What’s the story with blogging

We often feel the need to explain to our clients the difference between having a news module on their site and a Blog which can be integrated within their site or located on a separate domain.

As real time content has now made its way into the Google search results, this conversation is happening more often. Read this article from the 7th of December 09 from The Official Google Blog, Relevance meets the real-time web.

Thus we thought to share you before the New Year, what we consider to be the top ten benefits of blogging. We will also share our thoughts on how to blog, what to write and how to measure ROI.

Sound good ? then read on...

Starter for ten on the benefits of blogging

1. Enables you to build your following into a community, your community.

2. Allows you to talk is a conversational manner – “One to One” rather than “One to Many” .

3. Increases your coverage in the search result pages.

4. Gives you an opportunity to be a thought leader / influencer.

5. You can submit your blog to separate blogging directories increasing reach further.

6. People may ask you to blog on their blog and vice versa – doesn’t generally happen with News content (One to many and no sharing or conversing opportunities).

7. Provides new opportunities to communicate with your target markets.

8. Allows your team to be involved with your online presence, inviting team members to join in with stories / blogs.

9. You can blog from your phone.

10. Encourage visitors to your site, increase sales, increase engagement etc etc.

The Barrier to blogging

The biggest barrier to most is “what do I write about” and “how do I blog”. So we thought to share with you some further tips, giving an example of a landscape gardener setting up a blog.

What would a landscape gardener write about on their blog?

About them – who they are (who is writing the blog), what they like (Classic Films, The Arts), what they blog about (Landscape Gardening, Design, Colour partners).

In general they would write Blog posts on information that will be useful to others examples below:

Show people with images what they have created (Landscaped gardens).

• Explain why they placed lavender in with sage during their latest project.


• Provide advice and invite questions to equip people to succeed with their own landscape garden plans.


• Promote local landscape gardening groups.


• Share their personal thoughts of recent visit to XY garden in the UK or design exhibition.


• Review events they attended, which they had attended.


• Discuss a new TV show you saw (Garden or Design related to keep focus), your opinions.


• Engage readers with an event happening at their company, or perhaps encourage conversation over at another blog.

To sum up the key conversation areas are:

Show, Explain, Advise, Promote others, Share, Review, Discuss, Engage.

How to write the blog?

This part is simple as you as you simply: “Write it as you say it” ie: in a conversational tone. No one is really going to come to your blog and critique your grammar, however if this is important to you then ask a copywriter to check each post (we partner with a copywriting service for larger contracts).

Many people forget with the web you are actually talking to ONE person not MANY people, write the blog as if you were conversing. This is more engaging for the reader and also saves time too as you don’t need to be formal. Where possible let the text flow. Also consider non professional gardeners visiting your blog if mentioning Latin terms, mention English too. Don’t expect everyone to know what MULCHING is? (See the Wiki Pedia Guide to Mulch here)

How will this impact my business?

This is the big question.

To help measure ROI it is important that before writing any post consider the post’s objective, ie: do you want to encourage sales (of new type of plant? or service?) or is it to engage with your audience (your thoughts for school garden landscape competition) or do you want to write something that will be shared with many/retweeted/bookmarked to improve the ranking of your blog and site.

• Reaching a sale on your site – write the post towards a call to action
  
• Engaging audience – ask the readers questions
  
• Bookmarking & Retweets – Write something compelling, funny, new that people will want to share.

Blog posts can simply be fun too eg: It was my birthday today, look at how many pieces of my cake are left, there are only 4 people working here! Let people know you are human.
You can throw in the odd bit of fun as long as you say to yourself, what is the goal of this? could you perhaps promote the local bakery in which the cake came from? With the goal of showing you care about / are involved in local community, maybe! What does this do? Well it builds trust with your consumer base as it shows you are open, honest and most importantly approachable.

Seeding out your content

Tip 1: Share blog post within your networks via RSS feeds, (find out more about RSS here)

• Send to Twitter
  
• Send to Your Site
  
• Send to other local business, perhaps place you information on their site and their news goes on yours.

Tip 2: Give consideration to the title of the blog post

When the RSS feed is fed out to the networks, the title needs to be engaging enough to make people want to click through. So please refrain from naming your blog titles: blog post 1, blog post 2, or January blog post etc.

Tip 3: Meet with us for help

We often help clients kick start their blogs (social media campaigns) by meeting with them, talking about their company aspirations, goals, events of the year etc, then we go away and write up some blog posts for them. We encourage that blog posts come direct from the company or even better the individual running the company, however 7/10 times the company we are talking to, will not have the resource in house or the time. It is I am afraid a similar situation at Rocktime.

It is only when the community starts to build and the Managing Director/s see the results, then the available time to take the blog over or add more content come into play.

If you have a blog, have lost focus or simply need guidance on how to build your community further then please come in and speak to the Flashlight Team to discuss your social media strategy.

Oh and the objective of this post, was to provide you with useful information and to encourage you to CONTACT US to discuss your social media plans for 2010. See you next year ;)

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Geek Video of the month

Together with the New York Times and the Washington Post, Google is introducing an experimental way of presenting news online.

Using certain advantages of online publishing Living Stories (presented in above video) organizes information according to how stories are developing.

We've found it particularly interesting watching the stories coming in on Copenhagen Climate Summit (COP15), a great advantage is that that you can filter content by opinions, events, graphics, quotes. Which is a fantastic way (IMO) of receiving news.

Have a look, see what you think here: http://livingstories.googlelabs.com/

If you are interested in real time news then Living Stories is one to keep an eye on.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Xmas Themes

If you fancy getting into the festive season and use Firefox (Firefox: 2.0 – 2.0.0) as your browser. Why not get yourself in the holiday mood by adding an animated snowfall on your tool bar and add animated toolbar icons like fir trees and smoking chimney pots, fairy lights as scroll bars and many more.

Download and find out more about the Xmas Firefox theme here
Download and find out more about the Xmas Light Firefox theme here.

Alternatively decorate your colleagues !!

If you would like a bit of Christmas Sparkle on your website, contact our Rocktime sales team.

Bebo attempts to reinvigorate itself

I read this morning on the Guardian website that AOL –owned social networking site for Teens Bebo are downsizing their activities and have made the decision to stop commissioning new content. Which was once considered as being their future.

Statement from Media Guardian today: “Bebo is cutting jobs at its UK operation and freezing commissions from its web TV production arm, which has been responsible for groundbreaking shows including KateModern”

The online shows on Bebo included KateModern, Sofia’s Diary, The Secret World of Sam King and The Gap Year were a great idea in attracting teenagers to regular visit the site and also provided the Bebo profit pot with large sponsorship funds from a number of blue chip advertisers.

The spokewoman at Bebo said:

"We are in the process of re-aligning the Bebo business and need to make sure that our resources are aligned with our new business mode in order to execute effectively against our future vision and stay competitive. We are therefore required to make some difficult decisions about the future of our organization and its people in order to stay competitive."

The news isn’t surprising with sites like Facebook and Twitter powering ahead and attracting the Bebo audience to move over to them with word on the street of “I’ll Facebook you” or he “Twittered me” they have struggled to remain fashionable.

Although understandable in these economic times phasing out the online TV production unit is a shame in my opinion for the engagement levels on Bebo. Plus negative news for the fans of the shows. However saying that I am in total agreement with their decision to re-focus and re-align their core social media activities at this current time.

Let’s just hope they don’t take as long as MySpace, who saw a 55% decline in market share in the last 12 months !!

All the best of luck sent to Bebo to discover their alignment and establish their future strategy.

We will be watching the responses from Sophia Diary fans as it is phased out till the end of the year. The repercussion of closing the show may even spawn a new network a TV network open to all (YouTube?) we already have a number on online networks showing repeats of shows, maybe there is room in these domains for online only shows, certainly some interesting times ahead in broadcast media.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

More British, More Homely, More cautious

The Generation Recession report from the Social Issues Research centre (commissioned by Friends Provident July 2009) has revealed that the recession has turned us all rather British and homely as we buy local (to help our economic climate) and highlights that 1 out of 3 Brits promote staying at home as the new going out.

As more people are choosing to stay at home, the appeal of social networking from your living room has increased, using sites such as Myspace, Twitter and Facebook. The study also revealed new “saving money” tactics and found that amongst those that are going out, that 21% of them make use of voucher codes to save on funds.

The report reviews (via focus groups and past recession feelings) how consumer’s habits have changed / are changing, how the British public feel about the recession, how we have all economised through nesting behaviour, how we have made cut backs in our spending habits and how our quest for the best bargain or deal has accelerated.

Another interesting point is that the study implies that the younger generation (under 25 reported to be the hardest hit by the crisis) will be moulded by the credit crunch and that formative experiences from their adolescence (9/11 attacks, London 7/7 bombings, 2004 Tsunami) will help shape Britain’s future, as perhaps they may have a greater sense of caution with finances and life in general.

There are some great comments from Poll respondents which will be of interest to a number of companies – take a look at the Generation Recession Report here.

In the meantime we have considered what the findings of this report will mean to website development and web marketing, and would like to share with you our Risdom (Rocktime Wisdom) recommending that you give consideration to the below points when outlining your web strategies:

• Review current online and offline loyalty programmes and rewards
• Social network with consumers in their homes (ie: Facebook)
• Consider using voucher codes, voucher sites for product and service promotions
• Make the younger generation feel valued online
• Make offers clear & transparent and timely online
• For larger purchases online, make it prominently clear that shopping service online is secure

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Introducing the all new Google Dashboard

We already have THE geek video of the month, thought to share with you something new from Google, which we love and will find super handy. It is the new Google Dashboard, which lets you know what data is stored on your Google Account. The design is simple, it's consise and best of all easy to navigate.

We can actually see this format working for a number of our clients customers with access to more than one site area (Blog, Shopping, Forum etc).....hmmm. Let's get innovating further, to be continued.....

Geek Video of the month

Our Geek Video of the month goes the iPhone app which allows motorists to drive a car using their mobile phone, developed by German researchers. It is pretty cool and very Kit car (Knightrider),

What would be better is an Iphone App which will direct your supermarket trolley back to the trolley bay when it's raining - now that is cool !!

Find out more over at the Telegraphs Motoring News here