spend more time being aware of the language we use, and translate it in the needs of the businesses we work with. Seek to get crystal clear about what influence we seek and where we may best find and use it on the web and really, really go back to basics and fit back to our business objectives and measurable, clear targets.

Tweet us @intendance and let us know what you think, whether you are in the industry or an end user of data gained from social media monitoring.

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Research shows that that 46% of companies spend at least £10,000 a year on search engine optimisation, and 32% of companies are spending at least £100,000 a year on paid internet campaigns. However, not many companies are utilising the opportunities that social media activity can provide, indicating that there is scope for businesses looking for ways to increase their webpage traffic. As social media is a relatively new form of marketing (especially Twitter, which has taken the business world by storm over the past 6 months) businesses can increase their online visibility relatively easily whilst competition is relatively light.

Due to the growth in popularity of social media there are now networks to target consumer demographics from cradle to coffin. This coverage provides organisations with a large amount of targeted traffic coming to their site, therefore making their online activity more efficient and cost effective.

There is a drawback to social media however. As a lot of social media sites privatise there web matrix - i.e. lock their content away behind password-protection - search engine spiders are unable to access content within these sites. This means that social media activity will not increase visibility on search engine sites such as Google as there is no content being pulled through. However, creating links on social media platforms will generate organic links and will therefore increase your chances of ranking higher on Google. Also, as Google is constantly changing and looking for new, up to date material, a consistent social media strategy will increase the chance that your organisation will be ranked higher in search engines in the long term.  

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Many know us for the research we do into the use of �online� in different professions � pleasingly we were recently described by a client as the "Accenture of the legal profession" � so it is in our DNA to keep a close eye on what is happening in the world of online.

Conscious that many of those who consume our research understandably see the internet as principally just another marketing medium, we try not to over-evangelise the web. We in business are inevitably behind the curve when it comes to embracing new technologies. After all, we have systems, procedures and habits to change; change that rarely happens overnight. Individuals can be more adventurous, risking the loss of little more than a bit of money if they invest unwisely in a new idea. So we at Intendance have had to learn to temper our enthusiasm for the phenomenon that is online and �keep it real� so that sensible considerations like return on investment can be assessed coolly and objectively. And that�s the way it should be.

But having just watched the last episode of the BBC�s excellent The Virtual Revolution series (now only available on YouTube) makes me appreciate the awesome power of the web and just how apt the term �revolution �is.

From our modest vantage point we see how the combination of a web presence, evermore sophisticated search technology and the force of social media have combined to propel the potential of the internet so fast that it takes the breath away.

This phenomenon comes with downsides inevitably � the challenge of overcoming information saturation, for one � but the sheer pace and extent of communication offered must also be a force for good. As a generation grows up never having known what it is like to have to been without a mobile phone and an internet connection, the need for business to be �in the loop� and to develop all the right associations with the online audience is becoming evermore compelling.

Whatever your view of the internet and all that comes with it, I recommend this quadrilogy of TV programmes to open your eyes to vast horizon in front of us. It�s heady stuff.

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There are three key elements to the success of an organisation�s search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy which are explained below.

On-page � What is actually on your webpage? (Content)

On-site � Is your site easily accessible? (Easy to find your way around the site)

Off-site � What are you doing outside of your own webpage? (Link building, social media)

It�s important to stamp your authority throughout all these key elements to ensure that your site is receiving the desired number of visitors.

Key phrases

Key phrases are words which are being typed into search engines and are what a company wants to be visible for. They are crucial to SEO, and all key phrases have to be researched and analysed to see what the best ones for their business are.

The best way to conduct research and analysis on your organisation�s key phrases is to benchmark what your competitors are doing, and by competitors I mean similar organisations that are ranking in the top pages of the Google index. Once you know what key phrase your competition are using it not only gives you some indication of what key phrases you should be using, but it also gives you the opportunity to be creative and have some key phrases relating to the periphery services your business provides which could set you apart from your competitors.   

Content

In SEO there is a saying �content is king�. This means that it is vital that the content on your webpage reflects the key phrases which you are optimising for; this again stamps your authority. There is no point trying to get ranked in Google for a particular key phrase if you don�t even have the phrase on the relevant page on your website, which is why an SEO copywriter should be used to ensure that the relevant content is on each page.

Content should also be formatted correctly, as well structured content ranks higher in the search engine. The use of headings, sub-headings, bullet points and any other emphasis is a good way to let search engines know what you are talking about. It is also good if any emphasised headings match those of the key phrases, as this would add towards the websites search engine ranking. Also each key phrase should have its own respective page, as this will stamp the websites authority in search engines. So if you have 10 key phrases then you should ideally have 10 pages referring to those phrases.

Webpage layout

The layout of your website is an important factor to consider for search engine optimisation as it again has to stamp authority to get your website noticed by search engines. This is because the layout must provide easy access for search engine spiders to pull out relevant information (like your key phrases).

The hierarchy on your website should have all the pages you want found near the front so that Google spiders can find the information easily. There is no point trying to optimise a page that is buried at the bottom of your website, so move the relevant pages closer to the home page and move the less important pages like �about us� or �contact us� or �site map� to the back end of the site.

Internal links also can make it easier for spiders to find relevant information, so index relevant pages you want found to make them more optimised. However button links such as �click here� are of no use to search engines as they won�t be able to pull out any information that link holds. All internal links must use the key phrases to again stamp the websites authority and make it easier for search engine spiders to find.

The title tag of a web page is one of the first things search engines pick up so it is vital to include the key phrase as the first piece of information in the title tag and whatever information such as the company name should be after. As I mentioned earlier each key phrase should have its own page therefore the title tag for that page should have the key phrase within it to stamp authority once again.

Another tag to consider is the alt tag, which is alternate text associated with a web page graphic that gets displayed when the Internet user hovers the mouse over the graphic. Alt tags should convey what the graphic is for or about and contain good relevant keywords to again stamp authority. Alt tags also serve a purpose for your website�s accessibility compliance, ensuring that all visitors can see the images or the alternative text on your site.

Link building

50-60% of all indexing done by Google is down to what external links a website has, and the more links the better as it will stamp authority on your website. The best way to start building links is to see where your competitors are doing it to see if there is a pattern occurring of sites have high page rank, and which allow for key phrases to be used to build links.  

There are two types of links: �unnatural� and �natural�:

Unnatural links � These are links that are generated from articles, blogs, micro blogs wikis etc. Basically any link which is �pushed� onto a website to generate a higher ranking in the Google index. These links are a great way to build your websites visibility, although; the drawback with such links is that they easy to create and everyone is creating them, which makes them unreliable and not as valuable as natural links.

Natural links � Although undoubtedly a difficult and time consuming method, as well as one of the more unreliable ones, natural link building is what powers most of the top sites on the internet. This method involves developing the most useful, relevant content and providing the best resources, tools and information for your industry. By offering the web community the best possible site, you can gain natural links through the power of having others on the web link to you. For example, Twitter is a social media platform which allows users to spread interesting and useful information on websites. If your website contains a wealth of information and thought leadership, visitors may tweet a link to your site, which is great for both link building, and for driving visitors to the site. Natural links tend to drive more traffic to your website than unnatural ones, but you have no control over the phrase or URL that is used for the link building.

It is important to have a combination of both types of links, to support your search engine optimisation strategy.

As you can see, there are many factors involved in achieving high rankings. Search engine optimisation is an ongoing process that requires research, monitoring and consistent content development. Companies that offer this service should always be transparent about their efforts, and only use ethical methods when optimising a website for clients. Link farming, paid links and other gray areas should be avoided when optimising your website. See our blog post on SEO tactics for more information on what to avoid, or what to look for when dealing with an external marketing agency.

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Location: London
Salary: Unspecified
Company: Intendance Limited
Job type: Permanent
Role: MySource Matrix developer/implementer

Intendance is expanding its MySource Matrix development team and is looking for a skilled developer/implementer with at least 2 years� experience using the MySource Matrix content management system or a similar Open Source content management system. We need a person who is enthusiastic, thorough, enterprising and has an attention to detail.

We require the candidate to have:

* ...Open Source content management systems experience - especially MySource Matrix content management systems experience
* ...excellent communication skills (written and verbal)
* ...great problem solving skills
* ...fluent knowledge of HTML and CSS
* ...good knowledge of Java Script
* ...real enthusiasm for Web work
* ...able to interact with clients
* ...pride in the quality of their work
* ...a proactive, roll-up-your-sleeves attitude
* ...at least one year�s commercial experience.

Your primary role will be to develop new and amend existing websites built in MySource Matrix and other CMS. You will also train clients to manage their sites.

Candidates should complement the current team in terms of skills and character, and we will favour candidates that have relevant experience and management potential.

We're hiring NOW, for an immediate start to work in our central London office.

Location: London
Salary: Unspecified
Company: Intendance Limited
Job type: Permanent
Role: Trainee web developer

We are expanding our website development team and are looking for an enthusiastic individual to support the team and learn how to develop websites. Experience with Open Source content management systems would be a distinct advantage, but we will provide the specific training needed.

We require the candidate to have:

* ...a good grounding in website development including knowledge of Open Source content management systems. It would be an advantage if you are familiar with MySource Matrix
* ...excellent written and verbal communication skills. You will be dealing with clients on a very regular basis.
* ...knowledge of HTML and CSS
* ...real enthusiasm for Web work
* ...pride in the quality of their work and an attention to detail
* ...a proactive, roll-up-your-sleeves attitude
* ...commercial experience is an advantage

Candidates should complement the current team in terms of skills and character and we will favour candidates that have relevant experience.

We're hiring NOW, for am immediate start to work in our office central London office.

No agencies please

Paid search is a great way to generate instant visibility for your website, products, services, events and publications. However, if not managed properly, platforms like Google Adwords can turn into a black hole for your marketing budget. Poor ad copy, lack of relevant landing pages, and generic key phrases all contribute to an expensive disaster.

Here are a few tips on how to avoid common mistakes in Adwords campaigns:

Don�t send ads to your home page

There are few exceptions for this. For example, if you want to be visible for something really competitive and location specific, like �hotel central London�. Ideally, you need a specific landing page for each search phrase and each ad. For instance, if someone types �child custody in divorce� into a search engine, you want your ad to direct them to a page specifically on child custody. You don�t want them landing on a generic family law page that mentions divorce, and you definitely don�t want them landing on your home page. Chances are, they will click the back button if they don�t find a relevant page for their search. You lose the money from the click, and the prospective client.

Make sure your ad copy is relevant to the search terms

Okay, here is one that sounds so obvious, but is overlooked by some of the biggest companies in the world. In the example below, we typed in �road accident claims�. As you can see from the sponsored links, most of the ad copy does reflect the search query. However, one of the largest law firms, Irwin Mitchell, has an ad running for brain injuries. This is obviously not going to be effective for road accident claims. We clicked on the ad (which we estimate cost Irwin Mitchell over £4), and landed on the page for brain injury claims.

Be sure to include negative keywords

Poorly managed paid search campaigns can waste lots of money, and provide a low return on investment. Unless you are a school or recruiter, paying for visitors who are looking for jobs or courses doesn�t make a lot of sense. Likewise, visitors looking for free advice, free tools, or services outside your target geographic area are not really worth paying for.

The easiest way to exclude irrelevant traffic is through the use of negative keywords. You know when you set up your campaign some words you don�t want to pay for. Running search query reports will also give you insight into the language patterns visitors are using. This will help you identify some words you wouldn�t normally think of.

One of our clients, a UK energy broker, had set up an Adwords campaign, assuming that all traffic relating to his keywords would be relevant. He did not consider at the onset that words like �cooker�, �boiler�, �grill� or �heaters� would need to be excluded from a campaign for energy quotes, energy prices, gas and electricity prices. After running the first search query report for him, we were able to demonstrate just how much those irrelevant visitors were costing him per month. Making small changes to the campaign early, and monitoring search queries often through the reporting tool, will ensure that visitors are more likely to be from your target market.

Measure keyword performance through analytics

While it is important to monitor click through rate, ad performance, and search queries through the Adwords reporting tool, it is equally important to monitor keyword performance through analytics. Even if you have a key phrase that has a 50% click through rate, and generates 100 visitors to your site per week, if 80% of those visitors leave your site then there is a problem, right? You can identify this by looking at bounce rates and levels of engagement.

Google Buzz is the new social offering from Google that you may have heard literally buzzing around different news channels in the last few days.

What is Google Buzz?
It�s a social addition to GoogleMail which means you can add updates (like you do in Twitter) and follow other GoogleMail users, and have them following you. Proponents say it widens the way you can get involved in social conversations and content, and this is how industry expert Mashable are trialling it, as a way to get additional comment and content on their stories.

So will it be useful?

When you�re involved in social media and online marketing, it can be easy to get carried away and excited about new technologies, platforms and tools. This is even more the case when mainstream media are reporting on the announcements. With Google Buzz, it seems the jury is still out with online and social media specialists raising some initial concerns:

• Concerns about privacy � you�re given suggestions to follow who are based on the people you email the most. Is this information you want to share with others? Concerns highlighted are this pinpoints your clients, if you use this for work � or conversations with people you�d prefer to remain uknown (competitors, job searching and an exboyfriend are just a few examples which have been given!)
• We�re used to cross posting content easily and this is something competitors are pointing out isn�t easily available yet

There is also the fact that it is based on Gmail and that Gmail isn�t the email platform for most people � especially in the corporate world. So, if you�re reading this as a professional service firms are, chances are that you only use Google at a personal, rather than business level.

Looking at industry sources, where it is being suggested it could be useful are:

• Updates within your trusted network
• Location rich features for local businesses, via Google Buzz for Mobile
• Additional collaboration
• In Google Reader you can see shared information from people you are following, which is a good potential source of useful information on what is important to them. Social Media as a whole is useful for this level of �transparency� in helping you learn about information which it would add value for you to share with key individuals, such as prospects and suppliers. It is also a key reminder to protect information you don�t want to share.

It seems clear that currently, that there is a sense of experimentation about Google Buzz. If you are thinking about trying it out, then being aware of these potential concerns, as well as uses, can help you to think about how it may work, or add yet another distraction, to you and your business. If nothing else, it prompted a reminder to me to update my own Google Profile!

As a business, my top tips for new platforms are:

• Evaluate how any new platform will fit in with your particular business and all you know about your risks, resources and strategy � don�t just jump in for the sake of it!  Taking the planning and listening as your first steps will help you fit in the right platforms and how your clients and prospects may be using htem
• Ensure that your settings are set up to protect information you want to remain private
• If you aren�t a firm of early adopters, consider waiting a little while after a �launch� so you can review industry and mainstream news about the pros and cons of the platform, so it is easier to make your evaluation
• Use new platform announcements as an opportunity to review your current use of social media and ensure that your profiles are up to date and well maintained.

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�What is web 3.0?�  This was probably the 3rd most common question last year from my clients. (One might now ask what the two most popular questions were….The first one was probably �why does it cost that much?� followed by �why does it take that long to do?�)

So, why is there is there such a big buzz around web 3.0? Does anybody actually know what web 3.0 is? People are talking about �intelligent computers�, which sounds a bit like a bad movie title, but what exactly do we mean by that?

Perhaps, it is easier to explain web 3.0 by highlighting where web 2.0 is falling behind.

Web 2.0 was/is all about �search� and publishing content. We have access to a tremendous amount of information through search engines like Google. For example if I type the word �dishwasher� into Google, 11 million search results are competing for my click. BUT, why would I type the word �dishwasher� into Google? Instead, we are more likely to type something along the lines of �why should I use a dishwasher?�…and this is where the limit of web 2.0 is at present. The CONTEXT of my search is totally ignored.  

There are a number of search engines in Beta development like Hakia, where we can actually start to see this happening. Instead of giving me 11 million results for �dishwashers�, it actually responds to the question, as highlighted below.

Furthermore, it gives me results on �credible sites�. By providing user generated information through ranking, it can actually provide me with the most credible data, and if this is not enough, it can also put me in touch with the right communities (not that I am dying to be a part of the dishwasher community, but we can imagine situations where this could actually be quite useful)  

Web 3.0 will be about the CONTEXT and the DATA, not the Search itself. The context might be the location of my search or the device I use, but by understanding the context, the search will have a completely new meaning to it.

There are a number of other applications where we can start to see the DATA being at the centre of the development. Data engines like WolframAlpha can answer very specific questions. Photo software like Photosynth can create 3D buildings out of photos tagged in Filckr. Both are �intelligent� tools that can actually compare two pieces of information and give us the results.

How is this going to impact our everyday life as online marketers? We will have to provide information in the context of the search with the relevant data. This will obviously need a �common language� through which we can tag the information but this is where currently the technology stops. Information on its own will not mean anything anymore. We will need answers to specific questions in the given context. Online communication will be about the right data (not information), the right person at the right time and with the right device.

Fanni Vig
fanni.vig@intendance.com  

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One of our designers lent me a book on graphic design recently. Adrian Shaughnessy�s �Graphic Design; A User�s Manual� is a collection of essays on his profession and the design world in general. His musings on branding struck an immediate chord with me, particularly this sentence: �In the age of the Internet, when consumers can band together in cyberspace and challenge, refute and reject a company�s brand values, branding will have to be more collaborative and less dictatorial. If this leads to more honesty, openness and plain speaking we�ll all benefit.�

For dictatorial, read annoying as well. By ramming messages or identity tags down people�s throats, are some companies in danger of putting a significant amount of consumers off? It�s great if your branding sticks in people�s minds � that is half the battle � but if it finds the part of the brain that houses rejection and revulsion it can be counterproductive.

One such example of this adverse effect is Intel and their brilliantly memorable but horribly grating jingle. You know the one - ba bum bum bum bum - which proves just how successful it is. But I wonder how many people go out of their way to avoid Intel�s products because of their irritation with the jingle. Now they are a market leader, dropping the jingle is an option. It would be a bold move, but a more nuanced approach might avert any growing antipathy towards their brand.

In our impatient �want-everything-now� world, consumers are pretty clued up, which makes marketers fondness for �machine gun� advertising perplexing. Apathy and world-weariness are the result, and more and more of these bullets fail to penetrate our growing layer of cynicism. It is as if we have developed some kind of Darwinian resistance to marketing techniques. In which case, marketers must start taking this apathy into account and rethink their methods, or consumer attitudes will continue to harden.

Right I�m off to buy a new laptop - one with an AMD processor of course…  

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I�ve always found social media a great way to grow your thought leadership, and this is true of for both firms and individuals. With the growth of web 2.0 it is more true than ever that as an organisation, you don�t have the complete ownership of your brand and reputation that you once did. So, you can either get annoyed about that, or you can use the fact to benefit you and stand out from your competitors who aren�t quite so web savvy.

Get more value from your PR

If you work with a PR firm or news clipping service, you may already know some of the hot topics and places where you are being discussed. You can add to this with a Social Media Listening Audit to help you find even more places where your key organisation themes and keywords are being discussed. Working for the good of your company, across all areas of marketing, simply makes good sense and allows you to utilise what you already know is working in terms of connecting with your community and target audience.

Start with your own connections

Indeed, your own connections are a great place to start connecting. Think about setting up or updating your contacts on sites such as LinkedIn, or feeding those contacts through into Twitter or Facebook if they are appropriate channels for you. Finding out more about what your community is doing and what is important for them, helps you be even more strategic in your online presence and response. When you start with those you are already connected to, you start in effect with a warm audience who already knows and responds to your market presence. Think about your internal teams, stakeholders, clients, customers, prospects, mailing list and more.

Tell people you are online

Share the news that you are now on social media. Yes, it�s difficult for people to find you if they don�t know you are there! Encourage them to come and participate in conversation with you online, and tell them where and how to do that. Update your email signatures with relevant links, show your social media presence on your website.

Find communities to interact with

So, how do you find communities online? One way is to ask your current team and contacts for ideas on where they participate in conversations online and offline, and which they find the most useful. A recommendation from someone we trust is a great way to get started without having to spend so much time researching different places to meet.

Other places you may find communities is by using the search functions on different social networking sites. LinkedIn has some really useful discussion groups, many of which are open to any member, some of which are closed and which require either an invite or previous participation (i.e. closed company networks). You can search them all and find out how large the group is and how relevant they are to what you want to show your leadership in. Then, all you need to do is request to join. I�d always recommend listening into the conversation for a while first so you can get a feel for what is appropriate to discuss and share. On Facebook too, you can search for groups about your subject. Another way is by looking on google for your �subject + forum� or, plus group. Yahoo and Google Groups are another more traditional way of finding places to meet other industry professionals.

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One thing I found interesting when making the move to tweeting and writing for the agency, was the difference in my mind between tweeting / blogging and connecting with people online as �myself� in the shape of my coaching business, and the move to doing this as part of the representation online for a larger business.

I thought I�d share this as I thought it may give a useful discussion point to those of you who read our blog who are considering getting started in using social media this year as part of your work for a larger firm. I�d love to hear about any tips and learning you have that you can share!

When you work for yourself, you are your online voice.

WheIf you are a small business owner, actually it can be easy to get started on social media. Although you are still your brand, you are only (or often!) the most expert, the one who makes the decisions, and the one who can either advance or limit your own brand. Especially as a sole owner, you are the voice of your company, so it is easy to find your voice. Your company voice becomes an extension of your own, everyday voice, as well as the voice of your company.

When you work for a firm you  can create an authentic voice

• See what has been done by those before you. Look at the company website, at any previous blog posts or social media outposts. This will help you see �how things are done around here� which is often a great starting point
• Talk to your boss/ the marketing team about what the key brand values and attributes are that they want to come across. You can then think about how you show these within the work you do online for the firm
• Balance the �sharing of information� with �points of view� � getting across what you think, getting involved in the social side of the conversation with people on social networks
• Be yourself. This is probably one of my biggest ones! I feel much more comfortable personally when I don�t �try� to be a certain way, but let my natural enthusiasm for connecting with people and my love of social media shine through!
• Whilst I am still finding my voice (and my feet!) tweeting for the larger firm, it�s also good to be able to take this step back and see how I can help others, something both I, and the firm has in common. See how that works? It�s all about the authenticity and finding the common points between how you are naturally and what is important for the firm!

As a final point, finding your voice is about confidence, so the more you can get active and participate in different forums and on different social media platforms, the easier it is to grow your confidence. It also really helps if you have a clear idea of who you are talking to � it�s much easier to blog, tweet and connect with an end user in mind, than just sending out a blanket communication to anyone who may be listening! I�d also really recommend getting involved in the communities you are interested in as a firm, as I�ve really found that this has helped over the last few months to grow both my own thought patterns in relation to those communities as well as growing my own knowledge.

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Resolve to Get started….

If you aren�t already involved in using social media for your business, then you are lagging behind the majority! My starter is therefore to use 2010 as the year to see how you can use social media in your business � whether it is for marketing, recruitment, customer service or brand awareness. If you�ve had concerns about jumping in, before you start:

• Stop and think about what you want to use social media for

• Listen out to find out where your target market is, what they are talking about and how the different social networks are structured

• Get started � get your full profile up and if you�re starting yourself rather than using an agency to support you, make sure you know what you want and how the social network etiquette works. And then you can test and review!

• Monitor the effect � buzz and impact, thought leaders in your sphere and opportunities to engage

Resolve to Act Consistently...

Make 2010 the year you are consistent. Be consistent in your social media marketing/ networking compared to how your company wants to be presented as a brand and for the values you want to represent. Make sure it is easy for your customers, prospects and the industry to know that your social media outposts are truly yours (rather than having been claimed by someone else) and that they are branded consistently.

Resolve to Contribute regularly…

Social media is best used regularly rather than as something you can dip into once a month. If you are short on resources, this is an even more important point to make sure that whatever social media platforms you are using, you are contributing content and to conversations consistently. One of the best ways to do this is to create yourself a regular process and then to test it. This can also include a content calendar to help you create content on a range of platforms which fits into key themes or topics.

Resolve to Be Social…

Engage, interact, chat, discuss, say hello, and respond to questions. Whatever it is, make sure you are real online and respond as you would if you were offline. After all, if someone came up to you and started a conversation, you�d reply, right? Yet, often on social media I see a lack of response to comments and replies. Think networking whilst you are online, and you can�t go wrong. If you�d reply in person, respond online. Simple!

Resolve to Get the team involved…

Making a resolution to get your team involved helps make life much easier. And that�s got to be a good resolution, yes? So, reach out and share what�s happening in social media in your company. Find out who in the company is active on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. Think about any controls and guidelines you want to put in place. Engage those first who are already engaged and who love to step up and talk about the company, what they do and are ready to talk, share and engage. Then check back in to see what is working and how you can make it even better!

Resolve to Measure and Monitor…

Make 2010 the year you start measuring social media alongside all the other metrics you have in your company. Benchmark from where you started, including how much time you spend on social media, and what impact it is having. Think about what you want to measure, whether it�s an increase in discussion around your brand, new followers, increase in traffic to your web, coupons used, or sales you can track directly to social media activity.

Is one of your resolutions to get help with setting up a social media strategy, listen into what�s being said online, or monitor buzz around your brand, competitors and keywords? If so we can help � get in touch!!

This year I�d love it if…

The Industry grows together on key definitions � clarity, definition and use:

One thing which came out clearly in the Monitoring Social Media Conference in November this year, was how much social media continues to develop as an industry. We�ve already been there with the development of SEO, and the tools to help us make the most of SEO. Now it�s the turn of the new kid on the block, social media. As more and more businesses look at how they can use social media in 2010, it will make it much easier for them if the business works together to make it easy. For me, this means clear use of terms, so it�s easy to compare different monitoring systems, or agency offerings.

B2B Social Marketing learns from B2C social media to create great case studies:

Preparing for my Introduction to Social Media presentation in December it was striking how many of the fully integrated case studies come from B2C companies. As we move into 2010 and beyond, I think that B2B businesses will look over at Social Media in B2C to see what is working for them and how it can be adapted to B2B.

B2B Business gets the �social� nature of social media marketing:

Looking at many examples of social media marketing in the B2B space now, there is a predominance of use of social media as another marketing channel. My wish is in 2010 that B2B companies will take this a step forwards and start moving out of the exploration space and into fully reviewing the new opportunities that the conversational nature of the social web gives to them. I think this will happen with more focus on how we add value to the consumers within companies who make the purchasing decision and help them make their lives easier.

Social Media Marketing aligns with SEO and other offline opportunities:

I�m a big fan of the �don�t put all your eggs in one basket� and I hope in 2010 social media will be seen as one of the suite of opportunities a business has to connect with its customers, prospects and industry experts. For me, social media is just one of the many ways we can interact, engage, discuss and research what is important to our customers. As social media aligns, it will also become more strategic and help companies not only review the past and real time of what is happening on the social web, but to use that information strategically to continue to add real, relevant value.

So, that�s my social media wish-list for 2010. How about you?

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Agile is a term that is often used to describe a software development methodology. Intendance currently works with a global software development company that champions agile, and we have begun looking more closely at how this methodology can be used in other areas, such as marketing, design, and business development. It has been an interesting exercise thus far.

The Agile Manifesto for software development values include:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Now I know to some of you reading this, it will fly in the face of what you are used to. We do not intend on giving up our cool tools or some sort of plan, nor do we think �winging it� is good for your business. So what does this mean you can expect from us?

Transparency � what we've learned from Agile is that project wikis, collaborative platforms, and transparency work best for our agency and for you as our client. You won't necessarily want to know everything we do every day, but you do want to know what we're doing with your money, and that your opinion matters most of all.

Interaction � this all comes down to relationships. We don't want to be the agency that did a few print designs, or built your site, and that's the end. Our agency wants the same thing as you, a trusted relationship where we speak to each other on a regular basis. We want your input, and we'll share our ideas and experience with you and your team as well. The team we put together for your project will interact as well, keeping a good flow of communication between them to deliver the best possible site, design, or marketing strategy possible.

Flexibility � this means that even though your site has specs, they are not set in stone. If a project can be delivered faster, better, or more efficiently, then it will be. If your project is half complete, and we see that a course correction is needed, then we will set it back on the right path. Rigid methodologies would balk at this idea, but we welcome it.

Iterations � agile methodology uses short iterations, or cycles of work, with deliverables for each time frame. For search marketing, one iteration may be keyword or competitor research, with a 20 key phrase list as the deliverable. For design work, iterations may be as quick as rough sketches in a short space of time. Development iterations can be a wireframe to be completed by a certain time, or content uploads. The idea is the same, shorter time frames, measurable results. It's a continuous process, broken into bite sized pieces.

Innovation � in order to speed up the process and improve performance, we are constantly reading, listening, and learning new information. Technology moves at such a rapid pace that our clients simply cannot keep up. Agencies are often hired for their expertise in technical, design, and marketing trends. We know our strength is directly tied to our knowledge about your industry, your competitors, and your business. This is especially true for services like search marketing and social media marketing, where falling behind can be a death sentence for your business. We are always trying new things, tweaking campaigns, and researching trends, to keep you one step ahead of what �the other guys� are doing.

We realise that this is just the beginning of Agile for us. We have to try and test tools, trends, and processes for ourselves. But as search engines evolve, analytics evolve, and website technology moves along at the speed of light, we think this is a step in the right direction.