August 31st, 2010
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
For all the praise that brand advertisers have for social media, they must be aware that it’s very much a double-edged sword. And for all the free marketing, advertising and brand promotion via Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Linked In, and other platforms used to help build an identity and relationship with your customers, it can just as quickly turn on you and your brand.
Social media disasters occur for a number of reasons, the first being that your company probably messed up. It may not have been intentional, but something, somewhere down the line, went wrong enough for someone to complain and it was enough for others to vocalize that complaint en masse. One mistake is all it takes for social media to turn against your brand.
No one is perfect and you can’t expect to please everyone all the time, so the best trick is to be prepared for how to handle things if your company finds itself under attack in the social realm. Here are three examples of companies who were attacked by social media and how they handled, or should have handled the situation. Learn from their mistakes or successes so you can stay on social media’s good side.
Read more …
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June 11th, 2010
Here’s a quick article on a great marketing technique: building rapport
Forget the old adage “opposites attract”.
In marketing yourself effectively you want to talk to your target audience in the way they want to be talked to and show them what they want and expect to see (even if they don’t know it yet)
Building rapport is very difficult through a computer screen (although online video is helping) and publication adverts. Therefore you need to ensure that your advertising has one aim, to get those you wish to sell to juiced on you and your business.
Top Tip
Use the words and phrases that your best clients use when talking about how great you and your product are, remember or ask them why they chose you or how they found you. Ask what stops them choosing other companies that offer similar products and services.
Don’t overload each advert or article and get to the point as quickly as possible and remember that point is what you can do for them / what they will have gained from using you. Building rapport is never about how good you are or how long you have been trading.
Visit us at FL1 Group for more assistance in all your internet marketing needs
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May 4th, 2010
Google and all the main search engines work on reading text and following links.
The contents of an image can be described to Google using what’s called an ALT or TITLE tag.
You can see these tags in action when you move your mouse over some images on a website. When you do this a small tooltip style message comes up with descriptive text.
With some images, it’s important to add meaningful text to describe the image, if the image is of something meaningful to the user.
For example, a product image in a shop would be a good example, where text along the lines of “Picture of a Dell Latitude E6400 Laptop Computer” might be used. This adds a little more context to the page, and helps Google include the image in its Google Images database.
Avoid putting key messages and words that you’d like Google to find in to the image itself. Often there are ways to display an image beneath text that achieves the same thing.
Finally, Flash is a great animation technology that can bring your website alive and provide a compelling interactive experience. BUT….Google cannot read flash content. If you have any words or links built in to Flash Technology, Google will never find them.
Many companies work around this by providing both a Flash and conventional website without Flash. The Flash driven website is the standard offering when the user visits the website, however the non-Flash version is purely to allow Google to discover it.
Magnet Kitchens are an excellent of this: www.magnet.co.uk
Having two websites can get you nicely round this issue, however that’s double the site, so double the effort and double the cost!
Want to know more?
Give us a call on 01727 739812
Posted in FL1, General, Search Engines | No Comments »
February 12th, 2010
Advergaming
Advergaming is the use of video games to advertise a product or service or to promote a viewpoint.
First seen in the early years of the last decade, advergaming is becoming increasing popular with companies and organisations of all sizes. Games are often the most visited aspect of large brand websites (e.g. Campbell’s Soup – http://www.mysoup.com/games.aspx) and have become an increasing important part of media planning.
For examples, see:
www.pepsi.com
http://kids.discovery.com/games/games.html
http://www.chevroncars.com/
http://pressokentertainment.com/ games on mobiles
Read the rest of this entry »
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February 10th, 2010
We’ve been talking at seminars throughout the county and in London for some time about Social Media and have seen first-hand how it has benefitted our business.
By Social Media, I refer to the likes of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogging to name a few.
But here’s a slightly different use for it.
Over the past 12 months we’ve ran three recruitment campaigns each for different roles.
We’ve traditionally used Recruitment Agencies, but as a small business, the cost of using a good agency has often been crippling when added to the time taken to induct and train along with lack of productivity whilst your new staff member learns the ropes.
We took the decision to practice what we preach and give Social Media a try.
So, here’s what happened…
We wrote up a job specification as usual, and wrote a blog post advertising the position.
We then used twitter, facebook and Linked In, to announce the position.
Finally we used facebook to advertise. Using facebook we were able to target based on interest and location, so for example (anyone interested in web development, mysql and php within 40 miles of St Albans).
We ran each campaign for approximately 4 weeks.
On average we received 20-30 CVs, half of which were suitable. On average we interviewed between 8 and 10 candidates, and on two occasions hired one person and on one occasion hired two candidates.
To summarise:
We spent the same amount of time filtering CVs, interviewing and inducting. Two hours in total was spent setting up the social media and advertising, and the total cost of advertising was on average £17.00.
A good recruitment agency is worth every penny, however, if you fancy rolling your sleeves up and doing it yourself Social Media is certainly worth considering.
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