McDonald's social media marketing strategy

By Angela Schuster

The global market leader for fast food recently shared its view on social media marketing. The presentation made its way onto Slideshare. Even though this is business-to-consumer, it makes for interesting viewing.

What makes this presentation interesting is the second-last slide - McDonald's key learnings from social media. Regardless of the market you are in, they are all relevant points to consider in any social media strategy and reiterate aspects of our recent post: To social media or not to social media

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To social media, or not to social media

By Peter Schuster

Excuse the nonsensical heading but every time I think of social media Shakespeare’s “To be, or not to be” pops into my head.

Social media is one of the hottest topics right now. Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, not to mention blogs, forums and other vehicles, are all gaining the attention of businesses.

Personally, I am a social media sceptic but my views are balanced by some in our company that can see potential. Regardless where we as a company stand on social media, we all admit that it warrants consideration in any business-to-business engagement plan. 

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Website Development Pitfall 5: Worrying about content... last

By Angela Schuster

The last Pitfall in our series appropriately focuses on leaving content until last.

I’ve covered 'content is king' previously in this series but to reiterate, content is king. Too often companies dive into website development and then once they have the site ‘shell’ do they suddenly realise they need content and so start scrambling to fill the pages with words. Often this results in hastily (and therefore poorly) written content, delays in launching the site or the realisation that there are gaps in the new website structure. 

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Website Development Pitfall 4: Not thinking beyond Day-2

By Angela Schuster

“Build it and they will come” was the catch cry of the pre-dot.com bust. We all know of course that this just doesn’t happen and your online marketing doesn’t end once you’ve launched your site.

But what happens to your site after launch (or Day-2) needs to be considered before you start and is the subject for Pitfall 4 in our 5 Pitfalls of Website Development series.  

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Website Development Pitfall 3: Ignoring standards and best practice

By Angela Schuster

In accounting, you have Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. The field has been around long enough for these principles to have developed and their existence means that when you see EBITA for one company you know it’s going to be based on the same workings as for another company.

The web has now been around long enough to have its own set of “generally accepted principles”. Pitfall 3 looks at the perils of ignoring such principles.  

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Website Development Pitfall 2: Getting an 'agency' to do it

By Angela Schuster

When putting this series together, there was never any doubt about what Pitfall 2 would cover... getting an 'agency' to develop your website.

Call them what you like; agency, digital media expert, website designer... unfortunately there are many companies out there eager to help but oblivious to the fact that they just don’t really 'get' online and that it's not as simple as mocking something up in Photoshop/Illustrator (or another design tool) and then banging out a website in Dreamweaver.  

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Website Development Pitfall 1: Starting with the design

By Angela Schuster

There are a number of pitfalls that should be avoided when developing a website and avoiding these pitfalls is not an easy task. This blog series focuses on five pitfalls (one a day) and how to avoid them.

Pitfall 1 is kicking off the process by working on how the site will look... 

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Five pitfalls of website development - over 5 days

By Angela Schuster

This week we've kicked off our our 5 Pitfalls of Website Development series - over 5 days.

Each day we'll release a new pitfall and give you 24 hours to digest it. Here's an overview of the week: 

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10 tips for creating online surveys that deliver useful information

By Angela Schuster

The increasing plethora of free or near-free survey tools seems to correspond directly to an increase of poorly planned and designed surveys that fail to deliver useful information.

Creating an online survey that provides valuable information is more than just throwing a few questions and answers together. Here are 10 tips that will help you avoid producing a survey that sinks.  

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Halting the steady decline of email response rates

By Angela Schuster

Guest Blogger, Jonathan Calver (Director of web based marketing system StrategyMix) continues his discussion regarding the alarming trend being seen in the UK of declining email response rates. 

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