Twitter Simplifies it's Business Model - #not

Twitter ranks as one of the most popular sites on the Internet. So we all have waited with baited breath of news on when they were going to start putting together a business model. The news broke yesterday.

They have launched what they call a simple service titled “Promoted tweets” and this morning I have been trying to get my head round what this means to the Twitter Eco System and how our clients will benefit from this service.

Twitter are classing this as the first stage and already have a number of advertising partners onboard to trial the service which include: Starbucks, Virgin America (not surprised), Red Bull, Best Buy and Sony Pictures. The premise being is that promoted tweets are just like ordinary tweets that brands may wish to use should they want to highlight their Tweet to a wider community.

We are going to begin to see promoted tweets appear at the top of some of Twitter Search result pages (see image above). Twitter will be measuring whether people like the tweets via their interaction with the message ie: marking as favourite, Re-tweeting or @replying. If no body/tweeter appears to like the promoted Tweet then it will disappear. I believe there will be a connection to the Twitter user and the promoted tweet, a little bit like “You may be interested in feature” on Amazon, ie: the more you RT tweet a tweet from a sports brand the more promoted tweets from sport brands you will see.

Also as the Tweet is promoted and Twitter seek to make money then the promoted tweets will be purchased on a CPM model and quite excitedly (for Flashlight) it will be a mix of earned versus paid media – as you need to make your Tweets work.

Having a combination or organic and paid ads will suit Rocktime’s Flashlight Team well as we have the mix of SEO expertise, Paid search expertise and Social Media Savvyness.

I am sure there is more in this development, so I went and visited Web Strategist Blog by Jeremiah Owyang to see what he has to say, quite alot as it happens.

Jeremiah has provided a summary of the promoted, explaining as I have above on how it will work, he has also developed a matrix on what Twitter’s promoted tweets business model will mean to the Eco-system. Go and view his blog post here and follow him (blog & twitter) as he regularly talks a lot of sense:

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/04/13/quicktake-analysis-what-twitters-resonation-means/

Twitter’s founder Biz Stone has let us all know that there will be more announcements soon as the project matures, they are currently finding their feet too in understanding how to measure Twitter user interaction on the Tweets. Once they have a footing this will be rolled out to other advertisers. So watch this space, as I am sure we have some very interesting times ahead.

Reputation and respect has never been more key. Power to the people ! and good luck to the brands in finding the 140 characters that resonate with their audiences.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

Google prefer sites that load quickly

Following on from the above video on June 2009 (note: final line - about their quest to "raise the quality of life"), last Friday, April the 9th 2010 Google officially announced its plan to promote faster loading sites.

This new rule reviews the speed in which the pages show up when a user clicks on an address, the objective being to show their customer (Google users) with sites with advanced usability.

Amit Singhal and Matt Cutts explained over at the Google Webmaster Central Blog

“Faster sites don't just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduce operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that's why we've decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites”

Read the full blog post here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html

Those familiar with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) know that Google’s ranking of results has mainly been based on the relevance of the website content to search query and providing points to those who have many other sites refer to it as a good source of information.

There are over 200 ranking factors in Google’s rule book, the good news, especially for smaller sites who can’t afford to maintain fast servers, is that they have stated that the most important criteria for ranking results would remain the relevance for a particular query and that the speed rule is only expected to play a minor role. It is believed that only 1% of search queries will be affected by the change to include load speed, as it will mainly involve penalising pages with excessive loading times of around 20 seconds or longer.

Google have helpfully provided a list of some free tools you can use to evaluate the speed of your site, please view these below. If you need any further guidance on site speed or SEO feel free to get in touch. We have used the Google's Site Performance feature found Google Webmaster Tools for some time now, Google blogged about their Site Performance feature back in Dec 09 here.

Handy Tools to evaluate the speed of your website

Page Speed, an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of web pages and gives suggestions for improvement.
YSlow, a free tool from Yahoo! that suggests ways to improve website speed.
WebPagetest shows a waterfall view of your pages' load performance plus an optimization checklist.
In Google Webmaster Tools, Labs > Site Performance shows the speed of your website as experienced by users around the world

There are also many other tools at code.google.com/speed.

We encourage our clients and our readers without an SEO contract with us to start looking at your site speed using the above tools, and as Google say this is to “not only to improve your ranking in search engines, but also to improve everyone's experience on the Internet”

Maybe they really are good guys after all !

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Fancy a game of Geek?

Mashable reported today: “Board Games on the iPad: Oh Yes, This is Going to be Big”.

Where I haven’t really been interested in the iPad to date, and it has been critiqued in the press and (just a little) by our Technical manager at this post.

Being a bit of a Board Game geek, I feel like I really need one..... like now!!
Unfortunately latest news is: I will have to wait a while seeing as the Apple iPad has already run out of stock for their Apple iPad launch day this Saturday (3rd of April). Indicating that interest is high, or potentially supply was low – not sure.

Those interested can find out more over at Mashable and keep up to date on the availability of iPads and their predictions on supply and demand with the guys over at Planet iPad.

Thinking out loud: If I note a few good reviews from a few good bloggers and journalists then I may have to put the iPad on my Amazon Wishlist.

Author: Sarah (bGame Geek) Griffiths

Questions, Questions, Questions ???

Our raison d’etre is to design & build bespoke websites and tailor effective online marketing campaigns in line with our clients business needs.

To meet client expectations we often ask quite a few blunt questions; the overall objective being to give our clients a site or/and a marketing campaign that is tailored to their goals and directly measured by real results.

The questions we ask

Off the top of my head, some of the questions we ask our clients are listed below:

Q: What is the purpose of your site?

Q: How are you going to use your site to overcome your overall business objectives?

Q: Are you developing on your website based on feedback on a usability study? If so how will you measure performance and the ROI of your investment?

Q: Does your website exist to lower your operating costs, if so how will you measure this?

Q: Will your website have a landing page to link into traditional media, if so what is the target market and how will you measure uptake?

Q: Does your website exist to help build your brand image? How will your personality be presented in text, are you talking in your copy on a one to one level?

All in all the above questions indicate measurement is key.

The Web Consultancy Approach

During web consultancy we also invite clients to consider the separate customer stages when designing or enhancing their websites.

Stage’s such as:

• Awareness - How will visitors be aware of your website?
  
• Interest - What will motivate the visitor to choose you over competitors?
  
• Call to Actions - What will encourage the visitor to book with you, buy from you, call you etc?
  
• Retention - Is it likely that customers will re-visit the site? If so is this to use the site; buy upgrades; replenish their products??? etc. How will you retain your customers? Are you separating those who visit versus those who regularly buy?

Online Marketing Campaigns Questions

When considering clients online marketing campaigns, to help our clients brief the Flashlight team and begin to get a clear understanding of what they are trying to achieve we suggest they complete our Campaign Objectives Sheet.

We have linked our campaign objectives worksheet into our Return on Investment Sales Funnel Calculator ; a useful tool to determine the return of your online marketing spend.

If you are considering increasing awareness of your company, thinking of ways in which to make your website more engaging to visitors, eager to understand more about how people use your site and what motivates them (esp: Calls to Actions) please get in touch with our Sales team on 01202 678777 or via our contact us form. So we can share our ideas too.

First step: You may want to help yourself by viewing and completing the Rocktime Campaign Objectives Sheet here.

Alternatively why not bounce the link to the campaign sheet around your team and ask them for their onsite innovations and campaign ideas you may be surprised at the response.

Happy Planning ;)

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Geek Video of the month

Introducing the “Dr Who” Dalek controlled by iPhone accelerometer. UK Robot enthusiast Steve Carpenter and founder of BotBuilder.co.uk has created the first Iphone controlled Dalek out of a Dalek bubble bath container. This video does use very geeky terms, hence winning the status of geek video of the month, what we particularly like is Steve’s passion for Robots. Take a look at Steve’s Bot Builder website here and find out how his bots go from the drawing board to the packaging box, look at the Bot Birth links on relevant product pages.

Ladder of success

Image and ladder safety tips sourced from http://www.hse.gov.uk/

Alex (our MD) fell of his ladder at the weekend clearing the moss from the top of his garage, 99.9% of him survived, the toe trapped under the ladder felt the brunt of the fall.

Thought to share some health and safety tips on using ladders correctly, for more information visit the Health and Safety Executive site.

Top five tips on how not to fall of your ladder

- Don't climb a ladder in your slippers
- Position the ladder correctly on a firm level surface
- Check the feet of the ladder before use
- Rest the ladder on a firm surface at the top
- Keep your body centred within the ladder

Consultancy Service

As we are a Full Service Digital Agency we offer an array of consultancy to our clients and partners, the vast majority of which as you may expect is focused around web rather than health and safety!! We consult on a whole range of web related tasks from site development to how to build on your social media conversations, aligning our tasks around your business or personal objectives.

Let us help you to climb the ladder of success and make sure your ladder is leaning against the right wall.....sorry couldn't resist the pun!!

To find out more visit our Web Consultancy page or talk to Micky in Rocktime sales.


Author: Sarah Griffiths

We need a Twitter directory for a Twitter directory?!

As Twitter usage continues to increase in the UK, I thought to shed some light on how you can increase your exposure and build on your growing Twitter community.

There are numerous ways to find Twitter users who share the same interests as you by using Twitter search engines, Twitter directories and refining results by category or location. Meanwhile Location targeted Twitter directories are pretty handy if you want advice on “real time local information” i.e. jobs, weather or perhaps sending or receiving a restaurant recommendation.

Which directories should I choose ?

In truth there is no definitive answer to this - we are not the holders of the definitive list of all the Twitter directories, but very few people probably are as new ways of managing contacts are popping up daily – and, at this rate, possibly one every minute.

Should you be in every directory? While it’s desirable, the reality is that this isn’t really possible: given the time it takes to list, it’s unlikely that the admin time would be worth it.
At Rocktime, we find time is more effectively spent listing our company and ourselves on a select few directories, which enables us to spend a much higher percentage of our time communicating with those we chose to follow or find out more about those following us.

Let me share with you a list of a few Twitter directories we use at Rocktime – but first, while we’re talking Twitter Directories, late last year Twitter introduced Twitter lists into public beta.

Twitter promoted these lists as being “A great way to organise the people you follow and discover new interesting accounts”. What this means to Twitter user is that they can create their own lists, or people may list them and display details to their followers. It is quite interesting to see in what lists you reside, as it gives an indication how people perceive you and what you have to say: perhaps you are a blogger listed by a few as a “comedy genius”, but you never knew !

But let’s get back to directories. There are two ways to feature in list directories: either by adding your own lists or by being on lists that have been added. selection of directories looking after these lists are also presented below.

Twitter User Directories

WeFollow – A really easy sign-up and connects to your Twitter account. Login to Twitter, enter your location and choose 5 interests which describe your business or personal brand.
NB: Check the fine print as you don’t need to accept the offer to have your Twitter profile page link to your WeFollow profile page (final box).

Twellow - Register by providing your Twitter email and password. Twellow will then pull relevant information of your twitter profile page to create your profile, making some suggestions on where you should be placed. After validating your email, you then need to decide whether you agree to their suggestions or add other categories (10). You can add more links within Twellow to other social media profiles within the extended bio section, which is pretty handy to spread your reach further.

Just Tweet It – This directory takes a little more time to sign up to than Wefollow or Twellow, as you are required to register before you are sent a password and a link to the profile editor page. Once your profile is complete return to the Just Tweet IT home page, pick 5 categories and enter a short bio on each.

List Directories

Listorious - Go to the Listorious directory and click add list. If you are signed into Twitter, Listorious will automatically connect to your Twitter account and show a form asking for a list URL, a one line description and some descriptive tags. Once your list is added you will be entered into the Listorious ranking table (calculated by number of followers)

TweetDeck - If you work your twitter Account from TweetDeck, then just create a list from there. Once it starts getting followers then it will be automatically included in the directory. Simple.

Location based directories

An easy way to find people geographically close to you is to use the advanced page on Twitter’s search engine which has the option “Near this place”. Results for this are are based on the location field in the twitter BIO, which can be pretty accurate with geo-location from people tweeting from their phones. Some people prefer to use Nearby Tweet for local tweeters www.nearbytweets.com, but be warned - it is pretty distracting when new posts arrive.

Geofollow – The main concept behind this directory is that instead of people being organised by category you are organised by location, but you can still use 3 tags to differentiate yourself from the masses.

Even more directories !

Mashable have compared 15 twitter directories here and have assigned them into four categories: applications, people, politics and strictly business. Soon I think we will need a Twitter directory for the Twitter directories. Hmm...now that’s an idea....

Twitter advice

If you would like any advice on using Twitter to build your community feel free to contact me or talk to a member of the Rocktime Sales team.

Author: Sarah Griffiths