A case study: Jasdev Dhaliwal of AVG explains their approach to Facebook marketing

[Editor's note: As long-standing Twitter connections, when we noticed that AVG passed the one million "Like" mark last week, we asked Jasdev Dhaliwal, the AVG Head of Communities "how?" to see what everyone can learn from their approach. Thanks Jas!] As AVG’s Head of Communities, for the past two years I’ve seen our Facebook community grow from a few hundred fans to over one million. Our page is now larger than many UK Brands including Marks and Spencer, British Airways and Vodafone UK. Globally, we now have more fans than Zappos, Diet Pepsi and Sony Music which is truly remarkable considering our community has grown organically with very limited advertising. Our established history in the security industry coupled with strong brand loyalty has helped us build a strong…

Pebble is a cool example of an alternative to traditional concept-testing for start-ups and small businesses

One of the most exciting aspects of social media is the many diverse opportunities these spaces offer brands to connect with their publics and potential publics in new and meaningful ways. Here's a great example of ‘crowd power’ in action - it's for Pebble - a new E-paper watch, promoted via Kickstarter, ‘the world's largest funding platform for creative projects’:

About Kickstarter

Kickstarter exemplifies just how effective crowdsourcing, concept testing and buzz generation can be in launching new creative projects. The figures speak for themselves; $200 million pledged to projects 1.8 million people have backed a project 20,000 projects successfully funded Every Kickstarter project is set up and controlled by the project’s organisers. Each project offers an appropriate ‘reward’ to encourage potential supporters and people can decide to become involved in…

Early studies reveal a mixed message

Value: [rating=3] Recommended link: Simply Measured Timeline engagement data  Dave has recently covered 9 recommendations for the new Facebook Timeline pages for brands. These switched over on the 30 March 2012. The question is, has this new platform helped or hindered marketers? Some light is shed on this by this initial data from social analytics software provider Simply Measured, that suggests the change is having a very significant upside for brands.

Average of 46% improvement in engagement across 15 brands

Simply Measured looked at 15 early adopting brand page and found that average engagement on brand posts (comments and Likes) rose 46% in the three weeks after the switch compared to the three weeks before. Prior to the Timeline introduction, the 15 brand pages saw an average of 1,672 points of engagement per post, rising to 2,441 after switching to Timeline. …

Only one month from today to comply with the new law

Value/Importance: [rating=5] Recommended link: Ecomplished survey

Our commentary on the E-privacy directive - deadline 26th May

We’re getting close to the deadline for compliance with this law, it’s a month away today. In previous posts we’ve alerted readers to the latest guidance from the ICO on implementation for the cookie law and different solutions (Solution #1, Solution #2 and Solution #3). With a month to go, here is a timely survey of 100 retailers’ response to the directive published by Ecomplished. The survey suggests: 29% of UK retailers believe on-site 3rd party cookies are someone else’s problem 34% plan to use compulsory pop-ups for opt-in 47% believe their cookies are non-intrusive and therefore exempt

Implications of the survey results

The Ecomplished survey suggests if you…

Customer over corporate-led communications

We're currently hiring at First 10. A friend asked me what kind of roles we're looking to fill. My response was, "two brand journalists". She was puzzled, "do you mean PRs", she said? "...aren't there loads of people in marketing who can write?" My response: "Not really, it's a different blend of skill-sets and a totally different motivation." I embraced the whole idea of "brand journalism" via a book by David Meerman-Scott, I read 3-4 years ago, it's made increasing sense since. The way a journalist approaches an article is simply different from the way that somebody who is good at writing approaches an article. A brand journalist works inside the company across all content formats, writing and producing videos, blog posts, photos, webinars, articles, e-books and podcasts. It's about producing the content that is relevant to, that engages prospects and customers, which is something that Marketing Profs…

Google Targets Low Quality Sites Again

Source : Google Inside Search Blog Importance : [rating=4]

Our Commentary

Google has started the rollout of a small algorithm update targeting poor quality websites. It's been dubbed Penguin by SearchEngineLand. The techniques Google are targeting as part of this update are not new and Google has been combating them for years already. In their blog post announcing the change Google explain they are targeting both anchor text of links and quality of content on a page as primary focus. When looking at the examples used to explain the the type of spam they are targeting - you can see it  is very keyword heavy copy or irrelevant links as part of the content as this image shows. It's from an example of a site Google calls out which it is…

A checklist and examples of good practice for 9 new features

It’s now around a month since Facebook business timelines were introduced. We explained the main marketing features here. We’ve been checking out some of the best uses of the new features for marketing, plus we’re seeing some of the new features aren’t being implemented. It’s rare to see a Facebook page that combines all the features in the most effective way. That’s natural, there’s quite a lot for page owners to “get their heads around”, plus the usual time, budget, technical limitations. In this post I hope to give some guidance to help you review your site and to combine looking at some examples to learn from, plus showing what some are missing. So from top to bottom, I’ll mark what are potentially the most important.

1. Use the cover photo for promotions or to encourage opt-in? (Could be important)

Well, most…

7 Tips for more effective mobile emails

Email and mobile together are already functioning as a team, whether we as marketers want them to or not. The customers and consumers have voted with their usage. They’re not sitting around waiting for marketers to get their act together, but as I write this between 20-60% of your database will be reading your marketing emails on their mobile device. If designed and planned well, email and mobile together, will, in the forthcoming years, form a formidable marketing force. So marketers, a question: Will you be leading the way and profiting from your competitors lack of preparedness? Or will your competitors be profiting from yours?

Challenges

Many marketers get stuck here and go no further. In no way am I trying to minimize the challenges that lay ahead for a marketer to optimise the mobile email journey – however they are certainly not as insurmountable as they…

How to create an inbound marketing strategy - some case studies of tools and tactics

I've found setting up and running a small business is both daunting and exciting in equal measure. The combined economic downturn and increasingly crowded competitive landscape mean the need to promote your business and get your message ‘out there’ is as important as ever.

The small business marketing challenge

Marketing is a huge challenge for small businesses, particularly start-ups with no established customer base or community around them. Traditional advertising is an absolute necessity to let people know who you are. But if you’ve limited money and resources, what other options do you have to get your message about your fantastic new business out there? Inbound marketing is one strategy I would highly recommend.

An introduction to inbound marketing -  ‘pull’ rather than ‘push’

For any business, large or small, there are three key media types you can use to connect with consumers;…

A golden rule to rule them all

I grew up being taught the golden rule that one should always do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s thought which is beautiful in its simplistic wisdom. We've all thought about how much better and brighter this world would be if we all followed this golden rule. I suppose this could be a problem if you’re masochistic, but let’s assume most of us aren’t...

Email Onto Others as You Would Have Them Email Onto You

It’s not stretch at all to revise this rule to: "email onto others as you would have them email onto you" Isn’t that the best place to start? Let’ s put aside all the rocket science and just think of how much better and more effective email marketing would be if we all kept that golden rule front of mind.

Email…