Marketing resolutions for 2010

As I shall only be working on one day between now and January 4, I thought I would share my marketing New Year’s resolution with you in advance.

I’m going to consolidate the various communicates I’ve built up over the years into a single, more easily sustainable group. The way I see it, these groups are: readers of this Blog, readers of my newsletter, members of the LinkedIn groups I run, Facebook fans of Stone Junction and Twitter followers. And of course, using Real World 2.0 (version 34) there are also people I actually know, work with and work for. This latter group is often forgotten by digital marketers ;-)

So, in 2010, I propose to bring these groups together, using more cohesive communications technologies and messaging. It’s my feeling that we are approaching a critical mass in terms of the sheer quantity of self populated content sites out there, both in terms of Social Media and online news outlets, and this is inevitably going to bring with it a consolidation of its own. This isn’t to say we are going to see any kind of bursting bubble. However, the weak generalist sites will die out or specialise while the niche sites and the well used general sites will continue to flourish. My objective in communicating more efficiently via all of these mediums is to avoid having all my eggs in one basket when this happens.

So, Merry Christmas, Fröhliche Weinachten, Buone Feste Natalizie, Shinnen Omedeto. Kurisumasu Omedeto!

Blogger service: Ranking higher in Google

Most of us want our Blogs to rank more highly in Google and there are plenty of ways to achieve this, so I thought I would share a couple with you.

1, Set up your Title Bar so that it includes the key words you want to be ranked under, reading from left to right. So, if you want to be ranked highly for the words 'bearings', 'condition monitoring' and 'predictive maintenance', make sure you title reads 'Bearings, condition monitoring and predictive maintenance from XXX'. Of course, if you want to be ranked highly for, say, technical PR, the same thing applies!

2, Include your key words in the tags on your posts. And make sure every keyword is included in every tag.

3, Generate inbound links to your Blog with keyword rich anchor text. For example, if you are a sensor company, you might want to link from your Web site to your Blog with the phrase 'Read the Sensor Experts' Blog, instead of 'Read our Blog'.

4, Encourage readers to share your Blog, perhaps by using AddThis tags. Again, this will generate quality inbound links.

5, Use the bottom of your Blog for something! Google considers the first and last links on a page to be particularly important, so make sure the last link on your page is a text link to your Blog's homepage, using keyword rich anchor text, or an image linking to your home page using Alt tags that feature your keywords.

And of course, don't forget you are Blogging for a reason. If your objective is sell more product to customers, make sure your include a call to action. For instance, we might say, 'contact Stone Junction on 020 8699 7743, to discuss setting up a Blog for your own company'. However, not every post has to be a sales pitch just because this one is! It is beneficial to build your company's perceived expertise by simply imparting useful information.

Engineering PR: The health of the trade press

Whether you refer to it as technical PR, engineering PR, industrial PR or even technology PR the fact remains that communicating with and via the editorial in the trade media is probably still quite high on your marketing agenda in 2010. I appreciate that plenty of other things are probably important as well. From Blogging, Social media and e-mail marketing to Google AdWords, SEO and just getting a better Web site online there have never been more 'new' elements of the marketing mix introduced in a single decade.

I imagine you have also heard, like I have, that the trade press is now a less effective medium than it once was. Well, putting aside that this is a hugely sweeping statement that addresses every magazine from the The Engineer and the IEE Review to a highly specialist title like Panel Building, I think it's fundamentally wrong.

Firstly, the trade press were amongst the first organisations to begin taking advantage of the possibilities of Web 2.0. From launching video sites to Twitter streams, it's the media who have been ahead all along. So, the idea that they are going to be left behind seems strange to me. Surely now is the best time to be in the trade press, after all you no longer just get a clipping in the magazine but also online and probably a reference in their e-mail newsletter, Twitter feed, Facebook fan page, LinkedIn Group and countless other outlets they might use to disseminate news. And don't forget, magazines are 'authorities' on their subjects and thus highly likely to rank highly for the relevant keywords.

However, while it isn't true that the trade press is on its last legs, it is true that there has been a fundamental shift in the way people buy everything from bearings to packaging lines and inverters to wind turbines.

Once, people would look at the editorial and ads in their most trusted trade magazine and select a product on that basis. Of course, there were a million and one other factors, from trade shows to how friendly the salesmen was, but the fact remains that the trade magazine was the key source of information.

Then, there was a time when people sourcing goods would just type what they wanted into Google and buy it. Now, I believe it is much more likely that they will type what they want into Google, assess every option and the trustworthiness of the information presented to them and then make an informed decision. Gone are the days in which Google was God and we believed whatever it said. In that sense, the golden age of Google has been analogous to the golden age of TV advertising - both were times in which the claims of a single medium were believed above all else.

Of course, people still use Google to find things, but they don't just trust the top three listings anymore. Instead they look for the most trustworthy and relevant pieces of information on which to base their decisions. And where do they look for it? Online articles, print articles, Twitter feeds, fan pages, message boards, video - in fact, in all of the information mediums the trade press provides... So, the fact remains, you are right to make technical PR a key part of your 2010 marketing strategy, because good technical PR now incorporates a host of online communication methodologies that will help you be that trusted source of information.

How to install Google analytics on your Blog

Most of us have an analytics package on our Web site. If you don't, then you absolutely should. However, not everyone has analytics on their Blog.

If you are one of these people, ask yourself why you haven’t installed an analytics package yet? Is your Blog not an important part of your online PR strategy? If it isn't, then why are you bothering with it? If it is, then surely you must want to measure its efficacy? What you can’t measure, you can’t manage.

Well, the good news is, you can easily install a package and it's free. Here's an article, explaining how to install Google Analytics in such simple terms that it can be understood by even the least techie Blogger. Thanks to David Cowgill for writing the original article this post links to.

So, measuring the efficacy of your Blog is free, but do you get time to produce high quality posts for it? If not, get in touch and we can provide a quote on how to do this cost effectively as part of your technical PR strategy.

Tweet for business, individually

As someone who runs several business Twitter accounts on behalf of clients, I'm always conscious of ensuring that the tweets I put out are authentic and worthwhile. So, I'm delighted that Twitter is now making it possible for business users who have a single account covering the whole company to allow individuals to tweet using that account but also identify themselves separately.

As a result, you can have Tweets from the MD, the HR manager, people on shop floor and even the PR person - all clearly identified. Apart from obviating the problems with representing yourself online as another individual or company, this will also add another layer of social networking to Twitter.

I can also see huge potential for Twitter as an internal communications tool once this feature is enabled. Anyway, you can read more at Brand Republic. And don't forget, if you are looking for someone to establish a social media presence on behalf of your brand, get in touch.

The tool is only in Beta testing stage at the moment though; Anamitra Banerji from the Twitter product team said, "The beta will be released to a limited subset of folks for some time so that we can get an idea of how the features work from a system perspective. After we kick the tires a bit, we'll do a full launch to all business users and ecosystem partners."

When it is released generally, I will put a ‘how to’ feature on the Blog.