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Ask the Experts: Digital Media Google Plus Hangout

Jennifer D Begg — September 30, 2012 — 1 Comment

The lovely Emma Cossey and Fran Swaine joined me this week for a live Q&A on the topic of Digital Media over on Google+ Hangouts. Questions covered included:

What are the biggest barriers for organisations who want to use social and digital media?
What is your favourite social media dashboard and why do you use it?
Do I need to use Google Plus? What is good about it?
SEO – Help! What do I need to know about SEO?
How do I get more comments on my blog?

We had such a great time and are really looking forward to running our next discussion. We didn’t get a chance to answer all the questions we were asked (Sorry Sally, definitely talk about Facebook competitions next time) so we have plenty left to talk about.

Before we decide what theme we should go with for our next Q&A, it would be great if you could post any theme requests or questions below. What have you always wanted to learn more about from the world of Digital Media? What do you find confusing, interesting or just think deserves a bit of air time?

–x–

From the video – links mentioned in our discussion:

Mentioned in the intro – Lasa ICT Digital Media Survey:http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/lasadigitalsurvey
Please take a second to fill it out if you work in a charity. Thanks :)

Resources mentioned:
Hootsuite: http://hootsuite.com/dashboard
Tweetdeck: http://tweetdeck.com/
BufferApp: http://bufferapp.com/dashboard
If this then that: https://ifttt.com/dashboard
Alternion: http://www.alternion.com/
SEOMoz: http://www.seomoz.org/

Geek & Sundry: http://geekandsundry.com/
Nerdist: http://www.nerdist.com/

For more digital and social media tips and training, why not sign up for one of my online training programmes. Guided learning in the comfort of your own home from beginner to advanced.

Digital Strategy: Targeting your audience

Jennifer D Begg — September 23, 2012 — Leave a comment

Having clearly set your organisational goals using the advice from my previous post, it’s now time to look at your target audience. Who are they, which social platforms do they use and are they open to your communications while using them? Just because your audience are on Facebook doesn’t mean they are willing to interact with your there.

Continuous and evolving

As part of your marketing you will already have a clear idea of who your target audience are. Now it’s time to find them online. Not just online but specifically on which platform and additionally which device. This is where your web analytics can help you. If you use Google Analytics you can not only find out how much of your traffic comes from mobile devices but also the amount of social referral traffic you are getting from sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

This is also a good time to look at your bounce rate from mobile devices. Is your content cutting the mustard when it comes to mobile operating systems like iOS, Android, Windows Mobile and Blackberry?

Now that you have a baseline to work with you can start looking at potential. You know how much social and mobile traffic you have at the moment so where should you be concentrating your efforts to increase that interaction?

There are many places you can go to collect this data so my advice is to start a spreadsheet (this is often my advice, I LOVE a spreadsheet) so that you can put the data collected from different sources into one place for easy analysis. Here are some of the places you can go:

Ofcom – do reasonably regular analysis on UK specific digital usage
Social Bakers – give topline numbers on worldwide Facebook usage as part of their free package
Facebook – go through the advertisement process without confirming and you can get pretty specific data on potential reach (thanks to Mark Braggins for the heads up on that one)
Mashable – share case studies and infographics with tips and data
The Next Web – insights and data
eConsultancy – share information and topline stats through their blog and research samples or become a member to get the latest available numbers

After finding the general usage data you need to experiment and look at any sentiment data you can find to establish how open users are to interacting with brands. Again if resources are low you might just want to experiment for a while and establish for yourself which platforms are best for you after all, this is an ongoing process.

You need to really listen to your audience and there are two ways that you do that:

Ask them. Whether it’s through comments, tweets or surveys.
Look at data stats. How many clicks did you get on specific tweets? How many RTs etc

It’s not just about what people say they do but what actions they actually take.

When all this data is collected and you’ve made an informed decision where you want to place your efforts, you need to look at what content you are going to share. The next post in this series will look at how you can create and implement an effective content strategy for your organisation.

For more digital and social media tips and training, why not sign up for one of my online training programmes. Guided learning in the comfort of your own home from beginner to advanced.

Digital strategy: Starting with Organisational Goals

Jennifer D Begg — September 23, 2012 — 1 Comment

It can be incredibly difficult to divide your resources when you are part of a small team. Although social networking sites are free to join, to be truly effective your organisation you will need to invest time and resources.

How do you know where to start, never mind how to amplify and grow your online presence. Where should you focus your efforts to ensure your team’s actions are garnering the best results?

Continuous and evolving

A digital strategy is not a fixed document but a continuous and evolving process. This is especially true when resources are tight. To capitalise on what digital communications can offer, it’s important to be agile.

Start with organisational goals in mind:

This is really important if you want to avoid the trap that so many companies fall in to of trying to jump on every shiny new digital trend. It’s not about your digital goals, they come next and should be tied directly to what you are trying to do as an organisation. For example:

The goals above are very simplistic but it is worth starting with the most basic and building complexity from there. In the example above Revenue could just as easily be e-commerce or Online Donations, they all come down to the same thing.

Next relate these to digital actions that you can measure:

It’s important to remember that getting traffic to your website isn’t enough, what do users do when they get there? I would make this same point when it comes to twitter followers, Facebook fans, blog subscribers etc. For large retailers there is always an argument to be made for playing the numbers game if you can do it economically. However, for small organisations it’s much better to build value into each action.

Having clearly set your organisational goals, it’s now time to look at your target audience. Who are they, which social platforms do they use and are they open to your communications while using them? Just because your audience are on Facebook doesn’t mean they are willing to interact with your there.

Go to > Digital Strategy: Targeting your audience

For more digital and social media tips and training, why not sign up for one of my online training programmes. Guided learning in the comfort of your own home from beginner to advanced.

Down the rabbit hole: Buying twitter followers

Jennifer D Begg — September 8, 2012 — 2 Comments

What happens when you buy twitter followers? The Rabbit Agency ran a little experiment to find out…

View this document on Scribd

Metrics are important in digital media whether it’s website traffic statistics or social media interactions. However, be strategic with your choices. It’s not about gaining followers or fans, if they’re not interested in you or your organisation then the numbers have no meaning.

The Social Penguin recently ran an article on Social Media Gurus and the dangers of buying their snake oil. I love social media and really believe in its potential as a tool for engagement but these guys are right, your scepticism has a valuable place here. To be successful with social media it’s important to invest time and energy strategically, that way you’ll grow relevant followers who will take appropriate actions like visit your website or share a message. I would go even further and suggest that when you’re measuring traffic on your website and you’re tracking social media referrals, take note of where users go when they get to your site, what are they doing when they get there? How engaged are they with your content? This will help you to develop more meaningful digital strategies.

For more digital and social media tips and training, why not sign up for one of my online training programmes. Guided learning in the comfort of your own home from beginner to advanced.

In Digital Media, Jennifer D, SocialNetworking, Twitter Business Development, campaign, connections, Digital Media, engagement, interaction, marketing, ROI, Seminar, social media, social networking, tracking, twitter, workshop

5 time saving social media tips

Jennifer D Begg — August 31, 2012 — 4 Comments

There is one concern that comes up at every digital media training session I’ve ever run. How do you find the time to commit to successful social media? It’s not just the newbies who have this concern, you could be the most enthusiastic tweeter, it can still be difficult to co-ordinate your time to produce a successful social media presence. So, here are my top tips for streamlining your social media:

1. Schedule, schedule, schedule (but don’t sound like an autobot – make sure you compose all your own messages)

While the joy you get from social media is in the interactions, it’s ok to schedule a portion of your posts. What doesn’t work is if that’s all you do.

I use BufferApp to schedule for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, unfortunately there’s no Google+ integration yet but I believe it’s in the pipeline. The great thing about BufferApp is that I can schedule posts while doing my job. Throughout the day you probably come across many articles, videos, pictures, blogs that are relevant to your sector. With a couple of clicks (using the Chrome extension) you can schedule that sharing across multiple platforms. Make sure you rewrite the suggested text so that the post is in your “voice”, scheduling is fine but sounding automated isn’t.

2. Find inspirational content to share

If you know you’re going to be offline for a few days (or at least mobile dependent), have a play with StumbleUpon to find content that is worth sharing with your audience. Depending on the interests you pick, you will get randomised posts that are tailored to your profile. The more you use StumbleUpon the more relevant the posts become. You can also use tools like Scoop.it and Summify to see what the people you follow are sharing.

3. Keep an eye on your channels

If your timeline moves so quickly you can’t possibly keep an eye on the twitter chat, use lists and columns to organise and manage any important feeds. I like Tweetdeck for keeping an eye on conversations because of the black background but you can also use a dashboard like HootSuite. Just add a column with your chosen search term or list of users and flick back and forth throughout the day.

4. Keep ahead of the trends

This is particularly useful if you are trying to build a following in foreign markets. TrendsMap uses both GoogleMaps and twitter API to make it easy to see who is talking about what in a particular town / city / country. If you see something that is relevant to your business, add the hashtag to your columns in Tweetdeck and get involved in the conversation (and see your follower count and RTs grow).

5. Recipe of success

If This Then That is a relatively new site that lets you match up multiple accounts to make your own recipes (automated actions). I’ve written before about how to set up your own recipes so I won’t bore you with that again here. What I will say though is that it’s become invaluable to me for keeping track of things like twitter mentions and comments on guest blogs.

Social media may be free at the point of entry but to do it well is time consuming. However, the opportunities to build relationships, drive traffic and create value are endless. To really get the best out of social media you do need to invest in it but that investment should be focused on the best areas for your goals. Treat social media like any of your communication channels; measure, evaluate, improve.

What are your top time saving tips?

For more digital and social media tips and training, why not sign up for one of my online training programmes. Guided learning in the comfort of your own home from beginner to advanced.

Digital Networks: If This Then That

Jennifer D Begg — July 2, 2012 — 4 Comments

A new way to organise your digital networks

Following a couple of prompts (thanks @Skipinder & @SuchPrettyEyes), I’ve finally managed to sit down and have a play around with IF This Then That. In the words of my husband “why didn’t I think of inventing that!?”

The site lets you connect your accounts from across 47 options in order to trigger actions. Essentially, each channel becomes a “this” or “that” with the first action triggering the other.

Connect up to 47 different accounts

You create your own “Recipes” which are private or can be shared if you think the combination would be useful for other users.

So far, I’ve set up my Instagram pictures to be automatically saved to a Dropbox folder, twitter mentions to be added to Storypad for Storify (great for building brand engagement stories), new WordPress posts to go to LinkedIn (not revolutionary, I can set this up easily already) and lastly my YouTube favourites are being sent to Dropbox.

I particularly like the range of applications available to users. It’s incredibly easy to set up your Recipe’s and although some links are easily managed with other existing programmes, IFTTT significantly opens up the field, upping the control and customisation to incredible levels!

So, what are your favourite Recipes?

In Digital Media, Jennifer D campaign, collaboration, creativity, Dropbox, engagement, facebook, innovation, Inspiration, Instagram, interaction, ROI, social bookmarking, Sugarsync, tracking, unusual, WordPress, YouTube

How do I market my business with no budget?

Jennifer D Begg — June 24, 2012 — 3 Comments

This article was originally posted on JenniferBegg.com

This post was inspired by the Quora question: How do I market my new business with no budget?

Always start with the main goals of your business in mind. You don’t have to be on every shiny new social media platform. Spend time analysing where your target audience spend their time and talk to them there.

Optimise your site thoroughly. Start by doing the following:

Register your site with GoogleAnalytics and start using WebMaster Tools
Look at the terms current users are typing in to reach your site and see where you could be expanding your reach. Which terms are resulting in the most pages per visit and lowest bounce rates?
Use GoogleAdwords’ keyword search to get an idea of how competitive the terms you want to go after are (nb: you don’t need to be booking advertising to use these tools)
Google cares about who links to you. It’s important to optimise on the pages of your website but you also need to spend time gaining relevant links back to your website pages. This not only helps with search ranking but is also another avenue for relevant traffic.

Here is a handy cheat sheet for optimising your pages

It’s important to follow blogs like SEOMoz to keep ahead of the competition.

Next you should make time for social media. It may be free but to get good returns you need to invest time and invest it wisely:

Decide on the profile of your target audience (start with a narrower definition first to make targeting easier, especially if you are short on resources)
Spend time searching twitter for discussions that are relevant to you (this twitter chat hashtag list is a handy place to start)
Facebook advertising is a very cheap and targeted way to put your toe in the water (you can do some short term testing for very little money and you have complete control) – ONLY IF THIS IS WHERE YOUR AUDIENCE ARE
LinkedIn discussions and relevant blogs are a great way to gain credibility and link people back to useful information on your website.

Finally – get into the habit of using a social media dashboard so that you can analyse the success of your tasks and integrate your profiles in a more time efficient way. I combine the following:

BufferApp Their chrome extension means I can add posts to my schedule without leaving the page I’m on. Saves massively on time and I can avoid sounding like an autobot by editing tweets etc before posting. They also let you integrate your bitly account so that you can track all the stats from your specific links. Works for: Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn

TweetDeck Great for following multiple hashtags and discussions as well as search terms (make columns that are specific to the audience you are targeting).

SproutSocial This is not a free app but is very cost efficient as I get detailed stats and tailored search functionality which really helps me to target my efforts.

In Digital Media, SocialNetworking Business Development, campaign, Digital Media, marketing, ROI, SEO, social media, tracking

If nothing we do matters…

Jennifer D Begg — June 8, 2012 — 43 Comments

You know how some people have little motos that they live by (no? just me. ok), well mine comes from an episode of Angel (season 2, episodes 17 to be exact). There, I said it. Frankly, it’s a relief to get it out there.

Now before you judge me too harshly, I’ll tell you what that moto is:

“If nothing we do matters then all that matters is what we do”

Confused? That’s ok, Joss Whedon (genius, god like creature that he is!) lets Angel explain:

Now you could say that this is as cliched as any other quote you see flying around twitter – and it is. However, it’s also completely true.

We’re bombarded by media every day telling us of great disaster and injustice and we feel helpless to do anything about it. No matter how just the cause or convincing the fundraising ask is, it’s difficult to convince people that their donation or act is actually going to make something better.

There are times in life when we’re all faced with our own mortality and limitations. I’ve been there and at the time, to be honest, didn’t really live by my motto and in fact, pretty much decided to check out for a while. Then with small steps I started to realise something. Instead of feeling like I had to take on the world in order to have my life mean something, I decided to find things I could actually have an impact on.

I now spend my time doing things that I love and that I think matter. None of them particularly Earth shattering but definitely world changing to me!

So, in celebration of the little things (or big things) that make a difference, I’d love it if you would share what makes you proud today and why it makes a difference.

123 – GO!

In FeelGoodFriday, Fundraising, Jennifer D Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, campaign, campaigning, Donations, Fundraising, Inspiration, JaniesSchool, Joss Whedon, Life

Video Sharing: from marketing messages to stakeholder engagement

Jennifer D Begg — February 26, 2012 — 1 Comment

Video Sharing: from marketing messages to stakeholder engagement was a seminar given by me for The Guardian Media Academy & Guardian Seminars. This presentation is a flavour of what was discussed and will hopefully give you some practical pointers on how you can improve brand exposure and engagement using video content.

Video Sharing: From marketing messages to stakeholder engagement

View more presentations from livefreerange

SEO: Ensuring your web presence is a success

Jennifer D Begg — February 6, 2012 — Leave a comment

Optimising your online presence, beyond SEO

SEO: Ensuring your web presence is a success

View more presentations from livefreerange

Search Engine Optimisation: Ensuring your web presence is a success was a seminar given by me for The Guardian Media Academy & Guardian Seminars. This presentation is a flavour of what was discussed and will hopefully give you some practical pointers on how you can improve your website usability and performance.

What’s your experience of SEO planning? What tools do you use to ensure your plan is successful? Please share below.

In Digital Media, SEO business, Business Development, campaign, comment, creativity, engagement, interaction, ROI, Seminar, SEO, social bookmarking, tracking, workshop

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