Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 6,100 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 10 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

One of my favourite talks was by Joanna Lord from SEOmoz, an SEO software company based in Seattle. Unlike some of her fellow speakers, who fell into the trap of only pitching their own company, Joanna had some great insights into how marketers could be doing things differently, and during her short 15 minute presentation managed to give the audience 4 great takeaways for how they could improve their Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)…

Today’s Consumer Is Very Different

Today’s consumer is very different to the consumer of even a few years ago. Today they are more social. The purchase funnel has changed and the discovery process is different. Consumers ask for a lot more  feedback from friends than they used to.

So what kind of metrics can you, as a marketer, test for this new type of user? We used to focus solely on lead generation and website results, on words and buttons, on layouts and forms. Nowadays though, marketers don’t just want leads, they want engagement and conversation. This means offline results, as well as online results.

Marketers need to build loyalty and build communities. Marketers need to build something exceptional and get more evangelists for our brands.

So, as Joanna said, take a breath, and now rethink everything you know about CRO …

4  Things To Start Improving

#1 – Your Story

Marketers need to focus on the why? We need to start creating a better story for our companies.

Joanna referenced the Golden Circle Theory which you can learn more about by watching Simon Sinek’s TedTalk.

Most of us spend a lot of our time on the what? – the products and services. Your unique value proposition is in the how? But nothing will win you as much as if you get to the why? Look at Zappos and Threadless as great examples of ‘why companies’; they woke up and realised there was a gap in the market, and that drives them.

It’s also really important how you present your story. Etsy’s mission is to “empower people to change the way the global economy works” … it’s a great message but it’s not presented well on their website, in fact, it’s near impossible to find.

#2 – Your Relationships

Showcase others who are doing great things. Partners who you work with and trust. SEOmoz does this via their ‘pro perks‘ and it drives huge loyalty and engagement for them, as well as driving trials and demos.

Rethink your relationships and how you showcase them. Consider making it part of your ‘about us’ page and not just tucked away elsewhere. Put up great photos and videos of you with your partners.

These days people won’t buy into your brand unless they know who you’re supporting and who you are supported by.

#3 – Your Triggers

Marketers are too driven by changing words. Words do not change the success of the company. The way those words play off each other – a holistic story – does. And that involves all 3 of the brains …

• Most of us test for the ‘new brain’ – the rational data. When we tell consumers that our company is the safest choice, the fastest etc. This marketing was working well until a few years ago.
• The ‘middle brain’ is newer to us, it is emotion driven. This is where consumers are being retargetted in their social network without them perhaps consciously realising they are being marketed to, or when a friend tells them in person to check a brand out.
• The ‘reptilian brain’ checks both of these out and then makes a decision.

We need to be targetting all 3 of these brains, and testing for all of them, for every homepage, landing page, email subject line etc. that we create.

Check out http://bit.ly/4n7AN3 to learn more about NeuroMarketing.

#4 – Thank You

How do you thank people once they’ve done what you wanted them to do? Marketers need to try to take from the middle funnel and drive these leads all the way in. Try to  build loyalty from early on. One way of doing this is via your thank you email once they have signed up for something.

• Paypal is a bad example of the thank you email – they have a stockphoto of  some man, lots of text that doesn’t mean much and no personalisation.
• Chill.com and Sephora send great emails – they make the experience personal and offer value to the consumer.

Marketers need to stop sending emails without value!

Think Bigger

Conversation Rate Optimisation is more than just testing. It’s about your story and relationships, its about value and loyalty.

Think bigger than just running the same tests that traditional marketers would run.

Watch Joanna’s full presentation here (it’s the second video on the page).

More On The Dublin Web Summit

If you want to get more of a flavour of what went on during the 2 day Dublin Web Summit check out my 2 Storify stories.

Here’s what I learnt from Maggie during her 45 minute presentation …

Test Test Test

Marketing should never be based on superstitions or gut feelings. Everything we do should be based on the results of tests we have carried out. Each campaign needs to be built from a solid foundation upwards, with your marketing offer being the foundation, and upon that you build (in order) your landing page, your email, your blog and finally your social media.

There are 3 steps to creating ‘lovable’ offers for your prospects …

1. How To Approach Content Creation

Good content is where the lead generation process starts. Your content should be based on your data:

• Blog analytics. Check what the top ranking blog topics are to give you ideas for content;
• Page performance. Check page views to see what pages are the most popular and use this intelligence to produce an offer
• Landing page analytics. Conversion rates e.g. if your landing pages with ebook offers convert highest, then you should be doing more ebooks.

The format of your offers matter, so see which medium works best for your target market and offer your content to them via that medium, whether it be ebooks, videos, photos etc.

Review your email marketing analytics  to check for patterns in your click through rates (CTR) in order to get more content ideas.

Think of content creation not as a silo but as something you can do across all your channels e.g. if Pinterest is a topic of interest to your target audience don’t just do an ebook, also look at publishing blog posts and webinars on the same topic.

If you don’t have enough internal data to review for content ideas, check out other sources of data e.g. Google News and leverage the current buzz for your own marketing.

All your content decisions should have data to back them up. If you take this approach your offer will be much more successful.

2. Know When To Publish

“Perfect is the enemy of good” – Voltaire.

If you constantly chase perfection in your marketing offers, then you will never publish anything. However, if you publish and review your data, then you can improve for your next offer.

The more you publish the more opportunities you have to drive lead conversion.

If time is an issue consider the following tips for creating high quality content fast…

• Repackage your own existing content:
  • 20 ‘how-to’ blog posts becomes an ebook;
  • An ebook becomes a webinar; or
  • A webinar becomes an ebook.
• Curate public content (this way you’re gathering existence content and repackaging it, as opposed to creating original content, which is more time consuming to produce):
  • 101 awesome marketing quotes;
  • 54 pearls of marketing wisdom; or
  • Learning Linkedin from the experts.

3. Double Down On What’s Working

Monitor your landing page conversion rates frequently to identify your winning offers, then repeat the activity that got you there.

Discover the offers that deserve your time; check the data and decide which of your offers to maintain, create again or ignore and move on. Focus on what is doing well and optimise those offers to increase conversion even further e.g. A/B test your landing pages and CTAs (call-to-actions).

Also consider incorporating some product information on your company into your top of the funnel content e.g. on your ‘thank you for downloading our whitepaper’ page, add a CTA for a secondary offer to, for example, demo your product.

What If Things Go Wrong?

If something doesn’t work, ask yourself …

• Is my offer compelling enough?
• Did I target the right audience?
• Am I not sending enough traffic to it?

If any of the answers are no, review the data, re-evaluate and try again.

To Summarise … The Key Steps To Succeeding With Marketing Offers Are

1. Don’t optimise before you build strong foundations.
2. Use real data to drive your content strategy.
3. Publish often and iterate later.
4. Do more of what’s working!

Link to Maggie Georgieva’s presentation slides

If you go to the Artic Ready website, you will see a site very similar to Shell’s main corporate website. The Artic Ready site recently ran a competition asking the public to suggest captions for their next advertising campagin. When scrolling through the ads you see that the public have clearly hijacked the campaign, turning against Shell and coming up with ads such as the below …

A company’s worst nightmare right? An attempt to engage your audience by encouraging user generated content has gone horribly wrong!

So what happens next? … Go see what the company is saying on Twitter of course!

Shell On Twitter

On Twitter we find the @ShellisPrepared account which states that it is Shell’s social media team. On it are a string of tweets saying that Shell doesn’t endorse these ads and are working to take them down.

There are also numerous tweets insisting on the authenticity of the account. It appears, upon reviewing the tweets, that the social media team is in fact maintained by temps and interns who are clueless as to how to stop the tide of negative user generated content…

Marketing Fail

A return to the Artic Ready site and we see some more ads with captions pointing out how the Shell marketing team is failing at their jobs to keep on top of the situation …

So all in all it looks to be an absolutely epic failure of a social media campaign, one which colleges will use as a case studies to prompt students to figure out what Shell should have done when things started to go south.

However all is not what it seems …

The above co-ordinated campaign is not a failure at all, it is in fact a brilliantly executed and highly successful campaign run, not by Shell, but by Greenpeace, who have turned away from their hippy roots and taken a step into the online world in their fight against the major oil company.

Greenpeace have put together a well thought out online campaign which has resulted in a massive increase in online conversation and which has even been covered by major news corporations including Forbes, the Huffington Post and the Guardian.

Shell has announced that it does not plan to sue Greenpeace, most likely realising that legal action on their part would draw even more attention to the campagin.

So what can we learn from Greenpeace?

… Some advanced planning goes a long way towards the success of your campaign. If you are going to run an online campaign, ensure that you display consistency across your platforms, as Greenpeace have done with both their parody website and parody Twitter account.

This post originally appeared on TweakYourBiz.Com

Many companies are afraid of social media…. some are afraid of being involved, some are afraid of not being involved. Which is worse?

Anyone who has seen the socialnomics video has probably been persuaded that social media is important for business, both B2B and B2C. Unfortunately some companies get caught up in a panic and jump in without having any strategy or plan of action in mind. This leads to problems.

There is little worse than a Facebook page that is unmonitored – fans clamouring for attention and none being given. The key is in the name – social media. You need to be involved with your audience – you wouldn’t go to a seminar, put on a slideshow and then ignore the audience would you? So why ignore them online?

If you’re lucky enough to have an interested audience who is willing to engage with you, then you need to appreciate them and respond to their queries and concerns. Ignoring questions on social platforms is far worse for your image than having no presence at all; no presence is not great, it shows you’re not in touch with the new way people are doing business, but having a presence and ignoring people shows you don’t care about them at all – a far worse message to send.

A Tale Of Transformation

There is a skincare brand that I am particularly fond of; it’s an English brand started by two women on the Isle of Wight back in 1995. The brand has always projected an image of integrity, quality and, despite their growth, friendliness and caring. In my experience their telephone customer service is second to none (half the time you feel like having a cup of tea and a chat with the customer service rep – they are that friendly). But for some reason when they branched into social media none of this translated.

They had a Facebook page and a Twitter account; the Twitter account had very little interaction and on Facebook they were largely ignoring their fans. It was all broadcasting and no engagement. On one particular day there was a backlash against a post the company had placed on Facebook. The backlash went on for hours and hours without any comment from the company. It was quite clear that they were not paying any attention.

The error of their ways was brought to their attention however, and one year later the brand’s online presence is unrecognisable from what it was. They are now engaging properly with their community and responding to queries and answering questions. They are actively checking Twitter to see who is talking about them and responding to people.

The company has now matched its virtual reputation with its real life reputation. No mean feat, but if one company can do it, everyone can.

Marketing Takeaway

Even if you jumped into social media without a plan and have let it flounder, it’s not too late. Grab the bull by the horns, draw up a proper plan of action and go all guns blazing for the rest of 2012. It’s not too late to be great online….

It is exactly for this reason that the Super Bowl commercials have become as important a part of the event, for some people, as the game itself. For this year’s Super Bowl all the commercials were sold out by Thanksgiving 2011 (November) at an average price tag of $3.5 million per 30 second spot(!) – this was the highest rate in Super Bowl history, to date. As you would expect, with price tags like that, it was only the largest of brands who were on display, with ads showing from Samsung, Pepsi, Doritos, Volkswagen, Acura, Audi, Honda, M&M’s, Coca-Cola and Chrysler.

And it’s not just the air time that brands spend their money on, Samsung’s commercial featured British glam rock group, The Darkness, Pepsi featured Elton John and X Factor winner Melanie Amaro, Honda showed Matthew Broderick and Chrysler had Clint Eastwood.

Some of the commercials referenced the game, such as Chrysler’s ‘half time’ ad and Coca-Cola’s ‘superstition’ ad. Others, such as Pepsi, Audi and Honda, played off of popular culture, with Pepsi’s set up similarly to an X Factor audition, Audi chose to advertise their new ‘daylight’ headlights with a play on Twilight style vampires, and Honda had Broderick in a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off set up  (the 1986 movie Broderick starred in).

However it was Chrysler’s ‘half time’ commercial that seemed to win the ‘most controversial’ ad prize this year, albeit for different reasons than Groupon did last year. In the 2 minute-long Chrysler ad Clint Eastwood gives America its ‘half time pep talk’  saying “It’s half time in America too, people are out of work and they’re hurting, and they’re all wondering what they can do to make a come back, and we’re all scared, because this isn’t a game. The people of Detroit know a little something about this.”

Clint Eastwood is known for his support of the Republican party, so people were surprised to see him feature in a Super Bowl ad which spoke about the revival of Chrysler as an example of the American ‘come back’, given that Chrysler had received a government loan of $3.1 billion of taxpayers money. Shortly after the ad aired President Obama’s senior campaign adviser, David Axelrod, praised it as a “powerful” spot on Twitter, however Former Bush White House senior adviser, Karl Rove, told Fox News he was ‘offended’ by the ad. Many agreed it was a highly political ad, with debate raging across the internet. However Chrysler’s CEO has said it has “zero political content” and was not intended to be “any type of political overture“. Clint Eastwood himself has said “it was meant to be a message about job growth and the spirit of America“, he has also said that he is “not supporting any politician at this time,” but gave his blessing for either party to reference the commercial, or at least its message.

Whatever the true intention behind the commercial, it has certainly got people talking, which is after all, the point of advertising…

Scroll down to watch some of the Super Bowl commercials…

Chrysler

Samsung

Pepsi

Doritos

Audi

Coca-Cola

Volkswagen

Acura

Honda

M&M’s

What Are Others Doing?

Earlier this week I received an email from the company I switched to for my car insurance this year. The email was titled Winter Help Tips for Drivers and it highlighted some useful reminders for driving in winter weather, such as checking your tyres for adequate thread and watching for black ice, it also had the phone number for breakdown assistance. The email was friendly and helpful and did not seek to sell anything. A lesson could be taken from this – providing valuable information that is relevant to what is happening in the world, without being overtly sales driven is a great way to connect with your customers.

Another good example is from Apple. The last few years iTunes have had their 12 Days of Christmas app, which allowed users to download a free gift of a new song, game or app every day. This is a great way to reward users and also keeps people coming back every day for something new.

What Can You Do?

Think about what you can offer your customers this time of year without always pushing for a sale. This is a time of year to thank customers for their loyalty to you. Offering value to them, without a specific sales message, will still help your sales down the line as your customers will think of your company as one which values them, an important factor for people when deciding where to spend their money.

So get that thinking cap on and do something seasonal in your marketing today!

On the 16 November, BrightEdge released a report with some interesting Google+ pages stats…

• 61% of top brands had created a Google+ page in the first week – 93% of them have Facebook pages.
• Only 12% of the 61% had linked to their Google+ page from their website homepage – compared with 53% who link to their Facebook page.
• Over two dozen of the top 100 brands have over 1 million fans on Facebook – no brand other than Google has over 50,000 fans, and over two dozen have no fans at all.

This tells us two things –

1. There was a stampede to get a Google+ business page; and
2. Not much else seems to be happening – engagement is very low.

Google+ has been called the Facebook killer, and while it may grab a slice of the pie, it is a long way from threatening Facebook’s near total monopoly. Many marketers have said that the primary reason they set up a Google+ business page is to take advantage of the positive affects having a page is bound to have on their SERP ranking, rather than as a way to engage with fans. The fact is that although there are over 50 million users on Google+ most of them are not using the platform regularly, nor engaging with brands at the same level as they do on Facebook. Whether usage and engagement will grow, or Google+ will die a death like Wave and Buzz remains to be seen.

I still feel it is worth having a Google+ business page as it will help improve SERPs, but whether it will ever become the main way you communicate with your fans online looks doubtful right now.

Takeaway Message…

Set up a Google+ business page, but don’t consider abandoning your Facebook page for it.

• Subscriptions;
• Smart lists;
• Top news; and
• Ticker.

I previously wrote a post on Google+ and the great features it contained that I felt had been lacking in Facebook. Then last month I wrote a post on how Facebook had rolled out some changes in response to the competition from Google+ and Twitter.

But now, only a few weeks later, here are yet more changes. It would seem that the arrival of Google+ has kicked innovation into high-gear in Facebook with developers pushing out Facebook’s answer to some of the popular Google+ features, as well as some brand new features as well.

Nothing like a bit of competition to make people up their game!

Subscriptions

Facebook says the new subscribe button can be used to:

1.    Choose what you see from people in News Feed.
2.    Hear from people, even if you’re not friends.
3.    Let people hear from you, even if you’re not friends.

The first use can be particularly handy if some of your friends play Farmville a lot, as you can choose to just not see these updates any more.

The subscribe button also allows you to follow someone you are not friends with – similar to following someone on Twitter. The user e.g. President Obama, has to enable subscriptions on his account, but once this has been done anyone can subscribe to follow Obama’s news feed and anything that he posts publicly will show in subscribers’ news feeds.

This is somewhat similar to liking a Facebook Page, however Pages are supposed to be for businesses, brands or products only (although there’s a lot of misuse), so the subscribe button now allows you to follow people as well.

Friend Lists and Smart Lists

Facebook has also rolled out improved lists.

There are smart lists which you probably saw immediately when you logged in. These are created automatically based on something you have in common with a group of friends e.g. the city you live in or the university you went to.

You will also have close friends and acquaintances lists which separates your best friends from those you’re not as close to, allowing you to catch up with your closest friends quickly through one list. The lists are empty so you need to populate them yourself and from now on if you friend someone you will have to decide whether they are a close friend or an acquaintance straight away – however people will not know which list you have placed them in.

Any lists you have created yourself will now also be easier to access, as you can just add them to your favourites and they will show up in the left sidebar.

The lists are all completely optional, but as someone who was using the previous, clunkier version of lists, I find the new set up much nicer and easier to use.

Top News

Just announced today the news feed will now show you top news based on what has happened since you last logged into Facebook. So if it’s been a week you will see a summary of the top stories first…

but if its only been a few hours you’ll see the most recent news…

All top stories now feature a blue corner on them.

Real-Time Friend Activity

Also announced today is the ticker which shows up in the top right corner of the screen and shows your friends’ activity in real time, including their comments on other people’s status messages. To see more details simply hover over the update.

Change Is Good

There has been a lot of grumbling about all these recent changes, but I think people forget that Facebook is a free service, and no one is forcing them to use it.  Facebook is changing in response to its competition, and also in response to requests from users, all in an effort to give us a better experience…sure sometimes they get it wrong, but at least they’re trying to evolve and improve, and not just standing still!

Watch Facebook’s Video On The Changes

Too often businesses decide that they want a new website for no particular reason. Often this decision is made because the owners of the business themselves feel the current design is tired and they want something ‘new and fresh’. This is where the trouble begins.

A website revamp should be approached with care and attention, and there should be definite reasons for heading down this, usually very expensive, path.

Who Is The New Website For?

Your website is for your potential and current customers – not for you. You spend far more time on the website than anyone else does, and just because you are tired of the current ‘look’ doesn’t mean anyone else is.

The desire for new aesthetics is not a good reason to throw away thousands of euro on an unnecessary redesign.

Know Your Reasons

Your website’s purpose is to help others find the services / products you provide, and to help you convert them from browsing visitors, to interested prospects, and ultimately, to new clients.

If you want a new website because you want to attract more leads, and you want to convert more leads into customers – and your current website doesn’t allow you to do this – well then you should look at getting a new website.

Website redesign is sometimes necessary, but it is important to have good reasons for making that decision.

Know Your Objectives

Have a clear plan for what you hope to achieve from a website redesign.

Research has shown that 37% of marketers did not measure any metrics for their last website redesign and 1/3 of marketers were unhappy with their last website redesign. Seems to me that those statistics are related.

If you don’t know what you want to achieve, how will you know if you have achieved it? Those with a clear plan and actionable list will know whether they have achieved their goal, and are therefore more likely to be happy with the finished result.

Avoid Pitfalls

Make sure that the company you employ to execute your redesign knows what your objectives are, and that they are capable of meeting them. A good website designer will know that what your customer wants is a clean, simple, easy to navigate website (with no flash!).

Ensure as well that they know how to retain the vale of your existing website during the change over e.g. 301 redirects to avoid losing SEO rankings and inbound links.

Take Control

It’s your business and you make decisions every day, based on the circumstances, to make it the best business possible. Your website should be run the same way.

You should be able to make decisions every day, adding and editing your website content to suit the circumstances. You should be able to add a new blog post, or a new landing page for a special offer you’re running, or even add a page about a brand new product or service. You should not have to run back to your website designers every time you want to add in a comma, never mind new content.

Make sure that your new website puts the reins in your hands. Ensure that you have a good content management system that is easy to use; this will allow you to make changes so that your website is a living, breathing part of your business which will grow organically over time.

So, rethink . . . why do you ‘need’ that redesign?

I recently wrote a post on Google+ and its features. I specifically commented on the Circles feature, which allows you to easily share posts with specific groups of people, meaning I can share an article on running with my runner friends, and one on social media with my marketing friends, without sharing photos of a family holiday with everyone. This was a great feature and one I had said Facebook had been missing out on.

But Facebook heard us and has made a change…

Now posting different status messages to different groups of friends can be done quickly and easily with the click of a button.

However, it’s still not as good as Google+ Circles….yet…

In the new Facebook set up you can post  messages to Public, Friends, Friends of Friends or else specific people. So not quite the same as dragging-and-dropping all your friends into different circles and being able to post specifically to them. With Facebook you will still need to type in each friend’s name individually in order to post to a particular subset of peeople.

But I don’t doubt that Facebook will make further changes to make it easier for us to create and share with different friend groups.

If Facebook implements the great features of Google+ it will be harder for Google+ to lure users away – most people already have all their friends on Facebook, so it’s easier to stay there than move away.

Places Changes To Keep Pace with Twitter

Facebook has also updated its Places feature.

Now instead of going into Places for a separate ‘check-in with message’, you can use the normal status posts to add a location to your message – similar to what Twitter have been offering for a while.

Again this is easy to use, and is built straight into the status update bar.

The iPhone app does not yet appear to have been updated to keep inline with the new web version, with Places still showing separately. However no doubt an update will be rolled out soon.

Facebook Video On The Changes

With new features constantly being rolled out on all fronts, the battle of the social networks continues, will you pick a side? or embrace them all?

You’ve just written a blog post and it’s absolutely perfect; beautifully written content that has the ideal balance of valuable information with easy-to-read conversational language, not to mention those catchy headlines and witty imagery. People should be lining up to read this post, and share it with their friends and colleagues … but how to make that happen? How do you ensure that once you press publish your content will get found and spread by others?

1. Before You Hit Publish

Remember that perfectly written post? Did you include keywords? Do a quick keyword search on Google to see what words people are using to find content like yours. Then go back and make sure that those keywords are included in the main content, the headings, the page title and the image titles. All this will help your post get found organically through the search engines.

2. Syndication

Ensure you have an RSS feed set up for your blog. This will allow people who use RSS feed readers, such as Google Reader, get your content automatically the minute you hit publish.

3. Email List

Allow people to sign up for your blog via email (not everyone uses RSS readers so this is still an important option). Once you have a mailing list many blogs will allow you set up an automated email to go out to your list, advising them that a new post has been published. If you can’t do this automatically just send a quick email to your list manually, the blog title and a link to the page is plenty, although you can include the opening paragraph with the tantilising ‘read more…’ as well.

So you’ve got the keywords, the RSS feed and the email list. That means the post will get indexed by Google and your existing readers will be notified immediately once you publish.

But what about sharing on social media?

This is a huge part of the process, and I have, both personally and professional, seen massive changes to visit counts as a result of social media activity.

4. Social Media Sharing

As with sending an email, it is possible to set up a post to automatically publish out to your various Social Media accounts, however I caution against this. While it takes some of the effort out, people do interact with social media differently and at different times. Research has shown that blogs published in the morning get the highest traffic, however blogs posted on social media in the afternoon get shared the most, with the peak being around 4pm.

So ideally, you would publish your post in the morning, all your current readers will get it via email / rss, and then you would head over to your social media sites later on in the day and share it with your followers / fans there.

On Twitter you should aim to share a link to your blog post several times, as this medium moves fast, followers who log on an hour after you’ve tweeted may not see it. Make sure to use different taglines each time you tweet, this allows you see what works best at grabbing people’s attention (and also avoids the wrath of Twitter who frown on the same tweet being repeated ad nauseam). Be sure also to use a url shortener such as bit.ly or ow.ly, as this gives you more of those precious 140 characters to play with, and also provides you with great analytics such as how many clicks, and from what countries – valuable information for future targeting.

On LinkedIn you can share your post via your status message, but you should also seek to become involved in different groups. Check out what groups there are that might be relevant to you. 81% of LinkedIn’s 100 million members are part of at least one of the over 800,000 groups available (the maximum number of groups a member can join is 50). Join groups and then be sure to share your blog post with each group. This can result, not only in massively increased traffic, but also in some very interesting dialogue with like-minded members. LinkedIn have a great learning centre where you can learn more about groups.

On Facebook you can again share your post, however Facebook has a less frantic pace than Twitter, so sharing the post once is sufficient. Depending on your audience this could result in great engagement with your fans, as well as driving traffic to your site.

On Goolge+ you have the option to share your post with specific circles (learn more about circles). Make sure to share your post only with those who will find the content to be of interest and / or of value – this is much better than a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Again this is a slower paced platform, so sharing once is enough.

Make sure as well to have social sharing buttons on your blog so that anyone who comes across your post can share it with their own networks, thereby driving even more visitors to you!

It’s Worth It

While all of this might seem like a lot of effort, once you’ve done it a few times it will become second nature, and it will become quicker. It will also result in your post getting a LOT more traffic.

Isn’t it worth the bit of extra effort to ensure that your perfectly polished post doesn’t languish forgotten and alone in the internet ether?

But What About LinkedIn?

In June 2011 LinkedIn became the number 2 social network in the US, with 33.9 million visitors that month, up 63% on June 2010 (Facebook had 160.9 million US visitors and Twitter 30.6 million the same month).

As of 4 August 2011 LinkedIn had over 120 million members worldwide; with 26 million of those based in Europe. All 2011 Fortune 500 companies have executives on LinkedIn and 75 of the Fortune 100 companies use LinkedIn’s hiring solutions.

While Google+ is growing rapidly and the rankings are likely to shift in the coming months there is no denying that LinkedIn is a popular networking site for professionals, and especially for B2B companies.

But What About Sharing?

On 30th November 2010 LinkedIn announced their ‘share button’ which, when added to a webpage, allowed readers to easily share that content to their LinkedIn profile and/or LinkedIn groups. Many business oriented sites added the button quickly, including Forbes and Bloomberg, and others slowly added it in the following months.

By day I look after online communications for an Ireland-based, B2B professional services company and in April of this year I added the LinkedIn share button to the company blog, and started our senior managers actively sharing company content on LinkedIn.

The Result?

A 30% jump in traffic over the same period in 2010, purely from LinkedIn!

And, people were not only reading and sharing content, but sticking around to learn more about the company, and complete online forms – meaning not only are we seeing a huge jump in traffic, but we are also generating more inbound leads!

LinkedIn A Superstar For B2B

Of course, not all companies are guaranteed to see this kind of result, it will depend on a number of factors, including the industry.

But what if you did see this kind of result? Or an even better one? Isn’t it worth trying?

Add the LinkedIn share button today, it can’t hurt, and it could be the best decision you make in 2011 for website traffic…

The Complaint

The ads for Lancôme and Maybelline, companies owned by L’Oréal, were accused of having images that had been manipulated to an extent beyond which could be reasonably held up as achievable results obtained using the products they were advertising.

MP Jo Swinson, who has long fought against the overuse of post-production techniques, such as airbrushing, in advertising, made the complaint against L’Oréal and has said “we should have some honesty in advertising and that’s exactly what the ASA is there to do. I’m delighted they’ve upheld these complaints.”

L’Oréal has admitted both images were retouched, but has denied that the ads were misleading. In an attempt to have the complaint overruled L’Oréal supplied pictures of both Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington on the red carpet, showing that they are both naturally beautiful women. L’Oréal lost out against the complaint because it is a requirement that companies be able to show exactly how much retouching has been done to an image, which L’Oréal did not do, saying that it was against their contracts to release pre-production images.

Not The First Time

This is not the first time the ASA has found against the beauty industry.

Last November an ad featuring Georgia May Jagger, advertising mascara for Rimmel London, was banned due to the use of false eyelashes. In 2009 an image of the model Twiggy, used to advertise an Olay product, was also banned due to excessive airbrushing – Jo Swinson was also involved in this complaint. And in June 2010, L’Oréal was again under scrutiny for a hair care ad featuring Cheryl Cole which prompted complaints from the public, as Cole is well known for having hair extensions. On that particular occasion the ASA did not ban the ad, concluding that it was not misleading, however future runs of the ad included a line advising that Cole was wearing hair extension.

Will The UK Stand Alone?

It is encouraging to see the ASA stepping in and letting advertisers know that the images they use need to be reasonably achievable using the products advertised.

It is not healthy for younger people in particular, to be bombarded with these images, believing them to be accurate, or something they are expected to emmulate.

We have all become a little too found of the retouch buttons on our computers in this digital age and as Jo Swinson has said, we need to “get back to reality”.

Hopefully the UK will not remain alone in this fight against the use of unrealistic imagery, and other countries will step up to the plate as well.

Basically Google+ is attractive for one of the reasons that made Facebook so attractive during the MySpace / Bebo era – it’s really clean visually. The human eye likes whitespace and despite Facebook being relatively clean, Google+ has it beat on that front hands down – plus (so far) there are NO ADs.

1. Circles

One of my favourite features of Google+ is Circles, which allows you to group your contacts, so for example I have a ‘friends’ circle and a ‘marketing people’ circle. You are also able to put contacts in multiple circles, so some people in the ‘marketing’ circle might also be in the ‘friends’ circle.  The circles you create are completely private, so while people you’ve added will receive a notification advising them you have added them to a circle, they won’t know the name of the circle.

Circles do have a limit of 5,000 people per circle, but that’s unlikely to be a problem for most of us any time soon.

2. Sharing

Having contacts divided into groups like this means that now when I post  something I can target exactly who sees it. This is a feature I’ve felt Facebook has been lacking for a long time, and it’s the reason I never connect to anyone in my professional life on Facebook, I drew the line in the sand, and for me Facebook was personal. Now however I’m able to connect with everyone I want and decide who to share each post with.

You can share every post with one, or more, of your circles, or else type in an individual’s name to send them a private message.

As with Facebook, putting @ before a person’s name will turn their name into a hyperlink – but here you can also do it by putting a + before their name (naturally).

Once you’ve posted something you have options to edit it, disable sharing (so others can’t repost it), disable comments or delete it – but currently you can’t change who you’ve shared it with.

3. Real People Only Please

Currently Google+ is for ‘real people’ only with a handful of companies being allowed to set up a business page as part of a beta testing group, both Ford and Mashable News are among those.

4. Other Standout Features

Goolge+ also has hangouts and huddles.

Hangouts are group video chats which up to 10 people can join. This is going to be a very popular feature I believe, and has an advantage over Skype as video chats between more than 2 people is currently a paid feature on Skype.

Huddles are group text chats and are being pushed as a way to organise nights out etc. without having to send 10 individual texts.

I think both of the above will be particular popular with the current school / college set. Although there are rumours that Dell is considering using the hangouts for customer service, so only time will tell how businesses will take advantage of these features.

5. +1

The +1 button when used inside of Google+ acts as a ‘like’ button.

The +1 button when used outside of Google+ on blog entries, news stories etc. acts as a bookmark and will then show up in your +1 tab on your profile. This will allow you to create an aggregated list of content to recommend to those who visit your profile.

6. Search Will Be Affected

The +1 button is everywhere and is being used 2.3 billion times per day. This is essentially making Google more intelligent as people are telling it what content on the web is interesting. Not only that, but now Google will have access to more of your social circle (it doesn’t have access to Facebook) so will return search results based not only on the +1 recommendations but also on your specific social circle.

These better quality links will result in an even higher click through rate for those at the top of the search results.

7. Still Waiting For…

Vanity URLs: Currently Google+ aren’t allowing vanity urls to be set up so currently the urls contain a lot of numbers. There are various ways around this, one being to use http://www.profiles.google.com/xxxx the xxxx being the part before the @gmail.com of your email address – of course this means that everyone will then know your email address. There are also some websites, including www.gplus.to that are offering to create vanity urls for Google+ but unless you know the company I wouldn’t recommend going there. I suspect Google themselves will offer vanity urls before very long.

Verified Accounts: There is talk that Google+ will follow in the footsteps of  Twitter and allow certain well know people to  ‘verify’ their account, thereby indicating that they are who they say they are, and given that ‘Mark Zuckerberg’ already has 3 Google+ profiles, Google will hopefully roll this feature out quickly.

Business Pages: As mentioned these are still in beta testing but hopefully they will be rolled out soon enough as well. If they integrate with other Google products e.g. Maps, Local, Deals etc. they will be powerful pages for business, and as always, the early adopters will have the advantage.

With 13 million people and counting on Google+ they certainly look set to make life uncomfortable for Facebook, as to whether it will be a ‘Facebook killer’, only time will tell.

Let me know what you think of Google+. Please also +1 this post if you liked it and don’t forget to add me to your circles!

Have you noticed that people will choose their seats depending on the situation?

In a concert or sporting event who wouldn’t want to be in the front row . . . and yet if we’re talking about a class or conference, more often than not the front row (and usually the 2nd and 3rd rows) are avoided like the plague.

The reason is usually fear. Fear of being in the spotlight, of being called upon to answer a question, of having nowhere to hide.

The back row is ‘safe’, the front row, terrifying for many.

My Experience With The Front Row

Last month I attended the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco. The room was reasonably full when I arrived but the first few rows were completely empty. I chose to sit in the 4th row, about a ¼ of the way from the front. Not the front row, but definitely visible.

I hadn’t attended many conferences and this was my first to attend solo. While I’m reasonably chatty I don’t usually make a habbit of wandering straight up to strangers and striking up a conversaion, but this was a 2 day conference so I would need to talk to some people. My plan was to become active on the twitter hashtag #ims11, get involved in the conversation and then go seek those people out.

Shortly before our first break I noticed a woman, Jackie Shelley, tweeting about how all the fabulous people were in the front row, I tweeted back to see if the 4th row counted, Jackie agreed that I could be fabulous in the 4th row although Brandon Yanofsky was informed point blank that the back row was no good! However post lunch I had been recruited to the ‘fabulous front row’ to join both Jackie and Lois Ardito, and then Brandon joined us a few sessions later.

Sitting in the front row for the conference was great for a lot of reasons. Not only is it easier to see the slides and give each session your full attention (without the distractions of ‘people watching’) but I met some great people!

Life After The Front Row

One month later and Jackie, Lois, Brandon and myself are all still in contact and have even started our own podcast, discussing all things marketing, business and life related.

By our second podcast Jackie had a new business venture, her own company, appropriately called, Front Row Antics!

Today was our fourth podcast and Lois mentioned that she now uses the idea of the ‘front row’ as a positive mentality, deciding that today will be a ‘front row day’, meaning all engines are firing and the day will be met head on. I absolutely love this idea and will try to make most days front row days!

So there you have it, sitting in the front row resulted in friendship, a podcast, a new business and a new mentality. Remember that the next time you have to choose your seat…!

Recently a woman was kicked out of the theatre for texting during the movie and then left a very irate message on their answering machine.

Alamo turned her voicemail into an ad for their theatre and posted the video on YouTube. It’s pretty funny, although I’m guessing that woman is even less happy about it now that it has become a YouTube sensation!

The video was reasonably risky. Alamo were betting that people would side with them, but it could’ve gone either way.

Fortunately most people pretty much HATE other people using their phone in the theatre. It doesn’t matter how far away from you they are sitting, that illuminated screen is like a beacon, distracting everyone from the movie.

The video has had 5,000+ comments, 1.76 million hits on YouTube and has been even been posted on the Huffington Post.

It’s a great marketing tip – turn negative interactions into a positive! Anyone who hates others using their phone during a moive, now knows what theatre they can go to without that happening.

Everyone is in love with Alamo Drafthouse! If I lived in Austin I would definitely be visiting!

Last week I attended the Inbound Marketing Summit conference in San Francisco. Having only signed up a week in advance and then realising I had no business cards, I needed to get some fast. A quick Google revealed that MOO seemed very popular and the cards looked great. I picked a card and put in all my details and was told the  cards would be delivered on Monday 6th June – the day before the conference – close, but it’d get the job done. However, when I placed the ordered a few hours later (had to double check some things first) the delivered date had changed to Tuesday 7th June – the day of the conference – not good!

I sent an email to their customer service and got the usual boot reply “Thanks for contacting blah blah blah” and saying they’d be back to me by close of business Friday. Given the time issues I decided to give Twitter a whirl. MOO operate under the Twitter handle @overheardatmoo, which doesn’t imply customer service but I figured I’d give it a shot.

I sent a tweet (it was very late Wednesday night west cost time) and got a response within 10 minutes asking for my order number and saying they’d try expedite my query with Customer Service.

The next morning I awoke to find an email from ‘Dan M’ of MOO customer service who said he was going to see if the US Operations team could pull off ‘a small miracle’ and get the cards to me by Monday.

…They arrived on Saturday.

At every step of the way through Twitter and the email exchanges with Dan M I felt like a highly valued MOO customer, despite the fact that this was not an expensive order and I was a first time customer.

MOO clearly have figured out that going the extra mile for every customer is what it’s all about.

(Plus the cards look fab!)

Well done to MOO, I will definitely be back. Let’s hope some other companies out there take a leaf out of your book!

Féilim Mac An Iomaire, an Irish man from Galway, has done just that.  Féilim has rented a billboard on one of Dublin’s busy commuter roads for his poster plea ‘Save Me From Emigration’. The billboard shows Féilim with suitcase in hand looking across the water to famous landmarks from the skylines of Toronto, London, Sydney and New York.

Féilim has been searching, unsuccessfully, for a job since returning from Australia last August. Despite having a B.Comm from NUI Galway, Féilim, like many others in Ireland at the moment, has had no success in getting a job even though he has applied for well over a 100 positions in the last 10 months.

Féilim has said that he has felt the traditional ‘cover letter and cv’ method of applying for jobs doesn’t allow an applicant to show their creativity, and has decided to embark on this last ditch effort before throwing in the towel and emigrating to greener pastures.

In addition to the billboard, which also has the contact address joblesspaddy@gmail.com, Féilim has set up a Facebook page and Twitter account. He already has 1,703 people following him on Facebook and countless messages of support are pouring in.

Féilim’s innovative idea has caught people’s attention and he has already spoken on a number of Irish radio programmes, as well as on the national evening news.

This combination of coverage along with his obvious natural creativity will undoubtedly open doors for him. Who wouldn’t want someone showing this kind of initiative on their team? Aside from that, whoever hires him is guaranteed a lot of free publicity!

Good luck Féilim.

UPDATE: Féilim lands a job with Paddy Power.

We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it” – Erik Qualman

Most people have now accepted that social media has become a part of daily life and integral to how we communicate both socially, and for business.

However it’s always good to get a quick reminder of the facts.

The below video might be a year old (and missing references to, most notably, Twitter – which has grown exponentially in the last 12 months) but it’s still relevant, and still full of compelling reasons as to why we need to be engaged online.

Facts From The Video

Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30.

Social Media

• 96% of millennials have joined a social network.
• Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the US.
• Social media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the web.
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the US met via social media.
• Years to reach 50 million users:
• Radio – 38 years
• TV – 13 years
• Internet – 4 years
• iPod – 3 years
• Yet
• Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year.
• iPod application downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months.
• If Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest (behind China and India) – yet QQ & Renren dominate China.
• A US department of education study revealed that online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.
• 80% of companies use Social Media for recruitment;
• 95% of these are using Linkedin
• Fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old females.
• Ashton Kutcher & Britney Spears have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of:
• Sweden;
• Israel;
• Switzerland;
• Ireland;
• Norway; and
• Panama.
• 50% of the mobile internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook.
• Generation Y & Z consider email passé;
• Some universities have stopped distribution email accounts and are instead distributing eReaders / iPads / Tablets.

YouTube

• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world.
• While you watch the video 100+ hours of video will have been uploaded to YouTube.

Wikipedia

• Wiki is the Hawaiian word for quick.
• Wikipedia has over 15 million articles.
• Studies show it is as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.
• 78% of the articles are non-English.
• If you were paid $1 for every article posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour.

Blogs

• There are over 200 million blogs.
• 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.

Advertising

• People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services, than how Google ranks them.
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations;
• Only 14% trust advertisements.
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI;
• 90% of people skip TV ads using Tivo / DVR

Publishing

• Kindle ebooks outsold paper books Christmas 2009.
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation.
• 60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily.