LS BLOGS

It's Snow Twit

Debenham's assistants with 'Twitter' splashed all over their tee-shirts struck me as funny because it seems to me to be an action on Debenham's part to advertise their embracing of social media, rather than any effort to embrace it in a meaningful way.

Twitter is the new kid on the block thanks to its portability and the public way you can share your thoughts from any location. It's far easier to carry a mobile phone with you than a computer, and so it's easier for you to keep in touch with the world through the medium of electricity as you go about your work or play.

A tweet can carry geographic information, and so a real innovation that twitter can bring to our lives is real-time geographic based data arriving from all around the world that can be compiled into useful maps of information.

Two websites that use geographic real-time data processing to the max are:

http://uksnowmap.com/  an app searches Twitter for real-time snow reports and displays them on the map (see image above).

and…

http://trendsmap.com/  showing a real time 'tag-cloud' of the most popular phrases being twitted in real-time.

 

Debenham's Twitter Assistants

I Discussed Nick Parish's Mashable article in my last post. I continue in this post with Nick's mention of the Debenham Twitter Assistants. I quote:

Debenhams, for example, appointed six in-store sales associates as “Twitter Assistants” to monitor a designated hashtag during its four-day New Season Spectacular. One roamed each floor of the department store, fielding questions about the products, offering to meet customers and show them where things were located, and generally answering customer queries.

At first this struck me as Debenhams embracing new tech in an innovative way. But then I thought to myself: if I was in the store I'd verbally ask the store assistants about their products, they're easy to find. If I was reading on the web I'd probably email the company. So under what occasion might you want to twitter these assistants? Perhaps when you're shopping in the city and want to know whether it is worth your while to enter the store during busy shopping season? Maybe. if so... do the assistants really need twitter t-shirts? I think Debenhams Twitter assistants were 1/4 embracing tech and 3/4 gimmicky attempt to look to be embracing technology for short term marketing gig.

Branding and Positioning

I'm reading an article by Nick Parrish of Contagious. In it he discusses the need for modern brands to provide Exceptional Social Media Customer Service. In the article he quotes Glen Parker, research director at Universal McCann as conducting research that led him to the conclusion:
'Most (brands) inherently aren’t social, but users are expecting to see them in the same places [the users] are in. For all customers, the one thing they all want is good service, but in all other aspects they are completely different'.
All well and good. But you know, in my day job I had a senior manager that has now gone onto an extremely senior position in Europe who could talk sound bites (or even lengthy speeches) about information and technology - without really saying anything. It seems to me that his fast rising career has been based around using generic words and ambiguous sentences. Anyway, enough about my bitterness with the unwarranted success of some people the point of my example is that Glen Parker seems to being saying much the same thing to me. I'd have liked something specific. Some advice on practical action marketers could take. I'll have to read Glen's full article and learn if it's mor helpful.

Mobile Phone use - Really?

I like the new Windows phone 7 ad, the one indicating people are so tied into their new phones that even taking a leak properly has lesser priority! There is some truth to this… you do see people huddled around their phones reading texts, sending texts and checking out stuff on the web. It's made me wonder how the developing obsession with our phones affects my plans for www.goodbooks-toread.com. My hosting service apparently converts my web-pages automatically so they work on the phone… the thing is though - does anybody look for books on their phone? I still see phones as more of a communication device or perhaps a way to learn local knowledge when on the go (location of a bookstore in an unfamiliar city for example).

What does interest me vis-à-vis phones and marketing is twitter. I'm going to sign up to the service first... and then wonder afterwards how that might help the website.

Keywords

Well... maybe it's not about keys but it certainly is all about keywords. If it was about keys, which it's not, then it'd be about getting the right key for the lock, yeah? The right combination of bits of metal to turn the tumblers and get that damn door open.

I realised pretty soon when starting my website that keywords have a similar property with regard to websites, as keys have to locks. That is they open the door between you and those looking for you.

Your site needs to have the right keyword running through it: within text, headings and if possible the domain name itself - if you want to attract the right visitor to your site.

What is the correct keyword? Simple the word that people would type into the google search engine if you want them to find your site.

Me, I want people who type:      good books to read       into the google search engine to find my site and so my site is built around this keyword (or keywords as is the case).

Of course at this moment in time people who type such a phrase into the Google search engine stand no chance whatsoever of finding my site and that's because I'm not listed on Google yet; but that's a topic of another post, on another day.

It's all about the keys!

The first Post

Hi,

I'm Mike and this is my first and regretfully short post for the Hissing Ink. What is the Hissing Ink all about, what's it's purpose? well, I've been deliberately careful not to pin myself down too tightly. The blog will discuss my efforts to create my little website http://www.goodbooks-toread.com/ . I'll mention technical problems, design issues and the novels i particularly like to read, etc. And so I guess this blog might be of interest to those that like to read about a newbie building a website from scratch, and it might appeal to those that like to think about good novels and good authors and just those who like to read blogs.