FWD has provided clients with digital services for a number of years: recent projects have included a new website for Premium Credit ( www.premium-credit.co.uk). It’s taken us a while but we’ve finally launched a bespoke website covering all the digital services offered by the group. You can see it at www.fwddigital.com.
Digital is a diverse and fast-moving environment. A dedicated website and blog will allow us to keep clients and those who are interested up to date with developments and how FWD Digital can help businesses achieve their online potential. Our blog aims to provide ideas and insight into social media, blogging, search engine optimisation and web design.
We hope our site will help marketeers and CEOs alike understand how their business, whether it’s a consumer-facing or B2B brand, can use its website combined with tools such as search engine optimisation, social media marketing and site analytics to achieve a range of communication and business development goals.
The FWD Digital website can be found at www.fwddigital.com. Please feel free to contact either James or Craig through the site here: Contact us.
OUR RECENT BLOG looked at why B2B brands have been slow to begin using social media. Certianly one reason behind this trend is the ignorance-is-bliss attitude: brands have not wanted to enter the online space for fear of finding negative comments, lacking the resources to deal with it, making bad decisions or losing control of their brand.
The thing to remember is that there are going to be conversations about your brand with or without you, and that by participating or at least monitoring these conversations you can regain some of the control and start influencing what is being said.
The question we get asked time and again in one form or another is: isn’t social media just a load of teenagers messing about online?
A year and a half ago this would have been difficult to argue against but now social media has started to really come into its own for B2B brands.
There are soon to be over 18 million users on Twitter
80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices
There are more than 4,000 insurance-related posts every day
Blogs
There are over 70 million bloggers generating 1.5 million posts per day
34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands
78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
These points highlight why social media is relevant to B2B brands and indicate that they have reached a point where no sane business can afford to ignore them. Burying your head in the sand could mean you are missing out on opportunities to capitalise on gaps in the market, form ideas on consumer opinion and reduce the impact of negative press by proactively responding before a story forms.
Not every aspect of social media will be relevant for every brand, and it’s important to enter into any activity with a clear strategy. But monitoring how social media is used and what is being said about your brand will enable proactive online activity where you can start to build and influence in this online environment.
This presentation offers an introduction to the FWD Reputation Monitoring System:
AS A DIGITAL consultant at FWD I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to find case studies of B2B brands that have successfully integrated online communications into their marketing mix. This is proving to be harder than you may think, especially when looking for a UK brand.
Our first hand experience as FWD Digital has highlighted that very few financial service organisations have ventured into the online space any further than just having a website. We’ve found that the majority of them accept they should be involved in SEO and social media but, because they don’t know where to start, or due to a lack of resources, many of them keep putting activity off. Twitter and Facebook are perceived as being a teenage playground where no real business is done, and LinkedIn is just seen as a networking tool with no function in brand building or lead generation.
Our presentation explaining why social media and SEO is relevant to B2B brands has yet to fail in winning marketing directors and PR teams round. A few of our points are;
the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is the over 35s
the average age on LinkedIn is 41
49% of LinkedIn users are the business decision maker,
Twitter has 4,000 insurance-related posts a day
All of the social media sites can be great brand building, networking and lead generation tools if used correctly as there are so many industry experts, journalists and thought leaders using them everyday. With all of them, though, it is about using them strategically, familiarising yourself with how they work and then trying to fight through the noise to create your own space of relevant information where you can join or start a conversation. This video that is currently 14th in the viral video rankings with over 1 million views, clearly demonstrates that social media cannot be ignored any longer.
Craig Freeman, FWD's social media and SEO specialist
Craig Freeman is FWD’s latest recruit: an SEO (search engine optimisation) and social media specialist who has joined us as Digital Consultant. We thought you might be interested to know a bit more about Craig so here are his vital stats:
1. Why did you join FWD?
When I met the people from FWD, they demonstrated a real desire to grow their knowledge of the online environment and asked me to present to the whole team about SEO and social media. It quickly became apparent that these factors could benefit a large number of FWD’s clients if implemented correctly and I was subsequently offered a role with the company.
Everyone at FWD was very welcoming during my work experience and they all wanted to talk through how they could make use of the different online tools to add to the marketing and PR services they currently offer clients. It was this forward thinking outlook that encouraged me to accept the role as I feel that digital media can provide tools and techniques that can really benefit FWD’s clients.
2. How did you get into SEO & Social Media?
I left university in 2007 and got a job with a gap year company called Changing Worlds. This is a not-for-profit company organising voluntary work placements abroad for school leavers and students. My role was to look at their existing print and online marketing activities and establish what was working, what was ineffectual and what other tactics they could use.
It was a role that grew organically: I was given a free reign to try out different techniques. I quickly established that their target market was easily accessible online and started learning and using SEO and social media to position Changing Worlds in front of this audience. This involved setting up a Facebook page, ensuring they had links and adverts on quality websites and looking at how to ensure their website was easily accessible through search engines.
It was the instant and ever-evolving nature of this environment that really grabbed my interest as results would show within hours if the changes I made started to drive traffic and encourage interaction. Since then I have built up experience working for a health and fitness website and a West End marketing agency.
3. How does SEO fit into the general insurance market?
49% of online purchases originate from a search engine such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. Therefore it’s easy to see why the majority of consumer-facing companies are focusing on SEO as a method of boosting sales and brand awareness. The benefit of SEO within B2B environments is not as clear cut but it is still a key marketing tool. Consumer facing insurance companies easily fit the existing SEO model and should be able to see good levels of growth, but B2B facing insurance companies need to invest in SEO for different reasons. Appearing high up in search results will position a company as a high profile player within the industry. It can ensure they are in a potential clients thinking when looking for a new service provider or sending out a tender, while also increasing the chances of journalists picking up press releases or asking for opinions on breaking stories.
4. How does social media fit into the general insurance market?
Social media is being used in B2B environments at an ever increasing rate. Facebook pages, LinkedIn groups, Blogs and Twitter posts are likely to be familiar phrases for most companies in any sector, but have you heard of RSS, Ning, Twitterfeed or Twitpic? There are always new ways to increase the spread of your brand across the Web and by being active now you will be able to ride the wave of each new trend as it breaks. The competitive advantage that can be gained through social media is invaluable. If you paid for the equivalent coverage in advertising you would most likely have to triple your budget.
Social media provides a method of demonstrating your brand’s personality.
5. Where were you educated?
A-levels at Caterham School in Surrey followed by an honours degree in Business Administration at Coventry University, graduating in July 2007. For this I wrote my dissertation on Customer Relationship Marketing looking at Internet advertising.
6. Where do you live?
I still live in my home town of Caterham, Surrey close to junction 6 of the M25. I have, though, just secured a flat in Balham that I will be moving into with my girlfriend later this month.
7. Which social media sites do you use?
I use Facebook and Twitter daily, probably more than I used to now I have an iPhone. I also write a blog using Google’s Blogger platform and I have a LinkedIn account. I use Flickr, YouTube, Skype, Ning and MySpace less regularly but at least once a week. I also have accounts on Ecademy, Hi5 and Friends Reunited.
8. What is going to be the next big thing?
It is always a bit of a guessing game but I think that users are beginning to want more control over their social networks. Facebook has annoyed a number of users through repeatedly changing the layout and editing its Terms and Conditions to give them the rights to user-generated content. A large proportion of the applications that have been created for Facebook also send out too many updates and create so much noise that they end up burying the useful information.
Therefore I think we will start seeing subject specific social networks. MySpace is a good example as when it started to lose ground to Facebook it started focusing almost solely on music. Ning is now offering a template for users to create their own social network. This has been around for a few years but up until now take up has been quite slow. Some popular bloggers and influential Tweeters have started to set up travelling, celebrity and professional focused networks with new networks being set up almost every day. The majority of these will remain ineffectual but some of them will tip and achieve rapid growth.
This change could almost be seen as a move for democracy within social networks with users having a say in content, design and the use of advertising instead of a company having full control. Social networks have given the public a voice and they do not seem afraid to use it.
9. What are you most proud of?
My proudest achievement to date is helping Changing Worlds survive the downturn in an industry that was seeing a large number of the smaller gap year companies liquidating.
You can contact Craig on craig.freeman@fwdmarketing.co.uk or phone him on 020 7623 2368. Or you can send him a tweet at @craigdfreeman.
Have you left a message on the First Direct website?
Interesting experiment in social media and transparency going on over at First Direct, the HSBC-owned phone and online retail bank. First Direct has always prided itself on a positive reputation with its customers so the bank has decided to take the bold step of opening up a section of its website for customer comment.
Specifically the bank has created First Direct Live, a page on which people can leave comments, plus it displays a summary of First Direct-related sentiment from other online sites and blogs such as Twitter. The positivity or negativity of these comments is displayed as an overall measure of customer sentiment.
Tied in to PR around Britons’ use of social media, First Direct has clearly decided to nail its colours to the social media mast – and with some good results. The bank’s PR also makes it clear that this is an acquisition campaign. As a bank founded on phone and web technology, the move certainly makes sense and is targeting the right demographic. Equally important is the need to rebuild trust in banks post-credit crunch.
At the time of writing, the bank’s measure of comments received shows 76.69% are positive and 14.99% negative. Negative comments I’ve seen include the usual complaints about service and the bank’s attitudes: Sharon is wondering where her paying-in book is; Joe The Lion is calling the interest rates on his savings account pathetic; Unhappy Bunny says the local loan shark was more help.
There’s also criticism of this initiative as being faux social media: the bank is not responding to customers’ comments, which is what social media is all about, plus there is a degree of moderation which is leading to some comments being blocked. The T&Cs of the live section of the site do make it clear that the bank is picking and choosing which comments it uses and how long they’re displayed. A sensible safeguard for a bank but a poke in the eye for enthusiasts of truly social media.
Any way you cut it, though, it’s a bold experiment and one to be watched closely. First Direct has always had one of the best reputations in the sector, but it still takes a brave company to hang its dirty washing out in public in the hope that there is sufficient clean washing to entice new customers. Proof of the pudding will come in First Direct’s new business figures for the remainder of this year. Wonder whether we’ll be getting to see those?
But this experiment in social media and brand reputation is a big first for the financial services sector and a harbinger of what is to come in both B2C and B2B. So watch this space.
PS As a long time customer of First Direct I left a comment on the site – a positive one.
When considering some of the great things England has given the world, Cockney rhyming slang must be right up here with fish ‘n’ chips and Monty Python. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept, Cockney rhyming slang is form of slang in which a word is replaced with another that rhymes with it e.g. stairs = apples and pears. The Cockney bit refers to those lovely folk from East London born within the sound of Bow Bells.
Any old iron er…how, because Cockney rhyming slang is a living language that continues to evolve, we thought we’d bring it bang up to date and apply it to social media and the online world. So the FWD team put their heads together and have come up with the following. Strike a light!
iPod = Brickie’s hod e.g. “Oi, can you turn your brickie down!”
iPhone = Bugsy Malone e.g. “I ‘ad me Bugsy nicked on the tube.”
Facebook = Kelly Brook e.g. “Who were you chattin’ to on Kelly Brook last night, then?”
MySpace = death and disgrace e.g. “Everyone else has left death and disgrace for Kelly Brook.”
Spam = strawberry jam e.g. “Gor blimey, me inbox is full of strawberry jam this mornin’!”
YouTube = Rubik’s Cube e.g. “I’m gonna upload that video of you falling over to Rubik’s Cube.”
Google = apple strudel e.g. “Why don’t cha just strudel it?”
Twitter = spam fritter e.g. “Naw, I deleted me spam fritter account last week.”
Tweet = sweaty feet e.g. “I going to send a sweaty about that.”
To be frank, we struggled with Linkedin and email so any suggestions for those or indeed any other cockney-techno speak most welcome. Gertcha! Now I need to get with with writing me Phileas Fogg!
THERE’S BEEN AN awful lot of talk – and indeed hype – about Twitter in the last couple of years. And in case you’re one of the very few people who’ve not tweeted, or been exposed to Twitter, it’s a social networking and micro-blogging communication tool using the web and mobile phones. Postings are limited to 140 characters, so brevity is the rule of thumb here.
Rewind to earlier this year and Twitter was being hailed as the new communication channel for the tech-savvy PR and marketing person. Journalists suddenly stated talking about the death of the press release; send me your story via Twitter instead, they tweeted. Incisive Media – Post, Reinsurance etc – has been experimenting with Twitter feeds; so too have a range of businesses.
But is it any use? Well, the site is now ranked the third most popular social network after Facebook and Myspace, estimated to have around 6 million users logging on each month. On the down side, there’s been a lot of discussion about the volumes of user who open an account, tweet a couple of times, then never both using the service again.
For anyone trying to get to the bottoms of this twitterous subject, here’s a very helpful graphic from informationisbeautiful.net which condenses the entire Twitter community to just 100 users – and this is what you get…
PS RT is retweet: forwarding on someone else’s tweet.
It came in an email at the close of yesterday afternoon: the dreadful news we’d been waiting for. No, not Jade Goody’s passing, but a chilly wind of change blowing through the hallowed halls of traditional public relations. And this is what the email said:
The Guardian’s Technology Editor, Charles Arthur, has indicated that he prefers to receive pitches from PR professionals via Twitter.
That’s right, no more ringing up Charles and pitching a story over the phone. No more lengthy emails. From now on we’re limited to communicating with him in just 140 characters using our mobiles or twitter.com.
For anyone not au fait with Twitter, it’s essentially a cross between micro-blogging and Facebook. But what’s marking it out as an issue for comms professionals is the growing number of journalists asking to receive pitches from PRs via it. Granted, most of these journalists are (a) American and (b) technology writers, but the trend is spreading. And it’s important to note that UK trade journalists and early adopters of new technology have a key demographic in common: they’re both in their 20s and 30s.
So what does this mean for PR practitioners? Should we abandon our press releases and our lengthy phone conversations in favour of condensing everything to a 140-character ‘tweet’ sent online? Absolutely not. You try pitching a reasonably complex business story in just 20 words.
Do journalists genuinely think Twitter is a better medium for a PR pitch or does it simply offer them a way of filtering out extraneous PR noise? Or is it more of a gesture – a way for a technology specialist like Charles Arthur, who is a highly intelligent and literate writer, to demonstrate that he ‘walks the talk’, technologically speaking.
Right now the jury is still out. B2B trade media are aware of the new technology and are beginning to experiment with it. So PRs, too, need to get to grips with Twitter and make a realistic assessment of its potential as a communication channel. And you can’t understand Twitter unless you use it, which is why we’re experimenting with it at FWD.
Today, for example, a picture appeared in many national tabloids of actress Demi Moore’s posterior as photographed by her husband Ashton Kutchner and uploaded to Twitter. At least that’s what the story said. Or are we actually looking at an example of a clever PR using Twitter to raise Ms Moore’s flagging profile with an allegedly candid shot?
Find me on Twitter and let me know what you think.
Genuine Twitter picture or just clever PR? Only Ashton and Demi know.
Tech website mashable.com has just published a fascinating article examining the ways in which traditional newspapers in the US are tapping into social media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc) to, well…save themselves.
Newspaper circulations across the board have been dropping for years – a source of much concern to their publishers. As a new generation of web-savvy Generation X-ers is swapping online news and content for hard-copy papers and magazines, the old media have been hunting frantically for new business models that will allow them to tap into the emerging culture.
You can read here how they’re trying to do it in the US.
FWD has provided clients with digital services for a number of years: recent projects have included a new website for Premium Credit ( www.premium-credit.co.uk). It’s taken us a while but we’ve finally launched a bespoke website covering all the digital services offered by the group. You can see it at www.fwddigital.com.
It came in an email at the close of yesterday afternoon: the dreadful news we’d been waiting for. No, not Jade Goody’s passing, but a chilly wind of change blowing through the hallowed halls of traditional public relations. And this is what the email said:
