On a Mission
A day with Mike Harris
Stand for Something
Building trusted brands
The Upside of the Downturn
Ten Management Strategies
![]() On a Mission
Stand for Something The Upside of the Downturn |
What's Your Social Networking Strategy?Wednesday 18th June 2008 The distinction between b2b networks and consumer networks is becoming blurred.
Social networking is about people talking and when people talk, financial marketers should always be ready to listen. Having a LinkedIn profile or a space on Ecademy does not a social networking strategy make!
Twitter is emerging as an interactive b2b marketing tool, particularly for tech company pitches but how long will it be before financial marketers catch on?
According to Business Week, Facebook is now being searched increasingly by the over-35s for potential business contacts. This substantial segment now represents 41% of the Facebook community. Although it is primarily intended to be a social networking site, its search functionality is being used by marketers, freelancers and owner managers of SMEs to interrogate the base to determine both contacts and gain consumer insights. It's time to become even more socially aware.
Friday 13th - The Brief From Hell!!Friday 13th June 2008 It would have to be Friday 13th:
“We brainstormed a design idea in-house with all the marketing executives involving a wind farm against a blue sky and I'm really happy with the concept. I found the image on Google, not sure if we can use it or what the quality may be or anything. There’s not really enough budget to get any new photographs for this ad but we’ve got a pic on our web site of our chairman who's very well known. Can you blow this up inside front.
I’ve sketched out some ideas fora layout on the back of a napkin from our internal lunch – maybe you could put all those together – I’ve seen something like that before on our competitor’s brochure. We can give you a pretty good idea of the spec in three days but we need it printed in five.
I’ve written some text but you’ll need to squeeze it in a bit to fit, maybe a smaller point size or maybe reduce the pics. Why not design both and I’ll take a look when I get back to the office next week - I'm off at 3 as my mother's cat is unwell.
We could put our logo on the front page centred and fairly large. We could also get the printing done by a guy I know in Cornwall where it‘s bound to be cheaper. He doesn’t have Quark so can you put it together as a pdf file and can you bike a CD to him as he hasn’t got broadband.“
Ok it didn't happen today but there are times...
Text in ContextMonday 09th June 2008 Text and email are in many ways just like talking. However, in a business context these are also all-too permanent records of a marketing conversation. Businesses must be aware that all communications, however seemingly informal, can have serious marketing and legal repercussions for a brand. We use these communications channels so much but none of us should ever take them lightly. I have seen countless examples of poor communications by text and email that are not only unprofessional, they could damage a brand irreparably. Here are some of the main Dos and Don’ts. DO DON’T Top Web 2.0 ToolsThursday 05th June 2008 As part of this series on Web 2.0, I researched countless directories, each containing over 200 Web 2.0 Tools, but I think that a marketer’s life is far too short to trial every single one. This is a much more refined guide with helpful commentary on each posted by users (in true Web 2.0 style): http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/Top100Tools/toolset.html The opportunities for marketers are stunning. Here are some Web 2.0 Tools that I will be living with over the coming weeks: http://del.icio.us/
Creating (computer independent) bookmarks of useful sites for use anywhere you go. http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/tour1.html Sharing word documents with clients / designers for amends / collaboration – keeping the latest copy online as a reference. http://www.netvibes.com/#General http://www.flickr.com/ I hope you find these practical toolsets useful. I look forward to sharing more with you more about these developments during the coming weeks, as well as some fresh insights into differentiation. How can you use these new toolsets to Create Your Own Space? Please do write and tell me. Testing Web 2.0 FeaturesWednesday 04th June 2008 The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming session between Tim O'Reilly and MediaLive International. Far from a DotCom 'crash', they recognised that new brands were emerging where the platform IS the Web! The next time a company claims that it's 'Web 2.0', test their features against the list below: - Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability What is Web 2.0?Tuesday 03rd June 2008 Even if you don’t fully understand what Web 2.0 is, the chances are that you make regular use of services which operate on the Web 2.0 platform. Web 2.0 services use the Internet as an operating platform, in order to create products and/or services that could not exist outside of the World Wide Web. I’m talking here about web services, not packaged software. So, we don't just read and publish stuff any more, we participate. We don't just use directories, we provide the content and add our own tags so other people can find them (something that's known as 'folksonomy'). It's ours to share. We're harnessing collective intelligence. We view user generated content on Wikipedia, we see what other people have bought on Amazon, we communicate our ideas with blogs. We get in touch with people on Linked In, Facebook or MySpace. You’ve all heard of Wi-Fi in the context of online broadcast media, now one of our major clients, Vision Critical, is developing what we have branded Fi-Wi. Financial Widgets that pull data together automatically (in what the technical guys refer to as mash ups) and present the customer financial data back to us graphically in precisely the way we want to view it. Now that's pure, true Web 2.0!! Web 2.0 Series - Welcome to Wiki WorldMonday 02nd June 2008 "Wikis will start to affect advertising in a positive way and help us identify constituents we want to touch," said Rod Smith, VP-Internet emerging technology at IBM Corp. Wikis can "help us position a new product and can provide good intelligence as we segment our advertising." Opening up IBM's wikis to customers "would be a great way to engage folks in our ecosystem about a new ad campaign before spending a dollar." "The hardest part of communications is to explain a new product, and sometimes we get too technical. But wikis allow nontechnical folks to talk about what their expectations are for a new product. You can feed off that from a marketing and advertising perspective. As wikis take off, I need to ask people in our markets: How can I engage you and how does that translate into product features that can touch those markets?". Financial brands and their trade associations have an opportunity to build a 'Wikipedia' about their industry and invite participants who are steeped in that subject matter to engage in a collaborative way. |
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