The message was clear to businesses at last weeks annual web 2.0 summit in San Francisco: Get Social!
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, having announced his sites’ new social messaging system, stated that “over the next five years almost every product vertical on the web is going to be rethought to be social – Get on the bus.”
He also referred to the massive growth of the mobile market: “every company will also have to think about how they interact with mobile.”
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph Mike Jones, chief executive of the troubled MySpace platform, explained his vision for the site as an entertainment and social destination. He also talked about the ‘social web’, taking the example of a clothes shop where you might view shirts by brand. Jones argued that it would be much more interesting and valuable to see the shirts your friends and people with similiar interests had bought or were considering purchasing. The site is then organised socially and not by category.
So how does business get more social on the web?
Your business needs to sell stuff and the best way is by being social. Selling through referrals, by word of mouth and through friends is as old as the hills, but very few businesses are harnessing the power of social on their websites – yes ‘like’ and ‘retweet’ buttons are prevalent but social log-ins such as Facebook’s Connect, Twitter, OpenID and Disqus provide a deeper level of interaction.
Right now the Internet is in the social (web 2.0) stage and businesses that have buried their head in the sand may be wise to look at offering a social element as well as something fun. Posts Tagged ‘Digital’
Silicon valley says businesses need to get more social
Monday, November 22nd, 2010The message was clear to businesses at last weeks annual web 2.0 summit in San Francisco: Get Social!
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, having announced his sites’ new social messaging system, stated that “over the next five years almost every product vertical on the web is going to be rethought to be social – Get on the bus.”
He also referred to the massive growth of the mobile market: “every company will also have to think about how they interact with mobile.”
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph Mike Jones, chief executive of the troubled MySpace platform, explained his vision for the site as an entertainment and social destination. He also talked about the ‘social web’, taking the example of a clothes shop where you might view shirts by brand. Jones argued that it would be much more interesting and valuable to see the shirts your friends and people with similiar interests had bought or were considering purchasing. The site is then organised socially and not by category.
So how does business get more social on the web?
Your business needs to sell stuff and the best way is by being social. Selling through referrals, by word of mouth and through friends is as old as the hills, but very few businesses are harnessing the power of social on their websites – yes ‘like’ and ‘retweet’ buttons are prevalent but social log-ins such as Facebook’s Connect, Twitter, OpenID and Disqus provide a deeper level of interaction.
Right now the Internet is in the social (web 2.0) stage and businesses that have buried their head in the sand may be wise to look at offering a social element as well as something fun. Why Start an Email Newsletter?
Monday, August 16th, 2010
Quite often this question comes up and is something we’d encourage business owners to seriously consider as part of their online marketing strategy. Email Newsletters compliment your website or blog nicely and can drive traffic back to them and help the longevity of your customer relationships.
1. If you engage with your email list (you are building an email list aren’t you?) and offer value to it you will build trust in your brand and services.
2. Your readers may not need your services today or tomorrow, but if you regularly touch bass with them, they WILL remember you when they need you!
3. It’s very inexpensive compared to printed newsletters or papers. You can reach thousands of subscribers for mere pence per person as opposed to taking on printing, posting and fulfilment costs.
4. Email newsletters encourage word-of-mouth advertising and make it easy for your subscribers to forward your email to others and also allows you to reach people you may not have reached any other way.
5. A good Email newsletter platform will provides track-able results giving you access to information such as who clicked what link, open rates and other really interesting data! Your Digital Products Unleashed
Monday, January 11th, 2010
The growth of digital product sales online has been growing steadily. This Christmas Amazon sold more eBook downloads than physical books for the first time ever. The Amazon Kindle was largely responsible as owners rushed to get content for their new e-readers.
Apple have also been heavily rumoured to be unveiling an e-reader, possibly called i-slate which could put digital products on the forefront of another online content revolution.
Digital products can be PDF formatted eBooks, audio podcast content, video content (training/how to etc) and the fact is you can sell as many as you like, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. No wonder there is a huge increase in work at home entrepreneurs, small businesses and indeed big businesses jumping on board the digital products revolution.
It doesn’t always have to be a complex software or mobile application. Many experts simply productize their knowledge to create an income outside of the services/time based model.
If you are a growing business you might want to consider adding digital products to your product lines or services. An example might be an accountancy who wants to give away a free eBook to their clients on ‘Preparing Your Tax Return’ or a Social Media Consultant selling clients video training about using Facebook.
Digital products don’t go bad and are mostly automated income once they are set-up and can compliment other products and services very nicely.
We have been helping many clients with their digital products, Graphic User interfaces (GUI) and video (both for training and actual product content) for many years.
If you have a great idea for your digital products, whether for video, audio, eBook, mobile or software applications Code 9 can help you realise your concept.
Click here for more information on GUI and Video How does your Website Convert?
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
Is your website actually doing its’ job? And what is its’ job?
These are questions that business owners with websites could focus on more when it comes to getting more leads, enquiries and sales.
Firstly, it may sound obvious but asking yourself what the main function of your website is can clarify how it is designed. In the past some clients have specified that they just want enquiries by phone or email to follow up on, some are selling an actual product and some just want a online presence, a brochure site.
Whether it is lead generation or actual sales, converting your visitors is a key part of the process, after all your website is a marketing tool.
Taking the example of 100 visitors a day, with 1 sale/lead gives a 1% conversion rate. You want to increase conversions to 2%, so based on this which is easier:
Increasing traffic/visitors to 200 a day? … or increasing conversion to 2%? (We’d vote for the latter)
A great tool for increasing your conversions is available from Google (who else?). Google website optimiser enables you to do split tests on your webpage.
So something as simple as your welcoming headline can be run through a A/B switch test where half your visitors are shown headline A and the other half headline B 
For example, if we were testing our marketing page we might also change some of the elements below as well as buttons, offers, text or anything else.
This will tell you what page elements brought in new customers!
Sometimes just changing a few words can bring unexpected results. If you can double your website conversion, your cost-per-acquisition (the cost of getting every new customer) would halve!
Google Analytics is another powerful tool giving you full tracking of your site visitors and can be used in conjunction with the website optimiser.
For example, if we were testing our marketing page we might also change some of the elements below as well as buttons, offers, text or anything else.
This will tell you what page elements brought in new customers!
Sometimes just changing a few words can bring unexpected results. If you can double your website conversion, your cost-per-acquisition (the cost of getting every new customer) would halve!
Google Analytics is another powerful tool giving you full tracking of your site visitors and can be used in conjunction with the website optimiser. Design Scoop
Friday, September 11th, 2009This Week…
Create interactive direct mail
Lindsey Whittle reveals how she created an innovative solution to promote the homeless charity Crisis, which won her a student D&AD Yellow Pencil. Read More .
21 Great Shots [And How They Were Taken]
“In our photography forums we’ve got a creative group of photographers – many who set themselves all kinds of photographic projects and then share how they took the shots.” Read More .
Washdays – Simon Neal Interviewed by The Reel
“The Rushes Soho Shorts awards were handed out to their talented filmmaker-recipients last month, so we’ve spent the last few weeks collating and curating a tidy DVD featuring (almost) all of the finalist films in full. Phew!! To celebrate this momentous occasion, we thought we’d catch up with Another Film Company director Simon Neal to ask him what the making of his Short Film category winning piece ‘Washdays’ was like”. Read More .
Brave new world – The Energy of new Middle Eastern Design
Pearlfisher’s Sophie Maxwell takes us on a design tour of Lebanon. Read More .
Creativity and Technology
Coming to London in November 2009! How do we remake media and creativity in a social world? Read More .Why your business needs New Media Marketing Now
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
Online marketing has developed way beyond using Google adwords to drive traffic to your website, although still an effective strategy, it by all means is not the only one.
Your business will need to adapt if it is to survive in the glut of online competition, keeping ahead of the curve is not just another marketing strategy, it is an essential strategy.
Once your business is online you need to drive targeted traffic, prospects and ultimately sales for your product or service to survive. New online entities such as video, podcasting and social media give a new and in my opinion welcome, dimension to the basic need for the lifeblood of the web, traffic.
Let’s start with Google, the most popular starting point of your customers. How do you get to the top of Google? Unfortunately if you are in a highly competitive business area this can be a mammoth task on its’ own. Google has traditionally ranked sites based on many different elements such as age, domain age, incoming links, location of web host, structured silos of your website, popularity and many many other factors.
Google has re-structured its’ algorithms to include their ‘other’ databases. The Google search engine consists of many separate databases of content. These are Google Images, Google News, Google Video, Google Local, Google Base, Google Blogs, Google Books and Google Code.
But the vast majority of users simply did not use these databases of information.
Universal search solves this problem by taking the results from these other databases, also known as ‘verticals’ and includes them in the main search results.
By integrating these elements into your overall strategy you stand to get your website visited via the backdoor through video, podcasts, images, blogs, satellite sites and many other pockets of sub-content. Social media also plays an increasingly important part – no it’s not just for teenagers – businesses and entrepreneurs and using it to network with their counterparts and their customers and their customers are starting to expect it!
Satellite content sites such as wetpaint, squidoo and hubpages all provide powerful backdoors to your main sales hub, providing it’s done right, as well as powerful back links in the eyes of Google.
When you have your website online and revving to go the work remember this the work has actually only just begun.
