Research is essential in defining the direction of ideas, if you don’t know the brand, how can you come up with new ideas? Knowing the products and services you sell and adapting them to fit with a certain brand culture can be tricky, however using a creative and imaginative drive will help you work to fit your products or services to suit the brand.

Creating a new service is a great way to enhance the agency portfolio. Every brand has a different culture, objectives and goals. Agencies working with brands need their products and services to be readily available and adaptable to suit the needs of any brand.

Adapting your writing style is a necessity in order to appeal to different readers; also the style of writing depends on who your community is. Adjust how formal, or quirky your tone of voice is to suit the expectations of your readership.

Be interesting yet factual where you can. Make sure your headline grabs the reader’s attention, so it gives them the urge to read on… Creating content does take time, so try not to rush, but do set yourself a realistic deadline.

Community Pages are aimed for Facebook users to create pages about topics and interests, themes and ideas they are interested in but which currently do not fit under the more customized Facebook Groups and Fan pages.

The new page was devised as an alternative to a Fan Pages which are developed for businesses, public figures and organisations. However the community pages are also designed to enhance personal pages.

Info pages on personal profiles will be enhanced by these connections such as, hometown, education and work, likes and interests, explains Alex Li from Facebook. In true Wikipedia style each community page, of which 6.5million will be created, will be available on any subject.

To modify pages you can request to add content to pages through a system where Facebook will notify you as to whether you are eligible to make a modification. The pages will include live streaming of relevant Facebook information for example, status updates.

The new initiative has already started to prompt users to amend information on profiles, linking to either Community Pages or Official Pages; a pop up box will recommend pages according to the information which you have included on your profile, you will then select how public you want this information to be, who will see it etc.

Another change is that Facebook are phasing out the link ‘Become a Fan’, instead of clicking on that users will now just click the ‘Like’ link, and to removed the link to fan pages there will now be an ‘Unlike’ link at the bottom of a page, alternatively fan pages can be removed through editing your profile.

Some industry experts believe adding the ‘Community Pages’ was a logical move in order to compete with information sharing sites like Wikipedia, however from a users perspective both socially and for business purposes the move could be a little confusing.

So, what are your initial thoughts and where do you think Facebook will venture next? Your opinions please…

Sources: http://ow.ly/1AEQH & http://www.insidefacebook.com

Experian Hitwise – has information from data centres in the US and UK as well as some European countries, more specifically stats and data from UK internet usage.

comScore – gives you up to date digital market intelligence from across the globe.

Alexa – includes information such as traffic metrics, search analytics, demographics and much more… from countries across the world.

Here’s a screengrab of Google News UK a few minutes ago – spot the obvious typo (after the jump).

Aside from the obvious joke that this sort of typo is more expected from The Grauniad, it’s interesting on two points:

1. Unless the Google Algorithm has built in mis-spellings like this, it suggests the headline (or meta headline) only plays a small part in determining which stories get picked up.
2. The headline published on Google News is not the same as the headline on the Times website “Civil servants and axed IT to pay for Tory tax cut”.
   The sub has input an alternative title (meta-title) for this story – good practice from an SEO perspective.

This begs the question – why are they bothering to optimise for Google if they regard Google’s linking to stories as theft?

Here’s a quote from Rupert Murdoch, via The Telegraph

“The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it – steal our stories, we say they steal our stories – they just take them. That’s Google, that’s Microsoft, that’s Ask.com…”

hmmmmmm…..

“The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.”

Please can someone at Google have a word with the person in charge of the algorithm – almost every day an inappropriate story gets coughed up into the Entertainment section.  Today’s example is pretty extreme -

Nestled in between

‘Strictly Come Dancing is fixed,’ says Joe Calzaghe (the former boxer who has been dubbed by some “the dancing wardrobe” for his wooden performances can’t understand why he didn’t win celebrity dancing show)

and

University Challenge contestants are given more clues, says producer (the only quiz show on TV for viewers with IQs in double figures drums up some much-needed publicity)

there is a very different story…

Yes,  this is a grotesque story about a vicious attack on a young girl by other teenagers. This is not what any rational person would consider “entertainment”.

How did it end up in Google News?  It must be the reference to social networking, or maybe because the attack was filmed by mobile video.  Still not an entertainment story!

Spotted anything else like this?  Please let us know by adding a comment below.

There’s just one thing that doesn’t add up with this apparent ploy to win passengers over: SMOKING IS BANNED IN PUBLIC PLACES – and that includes workplaces e.g. airports and aeroplanes.

Ryanair want to sell smokeless cigarettes which dispense nicotine without poisoning the air, apparently to calm grumpy smokers down, but smokers surely know when they book flights and holidays that smoking is banned on planes and has been for some years. Therefore they are fully aware how long it is till their next smoke, so why offer something which will surely cause passenger uproar?

Answer: most likely another PR stunt to get Ryanair in the headlines and boost sales – this time appealing to smokers who apparently lack self control.

Researching using Google “ryanair pr stunt” comes up with over 14,000 results – just shows how much publicity they get! This is the first page of results:

I have highlighted the 3 other stunts from this year, the remaining stories are reporting the same stories from different journalists/news publishers…

So why do Ryanair do this? Maybe they are running out of ideas to promote their brand and have to resort to silly media outbursts. What do you think?

Most of these strange results are quite amusing, or just gently misleading. Such as the main headline referring to one football team proclaiming “We wuz robbed” next to a picture of a player from the opposition.

A bit more disturbing is the tendency for stories to end up in the wrong news category, most often with a Weird World / Quirky story appearing in Entertainment.

There’s an example live at the moment:

Woman is savaged in 18st reindeer attack.

By no stretch of the imagination is this an entertainment story, even if the poor woman was once a contestant on a reality TV show.

Was the Google algorithm confused by the tasteless “Sex rampage reindeer Mr Frosty gores woman” in the Metro – Mr Frosty sounding like a cartoon character, or possibly a reference to the Xmas song “Frosty the Snowman”?

It highlights that human editors do a very valuable job!

Have you come across any strange Google News results (in any country)?  Or have you any idea how this story got into the Entertainment category  – please let us know…

As I use Twitter for work purposes to gain industry knowledge and promote WebCertain, I decided I should go and get as much information as possible to help build my knowledge on the micro-blogging site, so I put my name down to attend.

The training session lasted 4 hours, split into 3 sessions:
• Session One: The context, History and Background
• Session Two: Your Twitter Presence and Reputation
• Session Three: Expanding the Twitter Remit – 3rd Party Tools and Q&A’s.

We discussed what we all wanted to gain from the training, with the majority of the group having very little or no experience with Twitter so it was great to hear what everyone wanted out of it.

Session One covered: ‘What is Marketing Today’ where we looked at the various popular brands which used marketing effectively between 1950 – 2000 and what is and would be influential from 2000 – 2050. With regards to inbound marketing we looked at; Blogs, SEO and Social Media (which are more likely to generate leads?)and how social networking is a cost effective marketing tool. Also, how using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote your website will generate leads and sales.

Twitter’s history was something I hadn’t researched before and was interested to know how this phenomenon began… Back in early 2006 the blogging based company Odea (which was created and owned by Biz Stone and Evan Williams) began a project called Twitter from a brainstorming session and came up with a new type of SMS messaging service, an internal project for employees to share information. Odea thought that the concept could possibly be used on a wider basis and Twitter was launched in July 2006, being launched at the SXSW Festival where the crowd loved it! It went from having 20,000 followers to 60,000 followers in 1 day!

The business model issue:
An important point which Andy raised was about funding. Twitter currently is operated by Venture Capitalists, so what actually will happen when this funding runs out? All (most) social networking, blogging and micro blogging sites are currently free for personal and professional use, so where will the funding come from? Will Twitter limit the amount of corporate accounts and make companies pay for more? Or will companies have to pay to advertise? Will Twitter users have to pay for APIs which are currently free (up to a point)? Do you think sponsored Tweets will be the way forward? We came to the conclusion that as there is no revenue as there is no business model…

Session Two: This section started off by discussing why people use Twitter:

Andy went on to talk through creating an account and the jargon (DM, RT etc). Then we got onto the ‘reputation’, following and followers and how many people do the ‘follow-unfollow’ trick because they think it makes their presence look better than average, but does it really? I think it depends on the following:

The primary objectives of building your online reputation are:
• Supplying interesting facts / views
• Linking to useful content
• Re-Tweeting interesting information
• Asking questions and giving something back of value
• Using keywords in your tweets – people do track them
• Plus a very high volume of tweets does equal success!
‘What not to do’: Don’t over promote yourself!

A good point which was made is that Tweets don’t last for very long, depending of course who your followers are. So automation could be the way forward to ensure your tweet is ‘seen’ especially within the different time zones – therefore not limiting yourself to the zone you are in. Using automated applications by 3rd party organisations is needed (I think) to boost your tweets success which in turn will develop your following.

Section Three: Third party software is something I had briefly used before, mainly Twitrobot for automating tweets and tr.im for shortening URLs. So Andy opened up a whole new world of APIs I had never heard of or used before, here are a few:
• Twhirl – can manage multiple social media accounts like Twitter, FriendFeed and Seesmic Video. Shortening of URLs using, digg.com, bit.ly and twurl, this can be used in an array of languages.
• TweetDeck – links with Facebook and MySpace, can manage multiple accounts and split the people you’re following into categories to make it easier to view .
Other applications we talked about included: Twitrobot, TweetBeep, Tweetlater.com, Trendistic (shows twitter trends) ….

I also discovered that you can track your posts which have links in them, so you can find out how many people RT and viewed the article by using Topsy.com.

To use Twitter successfully and create a good following I think you need a mixture of automated tweets with personal tweets, use interesting information/links and follow people who will be of interest to you.

Also follow #isslon on Twitter for live updates.

Andy Atkins-Kruger kicked things off by thanking Sante J Achille for attending.  Sante is not the only speaker who has flown in for the event, but he has special circumstances as he lives in l’Aquila, the Italian city destroyed by earthquakes.

The first presentation was from Anne Kennedy about the global reach of Facebook.  Anne had lots of insights on the growth of Facebook, their success in part due to their successful localisation project.

Then it was my turn to speak (too quickly).  My subject was the opportunities and threats of marketing through Twitter.  I was surprised to see that at least 2/3 of attendees used Twitter.  My basic viewpoint is that there are lot of opportunities, but don’t be misled by the simplicity of Twitter – put in as much effort into planning as you would with any other campaigns…

I also believe that Twitter as a search engine has great possibilities for growth.

After a break, Nicole Vanderbilt of Bebo and Regina Bustamante of Plaxo spoke about the services offered by their social media sites.  Regina also shared information on their complex translation and localisation process.

Peter Crosby of Viadeo explained how they turned a French start-up into a global professional network.  He kept us on our toes with some live text voting and emphasised that their success in going global was based on taking very local approaches in each country.  Weirdly, it turns out I am following his brother on Twitter, small world and all that…

After lunch Andy, Dixon Jones of Receptional and Kristjan Mar Hauksson of Nordic eMarketing had their traditional battle, this time they each championed a “future of web marketing”.  Kristjan said nothing would ever be more successful than Google and was amusingly dismissive of Twitter’s ineffective search results.  Dixon argued that Facebook was the future model, because of its stickiness and the engagement it offers users.

Andy was pretty convincing sating that Twitter will be the future, but he lost the vote to Kristjan.  (Dixon later tweeted that he had been robbed!)

Moving onto blogs.  Vasco Sommer-Nunes of Mokono spoke on how to monetise blogging and Sante went through international blogging strategies, a subject that he is an expert in.  He also mentioned the importance of Flickr  - look out for the pictures from the conference on there soon! (Update – pictures from ISS London are already up, more coming from WebCertain

Then trends – Alex Burmeister of Nielsen online provided lots of in depth information on tracking and analytics – basically proving once again that social media is growing at an unstoppable rate.

More coming soon…

…continued

Tom Smith from Trendstream continued the analytic / statistics theme.  There was an awful lot to take in from both of them, one things that will definitely interest Stats-Fans – Nielsen are committed to making more of their data generally avaiable.

After a break, we had a passionate presentation from Massimo Burgio @massimoburgio (Massimo had an adventure getting to the conference from Barcelona with all sorts of travel problems – he arrived about 15 minutes before he was set to speak…)

Massimo’s presentation was a call to arms and all about the need for SEMs to change their attitudes, in line with the changes in search behaviour.

Following Massimo was my colleague Oscar Carreras with the brief to discuss SEO techniques in Social Media.  Oscar firmly believes that blogging is the way to go (I agree with him) because blogs allow synchronisation between channels – and the content is ideal for using in campaigns, in comparison to point-of-sale pages).

And wrapping things up, Martin Belam (@currybet), information architect from the Guardian spoke about How Major Publishers are Using Social Media to Drive Traffic.  Being an old news hound, this is my kind of subject and I touched on it briefly in my presentation – Twitter is an excellent news channel.

Even people weren’t as into that subject as I am were really enjoying the presentation, with an incidental Star Trek theme to the slides.  Martin (who was speaking for himself and not representing The Guardian – he has a disclaimer and everything), nevertheless spoke about a new project at The Guardian, the release of content – for free!

This caused a bit of a ruffle in a room full of marketers – could and should this be a model for other organisations and sectors?

Here is Volker Ballueder’s reivew of the ISS London.

Find tweets from the day on Twitter under #isslon

Please share your comments or useful links for information about the conference.