Social Media: what are they all used for? A fun and simple way to understand them all...

Take a look at the simple, and fun, short presentation on Slideshare that helps to explain what the various Social Media tools are used for in one simple sentence - using the medium of coffee drinking....

Social Media: what are they all used for?

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DIGITAL STRATGEY: 3 THINGS TO FOCUS ON AS A BRAND OR COMPANY

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photo by PlanToo46's  http://www.flickr.com/photos/55260169@N07

I am amazed all too often when I hear people through organizations talking about digital and digital strategies. There is an obsession with “doing stuff” and people keep asking for “a website”, a “Facebook page” and search optimization. These seem to be seen as strategies.

In a talk I did a while ago on Digital Fundamentals, I spoke about how to approach the whole digital space. To review those 10 tips and ideas you can watch it on SlideShare via the blog (click here) or download a PDF (click here)

But to make it even simpler, there are for me 3 key considerations for any brand or company as they think about digital and its role in their mix:

1.       Ensure any consumer/ customer/ KOL looking for your brand/ company online will find it - and get what they are looking for. If they seek they should find what they want!

1.       This means that you need to gout and find out what it is that they want and ensure you have it online, most likely via a website. It may be very simple: all they want is your contact details, or maybe to get a sample. Make sure you understand what they want, as you may find a one page site is all you need. Avoid copying what your competition does, as they may be doing what they think people want, not what they want.

2.       Ensure that your brand/ company is present where your core target consumers/ customers/ KOLs are and are interacting online. Fish where the fish are!

1.       In many ways, this is probably the key one. You need to be where people are. You need to “fish where there are fish”. Too many people focus on building destinations, rather than having content or ads where people are. The same as when you do a TV ad to communicate, you place it in the right place where your target is – you do not build a TV station and  invest on getting people to come to the channel…

3.       Increasing the amount people spend with you or on you by finding the ones who really like you, and use CRM to get them to buy more, come more often and stay loyal and cross purchase to make the investment worthwhile. You can find the best prospects and keep them on-board.

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Times Paywall and iPad app: what I like and what we can all learn from it

Much has been made by journalists and media commentators (mostly competitors of News International who own the title) of the move to charge for access to The Time's website, and to buy subscription to the iPad app to get the daily paper.

The data will finally tell us who was right, although early data suggests traffic on the site fell by three quarters (versus the 90% many projected). Also the charts I saw suggested that unique visitors to the competitive news sites was not up (meaning that the same set of people were looking at multiple sites versus a big unique set of people). Anyway, I thought it would be good to enter the discussion as a user and explain what I like and think about the move and the experiment - and what I think marketers and digital players can learn from it.

I have subscribed to the iPad Times news app (at £9.99 a month)

So here are the 5 things about the move so far that I like:

1: it focuses on the core target. In all the debate, the assumption has been that news is generic. It has not focused on the brand. It does not surprise me that the competitive sites have not seen a huge increase in unique users, as I suspect that many people - including me – would look at multiple sites covering news to see different points of view and coverage. But as a loyal Time reader off line, I ended up putting money where my loyalty lies.

When it comes to news there are brands and providers that users are loyal to and have affinities with. I love getting my TV news from Sky News, others from BBC. I love reading The Times. I buy and consume The Times as I like the editorial focus, style and screen. I like the familiarity. This is why people choose brands. The move is focusing on brand users and loyalists, at the expense potentially of volume, but they can focus on serving the needs of loyal users and try to get them to stay longer and spend more. Finding ways of adding value and keeping loyal users and repeat is a good marketing instinct and tactic. Volume and trial is easy to get, especially if it is FREE. But that is not what makes money and profit....

2: they are experimenting and learning. They have made a move, they are trying and experimenting. They are daring to go against the considered opinions and are constantly evolving the offer and actively asking for thoughts and input. This is what good innovation is about. I learnt recently that the best and most successful innovators are ones that keep doing things, trying changes, prototyping, testing live and constantly evolving. They have a belief (that good journalism costs) and are trying to make it work. I admire trying. More people win by trying than by sitting by and waiting for others to prove something.

3: they are using the tools to interact and engage. They have a very active Twitter feed that will contact you, feedback on queries and engage in a conversation. It is excellent and they will actively ask and push information. I feel like a person that is important to the brand, and not just one of a zillion of readers. I think this part of the mix is something that is really powerful and under-estimated in importance. They are making the loyal user feel part of the family and valued.

4: the iPad app is better than the paper, but familiar. It is a product improvement, it has added value and is not a substitute! The app is better than the website which is just like other websites. The iPad app is great. Has the occasional tech problems, but they work on it fast. It is – for me – key. The Times LOOKS BETTER on the iPad than on paper! It feels familiar and reads like the paper we are used to, but has added features and easy to navigate. For me the iPad app is much better than the site, as it feels like the product I like and consumer (but better) while the site looks like any news site. I think this is a missed opportunity.

Also one can access the paper earlier and easier than before as you can download it from about 4 or 5am. It also can be read offline, and for me who is away and out the country a lot means I can see and read my familiar product in “real time” not some day or more old thing.


Don't like
1: That for the £9.99 monthly fee, you don’t get access to the website online. You would need to pay again. Having one charge to access would be better.

 I think the 4 things above are key, as they provide some guidance for us as we think about digital and online. Focus on the brand loyal? Experiment and learn, push boundaries just don’t copy? Ensure your offering a product improvement not just an alternative? Use tools to engage and interact?

I hope it succeeds as I am hooked to the app!

Leave a comment on the blog in comments or email me with thoughts: gary@bembridge.co.uk



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Digital Fundamentals: 10 things you need to know to develop a great digital stratgey and plan

Check out my SlideShare Presentation covering 10 key funamentals to driving a successful digital marketing stratgey in a business.

Digital Fundamentals: 10 things you need to know to develop a great digital stratgey and plan

View more presentations from Gary Bembridge.

For more podcasts and talks subscribe on iTunes (click here) and my blog http://www.garybembridge.com

Twitter: the next big thing for your brand. Or not??

gary bembridge twitter home pgae, originally uploaded by garybembridge.

As a bit of an online junkie (some may even say whore), I love new tools and love new social networks like last.fm and facebook. I finally started to use Twitter a few months back, though I am still not really sure what it is all about and why it has become so hot.

To me it feels like a jumble of stuff and the more people you follow the more jumbled it gets. I thought it would be a good place to keep on top of news but find google news is better.

But one of the most interesting things that really made me ponder this whole topic last week, was a short interview and discussion on one of my most favourite podcasts (Media Guardian Podcast). On it they interviewed a 17 year old work intern they had who very bluntly said that Twitter is for celebrities who want to go on about "I am", and old people (by which she meant over 30) saying "look how young I am by using this".

It really made me think. The place to look for the next big thing is what teens and what this very online savvy generation is doing. By the time many of them get more mainstream, and your work mates start using them, it is time to think either:

(1) This tool is now past it's peak and past it's cutting edge. Our use of it may date us, may make us seem too establishment and behind the curve. OR

(2) This tool is now mainstream and time to embrace it!

Which option is right depends on your brand. So if you are a trendy young and cutting edge brand you probably need to be on what is scorching hot and new. More mainstream brands should look to the 2nd.

Either way you need to embrace these new tools and at least be trying...

visit my twitter feed at http://www.twitter.com/garybembridge

Internet advertising complaint department is very busy

The (British) Advertising Standards Authority has just published their 2006 Annual Report: the changing face of advertising. This report (.pdf) reveals that (in the U.K.) the number of complaints about internet advertising in rose by 33%, which makes is the 2nd most complained non-broadcast format. Five years ago, in 2001, the Internet ranked as the eighth most complained about of all nonbroadcast media.
This has of course to do with the importance of internet as an advertising medium. And with the fact that the online audience does not hesitate to use it's own medium backchannel to complain about advertising that is offensive to them.
Curious? Have a look at the Top 10 most complained about ads: the number one is a really weird ad from the Gay Police Association.
The ASA is, by the way, not able to sanction "faulty" internet ads. But they do have a clear mission: "It isn't just the change in advertising that has been remarkable over recent decades, but where and how that advertising appears." The challenge is not to create innovative advertising, but to make sure advertising techniques and concepts remain "legal, decent, honest and thruthful - and socially responsible too."

Found via 901am.com.

How big are we really?

Alain already wrote about this, but this week has been a very busy one for me and especially my team as we struggle to gather all the data necessary to answer a simple question. How big is this industry?

The question is of course a simple one and the answer should be too. But the path to this answer is a very difficult one. And not just because gathering the data in itself is a slow process. But there are a lot of things that need to be answered before that in order to get the right data. Let me just start with the first one. NET or GROSS.

Well in fact the question is not so Shakespeare-ian. The right question is: Net, Gross, Gross with volume discounts (or Gross Gross as we like to call it), Rate Card , and so on?. The fact is that different countries use different methodologies to establish the value of a market. And this is of course a big obstacle in trying to set a common denominator for the adspend across Europe. So there is not other way to set the market for the whole Europe but to try to estimate the differences between gross and net.

And this differences can be, believe me, very different by country to country. Luckily enough IAB Europe has a distinct advantage in this matter. People within the country organizations around Europe are the very people that know their online markets inside out. So estimating the differences between one and the other is much easier and precise. The other good part if it is that by doing that people in those markets and across Europe begin to gain an even more extensive knowledge of the other markets.

For comparison is always good. It tells you where you stand and where should you be in a few years time. And it brings people around the table once again. A thing that IAB Europe has always done and always will. :-)

Serial resetters and online gamers distort visitor metrics

Top ten websites by time per visit

1. RuneScape (the massive online adventure game by Jagex Ltd) - 6hrs 32mins


2. Electronic Arts Online (online game service) - 3h 07m


3. Bebo (MySpace Alternative) - 2h 37m


4. Facebook (social networking service for students, corporate, and geographic communities) 2h 28m


5. eBay - 1h 55m


6. King.com (free online games) - 1h 53m


7. Adventure Quest (Role Playing Game) - 1h 35m


8. Fox Interactive Media (MySpace) - 1h 11m


9. Club Penguin (kid-friendly virtual world) - 1h 10m


10. Cartoon Network (free games featuring Cartoon Network characters) - 1h 09m

Web counting tools 'need change': "The post Web 2.0 world is best represented by measuring time spent on particular websites, argues [Nielsen/NetRatings] analyst Alex Burmaster."

From the same BBC article: ""It is clear that a certain segment of internet users clears its cookies very frequently. These 'serial resetters' have the potential to wildly inflate a site's internal unique visitor tally, because just one set of 'eyeballs' at the site may be counted as 10 or more unique visitors over the course of a month," explained comScore president Dr Magid Abraham."

Online advertising: UK shows the way in Europe

IAB UK released its 2006 data about internet advertising and online ad spend across the Channel. We, Europeans from the ‘old continent’ can only watch them, say ‘gosh’ and hope that IAB Europe can play a role in helping us to achieve similar results ;-)

IAB UK found that online expenditure overtook national newspaper spending and online was over half the size of the TV advertising market. In the UK, Internet now accounts for an impressive 11,4 % of all advertising revenues.

Also interesting to see how Search Engine Advertising still outgrows display advertising.

Check it out on http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/iabadspend2006.mxs