chris dalrymple - blog
Monday, 27 April 2009
PPC branding in action - Northumberland Tourism
I read this slightly cheeky article with interest recently - I'm a big fan of the Northumberland coast and it really is stunning - stunning enough, it seems for a Canadian tourist board to use it in their ad promoting Alberta:
So far, so interesting, but what's this got to do with PPC?
Well, it wasn't until a few minutes later while, inspired by the Telegraph article, I started searching for tourist attractions in Northumberland that I saw this ad for the search 'Bamburgh castle':
Funny, relevent and great branding with personality - something lots of brands could learn from.
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Sunday, 15 March 2009
6 Golden Rules for Corporate Twittering
woah... Orwellian. A mention of LoveFilm makes them follow me. So... errr... Joan Holloway/MadMen... Bat for Lashes... free money! God? [link]
@NikeshShukla Sorry - we're not trying to be big brother, we just want to let people know we're here. Happy to unfollow if you want us too. [link]As clear an illustration as is needed about the difficulties of corporate tweeting - @LoveFilm_UK have been spooking people slightly by auto-following anyone who mentions LoveFilm in a tweet.
So why are they autofollowing? Well it's the easiest way there is to get return followers, and it works - 1,100 followers for LoveFilm already. But it's clearly spooking people a little, or just plain annoying them when it's done badly or inacurately:
HA!!! I get it. Why are all the pet related companies following me? My name comes up in their when their brainless bots go-a-searching. [link]So what are the alternatives? Well, by sending @replies to those users who have positive or negative experiences it gives them the choice to follow and LoveFilm can then follow in return. Of course that's much more difficult to automate (I suspect that's the point) and you always have to have something new to say.
There are other pitfalls too - should corporate accounts have an individuals name? Or just a brand? Is re-tweeting RSS feeds from corporate sites acceptable? (probably not if that's all you're tweeting). So, what are the golden rules..?
- Reply, don't autofollow - You can then follow if they reply or follow you, and it reduces the 'Big Brother' factor.
- Clear profile - Make it clear the purpose of the account in the profile snippet. Is it exclusively about deals? Latest news? Are you twittering as a brand, like William Hill, or an individual like ASOS?
- Twittering as a person? Set guidelines - Put your personal contact details in your profile, and make it clear what you're blogging about - if I've signed up to follow Woolies, I don't care if you're having trouble at the supermarket. Draw a line between personal and professional and keep it. Think about separating them into seperate accounts.
- Customer Services - Using Twitter to sort customer service problems? Split out customer service tweets into a seperate account - that way you won't fill your main account with @replies and bad customer service experiences.
- Keep it 'on message' - Don't crack jokes in your corporate advertising? Don't do it in your twitter feed - it jars, dilutes the brand (and could get you in trouble). A Twitter is just another marketing channel.
- Twitter in teams - Essential if you're using Twitter for customer services, but also important if you don't want to become mysteriously silent after 5.30 in the eveing. Make sure everyone knows the approach you're taking - put together guidelines that everyone can understand (also avoids a RyanAir situation).
What are your golden rules for Corporate Twitter Accounts?
Labels: twitter
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Monday, 9 March 2009
Think Visibility - a quick review
As with most of the blogosphere, I thought I'd offer a quick review of Think Visibility, (probably) Leeds' only online marketing conference.
Thinking back, I think this is honestly the first internet conference I've been to outside of London, and I was very happy to make the short 4 mile trip down the road to Leeds Uni for the 9am Saturday start.
First impressions were a well organised and relaxed day, and there were some great presentations:
Rob Lee on the 'web of data'.
This was a great reminder of the principals of digital networks - focus on resources, essential services and key areas of your site and use these 'social objects' as the targets of your promotion. It's the way LinkedIn, Flickr and Twitter have become succesful - using points of aggregation to allow others to syndicate content.
Really good example of MusicBrainz and the BBC aggregating this content.
Katie Lips on mobile. [slides]
Great talk on options for mobile apps - something I'm not too familiar with truth be told. Really good overview of resources available and I found Blyk particularly interesting.
Finally, Dave N on SEO.
Entertaining as always, and the underlying frustration Dave seems to have with the majority of SEO-ers is always worth seeing! However a few good tid-bits around 'Silver Bullet' sites and the opportunities marketers should be taking within Google's SERPs, particularly as personalised search takes hold - onebox (maps, product search, image results etc) and site links all help to claim much needed real estate on results pages and in many cases are faily easy to obtain.
Overall, I was very impressed with the day - for thirty quid there was enough to rival conferences costing ten times as much. Well done The Hodge!
Labels: conference, sem, seo
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Monday, 2 February 2009
Mashups in action
Ben Marsh has put together a nice mashup which shows a kind of social media weather map - #uksnow.Twitter users can tweet '#uksnow [first-half-of-postcode] [snow-score]/10"' and the live map will update with latest snow coverage.
Great to see something become so popular so quickly (snowballed if you will? *ahem*) - I suspect it helps that us Brits as so obsessed with the weather...
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Thursday, 29 January 2009
More cuts in affiliate budgets
A quicky post while I have a spare 5 mins, but it appear advertisers are reducing affiliate budgets - supporting a post I made a couple of weeks ago - Why are affiliate marketing budgets shrinking?"The Affiliate Marketing Survey Report 2008, sponsored by R.O.EYE, shows that, compared to a year ago, merchants - on average - are investing less of their digital budget in affiliate marketing and getting a smaller proportion of their sales through this channel. Additionally, fewer merchants are reporting that affiliate activity provides them with high volume."I'm sure the controversy over voucher code and incentive sites isn't helping - networks need to cut through any of the merchant concerns and show how strong a channel affiliate marketing can be...
Labels: affiliates
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Wednesday, 21 January 2009
My 2009 digital marketing predictions
Now in video-y goodness.Labels: 2009, affiliates, marketing, sem, seo
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Google Turning Off Print Ads
I thought this was interesting.Google's decided to shut down its service allowing advertisers to bid for newspaper space through their AdWords account.
I've always liked the concept - giving smaller advertisers access to marketing channels they otherwise find difficult to work with - but the difficulties in proving ROI surely run counter to the natural instincts of your typical AdWords user?
The TV and Radio ad services will continue, so is this just another nail in the coffin for offline newspapers? Or is this just Google's straying too far from their core business and being unable to make it work?
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present ideas
Chris Dalrymple is an online marketing manager in Leeds, Yorkshire, UK. This blog talks about lots of aspects of digital marketing, as well as general web-related geekery. 
