Who should be in your circle for the best quality advice?
Ever since Google+ burst onto the social media scene in July last year, the blogosphere has been awash with debate on the pros and cons of the new social network.
But what can’t be disputed is the calibre of digital experts publishing their latest thoughts Google+ and the amount of insight and expertise they offer up on a daily basis.
If you’re new to Google+ or just looking for some ideas on who to follow (or ‘Circle’, as it’s known on Google+), I think these are some of the best. The focus does tend to be on social media and search, so if you're looking for advice on more specific channel's see Dave Chaffey's post on the best marketers to learn from on Google+.
So here is my list of 10 great digital experts to get you started or check against your…
What does it take to win with E-Business?
We believe that the secret to growing E-Business results in your organization is to benchmark to find a better balance between enablers, readiness and performance.
Why are some organizations able to repeatedly deliver results while others struggle to keep up the pace (or never reach it)? We think that high performance E-Business organizations have several things in common but most notably, they are better at balancing E-Business enablers, readiness and performance while using benchmarking to identify improvement areas.
We've developed the E-Business Monitor for companies to benchmark where they are now and get actionable insights on where to improve.
Why other E-Business benchmarks fall short
The last decade has shown a tremendous growth of online channels. Now, organizations find themselves facing tough questions concerning the effectiveness of their E-Business (including digital marketing and E-commerce).
Key questions faced are:
How…
In this case study, we talk to Kate Webb, the Online Marketing Manager at Vision Express. Kate talks about how they have developed a strategy and manage social media marketing across the Vision Express teams. Thanks for sharing your experiences, Kate!
How big an impact has the increase in popularity of social media with consumers had on Vision Express?
It’s had quite an impact in terms of time and resource, especially in the early days.
As a company we’re relatively new to social media, we’ve only been active for just over eighteen months. We spent a lot of time during the first 3-6 months listening, watching and learning what consumers were saying about our brand/looking for from our brand, in order to decide on how we should communicate, and where – which platforms.
During this…
6 key management issues to include within all social media strategies
Social media marketing is now a mainstream business activity. The State of Social Report 2011 indicating that almost two-thirds of companies say they are now beyond the experimental phase, and are integrating social media efforts with other marketing channels and across business functions. This compares to just over 50% a year ago.
Given this emphasis on social media marketing, in this post I'll review what I see as some of the most important issues arising from marketplace and technology developments in 2011, that need to be considered as part of planning and implementing a social media strategy in 2012.
1. Outsourcing social media
There was a time last year when businesses were being warned away from outsourcing their social media functions. A number of high profile social media mishaps were attributed to the disconnect that can occur when social profiles are out-of-house social, including Eurostar’s…
An infographic emphasising the future skills gap for "data scientists"
I blogged recently and mentioned the importance of new skills being brought into your marketing team, and especially people with computer and mathematical science qualifications being of increasing importance.
I noticed this infographic and thought it was useful for their emphasis of the importance of 'Data Scientists' to the future of companies. It seems there's a growing recognition of the value of applying data to marketing.
As you can see, it seems as if demand for "data scientists" will outstrip supply, indeed it already is. So that's an opportunity for getting an edge in the jobs marketplace. As you might expect, the main challenge isn't lack of tools, it's having the skills to apply them, to ask the right questions and for management to give a supportive framework where time is defined for analysis and decision making based on data.
…
A 5 step process using 90-day time-boxes to help implement your plans
The start of a new year always brings a period of reflection and forward planning. New strategies are created and exciting initiatives are launched. It's often the case though, that plans and strategies end up in drawers, little changes and businesses continue on doing the same old things.
I am lucky in that between working for both Smart Insights and First 10 I get to bridge both the creation of strategies as well as the implementation of them. At the moment I'm more involved at the implementation stage which is why I have decided to share our process for making the most of a strategy and delivering on your big ideas.
Running marketing services at First 10 often sees us managing multiple clients as well as multiple freelancers in different markets, positions etc but essentially we help clients run and manage…
Our framework for owning marketing success
Thanks for your comments and shares for our new Marketing Growth Wheel, it was good to see that many found this useful. We'll be going into more depth on how to apply this in our guides and templates for members in future. By way of an introduction, I wanted to explain a bit more about our thinking behind it; why there is a need for a planned approach to digital marketing, yet the majority don't have a plan.
Perhaps, the best way to explain the need for a planned approach to give you the right focus is through this...
A Typical conversation about digital marketing:
A person: "How do I get more traffic?"
Me: "Do you need more traffic?"
A person: "Yeah, of course, we always want more traffic!"
Me: "Hmmm, sure. Is that the priority though? Isn't the real question around commercial growth and the priorities in [digital] marketing…
Our framework for marketing success
You may remember our strategic RACE framework which we created to provide a means to contextualise digital marketing tactics. We've developed this with a new visual to show a planning and management process to use on marketing projects.
Our new Growth Wheel infographic developed in collaboration with First 10 Digital, aims to provide a visual way to think about your marketing planning focused on creating commercial growth by integrating digital channels.
About the Marketing Growth Wheel
Our Growth Wheel uses a standard SOSTAC® approach to planning, but applied to using digital technologies and channels to create growth for a company. It's based on our experience in planning and implementation for many projects we've been involved with over the…
5 ideas to start your brand revolution in 2012
We're still in the midst of 2012 predictions, they're everywhere at the moment, mostly describing what's already out there. I'm not a futurologist, and if I am honest, I prefer to plan for the less predictable since that's what usually happens.
One trend I do observe, is how much marketing is changing (again, and faster). This is leaving a chasm of opportunity for the right organisations to step up. It has serious implications though... are you and your brand the revolutionary, or destined to be the cast-off of someone else's revolution? We've built our Marketing Manifesto of some of the changes that we think will help you falling into the chasm, but here I expand on some of these ideas.
So what's wrong with marketing?
It's one word: management, or lack of it. I believe that digital marketing…
5 reasons why you don't and 10 reasons why you could
Surely it's obvious, with today's digital marketing platforms like search and social networks, desktop and mobile web applications that you need a digital marketing strategy?
I don't think so, the obvious isn't always obvious, or practical to make happen, or even considered necessary. So, a couple of weeks ago we asked readers of SmartInsights.com whether their company, or if they work for an agency or are a consultant, their typical clients have one. These are the shocking? results...
Thank you if you voted or shared this post, we had around 110 responses, so a fair number, although we have no sample frame of who since it's just an informal poll.
As I suspected, there has been little change since we asked the exact same question back in 2010 as the chart below shows. This suggests that…
