The campaign is designed to promote word-of-mouth around a new beer product to hit the market: Home Draught. It’s an ideal product for WOM marketing – by its very nature it’s a social product, something you are likely to see at parties and share with friends.

While this may be an option for the private user, what about the big-money spenders – the businesses? Can cloud computing, like Google Docs, make real time collaboration on documents effortless not only within your own organisation, but also with clients and customers? What about governance, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, security? Can Google as the more cost-efficient service beat the services SharePoint offers?

As often within the IT industry, the answer is not simply black or white, but rather depends on where you stand.

What Google offers without a doubt is cost efficiency and flexibility. You have documents that everyone has to have editing access to all the time? No problem, simultaneous changes do not even cause a hiccup. You want a site dedicated to your team members without straining your IT budget? Google sites is quickly set up and can be made publicly available or shared with business pals only. It also has the added bonus of offering access from anywhere, anytime and from any device. And, above all, it is so easy that the IT department does not need to get involved.

However, the simplicity has one major price: lack of functionality. It may be argued that hardly anyone fully utilizes or even is aware of all the functionality offered by the Microsoft Office suite – but lack of awareness can hardly be used as an argument for Google. Ultimately, Excel still offers you the ability to publish to SharePoint, effectively creating a real-time, online working environment for all users of a specific site – just as Google Docs is doing. And Excel can do things that Google Docs are not yet ripe to do: it has powerful performance and functionality. You don’t believe me? Try filtering a Google spreadsheet by any specific item, and you will come up short.

Now, with all the effort Google has put into Docs, Sites, and all the other apps they are hosting, it is clear that they are trying to grab a share from Microsoft, especially in the most valuable markets – the market for businesses. They even sneakily advertise it as such, offering team leaders and project managers sites “without the hassle of getting IT involved”.

At the moment, despite everything that they have done, Google cannot convince where large, complex companies are involved. For your small business, consisting of you, your cat, and your neighbour, SharePoint is far too expensive and difficult, and you will do better sticking to the Google environment that comes with an in-built IT department.

But if governance, workflow, and storage of company-owned data on your own, physical servers are further up your list of concerns than saving money or easy information sharing with outsiders – then Microsoft remains unbeaten.

This is just a little taste of the sort of things you can create with some good SharePoint knowledge, lateral thinking and just a dash of wizardry.

Interactive Q&A platform
Creating interaction on the intranet is one of the key points bought out in Nielsen's 2010 report on the top 10 best intranets. It's also one of the things our clients ask for again and again - how can we engage employees and start a two way conversation? As part of a project to provide a Q&A facility where employees could ask questions of their senior management we developed a widget for the site homepage which read questions from a custom list and then displayed them in a modified content query webpart.

Users could ask questions of their business leaders, see at a glance what other people were asking and visit a dedicated microsite where they could become part of the conversation.

Header James Watford Company Chairman What effect will the massive UK healthcare cuts have on sales? 31 Mar - Anonymous Posting Guidelines Header Johan Lorenski President, France Can you share any insights you've gleaned in your first year with the company? 31 Mar - Anonymous Posting Guidelines Header Laura Tilley President, EMEA When will we see the new EMEA branding guidelines, are they still planned for 2011? 31 Mar - Anonymous Posting Guidelines Header Bjorn Stenberg President, DACH How have you coped with the recent restructuring of the Logistics and Supply Chain departments? 31 Mar - Anonymous Posting Guidelines Header Cristiano Reyes President, US Are you considering taking up the new Sales reporting system as DACH have had so much success with it? 31 Mar - Anonymous Posting Guidelines

SharePoint driven Flash dashboards
The second interesting project we're working on is an interactive Flash dashboard which is driven by data placed in a SharePoint list. Normally, dashboards read data from XML documents, but without doing some ASP.net coding it's hard to get SharePoint to let you have this. Instead we used SharePoint's default RSS feed from the list, and then converted it to something Flash can use within the dashboard itself.

This enables sales managers and non-technical staff to update their sales dashboards right from within SharePoint without the need for IT staff or Content Formula to be involved.

Have a think about your SharePoint site - what could you be doing differently?

No, not that Flash.

Flash receives a fair amount of criticism these days. Steve Jobs and Apple would have you believe that it’s game over for the adaptable web veteran, but Adobe are sticking to their guns. Who’s right?

No Flash on the iPhone or iPad

Flash is notable by its absence on Apple’s popular mobile devices the iPhone and the iPad. Many thought this was a strange omission initially (myself included). Apple recently posted a statement was posted on their website explaining their position.

Their main reasons are:

• Flash is not open standards based
• It’s not reliable
• It’s not secure
• It has a negative impact on the performance of the client’s computer/device
• It can’t be used properly with touch screens.

The first point is something that a lot of web professionals have been making a noise about for years. But, a lot of others have been using it gratuitously regardless.

Apple’s case is quite a solid one. The reduction in the use of Flash on websites over the last couple of years is partly for these reasons they have outlined. But, it’s also due to a better understanding of usability. People generally don’t care about animation and whizz bang – they just want to get things done.

So, does that mean we shouldn’t use Flash anymore?

Well, no. It’s true that we should be using other technologies for some of the things that we have been using Flash for up until now. However, these shouldn’t always be seen as suitable replacements. Flash still gives us a lot of flexibility to do things that just can’t be done with other technologies, or at least can’t be done as well. One example is interactive tools that demonstrate how complicated things work. Videos mixed with animations, text and interactive components can be combined to create excellent educational tools. There are other useful pieces of functionality that can be added to a website with Flash, but the point is that they should be selected carefully and all factors should be considered beforehand.

Back in 2000, Jakob Nielsen pointed out that Flash is 99% bad. The points he made about the virtually limitless options encouraging design abuse have been vindicated over the subsequent years. However, this is not the fault of Flash – it’s the fault of bad design. It’s a bit like saying that science is bad because it has produced nuclear weapons.

Also, Flash used to be completely inaccessible, but this has been addressed by both Macromedia and now Adobe.

What has changed then?

In the past people would say things like “let’s add some Flash”. But what we should be saying is “we want users to be able to do X, Y and Z on the site” – and then decide what technology is the best option, all things considered. Of course we should then test that it’s a success and rethink things if it’s not.

Moving forward, a big consideration when thinking about using Flash is going to be which devices can actually display it. Currently if you want your site to be viewed on mobile devices then it’s not a good idea to use Flash, but that might change. You should always be thinking about a different experience for mobile users anyway.

What can social media do for me?
There are plenty of benefits to using social media:
- it can build closer relationships and increase engagement with your customers and stakeholders
- it can help you to gain further insight into what makes your customers tick
- it can get your customers talking to you and to each other
- should you need to give or receive information quickly, you have a receptive communication channel ready to go.

Twitter? Facebook? LinkedIn? YouTube?
Before starting out, it’s worth considering what the objectives of your platforms are, and who you want to reach. Do you simply want web traffic? Do you want find new customers? Do you want to strengthen existing relationships? Do you want feedback on products / designs / initiatives? Do you want to establish yourself as an expert in your field? How public do you want your communication to be?

It’s worth considering the differences in demographics and use between each of these platforms. Where does your target market hang out when they’re online? How much time will you be devoting to keeping these platforms fresh and engaging? How will you get their attention and once you have it, what are you going to do with it? Primarily – what’s in it for them?

How much fun are you willing to have with social media?
Depending on the product and the messages you want to get out there, you can have a lot of fun with social media. Take this campaign from Orabrush for example. They combined YouTube and an iPhone application to promote their oral health products to a young audience in a cheeky, fun way. This video alone has had over a million views. How much would you have to pay for that many impressions and that level of engagement if it was an advertisement?

Facebook pages vs groups
So you want to use Facebook, but you can’t decide whether to start a Group or a Page. What’s the difference? Fundamentally Groups are all about fostering group discussions around particular topics, while Pages are more about one way conversations, where organisations can broadcast information to their fans in a public manner and in turn, fans can comment or hit the ‘like’ button. Messages sent through Pages will show up in fans’ news feeds, however Groups allow you to start discussion threads, and send messages to members’ inboxes too.

Some things to consider:
- Pages are public, while Groups can be as private as you like
- Members can become easily annoyed by messages in the inbox, while items in a newsfeed can be easily ignored
- Users are far more likely to click on your message if there’s a thumbnail image attached
- if you want people to click the ‘Like’ button, ask them to!

Should I automate my Facebook and Twitter feeds?
These days, tools like Hootsuite, and particular settings on the platforms themselves, allow you to post messages to many of your platforms at once. There’s plenty of debate on whether or not this is a good idea. Sure, the big advantage is that it makes life easier if you can communicate with your followers and fans with one click of a button. But there are some big downsides too.

Firstly, the audiences on each of these platforms may be similar, but the platforms are inherently different. You could send ten tweets out on your feed in an hour and few would bat an eyelid. But flood the newsfeeds of your followers on Facebook and watch the unsubscribe numbers climb.

Secondly, why ask people to join two platforms if they’re getting the same messages on both? Sure, you can send the same message out to both feeds, but that doesn’t mean you can’t shake things up a bit. Both platforms have different tricks to making your messages ‘clickable’. Facebook gives you more characters and an image / video option to play with, so you should use them! Meanwhile, Twitter is text and link based only, so use a link shortener to make the most out of those 140 characters. You should also consider asking an intriguing question or issuing a hard-to-resist call-to-action.

Thirdly, social media is meant to be ‘social’ – automation can really kill that personal feeling if you’re not careful. Talk to your fans and followers, read what they have to say, engage with them, and if you like one of your followers’ tweets, re-tweet it! It’s likely that they will return the favour down the line. Also, get involved in using Twitter hashtags to enter the larger community discussion.

Variety is the spice of (online) life!
Rule number 1 of online – keep it fresh. That means making sure you have the resources devoted to these platforms to ensure new content is going up often, and that your corners of the world wide web don’t become stale.

As long as 10 years ago, web standards champions the W3C afforded the web designer a way to optimise their layouts for handheld devices, however the methodology was little known and was implemented even less-so.

The advent of touch screen devices has changed the way users interact with the mobile web, and manufacturers have, to varied degrees, enhanced their built-in browsers to meet the new requirements.

I highly recommend you get around to doing this for your site or blog. We’re not just pandering to Apple device users here – the UI controls will cascade gracefully to other brand devices, whether they incorporate a touch-screen or not. Using a variety of design and coding techniques you can catch that huge cluster of mobile web users and keep them returning.

Return on investment
According to Morgan Stanley, five countries account for 48 percent of internet users, four of which, (Brazil Russia, India and China) are commonly thought to be the most important emerging markets for businesses to focus on. Emerging markets skip past-seen technology trends (for the purpose of this discussion, this means high spec desktop PCs in the home for internet access). This means that a Smartphone is likely the first internet capable device to be used.

This tallies with forecasts that in just a few years the desktop PC will be defunct, and key opinion leaders forecast the mobile web taking over as the preferred.

CMS and plug-in
Check out the images on the right – we used a popular WordPress plug-in combined with a free theme from WordPress.org to optimise how our site is viewed by mobile devices. This plug-in detects the hardware and software being used to access the articles section, and lays out the articles and navigation appropriately.

We set this up in a small amount of time, and the plug-in came at no cost. The benefits are immediately obvious – the whole article fits in the screen and the navigation controls look and feel like familiar iPhone UI elements. We were even able to bring in our own brand colour palette and keep it all looking unique.

The plug-in also adds an element to our blog dashboard’s built-in stats, offering metrics on how often an article is read using a mobile device, and which devices are used.

Go it alone
Of course you could keep up to speed with the manufacturers’ software development kits (SDKs), which document how to code your web pages to use the native system UI controls. Apple and Symbian offer their SDKs for free and provide examples. Forums and tutorials exist for learning how to code your site’s appearance for Android and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile systems.

A dedicated app
If your outreach is large enough, you could offer an app on the various platforms which download and organise your site’s content, and on some platforms you could push updates to your subscribers.

Content Formula uses WordPress Mobile Pack, a complete toolkit to help mobilize WordPress sites and blogs.

Alec Brownstein is a great example. In his quest for the perfect job he spent £4 ($6 USD) on Google adwords to reach five creative directors at major advertising and marketing firms: Scott Vitrone, Ian Reichenthal, Gerry Graf, Tony Granger, and David Droga. Basically he banked on the fact that these directors would be googling themselves at some point, and amongst the search results was his ad which simply read “Googling yourself is fun, hiring me is fun too.” He got four interviews, two job offers, and according to FastCompany.com, he’s now employed at Young & Rubicam. Definitely a slam dunk for Alec!

Eric, a recent graduate from an MBA program, is another great example. He bought Facebook ads that were targeted to employees at the companies he wanted to work for – mainly Microsoft. According to Consumerist.com, it cost him just under £35 ($50 USD) and he received 50,000 impressions, over 500 click-throughs and responses from over 20 Microsoft employees offering to help him.

“I chose Facebook for ads because it was unconventional, cheap, highly targeted and offered solid performance metrics,” Eric told Arbita.net. “I targeted all Microsoft employees nationwide. Given that cost per click was so low, that I could manipulate my bid price and put a cap on it for the day, I saw no sense in on limiting how wide I cast my net inside the company — you never know where help will come from.”

These are two individuals who really sat down and worked out who they wanted to reach, and how they could do it in a low-cost, attention grabbing, unique way. Now, what could social media do for your business?

Open Graph is Facebook’s latest foray into search engine functionality and if all else fails, it’s best to think of it simply as the first step towards a social search engine. Facebook is hoping that as people browse the web they will “like” pages by clicking a Facebook button which then informs their friends via Facebook.

Open Graph will enable sites which you’ve never been to before display recommendations and information tailored for your tastes based on what you or your friends have previously “liked”. At surface level then this is just a slightly more powerful version of those buttons you see around the web which enable you to share stuff you like with your friends. But the story of Open Graph is going to be so much more than that.

Facebook already have access to all sorts of personal information about you: your key demographics; your likes; your dislikes; what your friends like; when you last clicked a brand advert on Facebook.com and so on. With Open Graph they will also start to collect data about your browsing habits enabling them to build a much more comprehensive profile for each of their users.

If Facebook overcomes the row about its privacy terms and conditions, this will give them all the data they need to offer highly targeted advertising campaigns.

It is this that is making Google pay attention. Paid advertising was worth $22bn to Google in 2010 and although their search data enables them to sell advertising based on keywords and location, they are as yet unable to sell based on personalised data such as recommendations or browsing history.

Facebook on the other hand are starting to build exactly this system. Their “social” search is going to give them the data to personalise the web in a way never seen before. For example – a user “likes” a page on a website which has information about Panasonic LCD TVs. A friend of theirs then starts browsing a second website looking to buy a TV. If Facebook get their way, this friend will see a featured link for Panasonic LCD TVs at the top of the page with “Gary Newman likes this” underneath.

Would this influence him to buy the product? Who knows, but Open Graph could be set to change the landscape for online advertising.

Dare I say it, but you can try the “like” button right underneath this article. We promise not to sell you any TVs…

I will be concentrating on Google here, but we can apply the below to other search engines.

A lot of people will already know the basics of SEO

• Create page titles which carry information, rather than just one or two word titles.
• Create the page content & copy with audience and keywords in mind.
• Structure the page using headings, paragraphs and lists in the code.
• Give images descriptive alt text and titles.
• Add metadata descriptions to your page. (This is becoming less and less important, but it is still often used on the search engine results page!)

Following the above guidelines goes a long way to achieving a good ranking on any search engine you care to mention, but any SEO consultant will be at pains to tell you that there’s a lot more you can do.

How to submit your site content to Google

Informing search engines of your site content is nothing new, but Google seem to be driving a real dialogue with webmasters via Google webmaster tools. Register your website to access all sorts of useful information about how Google’s spiders are indexing the site, including top keywords, links to your site, any crawl errors and so on. It’s extremely informative, and provides a real insight into how your site ranks in queries made to Google search.

More useful is the information you can explicitly provide to the spider. While Google make pretty light work of rummaging around your website and sending visitors to the right place, it’s entirely possible that they miss sections unique to your taxonomy, so this is a golden opportunity for you to fill in the blanks!

Google have stated that they now want 2 types of site map:

• Page sitemap – detailing all the pages on your site
• Video sitemap – detailing all the videos on your site

The video sitemap is a new innovation, born out of necessity as it is notoriously difficult to point search engines at Flash video content. By providing an XML video sitemap to Google as well as having a YouTube channel, video content is sure to rank high in both Web and Video searches using Google.

Other opportunities

There are in fact all sorts of “maps” or snippets being created to assist search engines:

• Contact details
• People / staff members
• Recipes
• Events
• Reviews

If you’re working on any websites which have video, event or recipe content and driving traffic to the site is important to you, I’d suggest you need to get your web development team looking at these with some urgency!

Content Formula are expert at managing the effort to improve rankings for sites with varied and rich content (even if we do say so ourselves), so if you’d like to find out more then please get in touch!