Newlands is a long-standing client of Zeta’s, so when we learned that the business was expanding, we decided to get the lowdown on how the digital strategy and website that Zeta created back in 2005 have played a role in the success of the business.

Our journey prompted a conversation about a remarkable figure in Dorset’s local history; Lady Mary Bankes. I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t overly familiar with the one-time guardian of Corfe Castle, but since then I have done a bit of research and she’s quite an inspiration – how many people do you know who have singlehandedly defended a medieval fort under attack from an army of 300 bloodthirsty Parliamentarians? I expect you’re probably wondering how this anecdote fits in with the Zeta ethic of digital wizardry and cutting edge design – stick with me, it’s not as tenuous as it sounds!

After hearing about Lady Bankes and her defence of Corfe Castle, I couldn’t help but think that there were similarities to be drawn between her and the client we had just visited, due to the way the owner of Newlands Training, Lesley Simpson, has fought to grow her business into the success story it is in 2012.

Under siege

Back when Zeta built the Newlands website, the business was one of the first in the agricultural training industry to move onto the web – a bold move back then, especially for a small, rural-oriented firm in darkest Dorset – but as I found out, Lesley is no stranger when it comes to facing the unknown.

Newlands Training was established around 27 years ago, under the auspices of the now defunct Agricultural Training Board. When the government scrapped the ATB in 1994, Lesley made the decision to plough on ahead anyway: “The funding had stopped, but I realised that there must still be a demand for the local agricultural industry to stay competitive in exactly the same way as before: by keeping skills current, efficient and safe.” Returning to the old barn she used as a premises, Lesley picked up the phone and spent a week ringing round her previous clients to inform them that she had taken the decision to go it alone: it was business as usual for Newlands Training.

Fighting back

Since then, the company has gone from strength to strength; Lesley has a client base that includes the RSPB, Dorset County Council and the National Trust. Her qualified instructors offer industry recognised courses in forestry and arboriculture, agricultural vehicles, grounds maintenance and workshop skills to name but a few. The days of operating from ramshackle barns and tumbledown sheds are long gone; Newlands Training is now situated at Enterprise Park in Piddlehinton, with enough office space for Lesley and her small team to operate from comfortably; surrounded by beautiful Dorset countryside. After meeting her, I’m left in no doubt that her success is down to sheer determination and, to be frank, quite a lot of balls in the face of such a male dominated industry. During our conversation I’m surprised at how old-fashioned some people in the industry are in their attitudes towards women: “I’m used to people looking around for the owner of the business when they meet me – when they realise there isn’t a man in charge they look surprised and ask; “is this your business?!””

And if that attitude sounds more outdated than Internet Explorer 6, imagine if you will, some of the comments our other Dorset heroine, Lady Banks, must have received back in 1643 whilst single handedly defending Corfe Castle during the English Civil War.

A historical issue

Similarly to the way in which Lesley has battled hard for her business to survive in the face of government opposition, Lady Bankes fought off a 300 strong army of Cromwell’s soldiers, aided only by her six daughters and a servant. The details of how she fought off the siege are murky – some say the small group of defenders heaved hot stones and embers over the walls of the fort to keep the attackers at bay. There’s also records of the Parliamentarian forces melting lead from the village roofs and pipes of the church organ to make bullets. The story inspired us to create a list of our top women in business – why not tell us yours?

Here in the Zeta office we’re looking forward to starting work on an update of NewlandsTraining.com and working on a digital PR strategy. If you would like to hear how we can give your business a fighting chance with our online expertise, why not give us a call? 01202 901 108

Quick Response codes can simply be explained as a 2D barcode, which when read with a mobile phone camera or web cam will create a link to a piece of online content such as a site, article or video. The matrix for QR codes was created by the Denso-Wave Corporation from Japan in 1994, as it stands no license fee needs to be paid so QR codes are available to anyone wishing to use them. The web is full of sites that will create personal QR codes for any specified link, meaning anyone can now add a QR code to their correspondence.

As well as linking online content to an offline audience, Quick response codes can contain any degree of information such as names, numbers, addresses and email addresses. Their ability to hold this type of information as well in theory makes them the perfect addition, or even alternative to a business card.

Although growing in use throughout the advertising industry, QR codes have yet to firmly take off as they require the user to download the QR reader app in order to access the information held within them. Unfortunately the codes themselves are not that pretty, and the more information you want to store within them the bigger they need to be. With such large proportions of offline budgets going to art direction, will designers be willing to allow such an intrusion?

Linking offline and online is an invaluable service for marketers, yet we can’t help but think until they advance in functionality or develop aesthetically they may not ever grow from gimmick to mainstream.

The latest ‘I like it’ status innuendo, which is supposedly an unofficial marketing tactic to increase Breast Cancer Awareness during its October campaign month, is really starting to irritate me. The status tactic is old news and disappointingly uncreative. Come on people, we can do better!

I logged onto my Facebook page today only to find half a dozen or so of my girlfriends detailing a little too much personal information!

My best friend, Lauren, likes it on her kitchen counter; my school friend, Lisa, likes it on floor; and my Auntie Jane likes it on the coffee table!!

What about me? Well, I like it on the back seat of my car while I’m driving! Calm down everyone – we are only talking about our handbags!

I must say I won’t be telling people where I like mine this week. This Facebook status stunt is a little outdated – by about 5 months actually. So I wonder why on earth it has resurfaced? Well simply put, it is another unofficial campaign aimed at raising breast cancer awareness. It was used a few months ago but did not get quite as large a response or coverage it expected. Being the up to the minute social media guru I am, this is when I actually participated in changing my status accordingly. This second tier Facebook social viral was a clever follow-on from the Facebook bra updates back in 2009 – read my post here: colourful-facebook-statuses

Well October is Breast Cancer Awareness month so that is why we are seeing the viral re-appear this week. It is really that great? I don’t think so.

A spokesman for Breast Cancer Care, which is not affiliated by the campaign, commented that, “While viral campaigns have great potential for increasing consciousness around many issues, we’d like to see this go further. We would encourage people to direct their Facebook friends towards helpful support and information to create better breast awareness … or reminding their friends to check their breasts regularly when they explain what the campaign is about.”

The issue here, and with many viral campaigns, is that whilst they may spread messages and increase awareness they often do not lead to any measurable action. Have any of my friends who have updated their statuses donated any money to a cancer research charity, or have they booked in for a free breast cancer scan? Chances are the answer is NO!

Why doesn’t some clever organisation out there try and capitalise on this? Thousands of women are updating their statuses in the name of breast cancer, why not invite them to a charity landing page or website? Here it could ask them to share their status in return for a chance to win a prize, whilst cleverly designing that page to entice donations using clever calls-to-actions?

What about a celebrity campaign to start the flow? Where does Katie Price, Kylie Minogue or Charlotte Church like it? These women have been touched by cancer and could help explode such a viral campaign.

We could inject more creativity, but my point here is that there are so many great viral campaigns happening online every day, yet organisations and brands are failing to grasp the opportunities they present quickly enough.

I am lucky enough to work with a great team here, we encourage each other to stay abreast of digital and social media developments and buzz, and where appropriate we try and maximise these for our clients and campaigns.

Come on people … think outside the bra!

They say, and we agree, that by utilising and exploring social media tools employees can consume, learn and act on information much quicker. If knowledge is everything, then surely the more the better? We are obviously not talking about looking up your boyfriend from 5 years ago to see if his new girlfriend is pretty; we’re talking about separating your work and personal accounts, condensing the information and building relationships with contacts in the time it takes to tweet.

By streamlining your Facebook, Twitter, RSS Feed and Google alerts to separate work from play you can identify the information and limit the temptation to poke people all morning. By leaving the social at home and taking the networking to the office, staff can expand their knowledge and build relationships with clients and customers alike in a coffee break. Long gone are the extended boozy lunches and hours spent smoozhing at parties when all you used to come home with was a pocket full of crumpled business cards and an affair. Now contacts can be made from your desk first thing in the morning, when talking face to face with anyone is out of the question.

Yes, your boss may argue that staff could just sit there all day staring at an old school friend’s holiday photos if given unlimited access to these sites; but to be honest those people probably wouldn’t do any work anyway, so I’d just move their desk next to the boss’s and see how that works.

By allowing staff the tools and techniques to gain the most up-to-date information in their chosen field, it means your company will have the most up-to-date information in its chosen field.  “Social media has definitely confused the boundaries of work and home life, but a refusal to embrace this will no doubt leave you part of the diminishing minority” (Roger Allen – 2010, The Zeta Office).

So next time you are floating around cyberspace, but systematically switching windows between that and a timesheet, don’t worry, Roger says you’re part of the forward thinking majority, so embrace it!

Yesterday Rage Against the Machine (RATM) become the first UK Christmas number one from downloads alone. The Facebook group “Rage against the machine for Christmas no.1” boasts 975,476 members and was the catalyst to the most exciting chart battle for years. The Facebook campaign directly challenged the X Factor’s dominance for the Christmas No 1 slot – X Factor winners have dominated Christmas number ones for the last four years.

Over the last ten years we have witnessed a communication revolution. The rise of online shopping, the blogging phenomenon, iPhones and smart phones and online advertising spend overtaking TV advertising. The rise of social media has shaken up the marketing and advertising industry by introducing new dynamics to communication.

The RATM Facebook campaign really highlights the digital revolution we have experienced and thus makes a perfect end to 2009. It proves that online campaigns can make a serious impact on society and firmly reinforces social media as one of the most important technology developments of the past decade (and possibly the last 50 years).

If you think traditionally the X Factor single should have won. It had:

• A 12-14 week show on Saturday and Sunday nights
• A proven history of successful X Factor number ones with four previous winners
• A hugely successful record label financing the single
• High street sales; HMV, etc

The RATM campaign had

• £0 financing and marketing budget
• No store sales
• And a song which was 15 years old

But where it lacked in investment it scored in emotional connections with the UK population. Facebook gave people the opportunity to really make a difference and be heard. The viral campaign spread within days and topped 500,000 members in under a week.

The power of social media cannot be ignored. It has challenged the traditional forms of advertising. Consumers will be heard and must be listened to. Brands which do not listen will simply not be around in the future. Companies need to move their communication efforts to where their target consumers are, and many statistics show that as of 2009 more and more of us are spending time online especially engaging on social media.

Give your followers value

Before you even set up a Twitter account, you must plan a campaign and set goals for what you want to achieve. What is the purpose of your profile and what will your customers gain? If you were a customer what would benefit you? If you wouldn’t want to follow the updates then most probably neither would your customers.

Keep your profile updated with regular tweets, but only if they are useful to your followers. You don’t want to tweet useless updates like “I am hungry” which nobody is interested in. Tweet links to blog posts, discounts, news stories and anything else your customers may find interesting. Once you find a topic that brings in a lot of followers or sparks discussion you can expand on this and even write a follow-up blog post.

Don’t over-tweet and clog up your followers’ profiles because they will most probably be following other companies too. There’s a danger that your tweets may get in the way of other updates and people will just stop following you.

Etiquette

Twitter is not an instant messenger. It is designed to communicate to thousands of users at once. Try to make your tweets appeal to all followers and don’t get stuck in two way conversations. Re-tweet (RT) other relevant tweets which your followers will find valuable. Reply to your followers and find related queries other users might have that you can answer.

Promotion

Use your corporate branding to style your profile so users trust you and don’t think it’s a fake profile. Find other users which are related to your industry and follow them. They might return the favour and in turn pass on their followers.

Research what other people are saying before posting a tweet. Use Twitter Search to see what key phrases are being used and try to include them in your tweets. Use hash tags before and after your key phrases. Tweet at peak times so your tweets don’t get lost. Peak times can vary depending on your industry and country but the majority of users go on just before and after work.

If you have a company blog or website, add a link or feed so that people can see your latest Tweets. Add a link in your email signature.

Tweets

When it comes to writing a tweet, don’t just write “Here is a great article http://bit.ly/crDzc.” Spark conversation by asking a question e.g. “None, sharp, crisp, strong or smooth? Which photoshop anti-aliasing works best? You decide… #photoshop #design http://bit.ly/crDzc.”

Here I have asked a question which will entice followers and hopefully get a response and create even more exposure. I have also added key phrases so it will be picked up in Twitter Search.

Getting the most out of Twitter is a matter of trial and error.  You can only find out what works for your company by trying different approaches.

Guides

Newbie’s guide to Twitter
Twitter Glossary
Hash Tags

Tools

http://bit.ly/ – Use this website to shorten your URLs/Links so you can fit more characters in your tweets.
http://twitpic.com/ – Upload and share photos on Twitter.
http://refollow.com/ – Manage your friends and followers on Twitter.

Anyone can upload a video onto YouTube and thousands of people do this every day making it increasingly harder to get noticed. Uploading a clip while thinking it will automatically reach a wide audience just isn’t the reality and unless you do it with SEO in mind you may find that it just slips into the YouTube sea of useless information.
Appearing on page one for any chosen key phrase is essential to achieve maximum results. Applying SEO can get your video on the first page of YouTube and if you get that right you could also see yourself appearing on the first page of Google for the same key phrase. This will all depend on how competitive the key phrase you are targeting is and how well your video is produced, because at the end of the day you will need to create something that is visibly pleasing to the eye with relevant and useful information.

A good example of this is the video for the Magicard HoloKote Tool that I recently uploaded onto YouTube. After applying traditional SEO techniques I have got the video to appear number one on YouTube for its chosen key phrase “ID Card Security” and just recently it has started to jump between page one and two on Google.com.

Below is a screenshot I took today which displays the video at position one on Google.com

Alternatively search for [ID Card Security] on Google.com

Using traditional techniques like optimising the title, description and tags, have laid a solid foundation for us to build upon. Our next step is to create a newsletter that we can send out to all of the Magicard dealers. This will detail how they can embed the Holokote video into their site. Doing this will bring further exposure to the YouTube channel and move us up the SERPs. If we can get 30% of Magicard dealers to embed the video on their site then that’s a job well done and we should see the video move into the top five positions on Google.com regularly.

So in conclusion, using video as a marketing tool can bring a great return if you can achieve a first page ranking in any top search engine. And with more people turning towards the internet for video/media whether it is on a mobile device or through traditional means you may want to decide if this is something that you need to get involved in.

YouTube if you want to.