It depends whether you're content sharing or starting conversation

With so much written about the importance of marketing automation these days, the argument has touched on social media many times. It makes sense too as social media becomes more important, we want to use social media more within our personal or brand marketing, so in turn we want to make that a good investment. Born from the world of email marketing automation of years ago, we now have products like Eloqua, Marketo and Genius, as well as smaller players such as Office Autopilot, all of which can enable large scale automation.

So can social media marketing be automated?

Of course it can - most importantly within Facebook and Twitter - Hootsuite is probably the best tool to use, and it's relatively cheap. Yet I have Scott Stratten's hilarious comment that that a unicorn is killed every time someone sends an automated tweet, I…

There were no major updates on the major digital platforms this month; perhaps the most significant was the announcement that Pinterest has opened free access to all and developed new mobile services which could further spur adoption. I’d pick our first alert on the new content streaming services as the most interesting topic of discussion for this month, it shows how digital communications platforms continue to evolve. I’ve summarised the updates on what’s new in the standard five areas to make it quick for you to scan what’s new.

Strategy and planning

The co-founders of Twitter unveiled two new social websites - This alert by The Drum simply says they’re called Medium and Branch and are currently invite only - one to watch. If this sounds insignificant, ReadWriteWeb says “we’re witnessing another sea change in Web publishing” - take a look at this summary by Richard MacManus for 5 reasons why web…

Which is the best fit for your business? Mobile app, Mobile site or both?

Everyone’s mad about mobile apps it seems. ComScore MobiLens research from July showed a preference for mobile users to download content via apps (51.1%) rather than through a browser (49.8%). According to Ovum, it’s not just a phase of the tech-hungry West with mobile application adoption expected to increase sharply from 2013 across developing countries. MyCustomer recently interviewed industry experts to help businesses answer this question, this is the summer

Creating a mobile marketing strategy

Building a mobile app isn’t the same thing as building a mobile strategy. In fact, creating an app isn’t necessarily the best way to engage your customers at all. As Gartner’s Johan Jacobs said at the research firm’s Customer Strategies and Technology Summit last year: “Apps aren’t everything!”

Speaking to MyCustomer more recently, Jacobs explained that of the three definitions of…

Google+ with Google Apps, a platform for business?

I've written recently about Google+ as the true social network and so it's particularly fascinating to read this announcement today about Bringing Google+ to Work - it's a very exciting step for Google considering their already significant progress into Cloud based business applications - something that we already use across Smart Insights as it turns out.

A new business specific feature set

1. Private sharing Google Apps users (people running Gmail for business email, Calendar and Docs) get more control over the content they post to Google+. Simply mark it as 'restricted'. These posts become private to your organisation and can never be re-shared with anyone outside. You still get the flexibility to share it with specific partners or colleagues outside the organisation as well if you choose.

Video meetings integrated with Google Apps Thanks…

How the 4Cs model of social business highlights ways to create shared value

In my previous post I asked whether businesses are ready for social business and looked at 10 pitfalls of using social media which suggested many may not be. For those who are becoming proficient in using social media, understanding progression to social business is the next logical step. This begs the ‘what is social business?’ question. In this post I will look at the scope and applications of social business so that you can review how much progress your own organisation has made onto becoming a social business?

What Is Social Business?

So what does the term social business actually mean? Another buzz word coined by highly paid management consultants or a fundamental change in the modus operandi of your organisation, critical to future growth and competitiveness? In simple terms, a social…

9 Questions to ask when choosing a behavioural email provider

The benefits of using behavioural email marketing to engage with existing contacts are well established. If you've decided to take the plunge, it’s important you find the right service for your business. Knowing what to ask a potential provider will help identify whether the service they provide is the one you need. However, before you start talking to any third-party about what they do, first ensure you are 100% clear on what it is you want.

Behavioural email? Remarketing ? Operational & transactional triggers?

There is often confusion between true behavioural email and other simpler forms of triggered email. A detailed description can be found in a white paper from 2 years ago that I think still holds weight; but in simple terms an operational or transaction email responds to an action with a general communication; remarketing targets users based on actions…

Managing Conversion Rate Optimisation, Stage 3: Plan

In this article we continue to follow the 6-step Conversion Architecture model I outlined in Part 1. Analyse and Part 2. Talk. This 6-step process has been developed over the last 10 years of our work to become the foundation of all our clients’ projects so I hope it’s useful both to agencies and clients reviewing their approach to conversion rate optimisation (CRO). In this article I look at key issues to think through as part of planning after the analysis and research have been complete.

Demographics vs. Psychographics

Demographics looks at variables like age, gender, education, ethnicity and income level. Marketers are familiar with this, but for CRO planning you also need to think about Psychographics; which looks at the thought processes of site users. You need to think about your audience from a User Experience perspective. How do they interact with a…

Look to your site first, or opportunities will go down the plughole

Digital marketing strategies vary wildly from business to business as well they should. Not every website has the same business/ sales goals and they most certainly don’t use the same marketing or technical platforms. To a certain degree, before starting to develop strategies for new clients you never know quite what challenges are going to be "thrown your way"! However, there are some fundamentals to consider in advance of setting or spending  budget. The website that you want to digitally market should always be assessed or audited to identify if the best use is being made of the additional traffic that digital marketing will invariably drive. Let me break this down into an analogy that I like to use with my clients: think of your website as a bath, and your…

Is it a knockout or a points decision?

Last year Mark Zuckerberg spoke out against email marketing claiming that in the future, email will be replaced by message-based services such as Facebook. While it’s true that we now have more choice when it comes to our preferred method of communication, this doesn’t mean that email no longer has a place. In fact, research has shown that the use of email in our marketing and CRM activities has grown significantly over the past few years. And let’s not forget that in order to sign up to Facebook you still need an email address. According to a report produced by Royal Pingdom, Internet 2011 in numbers, there were more than 2.2bn email users in 2011 and 3.4bn email accounts, this figure growing by 500m. According to Radicati, this number is expected to grow to 4.1bn by the end of 2015. There is always a tendency…

5 Steps to an effective SEO migration from an old to a new site

Whether it's upgrading hosting, improving your URL structure or simplifying information architecture upgrades to your web presence are inevitable for every company. As more companies reach the limits of their current web investments, many are worried that significant change will impact their organic listings and SEO performance.  I've even seen a company maintaining two websites, frightened that merging would reduce their organic rankings, even though it was near impossible for users to find anything. Whether you are an in-house marketer or an agency specialist, in my experience if you are able to plan ahead and factor in SEO migration tactics to your project you will find a smooth transition. Often the very fact you engage with the search engines can provide improved rankings on the other side. In this article I look at 5 tactics to help you in the…