Learning a text markup language editor like Byword can help you focus on writing, not formatting

Many of us happily spend many hours editing text in our favourite blogging platform or CMS. In my case, and for many others this is Wordpress. I love Wordpress, but there was one big step backwards compared to my previous Plone CMS; the lack of a built-in markup language to make it easy to enter text without using HTML or fiddling around selecting formating and linking with the buttons using a mouse. I did check a couple years ago, but there were no suitable plugins for a multi-author blog. But my problem is solved thanks to a tweet from Paul Boag (@Boagworld). Now I can edit without any distractions, without using the mouse!

What is a markup language?

Byword, the editor I’m using uses a syntax called Markdown. You can see it’s easy…

“Listening and Engaging in the Digital Marketing Age” - a report, from Forrester.

The full report from Forrester, commissioned by Dell, is available to read and download from Dell's micro-site, which is here, the up-shot is that companies that launch listening and digital engagement initiatives are rewarded with improved customer satisfaction scores, loyalty and brand metrics. Only 50% of companies surveyed (US sample) feel that social media is a core function in their business, however they do feel that their efforts are serious despite only 6% of companies saying that their social media functions are very integrated in the business. “Listening and responding to customers is so basic and fundamental. The emergence of social media elevates how companies can act on the feedback they get from customers,” (Karen Quintos, senior vice president and Chief Marketing Officer at Dell) We've read and summarised the…
My experience with clients, is that businesses that produce high quality blogs produce positive results. But what is 'high quality"? Well, the great tips in this infographic from SEOMoz certainly help show how the functional aspects of blog design and layout can help improve blog quality. But as my other tips and links below show, it's the content quality that matters far more than these functional aspects.

Click image to see full size

My tips on creating Quality blogs

It's not just the functional aspects that are important though, so here is a short checklist of my recommendations on creating successful blogging sites / sections: Use Wordpress if possible - In my opinion it is the easiest to use & has such a large following & library of plugins Submit Sitemap(s) (if the blog is a section of your site include it as a…

5 areas of B2B email marketing to review

Email is in decline with the next generation of business professionals more likely to rely on SMS and social network messaging. Yet, most B2B companies still use email-based newsletters as a primary way of attempting to communicate with and engaging customers and prospects.

Email statistics

A recent Forrester report titled ‘How US Marketer’s use email’ heaped further concern on business use of email by summarizing: 6 in 10 B2B companies are keeping their marketing spend flat in 2011 71% use email to communicate with customers and prospects on a regular basis 33 % don’t routinely remove bad email addresses from databases 43% of B2B marketers think email will become more important to their marketing activity (more…)…
Is Pleasure from "Gamification" a new dimension for marketing? I've heard the word "gamification" many times this year; it's a concept that is undoubtedly getting more and more attention within marketing. Admittedly, I've previously felt that this could be just another fad, relevant in some markets, that gamification isn't relevant to most companies. My perspective until now was that gamification is simply about badges and points, great for start-ups and hot new tech companies like, Farmville, Zynga, Foursquare but not useful for everyday marketers. Having spotted some information around the demographics of social gamers this week, I was really surprised. With a little more research what appears is a whole new world with an awful lot of opportunity for the right brands. According to research presented from Social Games Observer: "The study confirms the strong appeal…

Who should go in your circles?  A new tool to discover who is worth following and my recommendations

Well, it seems as if Google Plus is here to stay. This chart tells its own story, although Google had a huge head start in awareness that Facebook and Twitter didn’t have originally. Like many others, I’ve been trying to work out how to best use Google Plus to stay informed. Within Google Plus a big part of this is deciding on who goes in which circles. I’m putting most people more or less well in a “digital marketers” circle, when they add me, but I also have more focused circles which are to help me find out what’s new in the different areas of digital marketing.

A new tool to find out who to put in your circles.

On Twitter, Wefollow - digital marketing example is useful if you’re new…

Apple's Lion Operating System is the shape (or feel) of things to come...

Apple are making a big deal out of the multi-touch gestures that allow you to manipulate the interface in their new desktop OS (Lion)  released this week. Lessons they’ve learnt from the iPad are rapidly impacting their other devices and software. Something Microsoft has perhaps been a bit slow doing following the success of their Xbox Kinect. Still I suspect it won’t be too much longer before a motion sensor approach to interaction is established for the desktop. All these steps towards more ‘natural’, less mediated, methods of control and experience got me thinking. How do we develop this physicality further? Can we capture taste, weight and texture in the digital environment? Clearly these things are physically impossible on the simple web pages…

Q. How effective is Facebook advertising?

I was recently asked this question by a student putting together a budget model for an online marketing campaign. I pointed them in the direction of this post on online ad clickthrough rates, but they specifically asked about Facebook, so this post is to answer the question and help others. The best public source on Facebook advertising effectiveness I’m aware of, is the analysis of 2.2 million clicks from 4.5 billion impressions that Webtrends track as part of their analytics system which I’ll summarise here.

1. Average clickthrough rates and media costs

Well, the overall number of clicks compared to impressions above give their own story - response rates are low - around than 1 in 2000 page views results in an ad clicks. No surprise since banner clickthrough rates are low and we’re mostly online to socialise. …

Market specialisation could well be a 2.0 model for social media monitoring

We saw this post on Open Forum, and then Mashable and thought that it was a great question to ask by Mashable, since there’s a wealth of potential for some markets. You may have seen in the past that we have compared the features of the main social media monitoring tools. Well, there's now a new tool to add to the list! Cruvee is the first vertical social media monitoring tool, that we’re aware of. This approach seems proven and popular for the wine market with around 30% of US wineries using it. With that evidence, why aren’t we seeing more platofrms like this for other markets? A gold mine, surely. That said, Cruvee remains free, for now!

What makes Cruvee so special?

Paul Mabray, VinTank’s chief strategy…

5 questions you should be asking about your SEO agency

At some-point most business have explored outsourcing "SEO", although recently more businesses I speak to are bringing it back in house. A recent guide from Hub Spot sparked this blog post as they have created a short guide to identifying a "Bad SEO Service" you may be interested in. You can check it out here. While their guide is good, I think it can be distilled down even further & I would even say you should even question whether you need an SEO agency at all!

Identifying a poor SEO Agency:

Here are the questions prompted by the guide: Q1. Do you they make unrealistic promises - "Guaranteed number one spots". Against which phrases? Q2. Are they delivering HUGE keyword lists rather than telling you the ones to focus on. The 80-20 rule holds…