Integrating On and Offline Marketing - follow up

Surprise, surprise. As soon as I wrote the blog article about supporting offline activities with online tools and vice versa, I receive this through the post from Starbucks.

And what a great example it is.

Starbucks have an event this weekend, the Starbucks VIA Taste Challenge,to celebrate the launch of their instant coffee all over the UK and they're inviting people into their local Starbucks.

I received this letter, along with some free Starbucks VIA through the post yesterday (perfectly timed 4 days before the event). As you can hopefully see, the P.S at the bottom is encouraging people to visit both their website and their facebook pages for more information.

This encourages those who already know about their online presence to join in the conversation and creates awareness for those that don’t.

Naturally I took a look (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=340304474474) and as you'll see, there's a great community already discussing the event, where they'll be going to take part as well as various other details.

And, thanks to facebook’s events page, Starbucks know that over 30,000 of their 306,000 fans will be attending across the weekend.

Along with their use of the pre pay Starbucks card, Starbucks continues to enjoy a great dialogue with its customers and specifically target their marketing accordingly.

Mine's an americano...

Integrating On and Offline Marketing

By Jon Paget

It amazes me that with social media continuing to grow in popularity and starting to play a central role in organisations’ marketing strategy, so many companies are missing out on the possibilities of integrating their various on and offline marketing campaigns (across various channels).

Cliff Findlay, a friend of mine from Latitude Solutions (www.latitudesolutions.co.uk), calls it cross media integration, which I rather like.

But whatever you'd like to call it, most marketers would agree that a mix of on and offline activities work best reaching different audiences and working in different ways. They’d also be likely to agree that offline activities should be supported online and vice versa.

So why are so many companies investing in both but not maximising (or integrating in Cliff’s words) the potential gains?

Perhaps it’s due to the ‘old ways’ of thinking being applied to new marketing tools, perhaps it’s fear or perhaps it’s something else.

The Skinny Cow (www.skinnycow.co.uk) is a great example of a new and successful brand using and integrating on and offline marketing.

Both the website and facebook pages have some great interactive features, encouraging conversation and supporting an online community. It’s also very easy to share content and introduce others. And with 45,000+ fans it’s very successful.

However, what inspired this post and caught my eye happened last week. I was flicking through a daily paper and saw some print advertising for The Skinny Cow Hot Chocolate. The advert promoted its facebook page so I took a look(http://www.facebook.com/skinnycowuk?v=app_6009294086).

I then wondered how many other companies were doing the same. So I searched that newspaper and found no other advert linking to any online promotions or campaigns. I tried several magazines. Nothing. Billboards. Yea you’ve guessed it. Nothing.

Of course there are other companies integrating their marketing but they’re a tiny minority. This week marketing profs (latest research) have published several items of research indicating social media is fast becoming pivotal to marketing strategies – if my observations are anything to go on, many companies, both big and small, are yet to realise the possibilities.

My next post – Why the industry isn’t helping!

Is Google stumped? The user generated content headache

By Jon Paget

We all know people we trust and respect. For instance, most of us know someone to call if our car breaks down or have someone to ask advice if we can’t decide where to go on holiday. We all have our own little network of experts.

Of course with the development of online platforms (Google Knol sticks in my mind at this precise moment) encouraging user generated content, it's never been easier to share our views online.

The implications of this are great for all users (both big and small).

I think most of us would recognise that hype generated online by word of mouth is alive and well (I’m sure you receive lots of recommendations to read, view or attend something every week just like I do) and the more we trust the person recommending us something, the more likely we are to follow up on it.

Essentially, we’ve started to use our respected personal and professional networks to filter content for us –helping to ensure we only digest information we find valuable.

However, we don’t rely on this exclusively and search engines are a daily tool for many of us. Google, for example, had over 6% of the global traffic online last year.

As we move towards an online environment with real time information (being drawn from an ever growing number of sources) being used as search result criteria, it’ll be interesting to see how Google (and the other engines) differentiate between user generated content, particularly content that’s generated on multi-user platforms.

As we start to see this develop (Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google has told us we’ll see this in 2010) there will be major changes to how organisations view the opportunities online.

Want to know more? See my next post on the user generated headache.

2010 is the year of…user generated content

By Jon Paget


For the past couple of months I’ve heard and read a lot about what 2010 will bring us. Some say it’ll be the year mobile technologies truly take off, others state the same about cloud computing. B2B Social Media and improved SM monitoring has also been mentioned…


…And there are some interesting products being developed.

However, whilst I believe it’s likely that all of these technologies will develop and we’ll see them introduced on a greater scale, I believe this will follow traditional rates of adoption (which, for the Internet, is still incredibly quick). It goes without saying then that I don’t think this year will be a defining year for any one technology or platform.

But, user generated content is posing some really interesting questions.

For me the questions to be asked over the next year or so will revolve around content, how we’ll manage ever increasing amounts of information and, most crucially, how we and the search engines will be able to find good quality, value adding and reliable user generated content - in real time.

Next week’s post – Is Google stumped? The user generated content headache…

Would you enter an F1 race with a Go-kart? (Optimising keywords and Google’s own keyword tool)

By Jon Paget

So you need to re-develop or create a new website and are eager to get that much coveted first page Google ranking. But, just like the cars in a F1 race, you need the right mechanics supporting you in order to compete.

After all, there are more and more websites with which to compete for the top, most lucrative spots. So don’t crash and burn at the first corner, take the time to get your keywords (and then your content right). With a little time you might just find your site in pole position.

But before we begin I should clarify something. The title of ‘optimising your keywords’ is a little misleading. Especially if you’re expecting this to be a similar process to optimising a site’s Meta title or Meta description (see previous posts).

Why is this? Well it’s because selecting the right keywords is one of the most important tasks that you’ll undertake when establishing optimising a website.

Researching the right keywords is not rocket science but there is a process which should be followed if you want the best results. There’s a lot of different software out there which works through this process (most agencies/SEO experts will use something like this) but there are some great free and easy to use tools to get started.

Google’s own keyword tool (type ‘keyword tool’ into Google and click the first result) is as good a place as any to start…

If you currently have a list of keywords from an existing site or have some initial ideas, simply type them in and click go. If you are starting from scratch type in a couple of related words that you would use personally to find whatever it is you’re attempting to identify keywords for.

The default settings of the keyword tool will then fetch results for the keywords you yourself entered as well as some keywords that Google suggests may be similar to those you entered (this can be turned off by selecting ‘filter my results’ and checking the box ‘Don't show ideas for new keywords’).

Either way you’ll then (hopefully) be presented with some results. Here is a brief explanation of the three columns you’ll be presented with:

Advertiser competition: this gives an indication of how strong the competition is for that keyword or phrase. The more full the bar (the more shaded) the greater the level of competition. If it’s completely full you’re likely to be facing a lot of other companies wishing to be at the top of Google. If this is the case you have two options. You might decide it’s worth pursuing (this will be dependent on other keywords available to you) in which case you’ll need to have a lot of patience and a very strong SEO strategy.

The second option would be to move on to another keyword that doesn’t quite have the same level of competition.

(Of course there are instances where opportunities are present despite a seemingly high level of competition – but that’s for a different post!)

Local Search Volume: this is the number of searches for that keyword or phrase over the previous month. The ‘local’ search volume refers to the country in which you’ve specified (e.g.: google.co.uk – Great Britain)

Global Search Volume: this is the average number of global searches for this keyword/phrase taken from the last 12 months. (It is possibly to have a higher local search volume than Global search volume.)

Of course when you’re refining your keywords there are a variety of factors you might wish to consider. These include:

• Your timeline for success (if you need results quickly you’ll want to pay more attention to a low level of advertiser competition)
• Just because a keyword has x thousand searches every month, this does not mean you’ll see all of these searches turn into visits, even if you’re ranked No.1 (suggested figures are that 25-40% of searches will visit your site if you’re ranked within the top 2 results in Google)
• How many keywords will you be optimising your site for? If it’s five your choices will vary greatly than if you need to choose dozens.
• What is the competition doing? Is your level of competition likely to change?
• Will you be able to create quality content that supports the optimisation of a page’s keywords?

Of course as good as the Google keyword tool is it can’t tell you lots of important information such as specifics about the competition or which sites are performing well for individual keywords (and most importantly how they’re achieving their success).

However the above should get you started and give you a basic understanding of what the process is and what’s involved.

It’s like your VHS player; obsolete. Or is it?

By Jon Paget

Optimising your Meta description

MySpace (facebook), MiniDisk players (iPod), Katie Price (tbc); the list of things that became unfashionable or were replaced by something more desirable during the noughties is long if nothing else. But in terms of SEO techniques, is the optimisation of a page’s meta description one of them?

Well in a word, no.

It’s true that Google and some of the other search engines no longer use the meta description as part a site's assessment. However it still represents an important part of your on-page SEO.

You may not have noticed but you often see a website’s meta description every time you use Google. This is because Google often displays a site’s meta description under the first line of each search result (Google can use other sources for this text).

But why optimise it?

Well Google can (and does) use randomly selected text from a page that matches the search criteria, often choosing to display text that includes the chosen keywords of your search.

So if you don’t optimise your meta description you run the risk of Google choosing the text displayed in the search results for you.

And what’s the problem with this you might ask? The answer lies in the fact that many of us use this text to determine if we’ll click on a link or not when searching for something. As users we often determine a site's relevance from this text (if a certain page found in the search results matches what we’re looking for).

So if the text is clear, relevant, engaging and includes a call to action you’re more likely to encourage a click-through. As a result; much more traffic to your website.

If you don’t optimise what’s displayed, not even the mighty Google can help you.

Death to 2005; SEO for 2010

By Jon Paget

2005 was a great year. Gorillaz were top of the charts and the UK was enjoying a booming economy (seems like a long time ago doesn't it). Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) companies had already started to promise the world (a trend that unfortunately continues) and keywords were crucial to Google's assessment of your site.

And as we approach 2010 things have certainly changed. Social media has greatly influenced this year's Christmas No.1 (Rage Against the Machine) and we're still in a recession. So, 5 years on and a lot has changed around the world; including SEO.

Over the next three weeks I'll be reviewing three of the most (historically) important on-page SEO factors to determine what you should and shouldn't be spending your time optimising.

Part 1 starts with the HTML Title (Title Tags)

What is a title tag?

This is the string of words that sit at the top of a web browser and, in windows explorer, are written in white font on the blue browser bar. See below.

So should you optimise your page title?

Yes. It remains the case that the page title is important to on-page SEO. In fact it's still one of the most important factors the search engines will use to assess relevance and establish a ranking.

How to optimise your title tags?

Here are some useful guidelines:

• Ensure your most important keywords are included at the beginning of the title (decreasing importance placed on every word after the first word)
• Try to keep your title to 70 characters so make sure every word you include adds value
• Keep punctuation, capital letters and grammar consistent on all of your page titles
• Add geographic locations - can be a good way of getting fast results (if applicable)
• Don't stuff your title with all your keywords*

*Remember that each page of optimised content should be specific. Very specific. Don't water your page's relevance down by stuffing too many keywords in it.

Next week: Part 2 - Optimising your meta description.