The Immediacy of Blogsite Build and Reach

I’ve been experimenting with blogs. Within an hour I can build a site, and I mean website, not blog. Well, it’s a mix really, so I’m calling it a blogsite. This ‘blogsite’ fulfils all the requirements of a basic business. These include
• Logo
• Pages
• Contact details
• Product descriptions
• Integration with social media
• Search Engine Visibility

OK. I’m a late developer. Bloggers have always known this. Contractory, I know, but though I’ve been a blogger myself since blogs began, I always looked down on the templates they used. (Some were pretty bad in the early days in fairness.) Then I started to question that logic when WordPress started to get impressive. I quickly imported my blog – TheTannoy.com from Blogger into WordPress (so simple) and I really got into the machine behind the text. I’ll port the .com URL over soon but its currently at thetannoy.wordpress.com. It’s all got so simple all of a sudden.

If you have a good logo and a basic template, the job is done. The logo communicates the seriousness of brand adequately IMHO. The rest is down to giving people what they want when they come to a site. Not an arrogant tour of the egos of your marketing department, of your good self, but rather a brief who, what, where, why, how much, contacts and a bit of relevant news.

The news is the hook. The best way to get people in contact with your business is not to fall into the trap of thinking that your business is that interesting. News is interesting. Developments, wow, market shifts, numbers and measures… news. You might indeed service a bit of the sector better than others, but that will all come out in the wash, won’t it. Being up to date in the digital world is by far the most important thing. Having a service that is relevant for today. Not tomorrow, or yesterday, but today. Then it’s down to pricing and the golden mean of digital marketing, and the point of this post, reach.

Every communication via your new website needs to hit the other locations where people hang out. No-one is going to seek your little shop in your new fresh corner of the Interweb. They hang out to be social in a business context, a family and friend one, or a news and views one. Just like in the real world. So, these hangouts are linkedin, facebook and twitter. So, every relevant utterance has to be share with the relevant audience. There are loads of cool widgets to help you do this on WordPress. Use them, and no site updates, or news, or views are wasted. They all have some audience. Maybe not huge, but a much bigger one than would exist if you’re waiting for that audience to wander by your website.

In truth, the vast majority of traffic to a B2B website does not come from customers, unless you are in the news, classifieds and entertainment business. A good proportion of your daily visits will come from competitors. Only rocking businesses will break this rule, but these are few and far between.

So, the best way to know that your messages are reaching your customers is to make sure that your blogsite is pushing messages to twitter followers, Facebook likers and Linkedin luddites (sorry, it rhymes and is often true). Then, let the competitors wander by. In a single push of the button ‘update’ you have updated your site and hit the relevant audience for your business… Simples.
Another good thing to note. It’s free. No harm in that is there.

To my surprise then, when I Googled my new websites, there they were. First page. Position 1 to 3. Sweet. Now that’s clever.

By the way, the sites I built are: www.monitrackresearch.com, www.paviliondigitalwebsite@wordpress.com (soon to be paviliondigital.com).

Addendum: I just mapped TheTannoy.com to wordpress. It took all of 30 seconds – instead of at least 30 minutes and 2 days for it to register before.

If you want something done…

OK. Time for a bit of a braindump.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, and I’ve written a few, but always left them without being published because they weren’t good enough, or big enough, or important enough, or something. I’m not sure I’m out of that head space just yet, but I do want to share some thoughts and questions.

The Tannoy has always been about new technologies and communications, and I’ve tried to track shifts in the way were talk to each other in the digital realm. Since we last spoke I’ve set up a few new companies to address and service these changes. All have a view of digital marketing at their core, but one of these – Pavilion Digital – looks to another development discussed at length by The Economist some months back.

Data.

It’s a word that has lost its meaning because it means so many different things to different people. For me, it is the 1s and 0s of raw code that tell a computer what happened when. Back to the binary coal face! There is more data than ever before, and will be much, much more in future, but what do we do with it?

Pavilion Digital extracts meaning from data. Any and all data. Diverse data sets, market research, server data, tracking data, sales, sales force and CRM of every description. Whatever it is, we can import datasets, analyse them individually or together and extract reports, statistical insights and most of all – value – from what already lies within. We’ve done it in the past few months with some very big clients from the transport and FMCG sectors, and the thing that emerged for me, most of all, was how difficult nay impossible this work is if you don’t know how it’s done, and don’t have the right tools. Few people, in my experience, can get their head around data sets, weighting, imports, exports and then extracting sensible stories from it. Important stories. We have the people to do that, and the best tools, so that’s cool!

In the end of the digital just provides another tool for telling a story. Pavilion Digital gives you the glasses to read it and the directions to understand it.

I’ve also developed and sold some iPhone apps – hardcore utility apps for data gathering and dissemination you understand… not the faddish gadgetry as makes up so much of the 150,000 apps, or whatever it is, that are out there. That’s been real fun. It’s very cool to come up with ideas, get them scoped, scripted and launched, and then someone just has to have them. Very rewarding. When I say iPhone apps, they are actually device and software agnostic, so will work on any smart phone. But more of that in a later blog. I’ll let you all know when the customers launch them and you can check them out.

Again, at the core of these and indeed all digital communication functionality is data.

OK. I sound wishy-washy and half-baked, and sorry for that. I’ll get to the point.
I’m looking at the digital communications industry, and I worry about it, because it seems to me that the whole thrust of internet collaboration is anti agency. Any agency! It’s all about putting people together, directly. Peer to peer not consumer to consumer. And to extend the analogy its about: – P2P, P2B, B2B and B2P.

The internet has taken an amazing toll on the market research space, the advertising industry and the travel space, because it puts individuals in touch with companies directly. And, vice versa, it also puts individual companies in touch with their markets’ individuals too. This puts agencies in a difficult situation… What is left for them to do?

At present, digital ad agencies are broken out by common sense boundaries. Social networks, of course, search and Pay Per Click, naturally. Website builders, traffickers and trackers and em… and, apart from the creative department (part of the website department) and content writers, that’s kind of it. (I’m sure someone will correct me here and feel free.) I know there are bigger agencies which co-ordinate the needs of bigger clients, and there is bound to be a need for these for some time. But then again… the bigger they are…

Market research agencies have a range of other issues including the lack of a requirement for a field force, the slashing of margins, shifting client expectations, the shortening of timeframes and indeed the whole cheapening of the space. Only top quality slimmed down research houses need remain.

The problem for the agency world in general is that any company can do all of these things themselves. Easily. And, if they can’t, they will be able to in a year or so. They probably do some of the things already. In fact, any individual will be able to do them. What’s worse for agencies is that very big companies, who make up the lion’s share of all advertising spend, are taking these functions in house. Why? Because they can, they have control, they don’t get dependent and bamboozled by gurus, and because, well, they just like it. Worse again, hard pressed governments, who used to make up another chunk of spend, are doing it too – wiping out even the larger players in the digital ad space. (The loss of such a contract was a major contributor to the downfall of digital media buying giant – i-Level in the UK.)

The issue for agencies is that buying advertising, tracking it, and optimizing it is child’s play, if you know how. It’s not only all so trackable – it is all so easily trackable. And, you will know how to do this sort of tracing and optimizing – if you want to. It’s not hard, if you can read instructions and can use a computer and the Internet. (If you can’t do either – this blog aint for your!)

The other issue is shifting impressions. Two years ago people used to surf the web now and then. That’s largely gone. That free time has been taken up with surfing on Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter… not on websites – unless you are doing something like research for shopping, or gathering information for health reasons for example. Or buying a ticket maybe. In short, there’s very little actual surfing done these days, so the impressions burned per user on the web as a whole will be dropping. Per user mind, not in total as the number of users is growing. The audience is just hanging out in a different place.

The long tail is getting a hell of a site longer. It has to be. People are visiting much fewer bigger sites, and occasionally wandering out of their social network in response to a link. I heard that 50% or so of Facebook users (350 million of them) are visiting the site daily for over half an hour. That is just phenomenal if you think about it. Well, all of those impressions that 350 million had to offer the Internet advertiser outside of Facebook are lost, unless the ads are in Facebook itself.

So – back to data. The game of business today, as I see it, is in using your existing information, your data, and squeezing every morsel of insight out of it before you spend any money on market research. There’s cash in that there data attic – if you just go and look.

Then, when you are advertising – try and get your head around as much of it yourself as you can, (or get staff to). You’ll save an absolute fortune! Between Bluestreak and Google Analytics you can track the world and his mother as they view your ads placed on networks for small beans. Use social networks. Embrace them. Learn how to target your market with age, sex and location. It’s so wizarded – my Dad could understand it. It’s intuitive, obvious, easy-to-manage and click – you’ve got a campaign going. Website? Use blogging software.

You will need help with logos, and creative, but it is a really, really very good time to do this. (There are free ways of getting them too, if quality isn’t a huge concern.) Then, when you’ve got all your add data, and reports, why not integrate them with your server data, CRM data, sales data, spend, product categories and sales outlets, and analyse them all together. That’s where we come in – because, with the right setup, tools and training, or if you want someone to do it for you and send you the reports – you talk to Pavilion Digital. Again, it’ll save you a fortune.

Slash market research budgets, manage and optimize ad-spend without margins to third parties. Optimize all activities and hone the ideas and marketing plans. This is the best way to give your business the best chance of making the most margin on all sales.

And don’t worry about going it alone. The net is empowering all and it is a collaborative space, so, if you don’t know how, ask, and someone will help you – for free. Just give it a go. You can’t break anything, and everything is reversible. It is tough times out there, so what have you got to lose. No, a better question – What have you got to gain?

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51 Great Ad Ideas

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Web 2.0

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NB: The Power of Chat for Sean Blogs

I predict that chat will be the biggest change in human communication in the next few years. I’m not gambling there, as lots of people are predicting that, because it’s a safe bet. Permitting online, realtime, chat, phone and video for free, is obviously going to work with people in general. It is just too obviously efficient to ignore. Chat, blog posting and VOIP enabled phones will mean that this mechanic for communication is set to explode. Those, like my good self, who’ve been using pretty expensive XDA, and PDAs for the last few years, have seen this functionality creeping steadily onto our mobile handset, but phones like a new Sony Ericsson K800i model I was told about, are expensive, but, with them, users online life, offline life, work and home life is seamlessly integrated into the one small window to the personal world you life in. That statement does require some clarification. I know.

I’m going to describe a typical member of net society. Sean Blogs. Mobile/iPod on the way to work, with music downloaded from friends n colleagues and online, at work and at home. Login to work broadband connection, with work and personal email, VOIP, chat and conferencing software, for work. He’s getting texts and personal calls on his mobile, along with access to personal mail accounts, MSN messenger, his favourite blogs and RSS newsfeeds, his dating profile news and up-dates and his MySpace community page. Sean is busy with work mind, very busy. But, he takes all this other stuff in his stride, and believes in work life balance. The only difference between Sean 10 years ago, and now, is that now he has his finger on the pulse of his personal life, and work life at the same time, in real time. And, he can deal with any and all eventualities immediately. He also logs into 2nd Life, but that’s for another blog. His mobile phone handset provides access to exactly these same services for personal use, though the line between personal, private, work and home has become so blurred, the line isn’t really the point any more. Its all about access, wherever you may be.

An important point of clarification. These services do not exist on the work PC, or on the phone, they exist online. The PC/laptop screen at work, his home laptop screen, and his phone/mobile screen, are only windows to the same world. The software that makes them work, and the information and data they contain, are on the Internet. The information is world of Sean Blogs, in all its complexity and simplicity. The modes through which he accesses the world may seem complex to the un-initiated, but once you get past the mechanism(s) of communication, and satisfying the basic needs of Sean’s life, it’s pretty simple.

What does Sean need? He needs to be able to reach his friends and family, and that girl he met at the weekend, oh, and the ex, and the mates from Bebo, and the girl he’s flirting with in an adjoining office. There are many of these people in Sean’s life, its true, but most aren’t that important, the messages they send or short and can be ignored, and very few require a reply. So, his down time from work is minimal, and can easily be managed along with his workload.

Sean is able to do work with an efficiency level impossible even a few years previously. Sean worked out that many of his work pressures came from people needing something from him; people who were not being able to reach him in time, and then they themselves were under pressure and became anxious. Communication then became impatient, and minty, and went down hill. Poorly connected managers who weren’t good at managing their own time were the worst. However, this new connectivity means that that doesn’t happen, and that expectations can be managed with ease. Sean knows what emails have come in after he left work, because he gets them on his phone, so there is no anxiety. No one has a chance to get worked up through mis-communication, or the pressures of time, because most ‘issues’ can be dealt with immediately. He can mail straight back and say. ‘Sure, no problem, first thing tomorrow,’ or ‘The way to solve this problem is by doing X and Y. OK?’, or ‘That is no problem, but it can’t be done till next week, so tell so and so to call me if there’s a problem with that.’ No one gets worked up, so his work life is just a productive as ever. Moreso in fact, and without the pressures. This takes a lot of the stress out of work, and makes it seem less like ‘work’ in the old sense of the word, and more like just doing lots of stuff every day; some interesting, some fun, some boring and yes, some drudgery… but nothing you can’t cope with.

Chat software like AIM, MSN, Y! and others bring this all a step further. Again, these will explode in popularity in the coming years, because they are just so efficient. A full and rich conversation can be had, while having several others at the same time through chat. You can be chatting through MSN, and on the phone, working on another document, sending files and a hundred other things at the same time. Being able to do this from your desktop is a really amazing experience. Being able to do it from your mobile phone handset, is even one step beyond.

OK. We’ve got that established to some degree I hope. Now the question for NB. Where do we fit in? Well, being able to advertise to people during their personal and work chats is something that has never been possible before. You are not ‘interrupting’ them, in the traditional ad-land sense, but you are accompanying them through their software. It’s a sponsorship opportunity, with other possibilities of click through, purchase, downloads, view video trailer, listen…. rich media… all the good stuff of net advertising at the same time. How will this work? Well, chatters will have a fair idea already as they’ll have seen the ads on their chat software, many of which were placed by NB. But for the non-chatters among you…. Think of someone making a phone call in their hall and as they talk to whomever, there are ads that always sit in front of them. The ads don’t bother them… they’ve always been there. Like the old stickers on the phone with the number of the local taxi company: − you don’t know when you might need it, but you reckon you will do sometime, and it saves you from putting the number somewhere you won’t be able to find it. (Hopefully, whoever is doodling on it will stop, so the number can be bloody read!) But more: while chatting for work or home, (it’s the same phone used for both because its online), you are also able to offer the chatter videos, offers of flights, competitions, trailers and anything they’d like to buy, at the same time. In fact, it’s only a short time away that the ads offered in chat software will relate to what the chatters are actually talking about. So, I say to you… ‘I wonder should we just hop on a plan to London… for the weekend?’ And the chat software advertises flights to London. It’s a creepy extreme I know, but it is going that way. Another example. I say to you, ‘what did happen with Saddam? What were they shouting. Did you see it on the news?’ And the software offers the latest news and video with subtitles from Ireland.com, CNN and Al Jazeera, all relevant to our conversation. I then say. ‘Ah, I’ll take a look. Wow.’ Google on the mobile has already put an end to the pub argument, but this will solve information shortages in so many more conversations.

So, in short, I reckon the advertising opportunities are endless, tremendous and exciting. And, NB, we’re there as it happens.

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Web 2.0

So much has been written lately about this new concept. It’s a buzz term, true, but also a description of fundamental changes happening in ICT. Europe is far behind the Far East and America in terms of our Internet usage, and Ireland is at the bottom of the European scale of things… So, I’d like to discuss some of the philosophy and thinking surrounding the concept. I’m just going to chat about some bits now, as there is an on-going, endless and somewhat tedious debate going on about ‘What Web 2.0 Means?’. These are the bits of what it means that I think are most relevant and interesting. Hopefully they’re relevant to you too. Tell me what you think

Many people, from the head of Microsoft and Apple, to futurologists, have pointed out what should have been obvious, but wasn’t too many. Once the software and hardware is in place to a sufficient degree, people start to do business online. Once they’re doing that, the business winners will be the service companies. It’s a clear set of stages which can be explained by analogy with the train industry.

The first companies to do well out of the age of the train are the track builders, Cisco in terms of ICT. Then the engine builders, Microsoft and Intel etc, and then the various train companies. After that, the train companies that get the trains running on time, and quickest, post the best timetables and get you to the stations efficiently, these are the next wave of companies. On the Internet thats true too, and we’re on the third wave of new communication technology development. Service! The funky software and sites that set appointments and schedules, the widgets that help you manage chats, conversations and photos. The software that gets you communicating, gets you sending your data from A to B the in the most efficient manner, and reminds you when to send it. These companies are distinct from the utilities; those who build the machines, and the pipes that channel your information around the world.

However, we’ve gone beyond this stage too. The software providers now place value on their software not by what it can individually do, but by the fact that everyone else is using the same software, or that this software speaks will all the others types of software, regardless of who’s using it. So, the individual piece of software might be totally cool, but it’s better if it merely works well, and everyone else uses it too. Also, it’s better if the software is online, and free. This is a whole new model for software companies and a very risky strategy for the software company investor. If the software catches on, happy days, as long as you can get sufficient donations, and/or advertising, or its used by so many people it will be bought by Google, or Yahoo! or someone. (Unlikely to be Yahoo! at the moment.)

So, the loop has reached the stage where the service itself is more important than the software. For example, consider Plaxo, Del.icio.us and the millions of other free site soft wares out there, doing everything from your household accounts, to setting up a free shop.

Data That Grows with Use and Users
This comes out of the previous point. As more people use these free/cheap online services, the better they get. More people tag on Del.icio.us, the better it gets; more people use YouTube, or Bebo, it comes alive; the more people use friendsreunited, dating sites or geneology sites, the more opportunity they have to function.

Trusting users as co-developers

This is where the net development goes all commy. It always was in a way. The language of the net, with surfing, waves and nets. Its all symbolic of the watery, fishing land of the west coast. The America lingo, is there because that’s where it all started. That’s where Silicon Valley is, and the people with that surf dude mind-set, the bright ones, made their millions. However, they made their millions out of IP. Shares, futures, and intellectual property… all that stuff.

Open source is a term for a movement where the developers of a peice of software invite users to develope that software. Most web and other software these days is open source, is seems to be in a stage of perpetual beta test. Indeed new free versions of the software seem to come out daily, rather than once every few years in the past. With open source and software stuck in beta test stage really taking on, BitTorrent is an example, software development and use comes together, software and sites become more popular, and the users more loyal.

The Power of the Collective

Remember the Borg? Well, Web 2.0 is a Borg concept, or vice versa. The power of Wikipedia is the users of Wikipedia, the power of Del.icio.us is the members of Del.icio.us. There was a time in the very recent past, where the database, and the time that had gone into its construction, and the data it contained was the valuable entity. Now databases are populated by the users of the databases, and their true value is in their popularity. The use of the database is free, and everything else follows.

The Long Tail
A great concept with a silly name. Think of a line on a graph. Starting big, and then petering out. The big companies are at the high part of the line, but on the internet, there are thousands upon thousands of smaller businesses. The tail of the graph is very long. 5 years ago, companies used to service the head of the graph, and not the tail… Now, the big business is being done servicing the needs of the long tail. Double click is a good example. Big expensive software which had to be bought by large publishers who wanted ad revenue from a few standardized formats on their site. Google arrives along with a whole new mechanic for buying ads, and anyone can ad a small bit of code to their site, and the ads are served. A completely different format, everything’s changed, and it works. Google services tiny companies, and individuals with blogs. Google services the long tail.

Conclusion
The Irish Internet space has changed immesurably and irreversibly in the last few years and we have to understand it if we are to satisfy the needs of advertisers, advertising being the life blood of many of the sites and services discussed above. Net Behaviour is an advertising company that tasks itself with understanding the Internet the way it is today, and tracking the changes in Internet usage as they happen, to best facilitate advertising for our clients. This is an ongoing job. We’ve found in the last year that sites with user generated content are working better and better for our advertisers. We’ve also started working with clients on strategies that involve the new social movements and usages of Irish Internet users. In the past the Internet had the potential to be a two directional medium but content was coming much more from traditional content providers… the newspapers, TV stations and radio. In the last year the flow of content has come much more the audience. User generated content sites and services have also developed more audience than tradition Internet news and information providers. This will be more or less true as fashions change, but I’m of the opinion that the graph is only going one way on this, towards UGC, though these will progressively be owned by International conglomerates.

I understand of course that there are different types of content. If there’s a war with Syria, traditional news providers will get the audience. But I feel there is a new segment of audience that will always like UGC, the get a buzz out of providing for it, and getting their friends and colleagues to view what they’ve provided, ,or sending funny stuff around the a gag group. Also, there will always be those who enjoy the un-constrained fun that can come from hidden video, jokes and pranks and studenty type films. Twink fell foul of this set. Does it matter who owns these sites, or where they are? No. Irish eyeballs are watching the web all over the world, and watching extremely local and international content, regardless of where the server resides, or who owns to company. NB will facilitate advertisers to reach this audiece, wherever it may be.

OK… Thats it. Those are some of the bits of Web 2.0 that interest me. I hope thei interest you too.

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Buzz Marketing

I’ve been working on a presentation about Web 2.0 for the last while, and wondered if anyone had any insights as to what they think Web 2.0 means. Extensive research is pointing very much to the power of new participatory Internet us, and there are sites out there specifically to discuss the topic, (when they can agree what it is). But my question is, what does all of this mean for Internet advertising?

We already advertise extensively on MySpace, YouTube, and Bebo, and work closely with Google moving with the developments in pay per click and placement and we do ongoing viral and buzz marketing for some clients (it doesn’t suit everyone yet), but I feel that this way of getting a clients message out there has only just begun.

The seed in this country, was Bebo. Suddenly, every kid could have their own website, and swarms of these gathered around the concept of schools and colleges. In a year there were 500,000 users of Bebo. The consumer had definitely caught up with business when it came to web development and activity, and passed them out.

But now, I think the sheen has gone off Bebo. It is still as popular and effective an advertising medium as ever mind. More so in fact. We’ve been optimising our spend accross a range of websites, and those, including Bebo, are continuing to improve month on month. No, I just think the faddishness has gone out of it. Viral campaigns abound now, and use YouTube and Bebo as their communication medium, their channel, rather than advertising specifically to users of these sites. Shamrog City, for Funda, is a great example. A great idea, carried out well, with fantastic results. This has been reported in all media, a first for the web I think. TV, radio, press and trade magazines, and lauded by all as a turning point in Internet advertising. NB helped seed this creative throughout the web, on video sites like YouTube, blogs, bulletin boards and everywhere else that such a concept can be linked. We learnt a lot, and its been fun.

Quo Vadis? Where to now? Well. I think this type of conversational activity and marketing is where. Where it leads us? Who knows… but we’re going anyway.

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