Fresh out of the oven, get’m while they’re hot…

MELBOURNE

Web Analytics Roundtable - February 10th [NEW!]
Internet Marketing & Social Media Fundamentals - February 14th
Social Media Hands-On Skills Training - February 15th [NEW!]
Taking Social Media for Business to the Next Level - March 6th

 SYDNEY

Internet Marketing & Social Media Fundamentals – February 21st
Social Media Hands-On Skills Training - February 22nd [NEW!]
Taking Social Media for Business to the Next Level – March 14th
Web Analytics Roundtable – March 2nd [NEW!]

PERTH

Internet Marketing & Social Media Fundamentals – May 24th

ADELAIDE

Internet Marketing & Social Media Fundamentals – May 31st

BRISBANE

Internet Marketing & Social Media Fundamentals – April 18th

[Image by ci_polla] 

Online agencies – some of them are helpful and others, well, not so much. Based on my own observations here’s a hit-list of what any client should reasonably expect from you as their agency or consultant:

1/  If a client expresses interest, take the time to explain what you are doing, why and how – empower them at every opportunity to help themselves.

2/  Don’t charge for jobs which only take a few minutes to complete – even if the client thinks it must have taken you much longer.

3/  Freely hand over the login details for any online accounts which you have set up on behalf of your client.

4/  Don’t charge to send through data-laden reports – only charge for actionable insights you’re able to pull from the data.

5/  Don’t engage in black-hat SEO techniques (if a client seems to want this, explain the risks).

6/  Don’t pretend you can do everything – refer work onto specialists where appropriate (what goes around comes around).

7/  If a client is still without a website CMS that they can easily handle internally, take the time to explain to them why they are being disadvantaged in terms of time and money.

8/  If a client’s business is not suited to Facebook, don’t sell them a Facebook presence.

I know there’s plenty more – feel free to throw in your 2 cents worth.

[Image by Nomadic Lass]

Here’s an example of using Storify to curate the commonly themed social media content of others – in this case the Qantas grounding. In less than 20 minutes I’ve hand-picked a sample of aligned social media content from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, as well as URL specific page content.

The ‘story’ can then be shared via permalink, or embedded directly within a website or blog as I’ve done below. Even traditional media is getting in on the play: ABC Australia is running a Storify on the Qantas grounding over here.

Don’t miss this!

We’re luckly enough to have Jenni Beattie co-presenting two full-day social media courses -  Melbourne on November 11, and Sydney on December 2.

Jenni’s been involved with social media long before it was even called that. She has run online communities for Sara Lee and Kelloggs, and worked on major social media strategies for brands such as Paramount Pictures and Pedigree.

These workshops are positioned for organisations who already have a degree of hands-on exposure to the main elements of internet marketing, including basic social media, but are facing the ‘now what?’ question. Workshop topics include:

• Developing Your Social Media Strategy
• Online Content – Making it Relevant, Findable & Sharable
• Developing Your Online Content Strategy
• Introducing Google+
• Facebook – What’s New
• Using Twitter with Confidence
• Governance and Social Media Policies
• Social Media Metrics and Management
• Creating your own Branded Social Media Content Widgets
• Dealing with a Social Media Crisis
• Using YouTube for Online Video Marketing & Distribution
• Social Network Advertising – Facebook & LinkedIn
• LinkedIn for Business

To book Melbourne, November 11, click here

To book Sydney, December 2, click here

Image by Tee Time Tony

QR codes have been around a while. They’re big in Japan and South Korea, appearing on billboards, consumer products, vending machines, magazines, newspapers, or anywhere there’s room to insert the symbols – including within the haircuts of rock stars. Think of them as bar codes for consumers, or ‘paper based hyperlinks’ – scanning one automatically triggers any number of predefined responses or code actions, such as opening an URL, sending a text message or sending vCard contact information (there are many other possible ‘actions’ across various social media platforms, maps, WiFi connections and online video).

While QR codes have been slow to take off in Australia I’ve noticed a recent shift in interest from local marketers, and more importantly the public at large; I would expect to see plenty of them popping up in offline places near you in during 2012.

Generating your own QR codes
This is simple – I use a comprehensive online code creator from Kerem Erkan, but there are many others. There are numerous actions and code customisation options to choose from when creating your own QR code; the final code can then be copied and posted online, or downloaded in various formats and placed within any offline media as you would a standard image or graphic.

The QR code example below has an embedded action to open the homepage of the NET:101 website when scanned.

Scanning a QR Code
This is commonly done with a QR reader app on a smartphone, making them a convenient way to interact with a mobile audience (the reader app I use on my iPhone is Qrafter). Some phones are now coming out with QR readers as native functionality, making the scanning process a quick & easy one.

Customising a QR Code
Marketers are taking QR codes to the next level by applying customised branding. This can be a little tricky, requiring graphic design manipulation without braking the code – here’s a good blog post on how to do this.

The code below is a customised version of the code above – it still performs the same action but presents with softer code edges and incorporates the NET:101 logo and primary brand colour, red.

A few other examples of customised QR code design:

Before settling on a new brand name ensure you’re able to secure the key online properties that will be associated with it, namely:

Page 1 Search Results

Type the brand name you’re considering into Google (or your favourite search engine) and analyse the page 1 results. Are there exact or similar brand names from anywhere else in the world you’ll be competing with for attention? If yes, how strong is their page 1 presence?  Brand name searches are popular online – as a given, your brand needs to come up numero uno for anyone running a search on it. And ideally anyone searching on your brand would prominently see a wide range of results which are only directly associated with you.

Domain Name

You’ll want to secure the Top Level Domain name for your brand in your primary geographic market, e.g. for an Australian business this would be the .com.au TLD (I recommend a country specific domain name over a generic .com). If the domain name you want is already taken, the hyphenated version may be available, e.g. www.the-box-people.com.au, but this has potential for confusion – people looking for your website might use the unhyphenated URL expecting to find you.

If the .com and the .net domains are also available for your brand names, go ahead and acquire these as a defensive play.

Registered Trademarks & Google AdWords

Check to see if anybody has your proposed brand name trademarked.  In Australia you can run a trademark search here and apply to have a brand trademarked for $120 here.

Securing a trademark for your brand prevents others from claiming or using it for their own purposes. Furthermore, Google will not allow its AdWords advertisers to use trademarked keywords to trigger an AdWords ad, or to appear in the body of one. Be aware however that Google mostly relies on others to notify it of any violations; you can alert Google of an AdWords related trademark violation here.

YouTube Channel

Is your proposed brand name already a (popular) YouTube username? Usernames can be up to 20 characters long and can include both letters and numbers; they can also contain capital and lowercase letters. If you have a two of three word brand name, consider capitalising the first letter of each word, e.g. TheBoxPeople. Once you have created your YouTube account you cannot change the username associated with the account – choose carefully.

Twitter

While it’s nice to get your brand name into your Twitter handle, it’s not essential. The page can still be strongly branded and any Twitter name can get itself known over time. Although Twitter allows usernames of up to 15 characters, shorter names are preferable as they take up less of the maximum 140 character allocation of each tweet. As with YouTube, usernames can contain numbers, and capital and lowercase letters.

While you’re in setting-up mode you might want to look at opening up a dedicated Google account, Google Analytics for your website or blog, a Facebook Page, a Flickr account, a LinkedIn business profile, and Bit.ly. Also, activate Foursquare and Google Places listings if you have any physical points of presence associated with your brand.

Image by jvleis

It’s a common throwaway line amongst online marketers: “RSS is dead”. But you’ll hear that coming from folk who probably have no idea what it is, and even less appreciation for what it really can do for them. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a technology with many tricks up its sleeve; for marketers and comms professionals it’s an effective way to pipe in filtered, next to real-time business intelligence directly from the web.

I personally use RSS in several ways: to subscribe to blogs, to expand my iGoogle online monitoring dashboard, for keyword trend analysis via Google Insights, and to create my own branded, customised content widgets.

Here’s one example below: a widget I’ve built through Widgetbox, focussing on the Qantas brand. I’ve run filtered search queries on various platforms for Qanats, and used the RSS outputs of each to create a separate monitoring tab. The source platforms used in this instance are Google News, Google Business News, Google Blog Search, Search Twitter, YouTube & Flickr.

Most widgets also have inbuilt syndication features which allow users to share the widget by grabbing embed code, or pushing it directly through to their favourite social media platforms (try out the ‘Get Widget’ function at the bottom of the widget below).

Image by Chasing the Shot