Apple's Swift U-turn

Many businesses, particularly the larger corporate giants, allow protests and calls for change to their systems and policies to fall on deaf ears, as it serves the company themselves a purpose to follow what might be otherwise viewed as an unpopular tact. When a minority complain, it is easy for these large companies to sweep the negative feedback under the rug, and continue to run their business gradually further down the path of decreasing popularity.

In the news it has been reported that Taylor Swift took to social media and wrote an open letter to Apple, regarding Apple Music’s (which launches at the end of the month) intentions to offer subscribers a three-month free trial, with artists receiving no payment during this period. Within 24 hours, an executive of Apple Music announced the decision to change policy, and pay the artists during the trial period. Here is an example of a huge company choosing not to do the easy thing and continue with what benefitted themselves, but instead chose to listen to its’ audience and make a change to keep them happy.

The point to this, is that Apple acted rapidly to address the complaints of Swift and other artists, in an effort to maintain the reputation of generosity and progressiveness that are strongly associated with their brand. Their speed of response impressively flipped a negative brand image into a positive one, restoring and enhancing the brand’s reputation effectively.

It also highlights the power of social media, as an open letter raises the awareness of a wider audience to the issue. By making the public aware of her grievance, Swift capitalised on the reach of social media to encourage a response from Apple, who would otherwise be open to further criticism.

So how is this related to smaller businesses? A few complaints here and there are easily ignored, but gradually stack up over time without much attention. It is also important to not only embrace the capacity of social media to address your audience, but also to hear their feedback. By burying our heads in the sand and not addressing customer concerns, contracts and clients could be lost once their patience has run out.

Listen to your critics, embrace their feedback, and act upon it; for the good of your brand and your future.

What’s the score - Online Marketing Update

If you’re involved in online marketing you’ll know that the way things work changes on an almost continual basis. Google continues to dominate the search engine market, with Google Panda and Penguin both making a big impact on the way websites are ranked.  Then there was Hummingbird that was slipped in last year, and that's not likely to be the end of it. So we thought it would be useful to look at the latest trends and expert thinking.

Why Content continues to be King
When all is said and done, there is no getting away from the fact Google has to generate the most relevant results in order to maintain its high ranking position in the search engine industry. For this reason Google rewards websites with high quality content. Generating high quality content continues to be a major challenge for any business or organisation looking to increase visitors to their website and when you read what Google says counts as a high value site, you’ll understand that content isn’t just about the occasional update to your website.

 It’s been reported that Google has started to boost the rankings of web pages that provide the most accurate and thorough answers to people’s questions. The Hummingbird algorithm means that Google now looks at the context of search enquiries, rather than specific keywords, so you need to research and understand the search terms that are being used and address them in articles if you want to achieve higher page rankings.

So what’s our advice:

• Research the questions being asked and select those that fall in line with your objectives
• Produce targeted content on a regular basis
• Broadcast content across a range of digital media: social media networks, blogs and video websites

Relevance on Social Media
The link between your website content and social media platforms will continue to become stronger and even more relevant:

While Twitter and Facebook are likely to continue holding the top slot as the most popular social media platforms, the likes of Google+, LinkedIn and Pinterest are also growing.

Talking about what Google+ is all about, Google’s UK Head of Agency, Matt Bush, has said that Google+ is not about “connecting you with your friends” but is about “trying to offer people the information they want at the right time and searching for information or people that you care about or take information from, when you want it most. That's the overarching strategy.”

Our advice:

• Research if your market (buyers and influencers) are using social media platforms and which ones are their preferred choice
• To avoid disillusionment, make sure you set objectives and measurement values to monitor results on a regular basis
• Use the social media platforms that your market is using

Optimising for Mobile
It’s no secret that the growth of smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices giving access to the internet is growing – and fast. Making sure your website is created for mobile use and visibility is now not only a given but essential, as search engines such as Google include this as part of its website ranking criteria.

Our advice:

• Ensure your website is responsive to mobile technology. It may be more appropriate to design a separate site for mobile visitors
• Research how mobile users are interacting with your site. Is it different to desktop visitors? Google Analytics can help you identify how visitors are arriving and using your website.
• Mobile users are used to interacting, so make sure your website provides plenty of relevant opportunities to be engaged and interact
• Don’t forget email and text messages, both of which high on the list of mobile users activities. Emails should also be optimised for viewing on mobile devices

Our Top 5 Social Media Tools

If you are actively using social media tools, you should also be monitoring how well they are working for you and whether there are things you should be doing to get better results.
We are regular users of particular social media tools that help us to manage our social media
activity, helping to save time, and to give us information that helps us to Tweet / Post / Update more
effectively. 

This is a list of the tools we use and have found to be especially easy and helpful. They are all
currently free to use, although this could change in the future, and some also offer a paid-for version which provides a more extensive range of benefits.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a management tool that allows you to manage multiple Social Media accounts in one
place. It supports Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn and provides a choice of what is
displayed in each ‘stream’.
The basic free version allows you to have up to 5 social networks streams and two RSS feeds per
Hootsuite account, although if you have more than one email address you can create more than one Hootsuite account.
HootSuite is great for scheduling posts, allowing you to include a photo and automatically shortening any links. You can choose to share the post in one or more networks and you can share the post immediately or at a scheduled date and time.

TweetDeck

An alternative Twitter-only management tool that has the advantage of no limit to the number of
Twitter accounts you can include.  The facility to schedule Tweets is included, as is adding an image.
TweetDeck does not automatically shorten link URLs; this would have to be done using a link
shortener tool such as Bit.ly.

Social Mention

Social Mention is a real time search engine tracking tool that allows you to monitor yourself, your
company or other topics on social networks, blogs, bookmarks and comments.
It also provides a snapshot overview of the Sentiment Score: how positive, neutral or negative your search term scores.  You are given a list of Top Keywords associated with your search brand or term, who the Top Users are and also Top Hashtags.

Tweriod

Timing is everything and Tweriod helps you make the most of Twitter by letting you know the best
time to tweet, by tracking when your Followers are active on Twitter. The reports produced are easy
to understand and can really help to make a difference to getting seen on Twitter.

Simply Measured

Simply Measured does a great job of pulling data on owned channels for both your brand and its
competitors. It is also one of the few tools able to report on multiple social channels, including
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. Try a free report before signing up to the 14-day free
trial or a paid account.

If you'd like to find out more, sign up to one of our bite-size seminars and workshops on social media topics. Social Media workshops

Social Media Tips – Using Twitter to encourage conversation

Twitter is a great tool for engaging in conversations and commentary about events of all sorts, whether they are taking place online or offline. Setting a hashtag (#) allows people to follow a campaign, event or speech remotely and is a great way to spread the word, even when in a business-to-business application.