PTAT – Remember This…
May 21, 2012 at 2:21 pm
Interesting article sourced via @markjhenry which also confirms much of what Dena Walker was saying at her recent Refresh Dublin talk… when you’re next looking at PTAT (People Talking About This) remember that the figure contains initial liking; liking specific content on a page, posting to a wall; commenting; sharing a post or other content from the page; answering a question; photo tagging; check-ins or RsVPing to an event.
This study by Karen Nelson-Field and Jennifer Taylor stripped out the initial likes to see what the real level of PTAT was for 200 of the top brands on Facebook over a period of 6 weeks (in late 2011).
What they found was that:
- Less than 0.5% of fans engage with the brand
- Only 1 brand scored engagement of over 2%
- 20 brands reached 1%
The results, showing very limited levels of engagement, are predictable to those familiar with empirical patterns of buyer behaviour. Consumers don’t love their brands; rather, they are polygamously loyal to a small group of offerings in the category (Goodhardt et al, 1984). In effect, we are loyal switchers rather than brand loyals (Uncles et al, 1995, Ehrenberg et al, 2004).
You can read the article here:
Facebook_Fan Engagement WARC 4.12
Pinterest Infographic (Good One)
May 8, 2012 at 11:46 am
Just getting my thoughts together on Pinterest for a talk I’ve to give to a group who market to women, aged 25-44. This is a good up-to-date infographic that I thought worth sharing, sourced from Tamba via Quora.
Sisterly Advice For SEO
May 4, 2012 at 9:40 am
My sister in Australia got in touch recently asking for my advice about SEO. I no longer do SEO but I was able to give her good advice on how to choose somebody. I’m sharing the tips below:
Getting your site highly ranked on Google is called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It’s a very tricky part of internet marketing and very labour intensive if it’s done well, so it can tend to be quite expensive. Anyone who tells you they can get your site ranked using software, or quickly, or if they are very cheap, walk away. You don’t want to mess with Google – if they catch you trying to trick them into ranking your site, they can blacklist you which is a fate worse than death. Usually you can expect it to take up 3-6 months to get a good ranking.
So my first message is – you won’t be able to do this effectively by yourselves. You need to engage a local SEO company to do this for you. I say local because they are more likely to be in tune with the language and search terms that your consumers will use. Even when I’m providing Internet Marketing training, I’m very clear on this – you can’t learn how to do it yourself in a day’s traning, it is more of an art than a skill to get a site number 1 on Google. The rules of the game change all the time.
Assuming you engage a firm to help you – what you should be looking for when making your selection:
- Ask them to give you a list of sites they have optimised / ranked. Go and search for those business on Google or Bing. But don’t search for the company name, anyone can get a listing on their own name, go and search for them using a keyword that a service user might use. If you find them, great. If not, walk away.
- When they describe their process – they should be using a mix of on page optimisation and off page link building. Hosting matters too.
- They should involve you in the keyword selection process. Don’t go with the first set of words they come back with – they will be the words that are easiest for them to rank you on. You need to be ranked on the words your clients will use. It’s about reaching a compromise between the two because obviously you can’t expect to get a number 1 ranking on the keyword “therapy”.. but you might be able to get a number 1 on “family therapy sydney” It’s about getting into the head of your consumer and coming up with the words that they would use – you are best placed to kick that off, your SEO company can expand that list and fill it out and include variations, and spelling mistakes, and other brand names, etc to get you a good keyword selection list.
I hope that helps.
Tags: search engine optimisation, seo ireland
Calling All Enterprise Ireland Clients….
May 3, 2012 at 2:51 pm
If you’d like a little digital action, strong on strategy and ideas, with lots of lovely social media piled on top, know that we’re now a trusted Enterprise Ireland consultant. This means that if you are an EI client, you can get us – at a subsidised rate to what you’d normally pay.
As with anything, some terms & conditions apply – but they’re not nasty ones.
Give us a shout. Spread the word. Tell your buddies who are EI clients who’d love to open up new markets using digital marketing and social media …
I Love It When A Plan Comes Together
May 1, 2012 at 8:40 am
Publicpolicy.ie launches today. 22 minutes ago in fact. This is the result of a few months hard work by a handpicked team of talented people and typifies the kind of quality that Brightspark’s website broking approach can deliver. I believe that the best websites are produced by breaking up the tasks into their component parts. Let the designers design. Let coders code. Don’t dare use the same designer for print as you would for web! And work with talented people who will make you look good. That’s the approach I’ve been working with for years and this latest site Publicpolicy.ie is a great example of what happens when you get good people on the job – and the client trusts you. That last bit is very important. In my experience, it’s only the most confident in their knowledge people that can admit to not knowing how to doing something and are smart enough to get good advice and use it. (You will notice no dropdown nav bars in here, and content that is user focused from the start… board pics are there, but in second place where they should be).
Publicpolicy is a great initiative, funded by (my heroes) Atlantic Philantrophies. If you’ve never read this book, buy it today and read it over the bank holiday weekend, it’s inspiring. Publicpolicy exists because in Ireland we don’t get access to a lot of unbiased information:
- We get Government pushed information, which has an agenda
- We have the Media, whose job it is to create spin
- Now we have objective unbiased, agenda-free presentation of facts – publicpolicy.ie
The Board of the think tank are an illustrious group of thinkers.
I was asked to present and keep them informed of progress, and I was genuinely excited to be going in to a group of people, some of whose words I studied back in college, and talking to them as a professional with knowledge. I can safely say, hand on heart, that this was an enjoyable project from start to finish, with no difficulties, or conflict along the way. A joy!
The team I put together who all deserve credit are:
- Started out back before Christmas by getting in Darkhorse to help us choose a name. Without them we’d still be called the Irish Fiscal Policy Research Centre, which just doesn’t have the same ring to it as publicpolicy.ie
- We got Koh on the case to create the visual identity and all the graphic design.
- Bohoe who photographed the Board on a cold winter’s day.
- Modus won the web design tender and were a pleasure to work with. No job too big or small. A tendency to delight with the ease in which they facilitated my last minute requests and desires.
- Raic Productions as ever, the most professional and brilliant editors – they’re the ones to thank for the videos.
- And me on the rest. Architecture. Content. Project Management. Email Marketing. And training – we had a session on social media to see if it is ‘for us’. And the team at Publicpolicy are all clued up in how to manage this baby and keep her looking beautiful.
We know the site works and achieves its goals. Go on over and check it out – choose one of the content areas that interests you and have a little browse. This weekend, when you’re in the pub or at a barbeque, you will find yourself contributing to the debates on water / property tax / the state this country is in, with an informed voice. People will stop what they’re doing and turn around to look at you – Angelus style.
As with anything we’ve been working on for so long – we are dying to hear what you think of it. Please feel free to comment here below. Or contact me on Twitter (@maryrose), or comment on the vids.
Is It Just Me? Or…
April 27, 2012 at 9:29 am
Is there a lot of sloppy marketing going on?
Yesterday I saw a pay per click ad for a walking festival in Leenane with a link to Delphi Resort & Spa – which I love, so I’d find it very easy to justify a stay there due to the walking! But when I followed the link there is nowhere on the site that mentions walking, let alone a festival! So Delphi are spending money on Adwords that are generating a conversion of zero. I emailed them to let them know. 24 hours later, no reply and no additions to the website.
This morning I received an ezine from Kildare Village. Now their marketing is usually pretty good. Today had a feature on accessories and a competition to win some. I watched their video – which was really stylishly produced, and I was really engaged with it… at the end it wasn’t clear to me what to do? I went to the site and there’s the video again, but there’s no clue as to how to enter their competition.
Is it just me or is there a lot of sloppy marketing going on?
Tags: delphi resort and spa, kildare village marketing fail
Really Innovative Use Of YouTube
April 23, 2012 at 12:41 pm
This little YouTube experience really brightened up my Monday morning! Thanks to Valentina for sharing it. It’s the most innovative use of YouTube I’ve seen in a very long time. Type any year (literally) and see what happens…1912, 1939, 1971… all spot on!
Don’t We Look Pretty!
March 29, 2012 at 11:32 am
Tourism Ireland Facebook Pages are now sporting rather fetching new designs, across all markets and in a variety of languages. App covers all updated. Posts pinned. Rubs hands together… another job well done!
Smaller clients are also being attended to with the greatest of loving care. My favourite is these guys:
The interesting thing about Christophes Cafe in Smithfield is that their market is largely made up of the legal profession. They may not be the most willing to be liking, sharing, commenting, but boy do they take up the offers in person! Goal is to increase footfall and reach. Tick! Another happy customer.
Tags: christophes cafe smithfield, Facebook Pages Timeline, timeline for pages, tourism ireland social media
A Typical Day Using Irish Corporate Websites
March 28, 2012 at 2:38 pm
Having an admin day today… I’ve spotted not 1, not 2, but 3 shocking mistakes on Irish corporate websites. Is the Irish corporate online identity in a state of disrepair or am I just unlucky? This is not the first time this has happened.
1. Chill Insurance
Try getting a household quote using the form on the home page. I tried this in 3 browsers and continue to get the “is sublet is required” box that, apart from being bad English, I am obliged but unable to select. Gave up and tried elsewhere.
2. Vodafone
Less glaringly obvious but a sign of an uncared for web page. Can you spot the typo here?
3. Magnet
And of course, MyMagnet.ie, the customer portal, still doesn’t work on Firefox. This has been the case since last year.
Such lack of attention to detail is enough to make you give up and go outdoors and enjoy the beautiful sunshine….
Saying Thank You
March 22, 2012 at 9:11 am
I was having a conversation the other day about saying thank you, and how, in many cases, I’ve introduced sometimes significant amounts of business to people, and they never even say thank you – let alone send something to show their appreciation. In all my 9 years of doing business as Brightspark I’ve only ever received a thank you card ONCE for making an introduction that turned into work. And that was from Gerrard Tannem at Islandbridge.
Apart from the example above, in my experience, it’s usually other women in business who will remember to acknowledge leads, or introductions made. It’s more of a man thing to forget…
Was discussing this with another woman the other day and she made the interesting assertion that this could be related to the fact that women can sometimes hold themselves back and don’t believe in themselves as much as men…therefore that men don’t say thank you because they have a certain inbuilt arrogance and think that they deserved the work anyway.
What do you think?
It’s also about expectation… if you try to surpass people’s expectations all the time in your work, then you’re unlikely to get a thank you. My sister has recently made a decision to stop working 12-14 hour days in her new job. We had a conversation about how, if you’re the person who always does the long hours, when you do go to work a regular 9 or 10 hour day, people often look at you as if to say “you’re knocking off early!!”. It’s just not acknowledged.
In the meantime, I also believe that you get back what you put out there, and while all this was on my mind, look what landed in my inbox yesterday! Thanks Heidi!
Tags: thank you
