Category Archives: brand

brand, Generate, Relationship

Social Media – The Importance of Being Ernest

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I came across a really interesting interview today with Reputation management expert Andy Beal which summed up simply how to make the most of online social media. I do not think I could say it better. It has so many benefits establishing a social media policy.

“When a company creates an interactive online profile, it’s effectively telling its stakeholders -customers, investors, employees, etc- that it cares about the community and wants to be a part of the conversation. When an online reputation crisis hits, companies that have an social media profile are more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt and more likely to be able to respond quickly, within that channel.

I advise my clients to look for the “centres of influence.” Where are their stakeholders hanging-out online? When you understand the types of social media your stakeholders are using -maybe they prefer blogs over forums -you’ll increase your chances of successfully engaging them.”

Social media channels that you may find useful for establishing a thriving social network, depending on your market and your niche, include:

FaceBook

MySpace

Twitter

Plurk

FriendFeed

Linkedkin

What networks would you add to this? Which ones do you enjoy the most?

brand, development

Microsoft Has Lost Its Way

It all looked rosy back at the beginning of 2007. The long awaited Vista was hitting the shelf’s along with office 2007. Companies all over the world accepted that they would be upgrading, that was the plan. Microsoft’s dominance of the software market was truly supreme. The success of the past 15 years had brought Microsoft to the very top. Could it go wrong with so much money and design excellence? Nobody was talking about the possibility.
There were signs though. Google clearly had plans for the office market on the internet, they saw the future. They realised that there was a large market out there that just wanted to be able to use a computer without any installation problems or blue screens. Google realized the plans that they could solve these problems by hosting the applications themselves. It was totally different business model. The key to any successful product is that it does what is says on the box. Microsoft did it just about if you did not mind investing a couple days of your time and employing technician to set it up. Google went better, and not just a little bit.

It was the simple things first that I noticed. There spell checker was really poor not only did it not recognise certain words in office 2007 but the application was slow. It was so big that you needed at least gigabyte of memory to run it and even then it was bulky. If I wanted the spelling for a word I would Google it. If I wanted calculator I could Google it. If I wanted a currency exchange figures, yes I would Google it. Google worked first time.

I have been long term fan of MS outlook too, but recently I have stepped over to Gmail. Following so many of my colleagues, the product just works. Vista is much the same experience after having used it for almost 2 years, it does not impress me. Fundamentally it does not really do anything else that XP did, at least for office user. But it does use a lot more resources to do it, 4 times more processing power, memory, and hard disk space.

Kinks in Microsoft’s armoury are starting to show and big company related history is repeating its self. What do you think?

brand, Marketing

A Message From Our Sponsors

I was just reading in the IOD magazine, that Officials at UEFA Euros 2008 are monitoring football fans for non-sponsorship logos and t-shirts, in a bullish crackdown on guerrilla marketing. Although 400 unofficial brands attempted to crack the last world Cup.

Football crowd cheering

I think it is rather clever, perhaps a little heavy handed of the organisers.

What do you think?

brand, Marketing, Relationship

Dogs of Oar – Charity & Company Promotion

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Having just participated in a charity event over the weekend. I can say there is no better way to raise your company profile and do some good for community. I was part of 4 man team that participated in a raft race to raise money for RNLI Most of the teams where made up by different companies on the Isle of Man. Here is a list of some of the companies that entered:

2e2

Paragon Recruitment

Steam packet – Did not show as they had a gearbox problem.

Sefton

Scottish Life

Bradford and Bingly

Central Software – Who sponsored and organised the event.

There were in total 21entries. We came in 6 after a good hard paddle. A good T-shirt design, loads of team spirit, and a good sporting performance and you are away. Some of other notable entrants were the Paragon Ninjas for costume and team idea. Thanks to every one for a great day.

brand, Marketing, Relationship

Company Car Advertising the Minus and Pluses

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A lot of successful companies have resolved there advertising problem by purchasing a company car or two and putting their company logo on the car.

This is a highly effective way to advertise your business for the following reasons:

1. For the price of petrol (£50) per a week a high number of people will see your company logo out and about
2. It lasts for a long period (3 years)
3. It is a perk for your employee.
4. It can motivate your employees if they can use it in there free time
5. You do not need to arrange other forms of advertising or less of it
6. The money you saved on advertising is going into your own company

The negatives are:

1. The driver will have to be a shining example of a good driver, or he could damage your companies reputation
2. There is increased company liability
3. Repairs will be expensive as the car will more than often be driven harder than it should.

I am thinking of doing a Wcx company car any suggestions for design please comment?

brand, Consultancy, E-Commerce, money, Personal, sales

Why I did the 360 and Monetised My Site

I am going to stick my hand in the fire and say that advertisements in blogging can offer a lot of benefits to the reader. Traditionally I came from  background that has never really  been effected by advertising. Is that really possible in this day and age? Well sort of, Most of my small or large purchasers are brought based on my own criteria. Now,  one can argue that there is marketing and I am being indirectly marketed too but that is a conversation for another blog. Why do I think advertising adds to blogs. Well if you are writing about ideas and concepts in your blogs than there are a lot of products that can appear in blog offering their services that would bolt on nicely to the content.

 

For example if I write a blog about content then advertisement will appear with services for content. So the reader than gets double choice. Monetising my blog was a bit of 360 for me. My profile on the work connexions site was w3c compliant very readable but possible a bit boring. We hope with the new site to have remedied that and that business development will be enjoyable or whatever it is that you do. What are your thoughts? to advertising on your blog. 

 

Of course if you want to skip the advertisements just RSS there is no advertisements in the feed…

brand, business, E-Commerce, service

Do You Trust The Internet?

Yesterday I came across to two glaring examples of misinformation. One was on the News vine site where someone had posted a story about presidential hopeful Obama. Without wanting to focus on the story as it has been removed It was quite clearly unfounded. But it does show how important it is that we remember the old motto believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see. Of course a web 2.0 social community will provide some form of control and editorship in place of where you may have a lone blog spouting misinformation.  
That is the problem in general with speculation, rumour and the internet. There is an awfully lot of information out there that probably is not correct but we have no idea how much. The number of dodgy e-commerce businesses that I have seen is really amazing. All sold by promises that they can never hope to achieve. If something sounds too good to be true it probably is on the internet. If there is none of the usual tracking methods such as feedback, users comments, transaction history then be very suspicious.