2009
30
Sep
By John Scott
It’s pretty common for a client to ask about having a Flash intro on their website. My immediate reaction is to suck air through my teeth like a plumber who’s been quizzed about the cost of fixing a boiler – not because I know it will be expensive, but because I know that it is a bad idea.
2009
28
Sep
By Geoff Scaplehorn
Social media. It is thought of by many companies as the domain of the clinically bored, and by many marketers as being actively dangerous towards the corporate image.
In the right or wrong hands, social media (that is, blogging and the use of social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) can be the difference between a company being accepted as cool and being a laughing stock. When marketers only use social media to throw out the company line, they quite often miss the point of the medium.
2009
15
Sep
By Dan Hawtrey
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.
2009
07
Sep
By Geoff Scaplehorn
An Englishman, Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a bar. The bartender turns round and says, “Is this some kind of joke?”
I’m sorry: terrible gag. I don’t know any good jokes. However, love it or hate it, would you put it on your company website?
One of the hardest things to get right with online content is tone. A lot of content – both on intranets and the internet – is written in a formal ‘company’ voice, thick with information and respectability. More light-hearted styles of writing are often shunned for coming across as inappropriate.
2009
25
Aug
By Kate Murray
What is a user persona and why do we use them?
A persona is a detailed profile of a user – whether that person is a user for a website, an intranet, an animation or a widget. It turns them from being just “the user” into “Roger Moore, retired, 65 years old, partially-blind, challenged by new technology”: it puts a face on the target audience of the project you’re working on.
Personas are used across marketing. We use them to help us understand the audience of a project we’re working on. This is important because as digital media gurus with a high degree of familiarity with digital technology, we can become removed from the way the general public actually uses, navigates or searches. Similarly, our clients, who know their own product or service inside-out, can also forget that the general public has a different perspective. So personas are about walking a mile in someone else’s shoes – putting the user’s hat on, and asking the questions that they would ask. Would Roger Moore notice that button, and know to click on it?
2009
24
Aug
By Vicky Edgerton
Often a common error by UK companies when creating keywords for a non-English site is to either leave keywords in English (a big no-no) or to try and use a tool to translate them.
The latter doesn’t work, as anyone who has tried using a translation dictionary may have found: words which may be correct are not necessarily the words a native speaker would use.
2009
10
Aug
By Hugh Fidgen
At Content Formula we like to keep an eye on developments within our sector and, now that we’re all merrily tweeting away, I thought I’d do a quick, dirty search of other agency websites to see who else we could follow on Twitter.
I thought that my 20 minutes scanning the NMA Top 100 list would be rewarded with dozens of new accounts to follow, but I was really quite disappointed – out of 113 agencies, I could only find 14 Twitter accounts and a rather lonely Facebook account. This was not quite what I expected from a group who collectively evangelise the cutting edge of web development and often offer social media services. I accept I was only scanning home pages and contact pages, but then if the information isn’t there, then where is it?
2009
30
Apr
By Dan Hawtrey
Online survey tools like Zoomerang and Surveymonkey make it very easy for just about everyone to launch their own surveys. Whilst this is a good thing, it also means that there are a lot of surveys out there and people are getting survey fatigue. If you manage to persuade someone to do your survey, your next challenge is to make sure that they don’t drop off half way through and actually complete the whole thing. Read on…
2009
21
Mar
By Dan Hawtrey
I meet a lot of people who say that Google Analytics (GA) does not provide enough depth for proper website traffic analysis. However, I still believe that GA is an excellent tool and I doubt that the depth of data provided by tools like Webtrends is actually useful for 99% of site owners. Web traffic analysis is a time consuming business and unless you put in the resource, most of the data available is wasted. GA does a great job of focusing on the stats that lead to the big learnings about your site and its traffic. You’ve got to walk before you can run. Read on…
2007
23
May
By John Scott
There is a real buzz around user-created content on the web at the moment. The popularity of sites like YouTube are sound testament to this. But, in order to find genuinely original material you often have to wade through a mass of lifted TV and film footage. Even if you do find the true user-created nuggets you are searching for, the talking heads and candid action rely upon people who have access to camcorders, digital cameras, or the most high-tech mobile phones. Read on…
