When it comes to seeking out a Digital Agency to redevelop your website, devise your social media campaign or do any of the myriad of things you can do online there is this broadly accepted, largely unspoken, practice of not revealing your budget in tenders or requests for quote. It's a broadly accepted practice we would very much like to quash. Don't panic, we don't really want to know your dirty little secrets; we just want you to acknowledge that your budget isn't one of them.
Obviously there are arguments in favour of keeping your budget under wraps: maybe you are requesting a quote from an unknown agency you have never worked with; maybe you have very specific requirements defined and are just looking for the best price from a list of known and reliable sources, but we are finding that often these sorts of scenarios aren't present and the tight lipped client is actually just doing themselves and us a disservice. So we've put together a list of situations that we believe warrant the big reveal!
- You want to produce something great with the money you have but you're unsure about the technical requirements of the project.
The thing to remember here is, while you're unsure, we're not. We've got the technical side of things covered once we've got a brief. But if we're unsure about budget we're at risk of either holding back on the scope of what we offer or presenting something that blows your budget out of the water and with it our chances of winning the job. Revealing your budget gives us something real to work to in making sure all the technical stuff is covered, and you might actually be pleasantly surprised by how much bang you get for your buck.
- You are working with an agency you know and trust
You know how much it has cost you in the past to build x, y or z; you know we can deliver on budget and on time; you know we deliver projects with integrity and transparency; and you know how flexible we are. It's time to fess up about the coin.
- You're looking to create an online marketing or social media campaign and aren't sure how to divide your budget between development and actual advertising placements.
Online marketing and social media remain pretty grey areas for a lot of people in terms of costs. But Digital Agencies actually understand this realm and, more importantly, we know how to tailor it to you and your budget. For instance you can have a substantial development spend, with Social Apps for Facebook, or you can put most of your budget into ongoing monitoring and maintenance of your many social media accounts. Telling us your budget and your aims for online marketing or social media engagement means we can put together a complete package that draws in just the right elements from this somewhat bewildering expanse of online opportunity.
- You want to save time.
It's simple, if your budget is a mystery but the project sounds fabulous, chances are you're going to get a vast set of would-be budgets sent back to you. That's a lot of candidates to sift through and the variety of budgets presented might confuse you and even cause you to question your initial take on the cost of things. While revealing your budget will mean some agencies will choose not to respond, this can only save everyone time in the end. If a certain budget means a project is not a good fit for an agency, it's best that both parties learn that before time is wasted writing and reading proposals, attending briefings and conducting interviews.
Talking honestly and openly with a client re budget means that you can potentially work together to change the scope and certain project elements to fit that budget while still being able to work towards a quality outcome. Plus, talking money can save time and improve your relationship with a Digital Agency. It takes out a lot of the guess work and sets the pace for an honest and open future. It doesn't mean that a proposal is going to be entirely budget focussed and inflexible, it just means that all your cards are on the table and the best possible solution has a fighting chance because it's also starting out as the most realistic.
You know that book you’ve always wanted to write, about all that fascinating stuff you know and all those opinions you’ve formed that everyone needs to hear? Well now you can. You can publish it online - in the form of a blog.
This is the sort of revelation web enthusiasts began spouting when the term weblog and its shortened form blog started doing the rounds in about 97-98. Apparently, and no doubt spurred along by the unbridled self indulgence and pure venting blogging inspires, the total number of blogs worldwide is now thought to be approaching 200 million, meaning the wannabe wordsmith in many of us has sought refuge in the celebrity making, yet largely anonymous, blogosphere. If competing for an audience with 200 million others doesn’t scare you, read on for where to start, what to say and how to say it.
Most blogs, no matter how poorly researched or badly crafted, offer a source for news or opinion. But a truly exceptional blog can be a means of setting trends or applying pressure, be it political, industrial or social, whether the target followers are intensely localised or global. I think this is a pretty good blog space I’ve got going here but I don’t delude myself that I’m setting the world on fire (feel free to disagree in the ‘Comments’) So what are the Perez Hilton’s and Tim O’Reilly’s of the world doing to become blogging leaders?
Well they’re starting by following the first rule of all good writers – write what you know. If Tim shifted his tweeting theme to celebrity gossip and Perez tried to wax lyrical on all things open source media I imagine the drivel that ensued would see a drop in O’Reilly’s 1.4 million Twitter followers and the same for Hilton’s 1.8. Trouble is, ‘what you know’ can be a pretty long list. What you really need is to blog about what you care strongly about because only when someone cares do you start to see real personality in their writing. Blogs, with origins in online diaries, are first and foremost personality driven.
Inject humour! Your sense of humour is the one place your personality cannot hide. It’s the year 2010 people! We have all spent a lot of time pouring over bland data on the web by now. So, whether you’re a conservative local member touting policy initiatives or a new web development agency looking to sound hip, humour and, if you’re clever enough, an original bent, is the Web 2.0 way. Leave the corporate voice in your Annual Report and breathe a little in your blog: but only if you want people to read it.
Be fun and factual. Really, they’re not mutually exclusive. The best blogs employ a readable style that relaxes the audience. When we’re relaxed we are not only more likely to believe what we’re reading, we’ll also remember more and be more inclined to continue visiting that particular blog and engaging further in the myriad of ways social networking allows. But, if you haven’t backed it up by checking your facts you’re at risk of quickly losing any credibility found through crafty sentence construction. You should also provide relevant links to the sites and people that influence you, the spaces where you research your facts. This shows you’ve done your homework while giving your blog a clearer context in the bigger community your blogging to and about. Be sure to include active links and always give credit where credit’s due.
Next you need to consider where to house your blog. Hosted blog tools such as blogger.com are the ideal starting point if you’re resource poor, technically inept, and/or don’t have an existing website to which you’re happy to attach your 2am rants.
Get active on Twitter. Most of us who opt to blog at all have a lot more to say than 140 characters will permit but if you have very very very concise opinions perhaps the ubiquitous immediacy of Twitter is all you need. For the rest of us Twitter is a good messenger, a place from which to direct you followers to your worldly pontificating. It’s also the perfect place to find a blog following and to find blogs to follow.
And reading other blogs is essential! You can get to know where the influence is online right now, get involved in commenting and discussions, join relevant communities and lay the groundwork for attracting people to your blog once it’s up and running. And, one other good reason to read other people’s blogs - you can borrow from their ideas and even their style. People will actively follow people on Twitter, for instance, for two reasons: what they’re saying and how they’re saying it. So if increasing your following is a motivator don’t be afraid to borrow from the successful. Now, don’t get all haughty, I’m not condoning plagiarism. But, come on, the blogosphere is a copy and paste society. Visit the sites visited by your favourite bloggers, follow them on Twitter, Facebook etc and you’ll start to understand the keys to their success. You should be following blogs covering your niche topic and themes but don’t get stuck in a rut reading the same stuff and nothing new, following blogs unrelated to your prime area of blogging concern can open you up to new and innovative blogging sensations that may not otherwise reach your audience.
Speaking of your audience, one very important blogging tip is to listen to them. A blog is a good way to respond to a customer query you hear again and again for instance. Responding to feedback is central to publishing a blog that works in any sort of commercial realm: one that actually reaches people, and with purpose. You can also ask your audience to comment on the blog itself. Incorporating that feedback in a ‘comments’ feature (found on most blog hosting sites and software) means that you perpetuate interest as the comments grow and it all becomes part of the broader conversation as you respond to and learn from your audience.
Having said all of that, I fully expect many a committed blogger to completely ignore it as they see fit. Seriously, if your blog is purely for venting rage or your audience will only subscribe to the meanest, most aggressive tirade then just do it! Guidelines be dammed! Write your way for your audience, even if it’s just you.
Finally, length. How long should your blog be? Well, this one is perhaps a little long. Anything under 1000 words is okay but a punchy 500 words is less of a commitment for your reader.
As the owner of a Digital agency, I don’t come from a purely marketing background which means I only speak conversational ‘Marketese’ at best. I’m also afflicted with my own self imposed honesty and integrity. So when a client asks me, “Is there really anything my business can gain from social media” I know they’re expecting more than a “why, yes, if you take a widescreen strategic approach and commit to a number of channels over a long period of time” type response.
There’s so much talk about social media that there’s now just as much talk about there being so much talk. Yet there still doesn’t seem to be much talk at all about practical means of measuring how a social media presence might be affecting your bottom line. You’d be hard pressed to find a ‘Digital Strategist’, or the like, who would actually say “no, I don’t think a Twitter profile is really right for you and your business at this time”.
Then there’s the somewhat inconvenient fact that all social media is free which makes it even harder to choose because now you can’t site your financial shortcomings as an excuse to not join the revolution. Obviously you still have to gauge where’s best to put your resources in terms of time and effort, so here are some actual ways to a) figure out if a social media platform is worth exploring, and b) monitor how well it’s working for you.
Facebook Fan Pages
Who should use it? At risk of contradicting my introduction – everyone. Facebook is a good starting point for the social media newbie. The thing about Facebook is that, with over 5 million Australian users, spread pretty predictably over a broad age range, it enjoys more appeal than some of the new kids on the block. Everyone’s heard of it and its existence actually makes sense to just about everyone without needing to be explained or justified. It’s also easy to build a targeted page, evidenced by the fact that there are over 20 different Facebook groups whose sole purpose is to complain about people flying Australian flags post Australia Day. Facebook business pages are also highly customisable and make it easy to build in a lot of information about your business - which Twitter is not quite so good at (more on that later).
Is it working? Facebook encourages business participation and as such, provides genuine tools for tracking the success of your page. With the ‘Insights’ tool you can see how many comments Fans make on your posts and track how many Facebook users start and stop viewing your posts in News Feed. More than this, the Insights portal focuses on the quality of content in the stream and presents all of this lovely information in pretty graphs: everybody loves graphs! To access this information all you have to do is click on the ‘View Insights’ link beneath your profile picture. If you’re redirecting Facebook users to your website you can also track these redirects from your own site.
Twitter
Who should use it? Anyone with the time/resources to engage, often. Twitter is an ‘all or nothing’ social media tool. What I mean by that clever phrase is you can’t just open up a Twitter profile and let it sit there waiting for the followers to stream in and do all that stuff they automatically do once they find you, like visit your website. You have to engage with it on an ongoing basis, i.e. tweet regularly, re-tweet, and direct-message followers. When you’re getting started you also have to spend a bit of time getting a following together. Which may or may not involve “negotiating” your way around Twitter’s ‘rules’ in that regard. So you do need to recognise the ‘time sink trade off’ here. Having said that if you have the time/resources to provide honest, open and interesting tweets you will start to see your following grow and with it genuine business interest. If you want to determine whether you bother with Twitter based on user and demographic data, you should seek out a proven market researcher such as www.nielsen.com. I could include some stats here but it’s just growing so fast in every sector that that’s really all you need to know.
Is it working? Measuring your success on Twitter is much easier than you think. In fact, flying in the face of Twitter’s own apparent rejection of all things commerce, there are a bunch of ways to do this. The most obvious first thing you can do is put tracking codes on the URL’s you use on Twitter. You should also use a better URL shortener than the one Twitter offers. Go for one like http://bit.ly/ that allows you to monitor clicks and who is tweeting about the URL link. There are also re-tweet monitoring tools like the imaginatively titled http://www.retweetrank.com/ . And there are tools to monitor how many times your Twitter name or product is mentioned and to measure the number of people following and un-following you per day. In fact I should probably confess that my earlier, somewhat negative, references to Twitter in this article were actually just tricks to appease the naysayers amongst you and keep you reading. The truth is, Twitter rocks!
You Tube
Who should use it? Anyone with a film worth showing. Even if you only have one short flick to upload and you don’t look like making anymore soon, You Tube is just too big a search engine to ignore (let’s not forget it’s owned by Google). If you want a YouTube profile that includes your own branding, some corporate info, web links and links to Twitter and Facebook et al, you can even design your own Channel page and draw in relevant videos from across You Tube to prop up your own stuff.
Another big selling point for You Tube is that not only is it free, it can actually save you money. Posting your video on You Tube as opposed to your own site can mean you don’t have to engage programmers to create media player functionality in your website. Alternatively your masterpiece can appear on your own website as it appears on You Tube. As is the nature of social networking, You Tube also enables people to share your epic five minute cinematic tour de force with colleagues and friends and nothing says ‘these guys are cool’ better than somebody else’s voice. One more selling point for You Tube is it needn’t be as much of a time sink as some other platforms because it relies more on the video’s than on discussion. Finally, detractors can say what they like about Facebook being the domain of phony friendships, or Twitter being just plain ridiculous, but nobody is disputing that You Tube is way cool!
Is it working? Video content is a proven marketing device. Users are lazy and tend to gravitate towards the quickest and most succinct way to find information. If you can give them a quality package that combines visual images, the spoken word, music and visual text, so all they have to do is sit back and absorb, you know you’re on a winner even before you start measures like tracking the number of people who have viewed your videos over time (which You Tube enables you to do). If you’ve created a channel you can also monitor channel subscriptions and, as with most social media, you can also track visits to the URLs you include on your You Tube profile.
MySpace
I’m not even going to launch into a discussion about MySpace because all signs point to it starting to lose relevance. Feel free to dispute that but I’m basing it, in part, on the fact that from June 08 to June 09 MySpace’s total unique visitors for Australia only grew by 5%. Sure, that’s still growth but it just doesn’t measure up to the 95% for Facebook and the whopping 6,000% for Twitter. It offers a platform that doesn’t do anything Facebook can’t do (with the possible exception of some music stuff) but frankly it’s just plain, well, daggy. The writing is on the wall, quite literally. Google ‘MySpace is dead’ and you’ll probably find as many genuine links as you would for “Twitter is taking over the world’.
There are also a number of other burgeoning social media platforms with varying degrees of relevance but Facebook, Twitter and YouTube remain the leaders with the broadest appeal and significant market share. What I am sorry I haven’t had the opportunity to get to is tracking the effectiveness of web users accessing your social media pages on their mobile phones. Maybe in my next blog I’ll talk more about how well social media ties in with consumer demand for mobile accessibility or, maybe, I’ll just say some more damming things about MySpace, who can say?!
