birddog

The all new Birddog website

So, here it is. The new Birddog website. Nice isn’t it? It’s also the vehicle for delivering the new Birddog visual identity.

In navigating the site, everything is fairly simple.  There’s the usual ‘about us’ and ‘service’ pages, but, like many visitors who visit this site, you’ll probably only ever read them once, so instead, the focus has been placed on two key areas:

Our work is the showcase for all of the work done by Birddog for clients. It’s the place where pictures really do speak a thousand words. The proof in the pudding if you like…

Our world is our commentary on our industry, talking about anything and everything relevant to things in our daily lives. You’ll also find Scot’s monthly blog articles as also featured in B2BMarketing.

These are two ‘streams’ of content, continually being updated by the Birddog team. The most recently added articles will appear at the top of the first page, so it’s simply a case of browsing through the content and clicking on something that takes your fancy. If you’re after something specific, click on one of the words within the ‘tags’ section of the article and you’ll then be shown a list of all articles corresponding with that tag. Or you can use the search engine.

Enjoy…

Oliver Budworth

Digital Director

Safeguarding your brand in the social media space

Social Media is here to stay, for now anyway.  The adoption of Social Media into the mainstream has been prolific.  Consumers have been quick to engage with and adopt social channels into their day to day lives. According to Nielsen, the total minutes spent on Facebook alone increased nearly 700% year-over-year, growing from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion in April 2009.

But what about brands?  How can brands use Social Channels effectively?  In the new world order, instead of pushing our message at an audience, we are expected to allow the audience to make up their own minds, be selective about what information they choose to adopt and trust that they will spread our message within their own network of peers. What about the loss of control over subject and message?  For some brands, the thought of effectively handing the majority of their PR to their customers – you and I, has been, and still is a daunting prospect.  What if they say the wrong thing, what if they damage the brand?

The web today, Web 2.0, the social web, or whatever else you want to call it is different.  It’s no longer a channel controlled by website owners – as it was way, way back in the dark ages of 1999. It’s now a two way medium, with site owners providing us, the audience, with the tools by which to connect, share, and voice our thoughts and opinions.  The success of these sites is largely driven not just by the functionality they offer the users, but by the PR they achieve. But the PR coverage no longer comes exclusively from press releases and magazine adverts. It comes from us, the audience using them, becoming their advocates, singing their praises (or not) both online, and in day-to-day conversation.

Building a successful brand online, and then protecting it and your brand values isn’t just a case of having a nice shiny website with four gazillion RSS feeds, a Facebook page, or a Twitter alias. It’s a combination of all of these things, the appropriate use of the channels and relevant context.

Things you [as a brand] should think about before embarking on a Social Media strategy:

1. What are you looking to use Social Media for?  If you’re looking to use it as a direct sales tool, forget it (we’ll see why later)
2. Have you got the skills in-house to develop, launch and manage these channels?  If not, consider appointing outside expertise.
3. Are any of your competitors using social channels, and what are they using them for?  What can you learn from them?
4. Social Media isn’t ‘free’ (just like PR isn’t free).  Yes, setting up a simple Facebook or Twitter account costs nothing more than a few minutes of your time, but it’s how you then develop these channels in terms of functionality, management and marketing (seeding, incentives, fan engagement) which takes time and costs money – sometimes a considerable investment.
5. Are you comfortable with your employees engaging with whatever social channels you choose to launch and advocate?  There are varying levels of anonymity to most areas of social media, providing people with a means by which to have a gripe without giving away their true identity.
6. Are your internal PR team, or your PR agency social media savvy?  Do they know how to react correctly to whatever is said on any of the social channels?
7. Are you committed to your social strategy, as a long-term investment, not a quick thing you can pick up and put down as you see fit?

Creating presences in relevant platforms

When you can answer the questions above (and probably a few more questions along the way) the next step is to choose your channels.  Sounds simple right?  Well, not really.  This is the most important part of your strategy.  Using the appropriate channels for your brand will make or break your strategy so it’s vital to choose the right ones.  Relevancy is key – think about your audience, your customers, where are they in the digital space?  If you’re not sure, ask them!

Do this right and you’ll reap the rewards.  Get it wrong and you’ll either waste a whole load of time and money, or end up upsetting your audience.  Or a combination of the two.  Now that would be bad.

Let’s talk about Dell for a minute. Dell is a well-known brand that has been using social media effectively for some time now. Dell launched www.ideastorm.com on February 16, 2007, and continues to use it to gather feedback on existing products.  It’s also a place where you and I can make suggestions for new products, features or functionality.  Other people then vote on these suggestions.  Suggestions with the most votes get reviewed and potentially implemented by Dell.  The point of this site is not merely for Dell to gather consumer feedback on their products, it’s also a great PR tool – who can say Dell don’t listen?

Dell also has a Facebook page – Social Media for Small Business.  Search on Facebook for it and check it out.  It’s a great resource for SME’s and SOHO’s, that gives plain English introductions and whitepapers all about Social Media.

You’ll also notice Dell include social bookmarking icons on the majority of their online properties, empowering their users to easily save and share Dell content.

Relevancy.  Dell are using multiple social channels, but in ways that are relevant to the audiences of those properties.

What to include?

Of course, it’s important to ensure your messaging is consistent – after all, it’s your brand, but it’s also important to ensue that your tone of voice is relevant to the channel.  Come across too corporate on certain channels and you’ll discourage people from engaging with you.

By using social media as a means to engage with your audience, you can build a relationship with them, a good rapport. It’s a small step to turn customer conversation into customer advocacy of your brand.  Whether you’re engaging with your audience through social channels or not, people will be talking about you.  It’s better to be engaged and influencing the conversation than not at all.

Understanding the landscape and conversations – Social Media in a B2B context

Social Media as a tool in B2B can be broken into three core areas:

1. Conversation -  Channels such as Twitter fall under the conversation category. These channels are a continual stream of real-time chatter that you can dip in and out of as you wish.  Conversation channels are fast becoming the first source of information for people seeking up-to-the-minute information on anything current.
2. Community – Facebook is the best example here.  Whilst Facebook is a ‘social utility’, to most users, their space in Facebook is their own online community, made up of friends, relatives and associates.  Online communities are built through trust and relationships, and provide both users and advertisers with powerful communication tools.
3. Networking – Networking sites provide users with the ability to do exactly that, network. LinkedIn is a great example of a networking site, giving its users the ability to get introduced to people they want to know, through utilising existing relationships.  Networking sites are a powerful tool in today’s business world.

Of course there are other ways of using social media, however, understanding the above will ensure that you use social channels effectively and in a way that is relevant.

What to say?

The main thing to remember with all social media is that the conversation is continuous.  Just because you log off at 5:30pm, doesn’t mean the conversation ends until 9am the following morning when you log back on.

The web is 24/7.  As we’re going home in the UK, people in the US are going in to work.  Conversations that have been created by a predominantly UK audience will continue through the night with people around the world, so it’s important as a brand to understand how these conversations can develop, and the repercussions if something were to go awry.

So what can you as a brand do to ensure you’re saying the right thing?

1. Listen.  See what people are saying about your brand, where they’re saying it and to whom.
2. Get involved – join Facebook groups, follow conversations on Twitter, slowly begin to engage with these groups and conversations.
3. Be responsive.  If people are asking questions, be prepared to answer them, help them and guide them in the right direction.
4. Don’t try the hard sell approach on social channels.  Ever.  People won’t like you for it.  They will probably also tell you they don’t like it.  And their 100+ followers/friends.

When it all goes wrong!

There is a flipside to the good and wonder that is Social Media.  It can also severely damage a brand.  As a brand, you can no-longer control what others say online. How you react to what has been said online will therefore determine a good or bad final outcome. Here are a couple of examples of how to, and how not to do it:

How not to do it – United Breaks Guitars

United breaks guitars” is a powerful example of how social media empowers consumers and can tarnish the image of a big company.  In spring, 2008, Dave Carroll of the Sons of Maxwell band claimed United Airlines baggage handlers broke his $3,500 Taylor guitar on a flight stop-over in Chicago while travelling from Halifax to Nebraska. Ladies and Gentlemen – presenting Dave Carroll: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, a Forrester Research analyst covering customer experience/service and social media says “If you spend millions on advertising your brand and someone spend five cents on a YouTube video, you’ve just wasted a lot of advertising dollars. There’s a consensus around the frustration customers feel with companies that act like monolithic monsters”.

But the guitar wasn’t the only thing damaged.  In just four days from the launch of the song online, millions of viewers had watched the video on YouTube and United Airlines stock plummeted 10%, costing shareholders $180M at the time. ‘This could have bought Dave over 51,000 replacement guitars” reported Chris Ayres of the Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/chris_ayres/article6722407.ece

United’s lack of willing to engage with the consumer cost them dearly, and no amount of crisis management could rectify the situation. The damage had been done.

How to do it – Domino’s Pizza

The now infamous Domino’s food prank, where a couple of employees decided it would be funny to upload a video on to YouTube showing them doing various unsavoury (excuse the pun) things to food that was about to be cooked and delivered to customers: http://www.dailymotion.pl/video/x8zunc_dominospizzaemployedegoutant_fun

“By Wednesday (April 15) afternoon, the video had been viewed more than a million times on YouTube,” reported Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times. “References on it were in five of the 12 results on the first page of Google search for ‘Domino’s,’ and discussions about Domino’s had spread throughout Twitter. This goes to show how social media has the reach and speed to turn tiny incidents into marketing crises.”

However this situation was different.  Rather than ignore the matter, by Wednesday (April 15) afternoon, Domino’s had created a Twitter account, @dpzinfo, to address the comments as well as their CEO, Patrick Doyle making a personal address via YouTube, apologising and re-assuring people that the matter was being dealt with, and that it was an isolated incident, watch it for yourself here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l6AJ49xNSQ

Making such a quick response within the social networks proved extremely helpful in efforts to re-establish trust and credibility with consumers while rebuilding their customers’ desire to purchase their products.

Things to remember with social media

1. You can’t control what people say about you online, but you can ensure you’re engaging with these people, and have the tools and knowledge to best to engage with them.
2. There is no room for spin with social media, if you try and manipulate the truth; chances are you will get found out.  Transparency is key.
3. It’s not all about you.  A big part of your success lies in how much and how well you interact and share with others in the social space.  This can range from quoting and referencing other brands’ articles, linking to useful resources (other than your own), or commenting in a positive manner to something someone has written.
4. The majority of social media engagement takes time and effort. It’s not something that can simply be bought [such as banner advertising].  It’s all about creating awareness, creating your unique space and building your reputation.
5. Just because a channel exists, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s right for your brand.
6. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action Advocacy.  That’s the thing to remember with social media, it’s not a direct sales tool. You don’t necessarily want your audience to perform an action.  You do however want them to become your advocates.

The day the Internet nearly died [Michael Jackson and the power of Wiki’s]

A Wiki is a website that runs the Wiki back end.  It is a content management system that enables collaborative contribution to the content of the site by the users.  Wikipedia is the best-known example, it was founded by Jimmy Wales in January 2001 and now has over 10 Million articles.

On the 26^th June 2009, it wasn’t just Michael Jackson who tragically died. People rushed to report the chain of events as they happened, with news spreading around the Internet at such a rapid rate that the load put on many websites was too much for them to handle, causing a large percentage of the web to almost grind to a halt.

People on Twitter were updating every minute, fuelling blogs and news sites.  But it wasn’t just Twitter, Facebook or blogs that were serving the news.  People were racing to Wikipedia to update Michael Jackson’s page, and all other pages that were in some way affiliated with the artist. Wikipedia saw close to 500 edits made to Jackson’s entry in less than 24 hours following his death.

So even before news sites, papers or television could get the news to the masses, social media had the scoop. Wikipedia is now one of the largest sources of news related information – and has even been credited with publishing news reports before the police know an incident has taken place!

Wiki’s – best practice

If you’re an established brand, it’s likely that there’s a Wikipedia page about you.  The first thing to remember about Wikipedia is that it’s not a sales tool. It’s designed to be unbiased and factual, so don’t approach the creation of a Wikipedia page with the idea that you can simply stick all of your well crafted PR on a page and that it will be accepted. It won’t.

1. Before creating an entry for your product or service, be sure the entry meets the notability requirement.
2. Remember, the page isn’t yours, other users can add or contribute to it – as long as what they write is factual.
3. Because anyone can create or modify a Wikipedia entry means that your entry could be modified by an unhappy customer, or worse, a competitor.  As a result you should regularly monitor your entries for any misleading or inaccurate information, and promptly make corrections.
4. The management of your Wikipedia page should become part of the management of all of your online channels such as your website and Facebook page.
5. Google loves Wikipedia.  If you’re number one on Google for your brand term, you may well find that in time, the Wikipedia page about your brand may overtake you into the number one spot.
6. The majority of people trust Wikipedia, so look upon having a presence on there in a positive light.
7. Every edit made to a Wikipedia page is archived and catalogued for future reference, so don’t do anything to a page that you might regret in the future.
8. Make sure your internal comms and PR team are fully aware and up-to speed with your Wikipedia page, and how to edit it.  Despite a large approvals team, the occasional slanderous or factually incorrect comment can appear on Wikipedia pages – make sure your team(s) know how to edit the page.

Finally

Social media isn’t merely something you can do as and when it suits you.  Even if you’re not engaged with it and in it on a regular basis you will fail. So spread the load. Consider you corporate social media policy and allow others to establish, join or maintain the conversation. This can range from your employees and customers to your competitors.  Ensuring your brand is as well protected as possible is about being aware of the conversations happening – even if you’re merely listening. But the best protection will come from the network itself. Brand advocates will do the protection and the promotion. Look after them.

Oliver Budworth

Digital Director

Top Digital Tips – in plain English

If you’re still struggling to work out digital, here are a few basic tips that should help you along the way.

1. Assess your company’s digital strategy – is it fully integrated into your marketing mix?  If it isn’t, why not?  The opportunities the web presents to you as a business are immense, so you should make sure you’re exploiting all available channels.
2. Are you engaged in any social media activity?  Even if you’re not, chances are other people are talking about you and your brand right now – from your staff, your customers, or independent reviewers, someone will be.  Make sure you’ve got a presence in these channels and get engaged.
3. Do you use your own website?  Poor user experience is the number one gripe people have with businesses online.  Frustrating navigation, unnecessary long user journeys, shopping carts that don’t work.  Today’s programming languages enable websites to do pretty much anything; there aren’t any constraints any more, so there are no excuses for the technology letting down the user experience.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong.
4. When was the last time you updated your website?  Websites generally need at least a design refresh every 12-18 months to ensure they remain looking fresh.
5. Are you thinking about the mobile web?  Whilst ‘web-on-the-go’ has been around for quite a long time, it’s only over the past year or so that it has become more and more mainstream.  With more people accessing the web on their mobile on a regular basis, does your offering sufficiently cater for mobile web users?
6. Are you looking to save money in the recession?  If your website is built in .NET – a Microsoft technology, then chances are you’re paying hefty annual licenses for the server software.  You might want to consider a re-build in an Open-Source language such as PHP.  Open-Source languages have come a long way.  So far in fact that they now serve the platform for some of the highest trafficked sites in the world – such as Facebook, Twitter and Del.icio.us – all built in PHP!
7. Search is still huge.  Despite everyone talking about Social Media all of the time, it’s vital that your organisation has a search strategy in place.  This will cover both paid (PPC) and natural (SEO).  After all, over half of all people online start their journey with a search!

Oliver Budworth

Digital Director

The convergence of media – increased choice for consumers but is it a good thing for advertisers?

In terms of developments in Media technology, the past 12 months have been incredible, for consumers at least.  Actually no, for everyone – but not everyone realises it yet.

So what’s happened?  The most significant change has been the growth and adoption of IPTV, or ‘TV on demand’ as it is often referred.  The BBC’s ‘iPlayer’ is probably the most well-known example.

TV on demand is essentially the beginning of the democratisation of one of the most powerful and popular formats of traditional media – Television.  No longer are consumers fixed to watching programmes in the order dictated by the broadcaster and the programme guide, they can now choose to watch what they want, when they want, on whatever compatible device they want – Television sets, desktop and laptop computers, smart phones, games consoles, the list goes on.

But what does this mean for advertisers?  Is the killer ad-spot on a Saturday night still as relevant if the people seeing the programme are watching it on a Tuesday lunchtime?  You could argue that video recorders have been around for years so there’s always been this problem, however people were generally more select with what they recorded, plus programmes weren’t ‘on-demand’ – we couldn’t watch something we hadn’t remembered to record.

In addition to the increase in programme choice, new platforms are emerging, aggregating multiple ‘on-demand’ services, such as BBC iPlayer, Channel 4’s 4OD, ITV’s ITVPlayer and so on, and delivering the content through one site, making it easier for consumers to view and choose content without having to navigate multiple websites.  This is the first part of convergence – the channels no longer sit in isolation.

I see the second part of the convergence happening when devices that can play this content through people’s televisions in the lounge reach tipping point.  I see myself as an early adopter, I’ve got to have the latest gadgets as soon as they hit the market so I regularly make use of the excellent iPlayer application on the PS3 – linked to my TV in my lounge.  I also get Sky TV through the net, through Sky Player, however I’m in the minority.  People don’t want to watch an evening of TV on their laptop, and until such a time comes where you can view iPlayer and all of the other on-demand services through your TV using your remote control (without the need for other devices such as games consoles) things won’t change much for most people.

Phew! So advertisers still have their prime ad slots… but what new opportunities does TV on demand present?

Hey! It’s the fucking Internet right? Guess what that means? ANALYTICS. Yes. Analytics, fucking loads of stats and monitoring. What percentage of 50 plus women who watch Coronation Street also use ASOS? ‘click’.

This is REALLY exciting. Really exciting. Behavioural monitoring, contextual advertising, hey, what about personalised advertising? ‘Hi Bob, you drive a BMW, ever thought about an Audi? You nearest dealer is… Yeah, that made you sit up didn’t it?

It’s not just about the analytics though.  Once the channels and ad networks crack it, we’ll get advertising that really is relevant to us, taking into consideration the TV and radio shows we listen to, not just the websites we look at – which are often very different to the types of TV we watch. I watch Eastenders, I don’t go on the Eastenders website. Ever. Nor do I Google pictures of Barbara Windsor. (Well, maybe once or twice).

TV has sort of been trying to achieve this for some time now – watch an ad, text a short code to get more info/a free sample/book now, or hey, visit our website – but how many people sit in their lounge, laptop at the ready for the TV ad web addresses – some of us yes, but we’re in the minority. How about a contextual, personalised TV advert which takes Bob to a contextual, personalised web page – how’s that for a good user journey?

I predict big things happening in the next 12 months, check out the following sites for a glimpse of what’s to come:

http://www.seesaw.com

http://zattoo.com

http://www.teev.co.uk

http://www.hulu.com

http://www.playon.tv

Oliver Budworth

Digital Director

10 tips for effectively planning your agency website

If you work in an agency, one of the hardest projects you’ll ever work on is your own website.  Often, it will take a lot longer to complete the project than any piece of client work you will ever do, due to many factors including (but not limited to):

• The work getting bumped due to pressing client deadlines
• Different people within the agency getting involved at different stages and not agreeing on some aspect of the site
• No-one having any time to create content for the site
• New technologies rapidly emerging that you feel just have to be included in the site, pushing the development time out even further

Sound familiar? We’ve all been there. Here are some tips that I feel should help you in planning and delivering your company website faster.

1. Make sure the project has an owner – a champion. Assigning the project to a group of people will often never work. Everyone has their own agenda and client work will always take precedent. If someone is given ownership responsibility they will ensure the project is pushed through and delivered. Make sure this person is someone who is well connected within the agency and knows how to get their own way when it comes to getting things done.
2. Treat your company as you would any client – give the project a job number and book in agency resource including an Account and/or Project Manager. By doing this, it is more likely that you will get access to the right resource at the times you need it, rather than trying to fit it in during the odd hour here or there.
3. Run a questionnaire with multiple choice answers to gather feedback and information [bit from Scot’s book]
4. Plan who you are going to involve.  If you ask a hundred people a question, you will get one hundred answers.  Run focus groups concentrating on the areas of specialism of the people in those groups. Involve as fewer [more from Scot’s book]
5. Whilst the creative team might all have some input on the new design, try to ensure the same designer/design team work on the design from start to finish. This will help in keeping all of the various aspects of the content consistent, and will also make it easier to adapt the design quickly, should part of it need amending.
6. Look at your competitors. Not because you want to emulate them but to make sure none of them already have a site that looks exactly like the one you’re planning. Sounds obvious but launching a site that looks like the competition never looks good. You’re there to differentiate from the competition right?
7. Plan your copy. Content is one of the hardest challenges in any new site build. Good copy requires time to create, something many agency staff don’t have the luxury of. Create a template people can just type into, and include a wireframe showing them what the page will look like so that they can get a feel for the content. Give them a content brief that shows them the tone of voice for the new site and make sure you set a strict word limit. If what you get back is wrong, don’t be afraid to push it back with some constructive feedback and get them to have a second stab at it.
8. Make sure Social Media courses through the veins of the site. Not only should your site become the example of others to follow, by integrating services such as Twitter, Facebook and Flickr as well as having comments enabled on all of your site articles will encourage both staff and external visitors to get involved in contributing a wide range of content, from something as simple as a Tweet, through to detailed responses to one of your blog posts.
9. Don’t forget the right order in which to plan your site. Usability should always come before Design. You new site might look pretty, but if you have to explain to visitors how to use it, if it takes ages to load on a 1mb broadband connection, if it’s style over substance people won’t use it and it will most likely become a talking point for all of the wrong reasons.
10. Plan your SEO. Whilst it could be argued that SEO is gradually becoming less relevant, with more traffic now going to Social Networks as opposed to Search Engines, search engines such as Google still usually deliver the majority of traffic to most sites, so it is important to plan your search strategy from the outset.

There are probably many more points to be added, so feel free to add your own comments below.

Oliver Budworth

Digital Director