A Picture’s Worth

So, it’s no secret that the hottest commodity in social networks right now is pictures.  From Instagram to Pinterest, pictures are becoming the fastest and most effective way to tell a story.  But does this craze translate into business and, if so, how can it help boost a business’ profile in the media and to key stakeholders?

Let’s look at Pinterest.  The photo-based phenomenon offers simple web-based pinboards of images for people to follow, “like” or create themselves.  The site had an estimated 17.8 million unique monthly visitors in February 2012 alone.

Whilst the site does not offer conventional opportunities for customers to buy products or services, the prospects are huge.  Popular images (with links back to the original source) can get repinned on hundreds of other users’ boards.  But how do businesses achieve maximum impact from the site?

It’s important to keep it simple – one of Pinterest’s main appeals is that it is easy to navigate.  Also, ensure that all Pinterest activity relates directly back to your main website – increasing traffic where businesses want it most.  Use other social media tools to promote your Pinterest activity, i.e. tweet a new pin, this ensures you are reaching more of your audience.

It is very important to remember that posting pins of only your products or services is quite transparent.  It is easy to spot a board that is too self-serving, so keeping a varied board that highlights different products or tips is a very useful marketing tool.

But the most important thing for a business to consider – is Pinterest a good fit?  It seems obvious, but not all social media tools apply to all businesses.  Pinterest tends to cater to those looking for recipes and design, for example.  If your business sells financial services, it may not be the best fit – one to consider before promoting your pinboard.

Thinking Outside the Box

This week, it has been reported that in 1900, an American civil engineer called John Elfreth Watkins made a number of predictions about what the world would be like in 2000. Maybe no big news, except for the fact that the majority of his predictions came true.

Over 100 years ago, John Elfreth Watkins wrote a feature for Ladies’ Home Journal, entitled What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years. The article said: “These prophecies will seem strange, almost impossible”.  And no doubt, at the time, they did.  He accurately predicted digital colour photography, mobile phones and television – all central to our world today.

Take Watkins prediction of mobile phones – this prediction came 15 years before Alexander Bell made the first call, so to predict mobile telephones was truly revolutionary.  It is this sort of revolutionary thinking which makes great people, well – great.  Okay, so Watkins himself didn’t invent the mobile phone, but he had enough foresight and vision to see further than what was right in front of him.

We need only look at Steve Jobs to see what thinking outside of the box can achieve for businesses.  He revolutionised the way we live our lives on a daily basis, simply by looking beyond the black and white.  It’s important for a business to employ hard working, motivated people, but it’s only when those people start to see the bigger picture and think creatively that truly great successes happen.

John Elfreth Watkins was ahead of his time in the way that he thought.  So was Steve Jobs.  The World Future Society says it best: “We invent the future through our actions and change it constantly”.  Nothing is set in stone and with the right people thinking inspired and inventive thoughts, a business’s success will see no bounds.

Measuring a blog’s success

These days, most businesses have a blog, and those that don’t – well, they are likely to be considering it. It’s a vital tool to help promote both a business and that business’s expertise in its industry. A blog allows for demonstration of thought leadership and the chance to actively engage with key stakeholders.

While all of this is true, a blog is pretty much useless if its performance is not being measured. Writing a blog a week may well be bringing in the viewers, but if you aren’t measuring, quite simply, you don’t know. So what are the best methods for measuring a blog’s success? Here are our tips:

Measure Visitors

It sounds obvious, but a blog is only as good as the amount of people reading it, so you need to be measuring. It is important to monitor the different posts to see where improvement is needed and which have been the most successful. If the most viewed blog posts all follow the same themes, this is a formula worth sticking to. Perhaps a video garnered the most attention, so incorporate that into posts going forward.

Measure Feedback

A blog doesn’t have to (and most likely won’t) result in a sale, but it can and should result in conversation. The whole idea of a blog is to provide a platform where your business can engage with existing or potential customers, industry bodies or the media. The more comments, feedback and questions a post receives, the more it shows the blog is spreading. Therefore, so is your business. Ask questions in your blog, open the conversation up for discussion. Just be sure to monitor the feedback and reply to any comments.

Measure Subscribers/Followers
Admittedly, it is hard to gain subscribers, but this is a great measure of success for a blog. The more followers, the more people who trust what you have to say and are, more than likely, spreading the word to others. Measuring how many people follow your blog provides a solid indicator of the quality of your blog and the impact it’s having.

While this is just a brief overview, it should help to understand the benefits of a blog and how those benefits can be exploited for maximum effect. The more information you have on how, when, why and what on your blog is being viewed, the better you can make it in the future and the more positive impact it will have on your business.

Twitter for Business: Myths Busted

Who would have thought only a few years back that we would all be sitting here broadcasting to the world and its mother what we ate for lunch? Who would have thought we would have the outlet to do so and who would have thought anyone would care? Flash forward and we are obsessed with Twitter. We use it to publicise ourselves and our work, we use it to get information (whether that be actual worthy information or, perhaps, what someone else deems worthy), and sometimes we use it merely to kill some time. Whatever our reasons, Twitter can no longer be ignored, but certain myths about the best way to use it for your business can.

Myth 1 – The longer you are on Twitter, the more influence you have

FALSE! No one cares if you joined three years ago or three weeks, so long as what you are saying is interesting and valuable. Businesses joining Twitter now are not late if they are engaging with their followers and showing them 140 characters that no one else in the industry can. People will take notice and will follow – regardless of if you joined in 2009 or just this month.

Myth 2 – The more you say, the better

FALSE! In terms of the workplace, as exciting as it may be to you to talk about what your office ate for lunch, the truth is, your followers are probably more interested in what your office thinks about its industry. Your followers want to know what events you will be attending and what you are doing to stand out from your competition. They do not want to know if you all need a coffee as it’s been “one of those days”. The truth is you need to think about what you yourself would want to read with your precious time. We live in a world where self promotion is easy and self indulgence is even easier, but if you are using a social network to get ahead, promotion should beat indulgence at all times. This means 3,000 tweets a day are not necessary and, if anything, a hindrance that could result in people clicking “unfollow” just to stop hearing about how your coffee machine is broken.

Myth 3 – Following celebrities will make you a celebrity

FALSE! Okay, this should go without saying, but if you are a business, it’s probably unlikely that following a celebrity is really going to bring in a large amount of interest for you (unless the celebrity is part of the cast of The Only Way is Essex and your business is in fake tans). On the whole, you would be better spending your time finding relevant people to follow. This can include important members of your industry, thought leaders, companies, and, most importantly, potential customers. It’s all fine and good to follow people that you find amusing or tell the best Twitter jokes, but if they aren’t going to buy your product, they aren’t the people you really want to engage with.

FACT!
At the end of the day, as with everything in business, Twitter should be about adding value. You would not call up a potential customer and spend half an hour telling nonsensical jokes. Fine, put the odd joke. Afterall, it’s important to show some personality (just as it would be on the phone). But just like you would on the phone, you should use your time on Twitter effectively – talk to the right people, promote yourself in a professional capacity, and tell your customers what the benefits are to them. People are busy – even 140 characters can be too much to read if time does not allow, so make sure that your 140 characters are saying something useful and it will be irrelevant how long you have been on Twitter or whether you have Stephen Fry following you – you will have customers who are interested. And we all know, the right interest leads to sales. Which is why you are on Twitter in the first place, right?

The Value of a Public Relations Stunt

Back in 1903, the philosophy for any given newspaper was that it is not good enough to simply report the news, but to also help create the news being reported. With this in mind, Geo Lefevre, a journalist for L’Auto magazine in France, came up with the idea that a race around France on bikes would generate some interest in his publication as well as stir up some headline grabbing stories. Thus, Tour de France was born—a PR stunt that not only put L’Auto’s competitors out of business, but is also a tradition still very much alive today.
The PR Stunt—a way to drum up media and public interest in a strange or sensational way and create recognition for the brand or product with which the stunt is associated. Sometimes risky, as reaction (whether positive or negative) can never be guaranteed, but in these hard-going economic times, a public relations stunt may be exactly the kind of light-hearted campaign people will engage with.
In 2009, Tourism Queensland took an advert to recruit an “island caretaker” willing to spend six months exploring the land and waters around the Great Barrier Reef for £70,000. The post, billed as “the best job in the world” would involve the successful applicant moving to a rent-free three-bedroom villa, complete with pool, on Hamilton Island. This stunt was hailed as one of the most effective in recent PR history as it had the whole world talking about Queensland.
Of course not all clients are as glamorous as Queensland and not all stunts will result in the consumer winning “the best job in the world”. What this campaign does demonstrate though, as did the Tour de France over 100 years earlier, is that people like interaction. A product or brand becomes a whole lot more exciting when a sensation is attached to it; be that a holiday, a sporting event, or even just a man submerged in a glass tank filled with two million skittles.