Creative Agency Secrets

I have been watching the online ad serving market quietly for a while and just read from Sam Sethi the not-so-secret rumour that Google is to buy Feedburner.

As a Typepad / 6Apart user, I’ve been on Feedburner for a while…. advantages you can read without adverts.  Now this will shortly be gone… if Google starts serving its own adverts down the Feedburner pipe.

How do you feel about getting ads with blog news?  I read on Bloglines to avoid it… BUT the other day, working with Buffalo Communications, I noticed that there were no adverts on the key blogs for their sector (outsourcing) being served with PR offerings…. a great opportunity for them.

So maybe I will become immune to adverts in YET another medium.

Salesforce has long been my own preferred database / sales management tool.  I’ve used it since 2003 and have been recommending it to clients since then.

Seems they are finally working out that FUNDING is important for bright young developers who have ideas to write add-in programmes for AppExchange [the part of Salesforce where third party suppliers can  promote their add-in programs].  Business Week picked up the story.

For creative businesses, I find Salesforce has enough functionality to allow a proper sales / business development pipeline management with a bit of CRM thrown in.  It isn’t expensive, it isn’t complex and it provides a sufficient framework for most organisations.  Salesforce does not work for CRM for clients.  It won’t store files (only a few ‘centralised’ ones) and so is inappropriate for that purpose.

As far as creative incubators go, the only one I knew about was run by Wilson Harvey (now part of Loewy Group) and Charlie Hoult was MD and rather manically trying to buy all the organisations he was incubating.  And of course a couple of large agencies sub-let vacant office space in 2001-3 to small start-ups…. but it was hardly incubation at that stage.  Tonic started off in offices like that at FCB.  Not sure what happened to them all…… is it time for creatives to incubate again?

What would an incubator do for a young creative agency?
1 - offices (meeting rooms, reception, cafe)
2 - business support (accounts, telephone)
3 - water cooler ideas / discussions
4 - opportunity to collaborate on clients (but only driven by the host, probably)

What can an incubator offer that somewhere like the Hub in Islington (a shared office space for creatives) can’t? 

Thanks to Sam Sethi for the info.

Tripped the light fantastic over to Earl’s Court (blimey this is the ‘best’ showground we have in Central London and it’s AWFUL - space dull, facilities basic, noisy, nylon carpet, no decent entrance).

Anyway, the organisers have merged the Direct Marketing and Internet World shows into one…. this was hard to work out as I had come for IW but found myself wandering around Post Office and TNT stands… until I realised that the critical divider was the CARPET… red for DM; blue for internet.  Obvious, really!

The conference schedule had one paid for event (Brands Reignited) and loads of short freebies in small booths around the floor.  BRILLIANT.  Love the concept.

Found the Web 2.0 stand and caught a Barclays guy put forward by his web consultant both waxing lyrical about his wonderfulness and how banking might move forward (catch-phrase city…. long tail… monetise…community….) nothing new.

Trexy - a new approach to search where instead of the content producers using SEO to dominate search, the user sets a ‘trail’ and others can follow it.  Trying to mimic the way we use tasks (brain recall, ask your friends, go find) to get stuff offline.  Neat.  Need to test it for myself.  Can’t see what’s in it for the average business site, nor how they make money.

Loic le Meur keynoted on the future of blogging.  Good to see the man in action.  He’s started using the one-word-per-slide crap that Tom Peters did years ago.  It works with a highly vibrant delivery style that does not require you to refer back to your notes / screen.  Not for you, Loic.

Message: The Future of Blogging
Trend 1 Escape your friends.  Get away from the huge numbers of readers Loic has on his blog by creating private spaces to meet the real people you want to converse with.  (Second LIfe, WOW etc).

Trend 2 Stay with your best friends.  Use clever sites to let people you wnat to meet know where you are and what you are doing.  (Twitter, Dopplr).  Rationale, you get closeness from your real friends and you pay attention to them, plus speed is of the essence - immediacy rules.

Trend 3.  Video blogs.  TV sucks and watching it alone proves you have no friends.  Make it a community past time (Joost, Sling Box, blinkx).

Trend 4. A culture.  Move to no office, borderless world with no race, no religion, no email, no country, no tie etc etc etc.  Decentralised, unheirarchial, no mass media, instant access and no costs (!).  NO secrets - everything is shared and aways in beta therefore there are no failures.

That was it… 120 slides in 28 minutes. 

My views - Trend 1… great for the famous. Hardly real for the masses.
Trend 2.  yes…. but…. I looked at Twitter and it just isn’t me.  Maybe I don;t have enough friends who are techie or online all the time but I really don’t want everyone interrupting me with messages through the day on what they are doing.  Easy and fast way to hear the ‘news’ e.g. French election results on Twitter before the newswires’ embargo was over.
Trend 3.  Probably.  Nice idea to make communities out of everything.
Trend 4.  Maybe.  It would be fantastic for me.  And I am really drawn to the online marketing and sales model by product development / community / buzz rather than advertising and push marketing.  Whether we can make it work for real for enough non-IT brands remains to be seen.

God bless Google’s algorithm.  I am easy to find online….. even if you spell my name wrong.

Try it for yourself!
Or for your brand…..
AND Or your competitors….

In fact.  Why not download Firefox’s SEO Add-on and check your online profile, Alexa, MSN, Google and other rankings.  If you corporate page isn’t at least hitting 5 on Google…. worry.  in fact, be very worried and get it sorted pronto.

SEO is what you need.  Plus an integrated online and offline sales and marketing plan that builds your profile and reputation globally.  If you aren’t doing it - you can probably consider your business history within 3 years.

Call me and I’ll send you to the right people who are expert in the various skills you’ll need.

Blimey.

PS respond if you are scared by this.
PPS in fact, don’t write a comment or a response - just do it.  DROP EVERYTHING AND DO IT.

B.L. Ochman has written the 12 tenets of Social Media Marketing.

She is good, well-read, top blogger and an inspiration.
How well am I doing?

1 - OK - building my public.  Need more of you reading me.
2 - working on this.  Hiring PR agency to help me out for the print side. BCP
3 - quite good for rowing stuff.  Not yet there for business commentary.
4 - rock on!  Strongly UK for me.  Global for rowperfect.
5 - you tell me.  How am I on this?
6 - I get responses so it can’t be all bad.
7 - ditto
8 - no chance, me and my big mouth!
9 - never happened yet!
10 - weeellll.  needs more work.  Even some work would be good here.
11 - comment at will - say it the way it is, Please?
12 - no way.

(more…)

This is the future….I love working with interesting people who challenge me and push new ideas out for testing to see if the idea will improve whatever we are working on.

This applies at work and in my leisure (rowing) life…. and at home too.

I have worked with great people who have helped me along the way Honor Chapman, Pip Errington, Mark Adams,  Richard Sheahan, Adriana Lukas,  Marianne Grand, Julian Wells [where are you now?], Vyla Rollins [ditto].   

I have also worked with great people who have NOT helped me along the way.  Sad but true.

Time for payback.  These people are GREAT.  They have skill, ability, strategic thoughts and they are very generous with their ideas.  And so here is my manifesto.

The Advice and Guidance Manifesto

Ever noticed how great, talented peoplet are free with advice and guidance?  Why do they do it?
1.  Because they aren’t threatened by sharing their ideas
2.  Because even if I could use every idea they tell me today there are dozens more they are formulating which will keep them ahead of me for a while yet
3.  Giving for free brings payback multiplied many times over (client referrals, new speaking opportunities, new ideas, building reputation….) 
4.  Because someone helped them when they were starting out and the responsibility cascades down the generations
5.  So start doing it yourself - TODAY!

I know this.  It happens here, on this blog.  As I write 9.72 unique visitors read this site daily.  Who are you?  Delighted you are visiting.  Presumably one or two are re-visiting - particular thanks to you, the faithful.  Wow.  Cheers.  Pass the message on. 

The topic of search engine optimisation (SEO) and google rankings seems to be front of mind this week.  Two of my clients have mentioned the need to do it, revise it or improve on it.

Agencies are now setting up specifically to advise on SEO and of course this is a license for a long term relationship with customers who have to keep coming back for more as the Google algorithm changes over time [invest now….?!]

Anyway, nice article  from the SEOmoz Blog about the key factors involved A Little Piece of the Google Algorithm Revealed .

The main parts are: Key Words, Domain Strength, Inbound LInks, User Data and Content Quality.

Well we could have guessed that…. but here are some things that you can use to check your website is up to scratch on these basic hygiene factors.  For the technically minded the Search Enging Ranking Factors article provides the techhie fix. (or send it to your web designers).

KW Usage Factors:

• KW in title tag
• KW in header tags
• KW in document text
• KW in internal links pointing to the page
• KW in domain and/or URL

Domain Strength

• Registration history
• Domain age
• Strength of links pointing to the domain
• Topical neighborhood of domain based on inlinks & outlinks
• Historical use & links pattern to domain

Inbound Link Score

• Age of links
• Quality of domains sending links
• Quality of pages sending links
• Anchor text of links
• Link quantity/weight metric (Pagerank or a variation)
• Subject matter of linking pages/sites

User Data

• Historical CTR to page in SERPs
• Time users spend on page
• Search requests for URL/domain
• Historical visits/use of URL/domain by users GG can monitor (toolbar, wifi, analytics, etc.)

Content Quality Score

• Potentially given by hand for popular queries/pages
• Provided by Google raters (remember Henk?)
• Machine-algos for rating text quality/readability/etc

Leading to…GoogScore = (KW Usage Score * 0.3) + (Domain
Strength * 0.25) + (Inbound Link Score * 0.25) + (User Data * 0.1)
+ (Content Quality Score * 0.1) + (Manual Boosts) - (Automated &
Manual Penalties)

Article published today in Business Startup website Startups.co.uk  on why Small Businesses are failing to capitalise on the opportunities offered by Blogs.

Research from online hosting provider Fasthosts has found that
nearly half of small business believe using a blog to encourage traffic
to their website would increase sales, yet a mere 3% of those polled
said they plan to launch one.

The study also found that over a quarter of small firm said
they need a blog to be updated daily to ensure that potential customers
return to their website.

“In today’s hyper-competitive market, blogs provide a fantastic
way for small businesses to differentiate themselves through
personalising their website and attracting more customers,” said Andrew
Michael, chief executive officer at Fasthosts.

“The corporate blogs of large companies are bound by corporate
guidelines and gatekeepers, so for small businesses there is far
greater opportunity for interesting comment and genuine dialogue with
customers.”

However, just over a third of respondents said that as long as
the blog was informative and interesting, it didn’t matter to them how
regularly it was updated.

So, some mis-conceptions there compared to reality.  Check out the business blog rules search I did Business Blog Rules and decide for yourself what works for your organisation.

Blogger Ergo Sum!

Happy, happy, happy.
Just had a call from Lucy King at Buffalo Communications that they have won another new client.  Toucan  part of IDT Corp have hired them to launch a new product into two separate marketplaces.

She was kind enough to say "it’s all happening now and it is thanks to you and the work you’re doing with us to win new business."
Thanks, Lucy.

I think I was wrong about people reading ads. Well, rowing people reading ads.

I overhead conversations at the World Rowing Champs of people saysing "I read about this…" or "Oh these are those new wotsits…."

So I take it all back.  We clearly all read adverts but we dont’ act on them.

So next question….. WHY DON’T WE ACT ON ADVERT MESSAGES?