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Archive for March, 2010

Social media statistics

11th March 2010 Marketing, Social Media , , , , , , , , by

There are all sorts of facts and figures flying around concerning social media and, on the surface of it, the numbers are quite significant:

Facebook

  • Over 18m active Facebook users in the UK
  • 50% of users return to the site on a daily basis 
  • The average user visits twice a day 
  • The average visit length is 25 minutes

YouTube 

  • It is now the UK’s 2nd biggest search engine 
  • An outstanding 15m unique visits clocked up every month
  • Every minute, 15 hours of YouTube video is uploaded

Twitter 

  • Estimated 6 million users 
  • Subscriber base is 63% male
  • Largest age demographic is 35-44 year olds 
  • 14% are considered as ‘stable career’ types
  • A quarter of users are high earners

LinkedIn 

  • Over 2.5 million users in the UK 
  • This is growing at an estimated 80,000 per month 
  • 60 million users worldwide
  • Spans 200 countries 
  • Average user age 41

It has also been reported that spend on social media marketing will reach $3.1 billion by 2014.

Clearly it’s an important (new) media channel, but developing a suitable strategy to engage with these users requires a different mindset altogether from the traditional marketing approaches that have been used over the years.

The question is, how should a strategy be developed that integrates with current activities, aligns with business objectives and delivers tangible or quantifiable returns on investment? That’s the key – and that’s what I plan on addressing in subsequent posts.

Like this design? – part2

9th March 2010 Design, Web & PC stuff, Wordpress , , , , , by

Ok – so there are loads of different free themes out there for WordPress and I’ve tried more than my fair share. Thanks to the various lists all over the web, it’s easy to preview and demo countless themes quickly and easily. I did previously make a post about my old theme, Regal (HERE) – but have since come across a different design that I’ve opted for instead.

This one’s called Mystique – and it’s also a freebie theme, given away by the designer. You can download it through the WordPress site HERE or directly from the designer’s site, HERE.

The designer’s summary about the site says: “Mystique is a free WordPress theme that attempts to top commercial templates in terms of design and functionality. Some of its features include 4 theme widgets, page templates for different layout styles and a advanced interface for the theme settings…“

I’m still trialling it – but first impressions are good. The theme options don’t seem to be working on my version of IE that I’m on right now, but I’ll test it on Chrome and Firefox later… it certainly isn’t a dealbreaker in any case!

To be fair and fully attribute my sources, I found the link to this theme in this list of “20 of my Favourite Free WordPress Themes in 2009” (link HERE).

What is Social Media?

9th March 2010 Marketing, Social Media, Web & PC stuff , , , , by

The phrase ‘social media’ is a broad concept, incorporating many different formats; including tools and services such as: social networking sites, blogs and micro-blogs, podcasts, professional networking sites, and online video. Collectively, they’re often referred to as Web 2.0 technologies.

This phrase “Web 2.0” is closely associated with Tim O’Reilly, after he used it in a 2004 conference. It broadly relates to the second generation of Internet-based services.

The 1st phase or generation of sites, were typically static sites or web pages that had minimal interaction between the visitor, other visitors and the site. This second generation of web sites are much more dynamic, allowing for individual content generation, sharing information, participation in online discussions and conversations, and web sites that can generate new pages and content automatically, on the fly.

I plan on expanding on this initial explanation of Social Media in my subsequent posts, building up a small knowledgebase and publishing guides about what services are out there and how they can best be utilised.

Like this design?

8th March 2010 Design, Web & PC stuff, Wordpress , , , by

09/03/2010 Update – ok, I’ve changed the design now, so this post relates to my old design… it’s still a very nice, clean design but I’ve decided to use this one instead. The new one is called Mystique (available from this designer HERE).

If you like this web site design, you can get it yourself – all for free – from this very generous theme designer, HERE.

It’s called Regal – and in my mind, is a nice, clean design that is extremely usable. If you check it out with the TAC application too, you can see it’s a clean install without any encrypted code or hidden links… well worth it!

The theme is described as having the following attributes:

  • 2 columns layout based template
  • Tableless design and 100% CSS-based
  • WordPress 2.8+
  • XHTML 1.0 Transitional
  • CSS Validates
  • SEF Optimised Layout
  • 3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional
  • W3C CSS 3 Valid

TV Catchup – what a great web site!

6th March 2010 General , , , by

 

wow-thing I’ve started using TV Catchup so I can have the news running in the background, or some trashy TV while I’m browsing online – and what a great little web site it is.

No jerky images or audio and all of the channels that are available on Freeview.

Not sure if it’s available outside of the UK, but it’s pretty handy and well worth a look!
 x-ray delta one  

ISA myths

6th March 2010 Finance , , , , by

There’s a good article on the Moneywise web site that I was emailed today… all about the myths associated with ISAs. They’ve given a top 10, as:

  1. You can only open one ISA
  2. They have to be declared on a tax return
  3. They are only worth having if you are a higher-rate taxpayer
  4. They are risky
  5.  Opening an ISA is complicated
  6. Putting money in an ISA is better than contributing to a pension
  7. Transferring an ISA is a nuisance
  8. There’s no point putting money into an ISA outside ISA season
  9. Teenagers can’t have ISAs
  10. If I move abroad, I’ll lose my ISA

The full article is available HERE

How much should a web site cost?

5th March 2010 Design, General, Marketing, Web & PC stuff by

This question seems to be asked all the time, often by people that don’t necessarily understand what’s involved with setting a web site up, or who have been bamboozled by agencies, developers or designers trying to charge them excessive fees.

The basics

It really depends on what level of technical competency you have personally. Purchasing a domain name and hosting it are the two major up front costs that you need to consider, because after that, everything else can be carried using Open Source software. In the UK, if you’re doing it all yourself – you can get decent hosting and a domain name, all for about £30 a year – as long as you’re willing to the design and promotion work yourself.

The intermediate options

Off the shelf scripts, are where you can really supplement existing Open Source web offerings – but these are only really beneficial if you’re trying to achieve something non-standard. General prices for functional scripts that can often be bolted on to existing open source web site structures range from about £20 to £100, although increasingly some authors are pursuing subscription models (for updates and support primarily), or are asking for donations if you use and benefit from their hard work.

The advanced options

Really, unless you have tons of cash or are producing a web site for a company – the advanced option of paying for a web team or designer to put a web site together for you will be beyond the means of most people.  Prices can range from a reasonable £100-ish, to thousands and tens of thousands…

But with so many free options available, why would many people want to look at these expensive options. A little bit of hard work and systematic research and anyone can begin creating their own web site, whatever their requirements.

Free printing / artwork templates

4th March 2010 Marketing , , , , by

I’ve found a good resource that I use regularly to source artwork  or printing templates for some design work that I carry out.

The site is affiliated with one of the low cost printing companies I use – Stress Free Print – and you can get to it HERE.

The site, Tom the Printer, includes various templates and sizes for the following generic designs:

  • Flat Leaflets / Flyers
  • Folded Leaflets / Flyers
  • Presentation Folders
  • Stationery
  • Business Cards
  • Greetings Cards
  • Tent Cards

Paying for online content

4th March 2010 General, Marketing, News, Web & PC stuff , , , , , by

There’s a really interesting discussion going on right now about whether newspapers can actually start charging for the digital distribution of their content. There’s an article on the BBC web site that I read today (link HERE) – and it includes an ongoing discussion about whether people really believe it’s achievable. 

As a marketer and someone interested in developing an online (hopefully profitable) presence, I have to believe it’s possible to monetize the web in some form – but I believe it’s unrealistic in this age of distributed reporting, aggregated news and instant updates that can be shared with the world, to expect someone to pay for content that is available in almost identical format elsewhere on or offline.  

The reason I think it’s not going to be enforceable universally is that there’s never going to be agreement between the media organisations. It’s the old prisoner’s dilemma, everyone saying that they’re going to be charging a fee to access the news, but then one breaks from the ranks to steal a competitive advantage – resulting in an endless circle of competitive retaliation.

What I do think is more achievable, is another service I read about recently that encourages micro payments. In the same way that organisations such as Amazon have benefited from targeting a huge population with an incredibly diverse product range – addressing the long tail of retailing – then micro payments that could be distributed to providers from a shared pot of funds could be exactly the solution that everyone is looking for. The site’s currently in beta (sign up for more info HERE) and is being developed by one of the Pirate Bay’s co-founders, Peter Sunde.

What is Open Source?

4th March 2010 General , , , , , , by

Open Source is simply defined as a collaboration, predominantly online, whereby source code and software is made available under an open licensing structure with the aim of encouraging other developers and users to test it, tweak it and develop it further, reposting their achievements back to the community so that others can benefit from it.

What this actually means is that most generally available commercial software has an Open Source alternative – with the added benefit that these are available freely for anyone to download from the Internet.

Some of the good Open Source software available includes: WordPress, Joomla, Star Office, Open Office, Freemind… these are the obvious ones that spring to mind, that I’ve used, but there are far more!

Wikipedia define Open Source as:

Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product’s source materials—typically, their source code. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology. Opening the source code enabled a self-enhancing diversity of production models, communication paths, and interactive communities. Subsequently, a new, three-word phrase “open source software” was born to describe the environment that the new copyright, licensing, domain, and consumer issues created.

 A main principle and practice of open source software development is peer production by bartering and collaboration, with the end-product (and source-material) available at no cost to the public.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source

A good list of available Open Source software (top 20)  is available from Trip Wire magazine, HERE.

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