Just a quick guide to the basic social media sites, we found on the internet recently.

1. You won’t need to invest all that time-consuming effort of forging a close, working relationship with a web agency that has a vested interest in the success of your business.
2. You no longer need to worry about looking distinct from your competitors. Surely everyone will start using pre-designed templates soon anyway.
3. Intellectual property issues will be a thing of the past. As it’s going to look pretty much identical to a 1000 other websites anyway, does it really matter if you no longer retain ownership of your core branding ingredients?
4. Costly, one-off fees will be a thing of the past. With an indefinite payment plan your capital outlay will be spread thinly. Who cares if it ends up costing far more in the longer run?
5. If the site goes down or you need an urgent update you no longer need to rely on an agency to dig you out of a big black hole. There are plenty of really cheap freelance developers all over the globe who speak reasonably good English and are willing to stay awake for over 24 hours in order to comply with your time zones.
6. No need to grapple with complicated site plans or wire frames. Web agencies always try and over complicate things when trying to deliver the best possible site architecture and user experience. If it’s not right first time, you can always start again.
7. Potential money savings can be ploughed back into site promotion. Why not employ one of those companies who guarantee to get your site to the top of the Google rankings in a matter of days for example.
8. Sleep easy in the knowledge that your website is hosted on a server that is shared with literally 1000s of other customers. There’s safety in numbers surely?
9. Forget about the hassle of developing complicated, bespoke online business tools that apparently make everyone’s life easier and more efficient. A one size fits all may not match your exact requirements but hey, does it really matter when off-the-shelf is so cheap.
10. You don’t need to be a geek and have to worry about boring coding issues. Who really cares if your site does not display correctly or works properly in certain browsers and devices? I’m still using IE6 and most sites don’t work anyway…

Of course, with all this spare time you can impress your friends by performing brain surgery or even offering to re-wire their house! I mean, how hard can it be?

Crisis in the concept house

I recently had a conversation with a prospective client regarding possible topics for a workshop at their up and coming annual conference. The conference was for a network of business partners from all over the world. My initial idea was to bring up the case for social media in a B2B environment. To my surprise the client thought about it for a while and came to the conclusion that social media really didn’t have any relevance to a B2B audience. I didn’t pursue the matter, but it did leave me questioning myself.

I knew that social media already formed an important part of many B2C companies marketing programs aimed at reaching a consumer market but I really had to go off and do a bit of research to convince myself that my idea was indeed a valid one in a B2B environment.

Paradise regained

It turned out that I didn’t have to dig too deep or Google too hard to come across plenty of musings, blogs, news articles, forum posts and industry journals confirming my assumption that Social Media was already in the hearts and minds of B2B marketers.

I confess a mental sigh of relief, however this was immediately replaced by thoughts about why the client had been so quick to dismiss this topic.

In my initial findings one statistic that was quite revealing was that in a recent B2B industry survey, 46% of the respondents reported that the perception that social media was irrelevant was an important internal obstacle in getting social media initiatives approved.

Have you checked in?

Perhaps the perceived view of social media in certain industries is limited to the recreational aspects of Facebook, Myspace and Foursquare. I acknowledge that having your Facebook page ‘liked’ or your YouTube video viewed thousands of times doesn’t necessarily translate to increase sales and will never convince company bean counters to part with their marketing cash. The metrics for measuring the success of a social media campaign have always been a contentious point (a MacDonalds Foursquare campaign that ran in 2010 is a contender for this dubious award), with increased web traffic being the most commonly used metric. But like most marketing fields there are dozens of social media tools at our disposal and I would never recommend that a client use all of them.

This seems familiar

I knew that if I had ever got to present this workshop, the first thing I would have needed to explain to the delegates was simply what the hell all this social media talk was all about. The first thing I would point out is that social media extends well beyond their teenage kids updating their Facebook statuses. Here’s how the very ‘social media’ online encyclopaedia wiki puts it:

“Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention, generates online conversations, and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. The message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand or company itself.”

The fact that these delegates from all around the world were gathered together to meet, compare industry experiences, foster new relationships and reinforce relationships with existing partners was without doubt simply a real life social media event happening in the first person. Social media is all about con­ver­sa­tional mar­ket­ing and so in essence it’s not new to them at all, they have been doing it most of their working lives.

I would have asked them why they were there and what they hoped to achieve whilst at the conference or what they would like to take back with them when they returned to their companies. I would try to convince them that these are the same values and business commodities that the modern digitised social media platform is able to deliver only in a much wider, quicker and efficient way.

People buy Expertise

Each of the delegates would have been there as a representative of the expertise their company offers in a specific field, and that after all is what people buy. People buy expertise. This is probably the main difference between how B2B business operates as apposed to B2C companies. On a consumer level you might buy an object because of its features or taste, but B2B sales tend to be driven by demonstrating some type of expertise in a particular field, service or industry sector you are in. With this in mind it becomes clearer why using social media effectively is a real asset to boosting B2B sales. If you can demonstrate your expertise through social media, you can have a measurable impact on your sales efforts.

One of the main benefits of social media is its high visibility and its ability to make your expertise widely available to your audience.

Don’t I know you?

The relationships that are fostered and forged through social media networks are already more familiar to a B2B company than they are to a B2C company. B2B businesses have had these relationships for years and understand them more fully. Whereas B2C companies are forever chasing the relationship, trying to coax new levels of interaction and brand trust from their mercurial target markets.

With Google now spidering and referencing sites like Twitter and LinkedIn (a perfect example of a truly B2B social networking site) and creative link building via online PR and social media having grown increasingly more important as a part of SEO optimization, the science of search marketing is increasingly becoming more reliant on social media. And although it appears that B2B companies have been slower to get on board the social media train, perhaps it is because they have been more cautious in their approach, more selective about their social media tools, and rightly so. After all social media in this context is all about the critical few rather than the masses.

To be or not B2B?

I’m not sure I have made a cast iron case for Social Media in the B2B workplace where my client is concerned and perhaps those particular delegates would have just stared back at me blankly, but perhaps I have opened a few doors of possibilities. But next time you doubt whether social media is right for B2B com­pa­nies, think about what B2B strat­egy is all about: It is about the rela­tion­ships and part­ner­ships you build with your colleagues, and there’s no easier way to do this today than through social media.

Did I mention it’s cheap too?

Social media in B2B is all about the ‘know’ rather than the ‘sell’. People are getting jaded by the generic marketing push and are becoming increasingly attracted to the personalized approach. It’s already a far more social activity than B2C commerce as it is built entirely around relationships, trust, passion and knowledge. So if you are a B2B company, get out there share your knowledge and demonstrate your expertise.

Finally here are a couple of throwaway stats you can impress social media naysayers with:
Intel has 220,000 Facebook fans and they don't sell chips to consumers. IBM has 139 official Twitter accounts and they don't sell to consumers either.

Beauty is more than skin deep they say, and our new website for the Spa PR Company certainly confirms this notion. We naturally believe that it scores highly when it comes to good looks, but delve a little deeper and you’ll discover that it delivers a bit more.

Spa PR are specialists in spa and beauty communications, and deal with a host of industry sectors from health & wellbeing to travel.  The new site needed to not only clearly present the company credentials and sales messages, but also do its part supporting various PR activities on behalf of clients. Along with a News and Blog, our simple Windows Live Writer based content management system, drives a host of resources including Spa Loves, Spa Escapes and Late Deals all integrated with the usual social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook.

We’re obviously pleased with how the site has turned out, but Spa PR seem pretty happy too. Company Director Steve Malkin had some kind words to say:

“I really, really love our new website… it has great content, its very pleasing on the eye and perfectly positions us as comms experts for our markets”.

It’s early days, but already we are seeing a greater penetration in natural search despite the fact the site has not been optimised for specific keywords, showing that there’s no substitute for a website built to high accessibility standards.  As usual we’ll be monitoring the user stats closely and hopefully writing a nice juicy case study shortly.

They also say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so have a look at the new SPA PR website and judge for yourselves. 

At Gravitate Media we love Google. Most of the traffic to our clients’ sites comes from the world’s favourite search engine - over 70% in fact. But we’ve noticed a worrying trend in recent weeks - the spammers appear to be winning!

Deteriorating search results
In the course of the day I tend to use the internet for fair amount of research, learning new techniques and getting answers to various technical related issues. Recently I’ve noticed a rise in the performance of websites that scrape content from a third party (they steal content, place adds around the stolen copy and then redistribute it on a new domain). Such sites appear to be often out ranking the original content creator. It’s not just me who has noticed this trend. Take a look at Trouble In the House of Google for more detail.

When most users don't get relevant search results, they tend to just change the search terms and try again. But recently we’ve found that both Bing and Yahoo's results sets are better (less spam and more relevant). Now I’m not going to change my search habits just yet - I’ve been using Google for 7 years and it takes a while to kick that kind of addiction.  But there’s more...

Out of place
Now with the introduction of Google Places for local search, the results sets just appear massively out. There are sites which are well constructed, using modern coding standards, being out ranked by a single page site with a massive graphic and no content, or listing which is blatantly SPAM.

To view the scale of the problem which Google Places just search for "garage doors danbury ct".

This  returns multiple results for a single company who have just spammed the index with multiple locations along the same road which don't exist.

For a full report on how this black hat SEO was done see: http://www.sitetruth.com/doc/placesspam10.pdf

In my view Google should be helping the internet improve and get better and not reward poor design and poor implementation and SPAM.

If they don't fix this people users will start to question their search engine of choice, I know I will.

Graves Jenkins are a leading, Sussex based estate agent, providing a mix of commercial and professional property services. 

Following an extensive pitch process, we’ve been commissioned to redevelop Graves Jenkins’ website and CRM system. Our winning proposal involved a totally bespoke software solution tailored to their exact business requirements.

The new website will hopefully look great (naturally), but will more importantly provide the tools for the business to take full advantage of online marketing and sophisticated client database management.

The winning formula
We don’t want too give much away yet, but some of the proposed features include:

• Social media integration
• Fully configurable client area with preferences and alerts
• Comprehensive and easy to use search facility and alert system
• Automated email property alerts
• Google map integration
• Enhanced property details.

Phil Graves, Director at Graves Jenkins told us,

"The decision to appoint the right website design agency was a difficult one as the City has a plethora of good quality agencies in a rapidly expanding media business. We have recognised that the new website will have to meet the demands of new business and be more interactive online. The property industry is ever changing and Graves Jenkins are keen to keep pushing new boundaries which is something which we are known for.

Gravitate Media were selected from a short list of agencies, as they demonstrated a complete understanding of our project requirements and company values. We very much look forward to a long term business relationship."

Watch this space
We’re obviously delighted and excited to have won the contract, and are very keen to get stuck in immediately. Please keep an eye out for any announcements in the early spring regards launch dates. 

We’re pleased to announce the launch of our latest client website, http://www.baymarkets.com/

The Swedish based I.T. company, provide cutting-edge software for OTC derivative trading systems and have a prestigious portfolio of clients such as the Norwegian Stock Exchange, Vantage Capital Markets and Cleartrade.

Baymarkets asked us create a website to communicate their core sales messages effectively to their highly corporate market. Following an extensive consultative design process, we’ve delivered a very clean layout with a generous use of white-space offset by powerful abstract images.

Having recently been launched at an international trade show in Chicago, the site has so far been met with universal approval.  We are confident that the site will perform and help Baymarkets improve their already impressive track record.

We’ll be reporting measuring and reporting on site performance as per usual, so watch this space…

It often bothers the collective Gravitate Media psyche how often simple web design principles are ignored in favour of a one-size-fits all approach.

Off-the-shelf website templates have become increasingly popular, especially with the proliferation of WordPress blogging tool with its numerous third-party plug-ins and burgeoning development community. Their popularity is testimony to the tempting freedom it can offer businesses with the obvious potential short term cost savings. But before everyone runs off and attempts DIY website solutions, businesses should remember that most off-the-shelf web templates are exactly that – a basic template – and as such should be handled with care.

A working example

We were recently approached by A Helping Hand, a London based company offering one-to-one IT tuition for silver surfers. Following numerous conversations about their website performance, we were commissioned to improve design and user experience of certain key pages.  What was immediately clear from initial discussions was as the site was based on an adapted WordPress template many of the finer details that add up to a commercially successfully online presence had been missed.

Generic home page

Their existing home page used an identical grid/layout to the rest of the site (as dictated by the WordPress template). This presented the visitor with long paragraphs of copy devoid of visual prompts – the result was at best underwhelming and did not work nearly hard enough.

Along with setting the tone and creating the right immediate impression, a good home page design should encourage and entice visitors into the most effective zones of the internal site. Our solution http://www.ahelpinghand.co.uk/ broke up the main central column up into multiple areas descending in a hierarchal order. 

Ecommerce issues

The page selling vouchers also suffered by adhering to the generic Wordpress template. Important ecommerce features like the Buy Now buttons were pushed far too low on the page and the purchase options confusing.

Page example pre-overhaul

We applied tried and tested design principles by splitting the main column up into two. Our solution brought the call to actions up above the page fold and allowed for a greater level of supporting messages and information.

Page example post-overhaul

The lesson

Although off-the-shelf templates may seem to offer a tempting short-cut, the visual solution that they produce can be rather generic and lack individuality. Many professional websites share similar goals but individual design requirements are rarely identical. In order to get the most out of any template purchased or provided by the likes of WordPress, expertise in the shape of for an experienced designer is still required. This then begs the question whether it may be better (and more cost-effective in the long run) to ask an experienced designer to produce a bespoke website from scratch in the first place.

Regardless of business size, selecting a partner to help develop your search marketing can be a confusing and at best daunting experience. To the uninitiated, SEO at best can appear like a dark art and this perception is certainly not helped by the shroud of secrecy that Google keeps about the true nature of their engine. This quick guide, although by no means exhaustive, is aimed to help business decision make an informed decision when choosing the right agency to work on a SEO project.

Black, white and grey hats – the importance of ethical SEO

A problem, particularly for small businesses, is that there is still what can be best described as cowboys operating, often making wild claims of getting your company to the top position of Google within weeks. Although, a part of SEO has historically been about reverse engineering the search engines algorithms to perform better than your competitors, there is a dividing line between what is considered acceptable. What at first may appear to gain you a short term boost in rankings can often run the risk of having your website removed from the search engine index indefinitely.

Black hat techniques are sometimes referred to as search engine spamming. One example is repeating an important keyphrase many times on the home page. Another is using text that is the same colour as the background of the page, so the keyphrase is visible to the search robots but not to the human reader. Engineering pages for robots is a practice known as “cloaking”. Other well-known examples are doorway and visibly optimised pages and the use of link-farms.

Such approaches should always be avoided if you care about long-term success. Only ever talk to a search optimiser who wears a white hat (although many may wear a grey one). A white hat approach uses an ethical approach that conforms to best practice set out by the search engines. A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself  “Does this aspect of a search imitative make the visitor experience or the way the brand is presented better or worse”.

Always ask a potential agency of examples of how they achieved success for clients. If they don’t list ethical techniques such as Keyword Analysis, On Page Optimisation, and SEO Link Building and above all creating relevant and engaging content head for the hills.

Does size matter?

Big brands tend to naturally choose one of the bigger, better known SEO agencies. Large agencies will have a higher daily rate but will have the experience of delivering results and their size gives them the chance to hire staff with a wide variety of skills. Change is constant in this world, so the more time a company can dedicate to staff education the better. In smaller agencies, a lot of time will be spent simply learning on the job and their time may be split between several clients.

However, there is also a risk with selecting a large search-marketing agency. If a client is relatively low value, then they may get less attention from account managers and may not get the best available SEO technicians. A smaller company may also have the motivation to go the extra mile to help build reputation so big doesn’t always equate to better. The final decision will usually be dictated by size of budget but remember SEO is a long term strategy and most agencies will insist on a minimum contract period of 6 to 12 months, with appropriate exit clauses.

Get with the program

Search marketing is a hugely dynamic discipline; what is accepted practice today can be outdated by the next. Although it is an exciting time to be involved in the sector, more and more search practitioners are being left behind, adhering to what used to work and sticking with habits even if they don’t produce tangible results. But how do you tell the search-marketing dinosaurs apart from the more progressive and cutting edge professionals? The following is a quick overview of some of the tell tale signs.

Too much emphasis on keyword density

Keyword or keyphrase density remains a useful SEO technique. It aims to sensibly place key search terms into your web copy (typically repeated to a predestined percentage). But over reliance on density of keywords is a far too simplistic method to estimate what is a hugely complicated process carried out by all the engines to determine the relevance of page content.

What are more important is context, relevance and meaning. Consider the following scenario; Google has two different pages to consider when returning search results for the term The Rolling Stones.  One has the phrase Rolling Stones but in context of a scientific study of the rate of movement of rocks down a mountainside, the other is a biopic of the rock group containing relevant words such as Mick Jagger etc – you get the picture. We can safely assume that the page that ranks higher will be the latter. As a search engine’s value is measured by the relevance of its results to the users intention, it must judge content not by how many times a word appears but the content of the supporting copy. Therefore, creating expert copy that uses relevant and authoritative language will always be far more important part of an overall strategy rather than simply repeating certain words.

They don’t mention creating content for your site

“Content is king” has always been the mantra of search professionals although not everyone practices what they preach. Alarm bells should start to ring if an agency doesn’t display a creative approach to adding new and compelling content to your site. Search engines just love regularly updated content, and tools such as blogs are one of the best vehicles for achieving this (it also generates extra content from contributors).

Don’t have an integrated approach to Link Building/Online PR

Although link building has long been a central to any SEO strategy, gone are the days when the accumulation of large volumes of inbound links was a fruitful exercise. Gaining relevant inbound links from high-ranking websites requires an approach that is truly multi-disciplinary and collaboration with your PR team is pre-requisite for any successful natural search campaign. Specific promotions, for example, should focus on seeding content throughout a wide range of targeted websites and a variety of other online channels such as social media and news aggregators.

Lack of in-depth tracking and reporting

Constant reporting is crucial to the DNA of SEO. In order to assess and measure the relative success of any campaign, monthly reports historically normally show page rank for a wide variety of targeted keyphrases with associated conversion rates.  However, when assessing path to conversion metrics, most tracking software fails to give a true picture of user journey. For example, a sale may be attributed to a click from an affiliate banner ad or PPC ad without showing that the same user may have previously found the same product via an organic search. Without using the latest, most sophisticated tracking software, crucial information is usually missing that would otherwise let us see the true performance of your organic traffic.  

Of course, by the time you probably read this current thinking would have probably moved on…

Back in 2007 when social media was just starting starting to go mainstream, flowtown created a map of the social media world, where MySpace was king and youtube was just a glint in Steve Chen’s eye.  

Fast forward three years and how the world has changed…