More and more healthcare companies are building their presence on Twitter. Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Roche, Astra Zeneca, GE Healthcare and Boehringer Ingelheim are all tweeting and being tweeted at. Some companies are even using Twitter to promote specific branded treatments: Novo Nordisk call attention to their Novolog and Levemir diabetes treatments.

In spite of all the hype surrounding Twitter, it looks like these early adopters might be on to something. Whilst still small in comparison to Facebook, Twitter offers something unique: it attracts a lot of content creators and critics – the minority of people who actually create content on the internet as opposed to the majority who merely browse and consume content. These creators are the ones most likely to discuss your brand, either on Twitter itself or on other social networks, such as blogs, message boards, YouTube and so on. For companies, the benefit of Twitter is clear: it’s about seeding your message to the creators so that it finds its way all over the web. It’s all about PR.

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With marketing budgets being crunched, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is starting to look even more appealing. The 80-20 rule (otherwise known as the Pareto principle) states that in general 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In SEO terms, this means that a few low-cost changes to your site can result in a dramatic increase of traffic. However, when you consider that Google has over 200 factors that determine ranking on search results, it’s important to focus your SEO efforts on the areas that are really going to make a difference. Read on…

More and more companies are choosing to build their website centrally and then roll them out across the world. Localisation projects deliver big benefits including consistency of message, cost and time savings as well as enabling central control of your web presence. However, there are lots of traps that global marketers can fall into. Content Formula has worked on many localisation projects and has learned a lot along the way. This article captures some of our top tips. Read on…

SharePoint has been the buzzword lately around the water cooler in our office. More and more of our clients are deploying it as their intranet system of choice. This popularity is reflected in its sales: Microsoft expects SharePoint sales to hit $1 billion this year, and more than 100 million licenses have been sold since the product was launched in 2001. Read on…

Google is the king of the search engine castle, with 68% of all online searches being made through its sites. Displayed alongside those millions of search results are ads, uniquely tied in to the results with a complex and highly secret algorithm.

Advertising on Google can put your brand out in front of thousands of potential customers, and not just on the search results pages. With the Google content network, relevant ads are also displayed on sites all over the web. Read on…

The 5 worst things you can do to your intranet

Some companies see their intranets much as they do potted plants: mainly decorative, placed with the intention of cheering up the workplace. Like plants, intranets appear easy to maintain at first glance – but this is not the case. Intranets are fickle and easy to kill: too little attention and the site will wither and die; too much water – or information – and it will drown in a puddle of inaccessibility. Read on…

Like many other marketers you may be thinking about allocating a big whack of your 2008 online budget to the search engines. After all, pay-per-click (PPC) keyword campaigns are measureable, targeted and on a cost-per-visit basis, they’re amongst the cheapest means of driving eyeballs to your website. Read on…

It’s not uncommon for senior managers’ eyes to glaze over when presented with web metrics. They can be technical, difficult to understand and far removed from business objectives. But select the right measures and you will get your boss’s attention. Read on…

Sites like Amazon use a range of techniques to show you personalised pages, content and recommendations. It’s possible to personalise intranets too, presenting different people in your organisation with the content that suits them best. What better way to save your staff time, while keeping them updated with the information they need most?

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