Indeed we believe that what is called by many; ‘the web’ or ‘the internet’ will soon be a social media dominated domain and marketplace; giving much more ‘control’ and influence to your audience as opposed to your ‘corporate’ office.

Being a high growth opportunity, it’s also a ‘bandwagon’ that many traditional and digital agencies seem to be attempting to jump on without properly understanding (or perhaps believing in) its potency …. and associated risks. Clients are also hesitant to engage without a more tangible appreciation of its benefits. This results in dabbling, that ultimately debases the business case and credibility in the approach; particularly when the provenance in such a revolutionary technique is limited and clients hesitate with RoI not easy to identify … quickly!

I may be rightly(?) considered biased in this view, although would suggest that, as one of the Media Agencies that already has a number of social media client campaigns running (together with a Dadi Award for a social media campaign), we have a privileged insight that provides an experienced perspective.

We only have to look at recent media history to identify the power of social media campaigns …. or perhaps the catastrophic lack of them; that really stand out to emphasise our view.
Take for example, the troubles Toyota had with its car fault recalls, the Catholic Church with their scandal of child abuse and much more topical at present, BP (and its CEO!) and their (public) ‘trial’ in the Gulf of Mexico.

We can assume(?) that its not arrogance or ‘care-less’ that inhibits their engagement, so I would consider that each of these has quite powerful traditional media agencies fighting on their behalf (albeit, one may question the Catholic Church’s abilities here!) Even with these powerful lobby groups, their corporate reputations and images have been hugely tarnished with the result that their ‘value’ and pulling power has been fundamentally debased.

Today, there is nowhere to hide, yet the tools and techniques exist to pro-actively engage with and openly address such critique. Effective Social Media campaigns could and would have made such a positive difference to these enterprises and their challenges; even if simply considered from a Corporate Social Responsibility perspective.

The bottom line is that, the traditional ‘push’ mentality of corporate messaging is no longer good enough (on its own) to engage with your marketplace and stakeholders to maintain brand, image and reputation, particularly in tough times, let alone promote products and services.

Engaging with your stakeholders and creating effective digital dialogue with them, whatever their views, is vital for future enterprise sustainability. Obviously this is easier done when the message(s) and engagement is positive as opposed to critical. However, treating the audience with due respect and engaging with debate can be so powerful not only for image, brand and reputation management, but also for new product/service development, strategic market positioning and even simply growing market share.

Clients must be prepared to change their approach to their marketplace and provide professional resource to effectively engage with the dialogue created. Such a challenge must not be underestimated.

I for one, long for the day when we get beyond those mind-numbing (and cosmetic) TV Ad campaigns with a related call to action web-site where we are supposed to have fun with some kind of trivial engagement.

Lets stand up and be professional about it.

And clients ….. please start to appreciate that ‘push’ is no longer good enough on its own; even though that is what you have traditionally been comfortable with. Your target audience now has a voice to which you are called to respectfully respond and engage …. ie ‘pull’.

Ignore it at your peril, because ‘pull-push’ IS the way forward and ‘dabbling just doesn’t cut it.
Just take a look at the Wikileaks debate today ….. so who is in control?!? ……….

Remember Stephen Frygate on Twitter? This afternoon chief execs at Vodafone will be extremely red faced after a massive blunder on their Twitter account.

An employee managed to tweet a fairly offensive message to the world which resulted in a spectacular page of @replies:

The company has already issued two desperate pleas for forgiveness across to all people who responded to the tweet and appear to be frozen in panic as I write this post. The one positive may be that their followers will increase out of pure rubbernecking curiosity to see how this car crash pans out.

This perfectly illustrates the dangers of social media and why as a large corporate it is important to regulate access and activity to your accounts. We speak to a lot of big brands about these issues and whether it is right for them to dive into social mediia, as a result it will be extremely interesting to see the fallout of this event and how they handle it.

Oh and by the way Vodafone – if you need reputation management from an award winning digital agency just give us a call

We have a new vacancy within Bloom (see below) we are happy consider candidates that are on their way to becoming this rather than perhaps being there already.. what we do want is someone really bright, really motivated & excited by the social media revolution and its impact on digital/SEO & PR, really straight talking and personable.. this is a new discipline for us so we are looking for someone from a PR agency background who can add new strings to our bow!

Digital PR vacancy

Bloom Media is a leading digital agency in Leeds west Yorkshire, we are enjoying a buoyant start to 2010 and are expanding our team. Last year we won a prestigious Dadi award for an innovative social media campaign and are looking to strengthen our digital marketing offering with a specialist in online PR, content strategy and social media marketing.

You will be an online and digital PR specialist, you will love online PR and social media like it is your very own offspring! You will be an budding online PR and social media expert with at least two years experience in this field and an excellent understanding of the evolving digital landscape. You will be a digital evangelist, who are able to demonstrate the effectiveness of online PR to existing and potential new clients, as well as helping the agency as a whole stay at the forefront of digital innovation and trends.

You will have solid proven experience working on website content/copy, social media and digital campaigns and understanding of how to develop relationships with key online opinion formers and brand evangelists. A brilliant nose for news and experience working on crisis and issues would be useful as well as the ability to drive and direct campaigns to support traditional PR activity. Bringing blogger contacts would be advantageous and as would stakeholder and media relations and management experience/exposure.

The Role
You will join an existing team: setting the direction for all online PR activity within the agency, working closely with the SEO and development teams on new business pitches, and developing existing client relationships. The ideal candidate will have an excellent knowledge of relevant UK online media.

You will have:

- Great communication skills, both over the phone and face-to-face
- Excellent copy writing skills
- The ability to meet strict deadlines
- Proactive approach with the ability to use own initiative
- Ability to deal effortlessly with several tasks
- Excellent telephone manner and team working skills
- An obsession with digital media!

The Agency
We are vibrant digital agency with a great blue chip client base including some of the UK’s most innovative online brands. We’re passionate about digital and love our jobs, we’re looking for someone who shares this and wants to thrive in an environment full of likeminded individuals with a great team spirit.

Update: Sorry – this position has been filled!

Keep checking back for future opportunities.

Digital Account Executive – Leeds

A leading & successful digital agency currently require a Digital Account Executive to join our expanding team. Due to continued success, our fast paced & fun agency have won several projects & have many more lined up next year.

The Digital Account Executive should have 6-12 months experience of online marketing or working in a digital environment, however being truly passionate about digital is more important. You will be responsible for liaising between clients and in-house teams to ensure digital projects are delivered smoothly and to an excellent level. Joining a team of developers, designers, and online marketing specialists, you will have the opportunity to work on major UK brands!

Digital Account Executive should have:

* Customer/client facing experience
* Confidence to take, understand briefs, and relay those briefs to in-house teams
* Solid knowledge of online marketing (seo/social media)
* (Desirable) Knowledge or usability/web design/development processes and methodologies.

This is a fantastic and rare opportunity to get involved with a young, dynamic and successful company. Applicants from a non-agency background will be considered for this role, provided they match the above criteria.

I have interviews available immediately so apply now to avoid disappointment!

As no doubt many of you are aware, there have been some big changes in Google Analytics lately, especially with the ways you can track how people interact with your site as well as the way you can structure your goal sets without having to create ridiculous numbers of profiles for you to track your 200+ goals! And yes, all of us here at Bloom are HOOGELY excited about it!

Google Analytics now lets you track up to 20 goals, all in the same profile! Each Profile is allocated 4 goal sets, each of these goal sets contain a set of five goals which make it really easy for you to now group similar goal types into one goal set:

Example:

Goal Set 1 – Registrations

Goal 1 – Party Registration

Goal 2 – Meeting Registration

Goal 3 – Conference Registration

Goal 4 – Charity Registration

Goal 5 – Seminar Registration

Goal Set 2 – Downloads

Goal 1 – Yearly Summary PDF Download

Goal 2 – Chairmans Statement PDF Download

Goal 3 – Widget Download

Goal 4 – Flash content Download

Goal 5 – Press Release Download

..and so it goes on.

Of course, you are not limited to the different types of goals that you can track; you can track just about anything! From completed ecommerce transactions to how many clicks you’ve had on your site “Follow us on Twitter” button, time on site, pages per visit, bounce rates, the possibilities are endless!

Engagement Goals

This is the thing which we Bloomers are especially excited about! Google Analytics has listened to the community and responded with a new type of goal called “Engagement Goals” which allows you to track how people are interacting with your website, and is an absolute must have if you are planning a new site launch and wanting to test the overall “stickiness” of the website, or even tweaking the website to improve its usability. This type of goal allows you to set thresholds for Time on Site or Pages per Visit.

Time on Site Goal

Google Analytics now allows you to set a greater than or less than value of time spent on the site for one of your goals.

For example, you can set a specific goal to track how many people spent less than 10 seconds on your site, then another goal to track how many people have spent 10 to 20 seconds, then another for 20 to 30 seconds, and so it goes on. This is particularly useful for when you are launching a new website, wanting to test some linkbait or how well people engage with a form or other facility that you’ve provided.

Pages Per Visit Goal

Google Analytics lets you create a goal that you can set to greater, equal to or less than value to a pages per visit.

For example you can set a specific goal to track how many people made less than 5, 10, 15 (the list goes on!) page views per session. As before, this is particularly useful when you are launching a new site, and you can gauge the success of it by seeing if the number of page views has improved, or God forbid, gone down!

And in case you’re wondering how you’re going to save all that historical data from your old goals, Kaushik tells you how to keep your old goal history in your new goal!

Advanced Table Filtering

A new addition to the reporting power of Google Analytics is the ability to filter the elements on a table based on the different metric conditions.

Example

If you only want to see your top pages that have an average session time of over one minute and received less than 100 pageviews, you can do that by performing the following action:

• Click Advanced Filter at the bottom of the report window:

• Click on “Add new condition” and select the metrics you want to set:

• Set the values you want to monitor:

• Create a new filter using the same process for the number of PageViews
• et Voila! Your Custom Report:

A very useful and powerful addition to the way you can report on your campaigns, I’m sure you’ll agree!

Google Analytics Intelligence Reports

This really is THE most useful new addition to the way Google Analytics reports your data. Google Analytics now tells YOU what’s happening on your website, your campaigns and much more!

Analytics Intelligence provides you with automatic alerts of significant changes that are happening to your website in terms of traffic, bounce rates, conversion rates, and a whole lot more!

Example:

Google Analytics will alert you if you’ve seen a big spike in traffic on a particular day from a referring website or search engine, like your blog, Google, or just about anything. It would also alert you if you saw a drop in Time on Site with visitors from London for instance. So instead of you having to monitor reports constantly, Google Analytics now does it all for you!

You can also set up Custom Alerts which makes it possible for you to tell Google Analytics what trends to look out for. You can set daily, weekly or monthly triggers on different dimensions and metrics and be notified by email or on the interface when the changes actually occur. An extremely powerful addition to Google Analytics indeed!

Fin

And there you have it! It’s easy to see why Google Analytics is one of the top Analytics packages available! Keep the new features rolling!

… or your most efficient and effective route to market??

As an independent business advisor and also Chair at Bloom I get a privileged ‘both sides’ perspective of the use and potential of the Internet. For many enterprises it still remains a black art/hole and I am truly mystified sometimes by the lack of understanding and ‘dabbling’ client side about the use, dynamics and potential of the internet as a major route to market and business development tool for increasing market share. For me, I guess, properly embracing the Internet boils down to the following issues:

a) Developing the confidence to overcome the fear of change often associated with engagement with the Internet

b) Understanding that engaging with the Internet is a dynamic domain and requires commitment, change and learning

c) Appreciation of the ‘click to capture’ inter-dependence of web design, development and SEO/PPC campaigns and the need to get them all right in an appropriate balance (together with traditional marketing campaigns)

d) Appreciating that SEO is a war with your competition and professional strategic and ‘real-time’ tactical campaign management is vital for a sustainable ‘win’.

e) Appreciating the emergence of social media ‘intangibles’ on reputation and brand management and hence your future business development

f) Appreciating that technology and techniques are often leading edge and are changing rapidly; agencies need to be driving this leading edge and the partners need to be flexible in adapting to this change

g) Appreciating that when the dynamic works, the increased traffic must be supported by internal ‘front office’ capacity to convert on line demand

h) Performance analytics from digital ‘pull’ campaigns must be reported in a format that creates tangible feedback for client understanding, response (decision making) and confidence

i) Too many ‘garage’ operators confusing the ‘picture’ and debasing the potential and real RoI for such investment.

However, the situation is changing fast with the Internet now beginning to dominate client marketing spend. The challenge is therefore now not one of ‘why or should we spend’ but ‘what and where we spend’. Working in partnership with a professional agency that understands the dynamics of the whole picture and assists with your decision making is therefore the only way to survive and build sustainability.

‘Dabbling’ is therefore no longer an option as both agency and client must embrace their partnership with professionalism and commitment in a win – win venture. Particularly now when the opportunity exists to invest in grabbing market share from hesitant competitors.

To overcome these obstacles and embrace the challenge and opportunities presented by the internet, my suggested ‘top 10 tips’ for a client-side approach to this engagement are as follows:

1. Have a clearly defined strategic marketing plan which includes the use of the Internet as a major (new?) route to market. This must clearly state your market position objectives, brand value statements and strategic objectives.

2. Develop a balanced traditional and digital sales and marketing plan with appropriately balanced budget allocation

3. Allocate a competent senior digital campaign champion to avoid conflict of interest or internal power struggles

4. Research prospective agencies online before requesting a pitch. In my experience, too often time and effort is wasted on the pitch process and confusion reigns. Better to get your ‘ideal’ agency profile defined, do your back-ground research properly and invite 1 or 2 in to pitch. Then move to point 5 et al. …. Be demanding but open minded!

5. Select and engage with a professional agency as a business partner based upon:
a. All round capability on creative, technical, strategic and commercial skills for Web Design & Development, Internet Marketing and Statistical Reporting

b. Provenance, client testimonials and professionalism

c. Ability & willingness to provide an unfair share of mind to your campaign

d. Confidence to project ideas and add value to your decision making process

e. Flexibility to work with existing professional partners

f. Chemistry & culture

g. RoI …. NOT cost! …. You want to WIN not simply save money.

6. Establish the professional rules of engagement and reporting format and process in conjunction with your selected partner

7. Establish both campaign objectives and internal resources to manage anticipated increased demand

8. Be prepared for and maintain flexibility for change

9. Depending upon your revenue and growth ambitions, be prepared to negotiate a payment on results SEO fee with your agency

10. Be prepared to engage your agency as part of your decision making forum with expert input on digital techniques and be aggressive and determined for a win -win

On the 1st December 2009 new changes to the FTC Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising come into effect.   This is potentially big news for our industry as the new guides address the fact that advertisers are increasingly harnessing Web 2:0 technologies and social networks for word-of-mouth marketing.

A legal perspective on the FTC guides was posted by a leading city law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse last week and includes some interesting comments.

The new guides recognise the common practice of payment for reviews on Blog sites as a form of advertising and seek to regulate this practice in much the same way as other similar activities or advertising. The FTC have given specific examples quoted in the Field Fisher Waterhouse commentary but include;

“Paying a blogger to post a review clearly requires disclosure as does a word-of-mouth marketing program that periodically sends consumers products for review. Sending a free sample to a blogger with a request to post a review may qualify as a “material connection” depending on the value of the product and the frequency that this occurs.” (for more visit the Field Fisher Waterhouse site).

Also made clear from the guide is that the responsibility for disclosure is placed upon the Blogger not the advertiser.

As I see it this will impact the SEO/Social media communities in the following ways, but mainly this rasies a lot of questions:

1.    Bloggers that receive payment for posting reviews/other content are obliged to disclose this fact.. but will they? and how will this be enforced?
2.    If posts with the appropriate disclosure are identified by Google, will Google react negatively? Will these be seen as paid for link sources and penalised?
3.    Given the method of disclosure is not specified then actually wont it be pretty easy to disguise the disclosure from Google in any case? (i.e. the disclosure could be placed in an image)
4.    Following on from above will this unleash a spate of people reporting blogs they suspect of receiving payment without disclosing to the relevant authorities/Google?
5.    What are the FTC expecting bloggers to do about all of the historical content/reviews that were paid for before these guides came into play?
6.    Does anyone else think that potentially this bites off more than it can chew given the sheer volume of content?

I’d be interested to hear comments from others to see if this can be clarified any further…

Being a ’silver surfer’, Chairman, CEO, NED, etc., gives me a privileged position of ‘outside-in’ insight into this industry which is still highly embryonic and quite naive in some ways; occasionally exhibiting the inconsistency of an early stage teenager! I am also ‘contemporary’ (some might say contentious) in my views on business management. I firmly believe that business sustainability is only enabled by developing real underlying value in the enterprise. Value that is founded upon market positioning, brand, image and stakeholder value with financial gain being the OUTCOME of leading, aligning and managing these essentially non-financial assets.

I am therefore always mystified by individuals and enterprises seeking short term gain by seemingly ‘following the money’. For example I recently read of an exclusively SEO ’start up’ seeking to invest big sums to ‘grab’ market share … WHY? Is it because they saw it as a quick turn investment? In my humble and biased(?) opinion, to REALLY make a success of SEO you need to know and have major influence on how websites work and vice-versa. Furthermore, social media is rapidly growing in terms of its influence on SEO/WEBSITE effectiveness. To  enter an already fairly mature yet dynamic and aggressive market in such an exposed manner seems at best, high risk.

DIGITAL now encompasses an ever expanding domain. With such rapidly growing technologies and techniques, the power of the collective (enterprise brand/image/credibility/etc.) needs to be harnessed TOGETHER with enabling the individual to express their flair and develop their own brand/image/credibility. Enterprise is then enhanced by the individual and the individual enhanced by the enterprise whereby such pro-active engagement enables each partners aspiration to be mutually enabled ….. engaging warp-drive if you will.

This takes enlightened leadership and staff engagement and is what true HOLISTIC benefit means.

2 + 2 = 6

Such an approach is also where stakeholder (enterprise, staff, client, partner) engagement is truly empowered. The focus for both enterprise and individual is therefore on mutually inclusive contribution and value add as opposed to I/me/my financial gain; albeit when WE get it right, mutually sustainable financial gain is a natural outcome.

About 9 or so years ago I attended a conference in the USA where BT ‘proudly and confidently’ announced from the platform that they were not going to invest in installing another single km of fibre optic cable into the ground because ADSL (copper) technology was the way forward. This was followed immediately by both France Telecom and AT&T who both ‘confidently and proudly’ announced that copper technology was limited (dead!) and that they were only going to install Fibre in the future! What a sad indictment for a company who allowed Balance Sheet bean-counters to dominate technological visionaries within its Martlesham research facility; one of whom (I believe) ‘invented’ the World Wide Web! Short sighted financially driven decision making that has now put a UK Blue-chip at risk (read on!)

Consider now that Lord Carter has recently published his (Government inspired) report on the future for a ‘Digital Britain’. My problem with the ‘objective’ is that we have a comms infrastructure inherited from BT that is (and has been for some long while) 3rd world technology; so how are we (UK Ltd) going to compete on the world stage?

Put simply, how can we get beyond this ‘copper crap’ that delivers unbalanced bi-directional speeds with at best kB performance in one direction, to the point where we at least catch up with our peers in other countries?? ……
The exponential journey that the internet is currently driving business on, requires AT LEAST the 8MB bi-directional speeds ‘talked’ about and probably at least 20MB, but this requires a massive investment in fibre optic infrastructure. Virgin have inherited the NTL/Telewest fibre network but this is very limited in its user avialability. What is needed, for UK Ltd to compete on the world stage is for the last/first mile, exchange to every home and business premise, to have fibre cable delivering REAL Broadband. The applications, demand and technologies already exist. Furthermore, someone, somewhere has to carry out appropriate oversight to ensure that we (UK) do not end up with a 3 tier comms infrastucture; ie that service providors are not allowed to cherry pick the ’super-centres’ and allow rural areas to continue to rely on copper. OFCOM have not demonstrated to-date (to me at least) that they can apply such strategic insight to their role in regulatory oversight.

However, we are where we are and such a capability requires massive investment which must be applied within the next 10 years …. and time is running. Without such investment the risk to us all is that we will have to compete on the world stage with 3rd world technology and that probably implies that we would end up as a 3rd world country.

Unfortunately, Lord Carters report is full of rhetoric and new committee’s; discussing legislation and control, etc. …. very little if any focus on how we deliver and meet the demands of todays rapidly evolving business world.

Put this situation into the context that BT has just reported a £2.3B loss for the first quarter of 2009 AND are only forecasting to invest in providing fibre to a ‘massive’ 1M homes and it is easy to appreciate the size of the challenge and risk!

There are other local service providors who are investing, eg Hull, Bournemouth, Dundee, etc, some of them with local authority investment, but these are just small pockets of activity and will not deliver what is needed.  What is needed NOW is a consensus which builds a powerful lobby that has a voice loud enough to be listened to in the corridors of power such that CHANGE HAPPENS…….
Help!!

If you are interested in this topic you might want to check out the following

http://nga-uk.blogspot.com/

http://digitalbritainforum.org.uk/