At Bright Digital we have lots of experience working with huge, well known and also smaller, lesser known IT companies who need to recruit (and retain) channel partners to their program. For IT companies large and small, the channel can be the lifeblood of the company. Whether the challenge is to put your relatively unknown or new program out there, to attract a specific type of partner to an established program, or to retain existing program members, it’s important that the most appropriate tactics – and treatment – are employed. The Bright Digital team are experts in creating campaigns that combine memorable creative with cutting edge marketing techniques – and we never take our eye off the results being generated, constantly tweaking and optimising. This means we create effective campaigns that really, actually deliver!

We often get asked “how do you recruit resellers to a program?” This is not an easy question to answer, like perhaps “how do you get traffic to your website?” is. Why is it so tricky to answer that question? What is more complex about channel marketing is that there is another level involved – it is not simply marketing to the end customer, but instead marketing to the people who will then themselves market to the end customer! Then there is the product education... Add to this the fact that the audience you are targeting is itself very specific, and you’ve got quite a challenge ahead...

Lucky we have BAGS of experience doing this then isn’t it??!

Here are some examples of techniques we have successfully employed in the past to give you a flavour of where we’re coming from...

Communication strategy development
Whether it is email or social media, we will work out the best ways to talk to potential and existing program members, taking the messages to the place where your target audience is and giving them the information they require regularly and in the medium they prefer.

Channel sales tools
Providing useful and easy to use sales tools for the channel not only makes existing program members’ jobs easier (and therefore makes more money for you), it also acts as an attractive key differentiator from all the other programs out there for prospective program members when they hear about them. We can create concise and helpful information collateral, customisable marketing tools, whizzy video magazines to showcase your products and generate leads… we’ve got loads of tricks up our sleeves.

Co-marketing solutions
Often the reseller wants to show off that this product comes from you, so in this instance it helps to co-brand marketing tools. We make sure yours and their brand sit alongside in exactly the right balance, making it extra simple for program members to use. News management and content - By creating lots of useful online content and news about your products, your program, your support for resellers, how to be more successful in your program etc etc, and distributing this by as many routes as possible, you get the message out there that this is a great product and a great program – and who wouldn’t want to be part of that? We have lots of experience creating, managing and distributing news and content so it works hard for you and you get more for your money.

Incentive schemes
We have run some hugely successful reward schemes to encourage the channel to compete with each other to sell more products. The secret is combining engaging creative with a sense of community and competition – and of course great prizes. These are a sure fire way to boost sales via the channel and always really popular with the participants. The client is happy - and so is the channel. Result!

Online training and product education
We believe one key to a successful channel campaign is providing excellent support and constant education about the product itself. More and more channel people are tuned into receiving their training and information online in a range of formats whether they be quizzes, webcasts, video tuorials, podcasts - whatever. We can provide online training and product education in a range of formats to suit your audience.

Webcasts
Webcasts, or webinars as they are sometimes called, are a really effective way of creating an online event about your program. A webcast is great for online training, as above, or to attract and introduce new people to your program. We can help drive people to the webinar, create the webinar itself, and also provide all-important follow up strategy so you get maximum return.

Partner extranets
Giving your partners a place to go to speak to you, each other, get support and information and so on, is absolutely key to supporting them in their sales of your products. We can create a secure extranet and also provide engaging and informative content to ensure they have all they need.

Talk to us today about getting more people signed up to your program or retaining existing members – we’re bursting with suggestions!

Ten years ago agencies urged clients “you must have a website”. Then five years later the message was “it’s no use just having a website if no-one is looking at it – optimise, optimise, optimise” The most important thing became optimising your website so the search engines could work out what it was about and rank it highly for relevant and popular search phrases. And rank it highly they would! I have worked on many a campaign where the site gained top 5 positions for massively popular phrases in very competitive industries. What halcyon days they were!

Optimise your site for search – but make it social too
In the current world of web, SEO is still very important. Ensuring your site is accessible by the most important search engine crawlers; creating the right amount of clearly tagged content to inform and attract; and encouraging related external links are all still essential parts of creating a successful online presence. But with so many gazillions of websites competing for a place in the first few SERPs (search engine results pages), something had to give. What happened was people started exploring the web through recommendations from people they know instead of just relying on Google to find great websites. Thus, other ways of getting traffic to your site have come to the fore. So what is this other avenue of natural traffic? It’s social media of course.

Create content that attracts natural search traffic - and then encourage sharing via social media
Just as in SEO, we recommend creating content that attracts people to your site. Whether this is a blog, WIKI, videos, or white papers – implement a sharing facility so people CAN distribute your article, video etc if they think it’s something that will be of interest to other people. This way you are extending the reach of your marketing and getting more bangs for your buck. Even if you don’t add a Share button or similar (they are free, just search for Share button), people can discover your site and promote it using social media by tagging your site of their own accord – however, if you provide the facility you are enabling them to share with even greater ease.

Put your content out there where your customers are
It’s fantastic to create content and then encourage sharing. But what about doing more to encourage engagement via social media? How about going where your customers spend time rather than waiting for them to come to you? Create channels on appropriate social media sites where you think your customers might spend time. Facebook generally is more consumer focused, whilst LinkedIn is great for business audiences. You’d be surprised at how many professionals are on Twitter too so consider using that for conversations with potential and existing customers.

Engage people first and then you can concentrate on converting them…
So what is our overriding message to clients now, ten years after the web exploded? It would be something like this: “Create communication materials that attract people to your site and that you can place elsewhere to engage people and drive enquiries to your site. Then when they arrive at your site make sure they can find what they want easily so you can convert them into customers”. It’s not as short and snappy a message as ten years ago but then, it’s not as easy as it once was to get people to your site and make them want to become a customer as it was back then. That’s why you need the right people to help you achieve your online business objectives! Feel free to talk to me on Twitter, email or phone about using social media to grow web traffic.

More and more people are consuming web content on their mobiles. It is no longer just tech savvy people with posh phones, most phones now have the capability and, more importantly, more people than ever are confident enough to navigate the Internet via their phone. One technology driven reason is the increase is handsets with the capabilities at the forefront of the phone’s design and the iPhone is the best example of this. One cultural reason for the huge increase is the popularity of social networking; people now consider social media an essential method of contact and they want to be kept up to date at all times, wherever they are.

Mobile web use therefore should be a huge talking point at the moment amongst marketers. Yet it is often something that gets overlooked, even in the technology sector, where you might guess it is being most actively embraced. In reality it is something that is being approached tentatively, possibly in fear that their website may require massive budgets and a huge shake up. Also department accountability may be a reason people aren’t addressing this issue as readily as you might think. Is this a marketing or IT responsibility? Which department in your company is in charge of making sure people get a positive and user friendly experience when they access your website from their mobile phone? An interesting question...

So, what are most crucial of the mobile web usability issues? There are lots potentially, and obviously some phones are better than others at displaying web content. WC3 cite the main issues as stemming from:

- the types of content involved
- the capabilities of the devices and access networks used (e.g., a small-screen mobile device vs. a desktop PC)
- the context in which the content is received by the user (e.g., sitting at a desk vs. sitting on a bus).

Despite the device technology improving and offering a better experience for users, it is important that marketers don’t assume the phone companies will adapt to their websites. The time when mobiles will perfectly reflect the PC experience of the web across all handsets is a long way off. In the meantime you could be losing sales because of the poor mobile user’s experience of your website. So, here is an overview of things you should be addressing to make your website more mobile friendly.

1. Create concise content with sub headers
Make your content as easy to read as possible for mobile users. Shorten the copy to contain only the essential information, and make it possible to scan read by including sub headers that summarise the paragraph below.

2. Don’t open new windows with links
Make all links open new pages within the same window, as on mobiles only one page can be displayed at a time.

3. Consider your navigation carefully
What works on a PC doesn’t necessarily work on a mobile, so simplify navigation and include mobiles when you test.

4. Don’t make conversion JavaScript or cookie dependant
Most mobile phones don’t support JavaScript or cookies so consider rethinking key elements of your site if they use these to convert visitors. Can the same thing be achieved by logging in?

5. Make all pages accessible via mobiles
Although this is changing, often certain pages can’t be viewed via mobiles. E.g. Flash pages, video content. A compromise may be relevant here, or at least a message to convey the problem and a redirection to a page where they can get similar information.

6. Avoid large file size
Most mobile phones have slower service than PCs so keep that in mind when designing your website if lots of visitors will be looking on their phones.

7. Bring key contact information to the fore
Often people browsing on mobiles may be looking for contact information such as telephone number, address, how to find you and so on, so make this information easily available on all pages.

8. Make forms as short as possible
Text input is not always easy when visiting websites on your mobile, so shorten forms to only what is absolutely necessary.

Notice anything about this list? Yep, they are all basic things that, strictly speaking, you should consider when designing a website anyway. In a nutshell you will be better off if you: make content concise; always assume the lowest level of technology on the user's behalf; make key info accessible; keep navigation simple.

Of course, making sure your customers can access your website via their phones isn’t a quick job as it may sound here, it is a long and worthwhile investment of time and effort - and budget. As mobile web users skyrocket, this is one project that just may be worth considering for 2010 if you want to increase conversions via the web. In the meantime, these considerations will certainly get you going in the right direction.

Facebook fan pages are an effective way to build followers and encourage advocacy, monitor the buzz, have conversations, promote products – and generally spread the word about your technology brand. Social media promotion of brands via Facebook is more suitable, generally, for B2C brands than B2B. This is because Facebook is thought of as a social tool in the truest sense; it is where people go to hang out with friends, rather than a place where businesspeople network or look for solutions or advice.

For technology brands who wish to promote their products via Facebook, here are 5 reasons to promote your consumer technology brand using a Facebook fan page:

1. Build followers: your fan page shows up in the News Feed of all your fans' friends, so they get notified whenever their friend has some activity on the page. By nature, friends have similar interests, so this is very tempting for the friends to have a look at what is going on at the page, and even become a fan themselves.

2. Encourage advocacy: when people become fans of your technology brand on Facebook, they immediately become advocates. You are giving them a chance to proclaim to the world that they really dig you! Not only this, but they can talk to other people about how much they like your products, suggest ways to improve, show pictures of themselves with your products, share links to information about your products - and so on... They don’t want o hang out on your website; they want o hang out on Facebook – so give them a space where they can do that and still interact with your brand.

3. Monitor the buzz: the Facebook fan page offers a great snapshot of what people are talking about. Obviously, people on a fan page are more likely to say positive things, so it may be one sided. However it still offers a chance to see what people think about your recent product / activity / campaign and get valuable feedback.

4. Talk to your customers: one of the best things about social media engagement for customers is that it empowers them. They have an opportunity to communicate with brands in a new way, rather than via a call centre. It also provides an opportunity for you to talk to customers in a new way too. To keep momentum up and activity high by seeding discussion, asking questions, inviting comments - have conversations, after all, that is what social media is all about.

5. Promote your products: use video, share links, post slide shows, and promote events - there atre so many ways to promote your new products via your Facebook fan page. Take advantage of the multimedia possibilities. You don't have to stick to the organic growth strategy of the news feed; consider using advertising on Facebook to grow your fan page is you have a product launching to boost activity.

So, should you set up a Facebook fan page or should you wait until one of your customers does? Well, only the page admin (person who has set the page up) has access to the Facebook Insights, the excellent stats area which shows you user exposure, actions, and behaviour relating to your Facebook fan page. It is great to be in control of your fan page however, if a fan has set one up then that is something you should be happy about. We wouldn’t advise waiting for customers to set one up. If one is already set up then maybe you could set up an alternative page with a different angle?

Whatever you do, if you are a consumer technology brand than you should have a Facebook fan page as a channel for marketing your products. Talk to us about engaging your customers using social media today on Twitter or email.

More information on Facebook fan pages visit this page.

We have been helping a large telecoms company manage their online reputation using Twitter and blogging. Even though most of their customers are really happy with their service, there is also a disgruntled lot who are making their opinions known, loud and clear, on Twitter. Sure, some of these customers are only followed by a small group of people. But others are followed by hundreds, even thousands of people, so these people are often highly influential individuals. And in this age of user generated reviews, other people's opinions matter - a lot!
By setting up a new, fresh Twitter account that is dedicated to addressing customers' complaints, comments and questions we are slowly but surely improving the reputation of the company.

It's really quite simple. By searching regularly for brand, product and service names, we can see what people are saying about our client. Then, we can respond accordingly, expressing disappointment if they say they are unhappy - and more importantly, seeing how we can help. If we notice that one topic or theme is occurring, then we respond in more detail on the blog.

We've had an amazing response. People are thrilled that this company, after seemingly ignoring them for quite some time, is now listening intently to what they think about their products and services.

For every customer that we convert back into a happy, smiling one from an aggrieved, angry one, we are not only managing the reputation of the company, but we are also saving them money as some of these customers would undoubtedly have moved elsewhere in the long term, such was their complaint.

Social media engagement with customers can be very impactful and meaningful, and we are confident we have helped this company retain lots of customers through managing their reputation on Twitter.

This week we are at Gitex in Dubai to see our hard work from the last few weeks come to fruition. We have created 54 interactive presentation kiosks for Etisalat, the telecoms giant of the Middle East. We are also twittering and blogging about the event live...

The kiosks combine dynamic 3D animated sequences that highlight the most important messages for each product or service, with animated 2D sequences that present the detail. All the presentations follow through the brand feel of the stand, and present today’s advanced technologies in a consistent and easy to follow manner. The style that matches the quality of the stand created by 2LK and the live interactive tours by Topspin, who we work with frequently.

Dell and Symantec have also pulled out the stops for this important show, with magicians and AR competitions to attract people onto their impressive stands. We also spoke to a robot, maybe if we had a better grasp of Arabic the conversation would have flowed a little better, but it was fun to try and it demonstrated that we are perhaps not that many years away from computers that will look and talk like people.

I am happy to announce that Bright Digital will be creating interactive event content for a well-known technology company overseas. It's the second time we have been selected for the job so we must be doing something right!

Many technology companies face a problem when creating social media friendly content (blogs, Twitter updates and so on): how do they make it chatty, fun, interesting and useful when frequently the subject matter is very technical (and the majority of the audience may necessarily not be) and therefore potentially complicated.

The problem is mainly a B2C one, but also it can be a problem with B2B audiences; just because a person is operating in a business to business capacity doesn't necessarily mean that they are technically minded, even if they are interested in or already use your products or services.

In my opinion social media is actually an opportunity to make potentially complicated subject material easier to understand. You can do this in a number of ways:

- Encourage your online community to help each other understand stuff

Use Twitter for example to grow your community, then encourage peer to peer communication in that space. This has been one of the greatest achievements of Twitter; the facility for individuals who are all following a certain company or brand to help each other. Just because you are the instigator of the group doesn't mean that the members aren't better than you at helping someone understand a product or service or iron out a problem.

Wikis are also a great way for a community to define their own terminology and also shape their own way of expressing meaning - and avoiding jargon. Encourage people in the community to get involved and create their own glossary of terms - created by the customers for the customers!

- Speak more informally (and avoid using jargon)

Social media provides an opportunity for you to talk informally, in a more chatty way about sometimes very complicated or technical products or services. It is easier to describe what something does or why it exists when you write in this way as it frees you from tone of voice, terminology and sales-led speak - and a limit in characters or words. Allow yourself to become conversational when blogging about stuff that is hard to understand; this will be a big help for people who sometimes struggle to understand your offering.

- Use other media to communicate

One of the best things about social media is that there are lots of different mediums you can choose from. Why stick to words when you can create an animation, or a video, an audio recording, or make a slideshow? Use YouTube, SlideShare, and podcasts to illustrate your offering in a more 3 dimensional way.

Recently Kate blogged about the often overloaded design layouts of social media sites like Facebook. Kate summarised that they are hugely overloaded with information but get away with it because people are prepared to invest more time skimming and digging through piles of extraneous information because of the emotional attachment to the material presented. Following on from that I would like to add that the social media world and its gurus are especially guilty of poor design consideration when creating web pages about events or information about social media. I, as someone who advises brands on social media, frequent these sites and it is quite frustrating to be searching for basic information for 15 minutes through masses of wikis, threads, updates and so on. It reinforces in my mind the importance of good clear, simple design and simple usability - something that ALL site creators, within social media or not, should remember when producing content for the web.

These web site usability / design principles are especially true when it comes to technology companies as they more than others need to convey clarity, due to the often potentially confusing and inherently technical nature of the products or services.

1. Who are you and what do you do?
It should be immediately clear who you are and what you do from just seconds of landing on your site. What you do can be conveyed simply in a sentence or two and who you are can be conveyed by a strong sense of brand through imagery and visuals.

2. Key facts at the fore.
Make sure your key information is either on the homepage or very clearly labelled in the navigation. Dates, relevant news, phone numbers, key products etc.

3. Avoid jargon.
Jargon is only useful for those who know what the terminology actually means! Why on earth would you want to risk alienating half the audience of people who visit your site? Beats me, but many people seem to miss this point.

4. Less is more.
In copy and also in imagery, logos etc, try to hold back and just include what is necessary so the page is uncluttered and simple to scan read.

5. Encourage them to get in touch.
Contact links, email addresses, snail mail, Twitter links and phone numbers: as much as possible encourage them to get in touch for more information. If they need help be clear about where they can go to get it.

There are lots of other, more complex and intricate considerations to expert web design, but if these basic points are covered (and you'd be surprised how many big companies don't manage to cover them) then you will convert more visitors - and more importantly people won't get frustrated and click away with a bad impression of your business.

Social sites bombard users with information
Most social media sites throw so much information out at the users that they are bombarded; we are being asked to look at a hell of a lot of ‘stuff’ all at once and we frequently have to scroll long pages of conversations and content. Some sites manage their huge amount of information quite well, like the Guardian site for example, where the content at least looks considered. Tools are available to better manage our social media information, like Tweetdeck. Some sites do it very badly like, in my opinion, Facebook. I still can’t get over how very messy facebook is – it is ugly to look at and highly difficult to navigate, yet it is still so successful! It seems to be me to break all the basic principles of good web design, but literally millions and millions of people use it. So, that prompts the question: how good does corporate website design need to be when Facebook is so badly laid out yet still so popular?

Design is no longer limited by technical restraints
There was a time when designing a website that you always placed the logo top left of the design, because it was the only space that could guaranteed to be seen on most of the browsers; so it became a convention. Visual design had to work around a lot of technical restraints. Today we still try to design sites where the main focus is ‘above the fold’ – seen instantly on the screen of most users' computers in most browsers. But in a social media world where written and video content is so plentiful it almost always scrolls down the page, how important is this principal now? When it is technically possible to build a whole site on one page, should you? How important is key messaging and visual design now?

Emotional response to the content compensates for poor design
To me the main difference between a company’s website and a social network site like Facebook is the motivation of the audience. Spending time on Facebook has high emotional rewards; you see snapshots of people's lives who you know and are already interested in. You are highly rewarded with satisfying insights and participate because you want to be part of the tribe, that is after all a basic human instinct. You will tolerate the disorganisation and overload of superfluous information because some of the information presented means something to you (negative or positive) and the emotional gratification is high.

Emotionally driven people are more motivated to sift through lots of rubbish
Now let’s contrast the emotions of someone tasked to improve their company’s IT system with someone who is surfing Facebook: this person will have to research several sites before he finds the right company to help him and let’s face it, there is nothing like the IT system to generate a lot of emotion. But it is a different sort of emotion right? It is not ‘don’t Johnnie’s kids look cute’ or ‘I’m gonna kill him for posting that picture of me like that!’ - it's more like ‘I am going to lose my job if we don’t reduce our IT downtime’ or ‘I don’t want another day of everyone complaining the server is slow’ ... he is less likely to want to sift through piles of content on your site, isn't he?

The lack of a personal emotional attachment means they will be quick to leave
Now consider you are the company offering services that can help the IT man and you don’t have the benefit of being an internationally renowned brand. You might be a known name, but it is quite likely there will very little emotional attachment at all between you and your prospective customer at this point. So what do you do? You could produce a one page site that presents an encyclopedia of information, all of which demonstrates your expert knowledge and wisdom on the subject at hand and why your services are so brilliant etc. You could flood the page all your staff’s latest twitter feeds (most of which will be irrelevant to the subject), tag clouds, blog updates, newsfeeds and document downloads, because technically that is possible. But what good would that do? The audience is not likely to be emotively motivated to wade through this social content. They are much more likely to feel time pressured now and so a likely response is ‘Whoa – I haven’t got time for all that' and they go back to the search results and find a competitor who makes their site design simpler and the messaging clearer instead.

Don't try and mirror social site design
In summary, the social sites are successful at what they do despite poor layout design because the user is emotionally invested in the content they are being asked to skim through. A visitor to your site on the other hand is looking to gauge whether or not you can help them quickly and easily. Whilst they may be personally invested in what they are doing, it is not comparable to the emotional investment when using social media sites. We can learn a lot from social media sites about communicating with people, but we certainly don't advise emulating social media site design.

Twitter and Facebook are compared all the time; yet essentially they are two very different beasts. Twitter is a microblogging site where posts are 140 characters long; whereas Facebook is a multifaceted social network which allows status updates, photo upload, event posting and much more.

The main comparison between them as far as I can see is that they are probably the two most popular social media sites. But how do they compare in terms of using them for buzz monitoring?
Because of Facebook's privacy settings, it isn't possible to search for mentions of your business and see all the users that have mentioned you recently; you will only see the ones that have their settings as such that anyone can see their wall postings and updates. However most fan pages will not be set to private so you will be able to see any updates from these.

On Twitter you can see everyone's updates so in this sense it is better for searching for mentions of your brand. However, it isn't as popular or widely used as Facebook, so despite the Twitter results yielding more mentions in the same time frame, this alone won't give you a very accurate representation of the type of people talking about your brand.

Nike created a great campaign recently surrounding the Tour de France. People submitted messages of hope and inspiration to a website before the race. Then a so called 'Chalkbot', a huge machine not dissimilar to one they use to spray paint roads, wrote these messages onto the roads so the participants could read them as they raced.

This created excitement for the audience as they felt included in the event. It also generated buzz, and positioned Nike as a caring and forward thinking brand that is heavily involved with the best sporting events.

What we liked about this is the idea of an activity online that had physical, real world impact. It is a great idea to generate excitement and encourage participation online for an activity that will become apparent at an event. We think it could work really well for technology and telecommunication brands. One idea we had was for event delegates to have a conversation online via Twitter on related subject prior to or during an event (as is happening all the time), the difference being that this could be projected onto a building in which the event is taking place. This type of crowd interactivity can really enhance an event.

If you're interested in finding out more about our bright ideas to bring interactivity to events contact the team.

The word blog comes from the phrase 'web log'. Blogs started as online journals for people to note down their feelings and thoughts, like a diary. There are millions of blogs that exist nowadays that aren't personal diaries, and blogs can offer businesses a great, informal way of communicating with their audience. Instead of websites being just formal presentations of a business, a blog adds an element of conviviality and a chance to publish fresh and regular content on a given subject.

Blogging is not suitable for all businesses. But, if you like writing (and are good at it, or a member of your team is); if you genuinely know your stuff and are passionate about your product or service; if what you are blogging about is genuinely interesting and useful; if you are prepared to blog fairly regularly (once a week is fine) - then I would say that it will help grow your business to begin blogging.

Here are a few of the main benefits of blogging:

Increase natural search traffic with your blog
We all know that content is key when it comes to getting indexed regularly by search engines and being ranked highly for popular search phrases pertaining to what you offer. So it makes sense that if you produce a weekly blog on related subjects you will start to be regarded by Google et al as a more important resource than when you had a 5 page website with very little written content on there. When you write a blog, think about how it could attract traffic: try and write the title so it is similar in its phraseology to what someone may type in if they were searching for information on that subject (the title of this blog is a good example; someone may well type in "How to use blogs to grow your business" or something similar, and in time this page will begin to attract traffic on that subject). Remember though, good copywriting and blogging should never at the expense of SEO. As with all content a blog should first and foremost serve to improve the user experience.

Open a dialogue with customers and to show the human side of your company
When writing a blog, if you can, try to end with questions and encourage comments so people start to become engaged in a conversation rather than it being one way. Especially if you are someone they wouldn't normally get to talk to, this is quite an exciting and empowering concept for an end consumer - to talk the the top people in such an accessible setting. It's OK to be yourself when writing a blog; it's a good opportunity to build yours and other team members' profiles and show the human face of the company rather than The Brand.

Increase the perception of yourself as an expert with your blog
By blogging on a subject regularly and building up a following, you are telling the world about your expertise on the subject. People want to buy products and services from other people who know their stuff; it instils a sense of trust in them and they are more likely to purchase. There is no better place to show how knowledgeable you are, as well as communicate your personality a bit too.

Extend the reach of your communications
Offer an RSS feed of the blog titles that people can subscribe to and read via their preferred reader, with a link to read more. Set up a Twitter account and Tweet your blog headlines (I will be blogging about some simple ways to use Twitter effectively soon too). By distributing the content like this you are leveraging your communication and enabling a potentially much bigger audience to see it.

One of the most common reasons people are hesitant to integrate social media into their marketing plan is that they don't understand what the basic benefits are, or know where to start. I find it helpful sometimes to get back to basics when thinking about such things, so that's what I want to do today. Let's start with so called buzz monitoring, which is what I often recommend when someone asks me where they should start...

"Buzz monitoring" as a term has entered the social media vernacular to describe listening to what is going on out there in relation to your company. In the main this refers to looking into any mentions of your brand on blogs, in social networks, in forums etc and, if appropriate, responding to them or taking some sort of action, even if it is just to make a note of it. It isn't just about mentions of your brand though; look at what your competitiors are doing; see what hot topics are being discussed; and look at what is going on in your industry.

Before you can start blogging, Twittering, a group on Facebook or whatever, you have to know what is going on around you; you have to start to listen. I recommend starting a buzz meeting once a week, invite relevant people in your company to it. Task each person with looking at a different area, ideally an area they specialise in for example, whether that's a product, service or an area of expertise such as PR. Set up a netvibes dashboard (a free page where you can add and organise your RSS feeds) with each tab representing an area of interest, for example: competitors, mentions etc. Ask everyone to bring at least two things to the meeting to discuss. As well as being subjects for discussion these meetings also provide subjects for blog posts, seed ideas for future campaigns, bring previously buried problems to the fore...

You can buy automated software to crawl the web and flag up mentions of your brand (or anything else you are tracking mentions of) but it is also possible to do it without software tools, just using RSS feeds and blog search and feeding this all into one page, such as netvibes.

Spend two hours a week doing this and you will soon reap the rewards in terms of being more aware of what is going on around you. Do it for two or three months and then maybe you will feel more confident to move to the next stage... blogging (which I will post about soon)!

At the recent D&AD student awards Christian Söderholm & Dennis Rosenqvist of Hyper Island in Sweden won a First prize for their Tag iPlayer idea for the BBC. The concept is to allow users to watch media on the iPlayer as normal, but with the help of a widget they can get related, additional content through tags which can also be shared with friends. The idea is that users can find out instant information about actors, recipes and other related content.

Great idea! So how could technology companies use this type of deep video tagging concept to sell more products?

Tagging from within the video would allow technology companies to promote their products in more depth by offering links to further resources as 'asides' to the main content; in product demos for example, by adding things like user reviews, related products, more in depth information, gallery of images etc the user gets a clearer picture of the product than they would have if the video were viewed without tags. You could address the fact that people have differing levels of technical understanding by offering explanation if required. If not, great, skip the tag and go ahead with the video. As video is used more and more on e-commerce sites to show products, this type of thing is sure to become more of a requirement.

The YouTube generation are changing the face of video production. They create video content with no knowledge of video production skills, without 'proper' kit and publish it online for free. Some brands and companies, particularly in the technology sector, are following suit and also publishing videos seemingly shot on cheap camcorders by the student intern onto their own sites as well as on the same video channels. So is this the end of the road for quality video communications with the high production standards, where the UK has arguably led the world for a generation? Or are brands merely trying to fit into the Everyman Internet where we're all potential publishers?

Desktop Publishing (DTP) changed the face of print publishing 25 years ago. Did it herald the downfall of professionally produced publications with talented writers that spend their hours being paid to create interesting content (like many forecasted)? No, it didn't. Before DTP came about, the only 'proper printed' publications were professionally and painstakingly typset affairs produced by the big publishing houses. This type of printing was beyond the budget of the masses.

When DTP software became widely available many predicted that the availability of these tools would cripple the publishing industry, however it had the opposite effect once all the hype died down. The technology made it cheaper and faster for professionals to produce content – as we can see by the proliferation of magazines and books available today. It also paved the way for a younger generation to have access to new ways of expressing their creative talents and became the base for many of today's digital professionals.

The same has been happening with video over the last 5-10 years; many of the facilities previously only available in expensive edit suites became easily available on a low budget home PC. The element that was missing previously was the costly nature of distributing the video. The explosion of video sharing sites (Vimeo, YouTube) has of course changed that. However we seem to be going through a similar transition to the publishing world, as naysayers announce that user generated videos threatens the work of the professional film/video producer. In my view what we will find at the end of this rainbow is an industry of creative video professionals who have never known anything different who will have injected a new lease of life into a tired industry. This YouTube phenomenon creates new ways of doing things and a much easier way of delivering high quality moving images so that more effort can be spent on the quality of the content that is being delivered - and that can only be a good thing!

I read a blog post recently that reflected what we had been talking about in the office for a while now: how brands (the ones we look at most closely is technology brands because that’s what we specialise in) are using Twitter in different ways. Specifically, how some brands are using it purely as a tool to distribute content, and others are using it as a way of talking to their customers.

Twitter is similar to RSS feeds, a well known broadcast medium, in that you use it to put your headline (limited character) content out there, with many posts containing links to read more. However, the Twitter interface allows you to view all your favourite ‘feeds’ in one place; it enables you to view who is receiving your ‘feeds’; and most importantly, it facilitates conversation between Twitterers. These are the main differences between Twitter and RSS feeds. Some brands are anonymously (the Twitterer is not named) sending out links to blog posts, news, offers etc without encouraging feedback or being conversational in delivery. I don’t think there is anything wrong with using Twitter as a broadcast medium; however I think brands are potentially missing out on some valuable insight and brand building as a result.

In my opinion it is fine to use Twitter as a broadcast medium, but I would advise brands doing this to think about adding another Twitter channel to use for conversational and customer relationship building purposes. Or maybe consider introducing more conversational tweets at a later time to your current broadcast account, once you have decided on your style and approach to conversational Twittering.

To get the most out of Twitter I think a brand should take advantage of all the different ‘hats’ a Twitter account can wear: customer service tool; broadcast medium; opinion tool; brand builder. You may choose to do this using several different accounts, as many of the larger brands do (be careful to track activity of all your different Twitter accounts though to retain consistency and work together in the best way possible) or in one account.

Josh Bernoff comments in this recent Groundswell blog post that social media is simply another communication channel. It sounds obvious, but his point is a good one: stop freaking people, social media is really just about communicating with others; sharing and connecting with folk! It's not THAT different to what we were all doing before. So why are people panicking? Well, he's right to suggest that it's the emphasis on conversational reciprocity of this communication channel that sends shivers down the spine of many a marketing person. That makes us all sounds like anti-social freaks though. But really what freaks people is just that it is new. Talk to customers, you say, but isn't that what our PR firm / customer services team is for?!

As Josh always says, what is key to successful engagement using social media is for brands to listen - and talk back - as corporate employees. Yes, you do work for this company, but yes, you are a human too aren't you? When conversing with people via social media as an employee it is, of course, important that you filter what are saying in the same way you would if you were at an event in the same capacity, but that doesn't mean that you have to be a robot.

Technology companies should be ahead of the game when it comes to social marketing because their customers will be, that much is clear, but their customers will also be the first to get annoyed if they ask for help or reach out and don't get a reply. So keep your ears peeled.

BabelWithMe is a real time multilingual conversation tool that is free to use. I think it will take off in some form; it certainly has lots of potential. One of the main problems we encounter when helping international technology brands communicate in a social sense is doing it in multiple languages.

Too often this holds companies back when they are thinking about how they can embrace digital communications within the social space. Take Twitter for example: shall we translate one Twitter feed into many different languages? Sometimes the time it takes to translate kills the spontaneity of the message. The other alternative, having lots of different Twitter accounts for all different languages isn't always possible, for many reasons. Besides, sometimes when using Twitter as a broadcast tool you want to have unity over the messages you are sending and this is harder if 20 different people are Twittering for you.

If BabelWithMe worked alongside Twitter somehow, then this would be real progress. Similarly if you could embed it, it would be even more useful. For now, I think you could utilise this BabelWithMe tool to continue the conversation in one place. You could encourage people to use it as a neutral site to send users to, after a webinar perhaps, or during an event to have a multilingual conversation. Let's wait and see what becomes of BabelWithMe; we predict big things!

With margins under ever increasing pressure, many IT solution providers and VARs are looking to the brave new world of Managed Services as a route to survival and hopefully long term prosperity. It's one of the few growth areas during this Recession, and we recently brought to market a new Managed Service offering for a major technology client. In doing so we learnt a few things about the marketplace...

One of the key challenges that existing IT providers face is not a technology one; it is a commercial and personnel issue. Talking to many small IT companies it became clear to us that their sales approach has always been about leading with the technology. This has resulted in haphazard sales with limited opportunities for regular, retained revenue.

If they are to benefit from the retained revenue Managed Services can bring, they require a very different approach to how they present themselves, moving away from delivering technology projects to delivering business solutions. It's is about the following:

- Simplifying the language and removing technospeak

- Learning to speak to the Managing Director not the IT Manager

- Demonstrating benefits to the business not the features of the technology

- Offering an insurance against failure not a fix to a problem

For many smaller firms this can take them outside their comfort zone and one many will struggle to achieve. Take a look at many small IT companies’ websites and you will usually see a plethora of vague, unquantifiable services littered with technology jargon.

We believe the first step to building a successful Managed Service business is to create a really clear offering. Prospective customers need to understand what is being offered, how it will benefit them, and how much it costs. A website is the shop window and should reflect this and present this clearly and concisely. Pricing should be transparent with different services for different types of customers.

We have lots of experience helping to market Managed Service offerings, making them viable business growth oppotunities for the IT solution providers and VAR marketplace.

Zunavision, created by Stanford University researchers studying artificial intelligence, is a new piece of software that can easily embed adverts into any video. This technology could be utilised to great effect as a reseller tool, allowing a vendor to create high quality promotional videos about the latest products and services. Resellers could then easily co-brand the video incorporating their logo or other content directly with the clip and embed it on their own website. We are looking at the possibilities so watch this space.

You will most likely have heard, Facebook has launched vanity URLs ( for example, facebook.com/yourcompanyname) for individuals and companies. This is an opportunity to increase your coverage online, but you must be quick or else someone will beat you to it. Even if at this moment in time you are not thinking about creating a Facebook group my advice would be to go ahead and register your vanity URL anyway. Most well known brands have made their move already, so don't delay.

What does this mean for the B2B sector? Well, although Facebook is thought of very much as a B2C social media tool, we would recommend registering your brand name anyway. Facebook is one of the most popular social media tools out there and this is something you cannot ignore. There is a lot of nice functionality in Facebook that could be utilised by a B2B company: letting people know about events, uploading video and pictures, engaging in debate etc. Don't rule it out just because it is used mainly as a social facilitator.

Update: It has since become apparent that Facebook set some prerequisites to the vanity URL for companies. Firstly they have decided you need 1000 fans or more to have a vanity URL on your fan page. Secondly, you must have had a page since 31 May 2009.

Another update: Good news for smaller companies: Facebook will lift the ban on 1000 minimum fans on June 28th.

This isn't a new subject, Josh Bernoff of Groundswell fame has spoken about it previously. But it is a subject that crops up when speaking to clients and potential clients. Is it right to pay bloggers to blog about your product or service? Josh Bernoff'asserts that is OK, as long as the blogger is transparent (a key concept when operating in social spaces) about the fact that they are being paid, and that they can speak freely about it, i.e. if they think it's pants they can say so!

I agree with what Josh says (he always has a balanced view of brands operating in social media and I can recommend following his work). But I would extend this question further to reflect an issue many companies are having right now: how do staff internally make the time (and hone the skills) to blog themselves? Is it right or wrong to have an agency help you write your blog?

This is more dangerous territory as it threatens to undermine the very core principle of social media: authenticity. Here at Bright, we understand that people are time pressured and also lack the confidence to blog. We help people make the time by hosting weekly calls where we talk about what's going on in the community and suggest articles for blogs. Then we help facilitate the blogs themselves. This means we get the staff members to write the bones of the article, and we, if needed, tweak or suggest ways to improve it.

We want to encourage as many brands as possible to engage with their audience using social media, so if we can help them blog successsfully by facilitating content with them then that's fine with us. The content comes from them and we help them get it right. A perfect balance.

I have been attending lots of events recently for marketing people who are interested in how social media strategy can help them achieve their B2B marketing objectives. They have been popular and have had great turnouts, but I still think social media is a cult, esoteric concept to most marketing people. There is still a long way to go to get past cynicism and internal 'poo-pooing' to the idea that social media is about more than Facebook! When I meet marketing folk at these dos they normally tell me that they want to learn more but they still seem tentative about how they can incorporate social media into their strategy. And if they feel like this can you imagine what their colleagues internally think! These keen but still unsure marketing people have often got a battle on their hands to get budget and backing to invest in this new area.

What people need is some simple and practical entry points (baby steps!) into this unchartered and exciting territory. Here's what I suggest:

1. Start using Twitter yourself first to get the hang of it before you set up your company on there(follow us if you like!). Have a play and see what it's all about - it's the only way to understand it. Don't worry about what to say, just say whatever pops into your head! You need to talk to have a conversation so just say something!

2. Start listening to what is going on out there in your target community. See what people are talking about on the specialist sites, what groups exist on social networking groups, what people are saying on blogs and forums. Have a weekly call internally to formalise this activitiy and task each person with the job of bringing at least one thing of interest to the table.

3. After the call, start brainstroming the type of things you might blog about, using the stuff you've come across as inspiration. Subjects should be of interest to your audience (obviously!), and be written by someone who cares about what they are writing about - this is key.

Once you've done these three things, you will be much more prepared to enter this arena, instead of getting stuck straight into it and feeling unsure about what lays ahead.

Let us know how you get on... Good luck!

This article on the B2B Marketing website states that Twitter has become the most popular social platform for senior marketing professionals. Whilst it makes me happy, it also makes me think "Hmmm, why is it that people are more comfortable Tweeting than using other social tools?". A few reasons I can think of:

- Twitter is easy
- Twitter is free
- Twitter is quick
- Twitter is set up in minutes
- Twitter is fast becoming a household name (ride the wave)

As opposed to blogging, creating groups on social networks etc, Twitter is very appealing to marketeers due to its accessibility and instant results. The fact that it is senior profs rather than marketeers in general is, I think, indicative that they are confident enough to convey opinion. The problem many marketing departments have with social media is that they do not trust their employees to speak on behalf of their company, but if the CEO or Head of Marketing is doing the Tweeting, then that's a different matter. These people often make the best figureheads of social activity for this reason: confidence. So, let's hear more from the horses' mouths!

What's next? How do these social-technology-embracing marketeers and senior professionals refine their Twitter campaigns? At the minute a very spammy trend for reciprocal following is occuring (this reminds me of the equally spammy reciprocal links days of SEO). My advice: don't succumb to this approach; only follow people you are genuinely interested in.