Sometimes it’s a developer inside an agency or design shop who no longer works there and because developing in his CMS of choice is not core business for the firm, they can no longer support changes.

Sometimes it’s a post-quake fallout thing, where the solo operator has simply upped sticks and gone, never to be seen or heard from again. Other times the client has engaged with an agency who are not web specialists, and unbeknownst to them, the work has been subcontracted out to a freelance developer – who is now no longer available.

So what we find happening is clients coming to see us knowing they will probably have to start from scratch, but determined this time to do it with a company that is big enough and has been around long enough that the story won’t be repeated.

In a way, it’s the perfect “you get what you pay for” example … yes, you will pay more upfront when you engage with a larger company because of our overheads, but in the long term it may cost you less in terms of stress, business interruption and general inconvenience because you are working with a business partner who can provide a high level of ongoing service.

And working with a team means that even if one or two people disappear, there is still knowledge of your business and your project inside the organisation that enables everything to continue as planned.

At the Lemon we are also prepared to look at alternative ways of working, depending on your existing agency/developer/designer relationships.

If you are looking for strategic input, expert advice around technology relating to your web presence, social media training and strategy, conversion optimisation, improving user experiences on your site and a company you can partner with for ongoing support and consultation advice, you have come to the right place.

Not every project we are involved in includes a website build, but we are always happy to apply our expertise on an hourly rate consultancy basis if that’s what you really need.

If that sounds like you, give us a call or drop us a line using our contact form and we will get right back to you to arrange a chat about your objectives and how we can support you to achieve them.

The statistics are compelling. For every $1 spent on wellness the ROI is fivefold.  Putting the money aside though, I agree with Brad that we have a responsibility to look after the people who choose to work alongside us every day.  Apart from being a “good thing to do” it is one tool that drives employee engagement. “The organisation I work for cares about me and my colleagues.”

After the session, I sat down and made a list of what we do as a business in the area of wellness.  We do all sorts of things – flu injections, a never ending fruit basket, daily breakfast, access and support of EAP services, ergonomic assessments to name a few.  Not too bad for a small business.

Feeling pretty upbeat I decided to poll the Lemons.  I asked “do you think we are committed to your health and wellbeing?”  The results were interesting.  Some thought we were outstanding, some less than average.

I think there are a couple of key lessons in this:

1. You should never make an assumption that you know what your people need in this area

Did I ever poll the team and ask them what areas of health and wellness are a real concern?  Or did I just assume that that my ideas were pretty good?

The ideas probably aren’t bad, but perhaps the team have more pressing issues?  Maybe budgeting and stress and help with insurance advice are important in post-quake CHCH, than a banana (or two)?

The lesson here for me is to engage the team more, poll them on what they think are the areas of real importance. Maybe even offer online health checks so that you can give them a real benchmark to draw their own conclusions.  Once you’ve got the data, you can form an opinion and then put a formal plan in place to help meet their REAL needs.

2. How you communicate what you are doing in your business is as important as the actions themselves.

Often we go to great pains to communicate a decision at the time we make it.  “We’re putting on breakfasts because we’re aware that you’re driving extra distances to our post-quake office.  We want to ensure that you get the day off to a good start.”

As staff depart and new staff arrive, some of your intent can be lost.  It’s important that the message “lives on” in an organisation.  Your induction process, your intranet are both great tools for sharing your thinking behind some of these initiatives.

As CEOs we focus so heavily on building an external brand, ensuring our customers know what we stand for. Understand why we do, what we do. In our case we go to great lengths to ensure that our clients know that we will only build them a digital presence that will “matter” to them and their users. We work hard to make sure that this message is consistent. That every client, whether they join us now or in 6 months, has that shared experience.

We need to put the same effort into ensuring that our other clients, the internal ones, have a common understanding of the decisions of the past.

Living and breathing your organisation values and purpose is the core means of doing this but this week I’ve decided we need to develop an internal brand – one that talks to our internal clients.

Every week this job teaches me something new…

That’s where Google comes in. So I search for ‘accommodation in Noosa’. Lots of sites are listed and I start trawling through the results. Decisions to be made – four or five star? location? maximum $’s we are willing to spend? facilities?

Right, all evaluated – Outrigger Little Hastings St – we are being indulgent. Ok, so who has the best deal? Another Google search on ‘Outrigger Little Hastings St’. Lots of options of who we can book with – sites I don’t know from a bar of soap. Total value is around $1,700 so I am a little cautious about giving my credit card to just any old site – plus it’s a ‘no cancellation/no refund’ deal and I am conservative with our money.

Then my brain kicks into play. What about House of Travel here in little old NZ? They do good flight deals, perhaps they do hotels as well. Business-wise we use their corporate arm for travel – Orbit Corporate Travel . They provide a great service and really look after us as clients. I am sure they would like my personal business as well (our Orbit office has a House of Travel holidays branch built in).

So onto www.hot.co.nz to see what accommodation they offer in Noosa – and there it is – Outrigger Little Hastings St.

They can offer the same value deal that all the other sites offer, I know them and trust them with my money, it’s nice to give something back to a valued supplier and support a Kiwi business. If anything goes wrong they have a 24 hour after-hours service just a phone call away and I know they will look after me.

So it is clear that Google doesn’t always provide us with the best answer. In all my searches I didn’t see the House of Travel website appear.

Moral of this story: Engage your brain as well as Google to search intelligently and use your local and brand knowledge as well as search results.

A robust and positive debate developed around where to spend their marketing dollars and what will have the best rate of return. I mentioned the adage that saving money can often cost money using a real life example I had experienced that morning.

Having flown into Rotorua from Christchurch, I disembarked from the plane and headed straight for the taxi stand. We had pre-booked me a shuttle into the Novotel where the conference was being held.

Normally you are greeted with the line up of  ‘Name Boards’ with friendly taxi drivers ready to whisk you away. A quick visual scan resulted in no “Mr Dockrill” and I couldn’t see any representatives from the shuttle company anywhere in sight.

So in this instance I thought the easiest thing to do was to give them a call and sort out the mistake. Their phone number was easy to spot in the Airport. They had invested in a large internal billboard that showcased all their offerings and had an 0800 number to call. Problem solved, ring the number, book the shuttle!

So I rang the 0800 number provided, I thought I had misdialled as there was quite a lag, it didn’t ring and went straight through to a voice message that appeared to start half way through the sentence.

So I rang the number again…to my surprise I was greeted with an automated message that said they don’t accept cell phone charges on the 0800 number and to call an Auckland number which they then gave me.

Let’s put this in context – I’m a traveler in an airport on a cell phone, I have an immediate need and want to spend some money with this company. I was standing at the time and of course by the time I realised what was going on, the recited Auckland number had long since left my memory.

The shuttle company had no doubt invested a large sum of money on a billboard and an 0800 number service.

And at some point they had also identified that accepting cell phone numbers on the 0800 number was perhaps proving more expensive than they first thought and stopped doing it.

But here’s the thing, you have to spend money to make money. I quickly found a competitor’s taxi number, called in my request and used their services for the duration of my stay, spending approximately $150.00 in taxis.

The decision to not accept cell phone charges had actually cost our initial provider money, not only in missing out on my taxi fare, it also rendered the billboard investment useless to the audience it was targeting. Once you add in the goodwill lost in general inconvenience, it appears to be quite an expensive “cost saving” exercise.

Marketing is all about getting the right content to the right audience at the right time.

Your website is one of the most cost effective ways to do this and coupled with good traditional marketing, and a consistency between your marketing messaging and actual product or service delivery, your ROI will be measurable and real.

Facebook Offers provides the opportunity for business page owners to provide “offers” for followers of their pages, which will show up in the followers’ Facebook newsfeeds, and in their timelines if they act on the offer.

The follower can interact with the offer, including sharing it to their friends and connections, enabling businesses to generate more new followers, as well as having a way to directly target those who have expressed interest in their brand or product.

The Offers programme has been in beta mode in the US for the last two months, being trialled by some of the big retail players, including Macy’s, Walgreens and Old Navy.

New Zealand and Australia are two of the additional five countries who will now have access to the Facebook Offers programme. Any businesses wanting to widen the reach of their offer will be charged, however if you are just targeting your existing followers, this is currently free.

At present, the offers functionality appears only to be available to “local businesses”, however this is likely to broaden in the near future.

To see if your page can create offers, look out for the yellow Offer icon at the top of your timeline:

For more information about how to create an effective offer, you can visit www.facebook.com/help/offers – or read through these tips:

Timeline is a great tool for businesses looking to build connections and engagement with people, announce new products, share news, and gather feedback. This change will affect how businesses represent themselves on Facebook, prompting brand awareness through strong imagery and rich content.

How will this affect your business?

Businesses can now express their identity through the new cover photo. The cover photo is positioned at the top of the Facebook Timeline and will need to clearly articulate the core message of your company.

Strong photographs, sized for the space and higher than usual web resolution are an imperative in this space too.

There are some limitations to the cover photo, designed by Facebook to stop businesses using this space as advertising space:

1. No promotions or advertising can be displayed in the cover photo.
2. No price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”.
3. No contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section.
4. No references to user interface elements, such as ‘Like’ or ‘Share’, or any other Facebook site features.
5. No calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your Friends”.
6. The cover photo will be purely static with the like button just below the image.

Consideration to the apps also needs to be given, as this will directly affect the appearance of your brand on Facebook. Applications need to have a custom designed thumbnail, which clearly describe the app’s function.

Applications can be re-arranged and prioritised too, giving the business control over which apps users will engage with more regularly – ie which show in the top row where four different apps can be seen. The Photos app is always first and cannot be changed.

Highlighting

The Timeline enables you to highlight content on your wall in ways that weren’t possible previously, including “pinning” and “highlighting” as illustrated in the following image.

The highlighted content goes right across two columns, giving it greater emphasis and works particularly well with video clips.

Pinned content will stay at the top of your wall for seven days, or until you choose to pin something else.

This is a great way to ensure something important doesn’t get lost further down the wall and can also be used for promotions of various kinds.

Marking Milestones

You can also incorporate the history of your company into the page by using the Milestones feature. Content including images and text can be added for each significant date you choose to include, which can be seen by clicking on the timeline at the top right of the page, or as visitors continue to scroll down through the content on your wall.

Messaging

Another significant benefit of the new rollout is that now finally, followers of your page can message you directly through the page. In the past this was only possible for personal accounts, which meant the only way for people to communicate with a brand on Facebook was via posting on the wall for all to see.

Now they can message your page admins directly, unless you choose to turn off this function, which can be done through the message settings below the cover page photograph.

Administration

The new administration area is at the top of the page above the cover photo and can be hidden by clicking on the hide button. Only page admins can see the majority of this section, which is also where your page notifications will show – the information about what activity is happening on the page. Any new messages to the page will also show up in the right hand site of the Admin panel.

To see the Facebook Insights, you need to click on “See all” in the insights section of the admin dashboard and it will bring up the analytics for your page.

One that is guaranteed to do one of two things: 1) teach you a bunch of stuff you didn’t already know, or 2) confirm that what you are already doing is right on track.

The iStrategy Sydney digital marketing conference (check the #iStrategy stream on Twitter) mostly did the latter for me, which was very affirming.

Trends: Mobile, Data and Social

At the same time, it was possible to pick up a number of very strong trends across all the different presenters and panel members.

The two most repeated words were without doubt, Mobile and Data: Data mining/Big Data.

Many of the speakers acknowledged they have been claiming each of the last 5 years or so to be “the year of mobile” but the advent of smartphone technology has really got things moving, to the point where we can safely say that this is now the decade of the mobile phone.

From the data perspective, it became apparent that data is our greatest asset – and our greatest challenge, as we attempt to assemble, review, analyse and develop strategies based on what our potential customers are doing, reading, commenting, liking and engaging with.

Coming a close third after Mobile, and Data, was of course, Social. Interestingly, no doubt as a consequence of many of the presenters coming from companies who offer social media management and monitoring platforms, the focus was heavily on ways to automate the process of managing the online conversation.

Due to the ongoing concern about how much human resource social media management could potentially absorb, this is understandable, but the reality remains that for any business, having human beings interacting with your audiences is key to really working out what is important to that audience and what you should be doing about it.

Software algorithms have their limitations when compared with the ability of human beings to understand tone, sentiment and opportunities that present themselves in social media channels. (More on that in a future blog post!)

Standouts

Standout presentations for me were those by the Experian team, who broke down the digital marketing strategy into its various components and provided some excellent examples and scenarios; Gillian Meussig from SEOMoz who was a brilliant presenter, facilitator and extractor of the most relevant information from various speakers; Nic Cola from Fairfax Media (image above is from Nic’s presentation, showing Fairfax’s modeling of their audiences using different devices during the day); Twitter’s Claire Diaz Ortiz with her stories of social good around the world and John Bastitich of Westfield Group with his high speed presentation highlighting all that is currently broken in the world of marketing.

Being away from the office and from Christchurch for a few days opens up time to think, particularly with such high quality inspiration at hand, and I am sure the Lemon – our team and our clients will see the impact of this event trickling through over the coming months.

We look forward to sharing some of our learnings with you, as we use them to continue to build and extend the services we offer our clients and the way we deliver those services.

Evidence is now suggesting that Pinterest is driving more traffic referrals to websites than Twitter, and the audience is up to 70% female.

People use Pinterest as a visual form of bookmarking, grouping together related types of content, for example someone planning on building a home might pin anything they would like to see in the home from interior design features to furniture, kitchen appliances and artwork.

Designers use the site to keep track of ideas and inspirational images or resources.

So how does it work for business?

1). You can create your own brand pinboards if you have a product that is highly visual and attractive. If you have seasonal product releases, you can create a new board for each season. Every image you pin provides a link back to your website, so it is an effective way of linkbuilding, which helps you from an SEO perspective. It is also an effective way to drive traffic to your site. e.g check out the Whale Watch Kaikoura Pinterest account.

2). Make sure that visual content on your site can be easily shared and pinned. The key to success with Pinterest is helping people to find your content and encouraging them to share it. You can do that by including the Pinterest icons on relevant pages along with other sharing tools.

3). Ensure your images are high quality and engaging – something that people will enjoy seeing and want to share with others. Quality images get ‘repinned’ and shared by many, which spreads your product further afield, and again generates more traffic back to your website.

4). We suggest including a gallery area on your site where images can be easily pinned and shared, and ensuring all image files are not protected against sharing in any way. Including a small watermark on the corner of any new images you create is also a good way to link the brand with the image, no matter what context it is seen in.

If you think Pinterest might be a good fit for your products and you want to know more about how to make the most of the opportunity it presents, contact your account manager.

• Social Media: Are all your social media icons up to date? With the speed of change in social channels and the addition of Google + it is likely you haven’t updated your sharing icons. Do you have all the necessary “follow us on” buttons? If not, you can add the individual buttons, or if you are running a WordPress blog, you may wish to update or find a new social media sharing plugin.

• If you run a hospitality business like a restaurant, cafe, bar or accommodation provider, you may wish to explore the new “save to foursquare” button, which enables people who like the sound of your place to add it to their To Do list on Foursquare. This is also great for sites or blogs that regularly publish reviews or articles about locations and different establishments. Once the location has been added to a Foursquare To Do list, that person will get “buzzed” by Foursquare when they are in the neighbourhood, making it easy to keep track of all those places they were meaning to check out.
• Go through your site and ensure any relevant date references are updated and accurate. For example, if your About Us says your company has been in business for 12 years, update to 13 years, to keep it fresh and current.
• Review your whole site as objectively as you can – does it show all your current products and services, for example? Are there any pages that could do with some new images or a freshen up from a design perspective? One of the things that can date a site most noticeably is photography. Do your staff photos need updating? Is there anything else on the site that has been bugging you for a while that you would love to change? Now is the time to get it all done.
• Check your Google Analytics to determine the most popular content pages and ensure the content on these is absolutely up to date, as well as being a good fit with your current business objectives, which may have shifted over the last 12 months.
• Do the same for your Social Media accounts – do you need to install a fresh Facebook landing page? Do you want to run a Facebook ad campaign with a special landing page? Time for a new custom Twitter or YouTube Channel background? Time to customise your company LinkedIn profile perhaps?

If you need some assistance taking a fresh look at your site, give your account manager a call and we can spend some time doing a bit of an audit and making suggestions from our perspective.

We can also offer some user testing or add tools like Crazy Egg so you can see how visitors are using your site.

I am lucky enough to be travelling to South America this month. The first part of the trip is for a hockey tournament (the serious side) and the second part is tripping around and experiencing local culture (the fun, relaxing, party side).

This got me thinking about trip reviews, things to do and see and more importantly, tips and suggestions to make it a memorable trip. Best place to get this info? Social media of course. Ways to learn first-hand from those who live there, ex pats and travellers alike.

I discovered a few of my friends who had travelled over to SA kept mentioning the name ‘Orkut’ so I did some research. Orkut is a social media website that is owned and operated by Google.

It was created by an employee of Google and although is a lot less popular in the US, Europe and Australasia than Facebook, it is one of the most visited websites in Brazil with 66 million active users worldwide.

There are many thoughts out there as to why so popular, but one that keeps arising is the sense of community that Orkut offers, unlike platforms like MySpace, which focus on individuals.

Most Brazilians associate themselves in groups and communicate this way. Social networking caught on very quick in Brazil because of this fact. Also the sense of coolness, individuality, and pride in Brazilian culture adds fuel to the social networking fire.

Facebook is obviously competing in this space more and more these days, however it was interesting to learn about all these other 100s of channels out there tailoring to specific cultures.

That is why I love traveling – not only do you get to experience other cultures and heritage while you are there, but you also have the chance to discover this sort of information whilst planning your trip.

The reality of social media on a global scale is that every country handles their social networking with their own unique approach. Some countries like China are obviously limited by censorship, but have still made their own social networks hugely popular. Weibo is the Chinese version of Twitter, and in fact, “weibo” means micro-blog in Chinese.

The most popular micro-blog site is Sina Weibo which had 140 million followers in the first quarter of 2011 and more than 50% of the Chinese market, followed by Tencent Weibo.

If your business wants to target international markets, it is worthwhile doing your homework to discover which social platforms have the highest level of engagement and finding staff or contractors who can engage in the local language to ensure your presence there is authentic.

Tanto tempo para agora