Both of these can be measured and while many Social Media Companies count Twitter followers and Facebook fans, these statistics are not enough. Without a measurable which is alligned to the campaign goals, your success will never be known. Take a measurement before you set out and then measure your goals on a regular basis. This way, you will be rewarded for your success or be given the chance to re-adjust your campaign to eventually achieve that success.

Listening tools are easy to set up and many are free of charge. Setting up a Google Alert takes only seconds and will generate valuable daily reports. Other useful free listening tools include Twilert (which is like the Google Alerts equivalent for Twitter) and the real-time search engine, Kurrently.
It’s amazing how some businesses fail to respond in any way to negative customer feedback, for instance, leaving customer complaints unanswered on their Facebook walls. Here are Kaufman Mather’s tips for dealing with negative feedback from customers:

• Always, always, always respond, as quickly as you can. Doing nothing is not an option; it makes it look as if your brand just can’t be bothered.
• Never be dismissive of how a customer feels. Perception is reality. You need to try and see the situation from the customer’s perspective.
• If you can, try and continue the conversation offline to learn more. Offer a telephone number and a names contact, or an email address and ask them to send more details of their experience.
• Try and turn the situation around and make a complainant into a brand advocate. Find ways of getting the customer to give the brand another chance. Offering a little freebie can bring great benefits!
• There will always be customers who cannot be turned into advocates but whatever the circumstances, remain polite, fair and professional

Lo and behold, within a few hours, I had a response suggesting I try one of two things. I did, but to no avail. It still did not work. Knowing there is a human at the other end of the application, I took a screen capture of the error and sent it off to my “man on the other side”. In minutes I had a further reply telling me that the error was in fact that I had a certain piece of software installed twice on the customer’s server. At this point, I think it would have been fair for the problem to be left with me to sort out. But no!

The last part of Ron’s email said something which, to me, was the very special part of the service he offered. Instead of leaving things there, and leaving the customer (in this case a non-fee paying one at that, to clean up, he suggested he improves his code to prevent such things getting the better of his software. He promised a new version the next day.

As sure as day follows night, the new version was there for the downloading. Well done Ron, it is great to see there are still people out there that offer great service.

One of the most common and costly web design mistakes is creating a web site without giving considerable thought to how people are likely to find your site.
Will you get it right first time? Well the chances are not, but at least you want to get close and you will only get there, if you consider SEO in every aspect of your site design.

As a web designer, there are essentially 6 key components that you need to think about when designing the site. These are:

• Branding
• Type of site – dynamic or static
• Structure of the site
• Content
• Images
• Keywords

Unfortunately, in many cases, the last one on the list, Keywords, is not taken into account. This post is intended to help you understand why this should in fact be the first thing that is tajen into account.

The best way to put this point forward is to use an example of a company which sells a range of little widgets which double as a pen and corkscrew. Throughout their site they would talk about pens and corkscrews, and how novel their product is. However had they done some very basic keyword research, they would have noticed that “pen” gets by far the highest number of searches, but one can only assume that in most cases people are looking for something more conventional, which discounts most of these searches. Corkscrews get a pretty low number of searches, but what does get a considerable number of searches is “gift ideas”, “present ideas” and “ideas for gifts”.
So let us look at how this might affect nearly all of the componentsof the website design.

Branding
Maybe the key message of the site could focus around gifts as opposed to the functional use of the product.

Structure of the site
If there are versions that are more suited to men than women and visa versa, the menu could reflect “Men’s gifts” and “Women’s gifts”

Content
The words and phrases that appear highest on the keyword lists should be more prominent in the sites copy.

Images
Not only should the content of the images maybe have items relating to presents, such as wrapping, but the alt tags associated to them should focus more on presents and gifts than pens and corkscrews

Keywords
The page titles and descriptions should also contain the primary search phrases rather than “pens” and “corkscrews”

I hope this post has been helpful to those setting out to create their company websites. Please let us have some feedback as to what you have learnt from it.

http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

So what is this 118 elevator pitch? Well, you have 8 seconds to hook the listener and 110 seconds to convince them. How right he is. Practice it, perfect it and you will reep the rewards.

And then, once you have done that, exactly the same rule applies to your website’s home page.

Last week somebody told me a great story about an American sports coach who was enroute to dine in one of the finest restaurants that New York can offer. This may seem a bit extreme, and indeed, maybe even a little freaky, but it’s a good example of how restaurants can use Social Media to personalise the dining experience for a valued customer. Apparently, feeling a little peckish at the airport he found himself eating a Burger King, and, amused by the irony of the situation, sent out a tweet about it.

On arrival at the exquisite restaurant in NYC, having perused the menu the sports coach and his partner settled down to anticipate a memorable meal. A waiter placed in front of each of them a small plate covered by a silver dome. As the domes were whipped away to reveal miniature but immaculately constructed burgers perched on tiny burger buns, the waiter smiled and said “We hope these taste better than the one you had at the airport!”
The restaurant staff had been looking for a way to personalise the sports coach’s experience, and his tweet provided that opportunity. By Googling a guest before they arrive at the restaurant, staff expecting a valued guest can gain valuable information that they can use, either simply to show an interest in the individual and create a connection or to use the information creatively to tailor the experience and delight the customer.

OK, I know that retail banking isn’t where the banks make their money, but I do believe that if they undertake to provide a service that they should deliver it to a certain standard. I suppose my baseline expectation is that they provide an efficient service and that they treat their customers with respect. These days I rarely cross the threshold of a branch, but today I had to carry out a transaction that could not be done online. This afternoon at Nat West in Acton, I witnessed a complete disregard for customer service. The branch was absolutely bursting with people, most of whom had been waiting for far too long. There were only two tellers behind the counter and no more were called, even though the queue of customers reached the door. The enquiries desk was unmanned whilst more than 10 people waited desperately for a member of staff to show up. Eventually a young woman swept past on her way to the staffroom. She was returning from a lunch break, recently purchased sandwich in hand. When stopped by a customer, she mumbled that she would see where the member of staff, who should be on duty had disappeared to. She did not attempt to manage the situation, to engage with the frustrated people who were standing there and to make it clear that she would take immediate action get the shambolic situation under control. She made no apology, showed no regret and demonstrated no respect. I’d like to see Nat West spending less on advertising and branch refits and more on actually providing some decent customer service. We’ve heard the talk, let’s see them walk the walk.

• those that used the media to its full
• those that dabbled
• those that simply had not yet got there (they will though).

This blog is about that middle group, the ones that dabbled. Here there were three sub-groups that we managed to find:

• all friend but little content
• all content but no friend
• all done when I have time

Clearly there are more and more companies joining this group of dabblers. Many of those will in time, when they establish a sound social media strategy, move to the group of “power users”, but many of these will not. These companies need to ask the question “If we are going to do Social Media, can we get the full benefits with the resources we have in-house?”.

If a company cannot build up a sound base of listeners and on a regular basis provide them with content, they seriously need to consider what resource they need to achieve this. Content without listeners or listeners witout regular content is simply not enough for a Social Media campaign to succeed.