Tasha Harrison

1. Build a relationship with your customers

   If you walk into a shop and the shopkeeper sits you down, makes you a nice cup of tea and discusses exactly what product is best for you, you are more likely to return. By speaking with your fans and not just at them you can create the same warm fuzzy feeling.

2. Customer services

   There are instances where people may talk about your brand, make a complaint or be unable to sort out a problem through the normal channels. You can monitor social media sites and reply to these people. They may reveal problems you didn’t know where there.

3. Your fans can become your brand champions

   They share your content, they suggest your Facebook page to their friends, they promote your Twitter account through #followfriday. They do the hard work for you.

4. Show your brand’s personality

   What sort of person is your brand? What music do they listen to? What do they wear? This can all be communicated through talking and sharing stuff with your fans and followers.

5. Be consistent

   The way you speak to your fans across all your social media sites should be the same, your fans will expect you to act in a particular way.

6. Create guidelines for your staff

   If more than one person is writing your content, you need to make clear to them how they should conduct themselves and what they can and can’t talk about.

There’s big changes on Google today. The search engine is going to include results from sites such as Twitter and from blogs. This is important, because it means that the search results we receive will be up to date news, as it happens. The explosion of  Twitter, in particular, has been the main catalyst for this change. It gives people the ability to publish news as it is happening. It is important that Google reflects this new real-time news source (Rupert Murdoch should take notice).

The other big change is the increased personalisation of your search. Google records your web history and bases its search results on the sites that you visit. So if you regularly visit a particular news site, it will place that site higher up the search rankings if it is relevant to your search. This is a big game changer for SEO, since it favours more established sites. It also means that when you view your own site on Google you will generally see it ranking differently than most of your potential customers, meaning that you have no idea how well your site is actually ranking.

Most good SEOs will have seen this trend already and will have been aware that personalisation has been increasing over the last couple of years. It provides us with a new challenge and increases the need for different forms of online marketing, like social media and online PR. It also creates a problem for SEO companies who still guarantee positions on Google, as they will find it hard to prove.

From a users point of view I actually think these changes are rather limiting. Surely the point of search engines is that we can find something new. Before the days of social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon and Digg, we relied on search engines to bring us new sites and information. Now we will increasingly receive the same sites, having to look further through the results to find something new.

Just when no one thought technology could move forward any quicker Apple launched the iPhone. The effect of the iPhone on how we live can already been seen. It is crazy for me to think now that I looked online at Google Maps and printed out directions to where I was going. That’s almost as insane as me carrying an A-Z about all the time. Now I just happily type the destination into Google Maps on my phone, which tells me exactly where I am and guides me to where I need to go.

If I’m going to a party or a gig that I have been invited to on Facebook I don’t even need to remember the address, I can arrive at the nearest tube, vaguely in the vicinity and Facebook will conveniently link the address on the event page to Google Maps.

I’m off to see a new client and I never bothered to write down their telephone number, but I’m running late (not going to get lost because of Google Maps) so I simply visit their website and there is their number.

In fact, I never need to remember anything ever again. Aeroplane tickets are sent via email – on my phone. Train tickets – email me a number to use at the station to pick them up. Event tickets – soon to be bar code on my phone. Voucher coupons for my supermarket shopping – barcode on my phone. The possibilities are endless.

The most important point I’m trying to make is that my phone is now the centre of my entire existence. And thanks to apps (applications to download onto your phone) people are adding functionality to my phone everyday. This, plus the ridiculously easy to use interface, makes the iPhone probably the most useful item I have ever owned, by miles.

This is why we need to all take notice of how businesses can tap into this emerging market. How can marketers use this information to connect with consumers? By integrating mobile into every campaign and moving it to the centre of all of our thinking.

For further reading see:
Mobile Platform Status Report
Mary Meeker on the iPhone and Mobile Marketing

A few months ago I went to see a new online business with the view to working with a PR company, myself doing their social media. Unfortunately we didn’t win the work, they chose a PR agency with some large companies in their portfolio, who were big players in their industry.  Of course it was sad that we didn’t win the work (and I’m not going to name names btw!), but throughout the two meetings I had with them it really struck me how the impact of the internet has crept up on a lot of business people without them realising.

Their plan was to sell their service for, say, £25 and then sell products on behalf of another company. It seemed a lot of money when people wouldn’t be 100% sure of what they were getting. I worked hard at researching competitors, all of whom offered a similar service, but for free. The client said their service was better than all their competitors, which I had to take their word for.

In our final pitch meeting I tried to explain that their targets were unrealistic and that they would be hard pressed to pursuade enough people to spend the money.  The internet is a crowded place and throwing money at something won’t make it a success. In a futile attempt to win the account I tried to explain why Spotify is such a success – they allow people to try before they buy. They offer their customers the option of paying a monthly subscription with no adverts or they can have the service for free, but with adverts. People realise what a great service it is and consider paying a monthly fee. Some people don’t mind the adverts, so they continue with the free service, which is still great for Spotify.

(Sadly, Spotify now only offer the service free with an invitation. But this is because they were so successful!)

Now they sell music as well, which they make extremely easy to buy. They built mobile applications on both the iPhone and Android platforms. They could well beat illegal downloads and save the music industry (maybe I’m getting a bit carried away!).

The point of the Spotify story was to show them that people online will spend money, but first they need to trust the company they’re buying from. The internet is so overcrowded with various services that people don’t give a lot of thought to something and certainly won’t spend money on something they’re not sure about.

Number one rule if you’re starting an online business – be prepared to give things away for free. If your product is good enough people will spend money with you.

This video reminds me of why I do what I do.  I constantly find it astonishing how powerful the internet is and how important social media has become in such a short space of time.  Enjoy!