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Archives for February 2013

Growing Your Social Media Network

There is so much potential to use social media for recruitment, but whatever you say or do, all of it will fall flat if you don’t have the right audience. Many firms make great use of their web capital and are very active on all forms of social media, but simply don’t have the audience for their tweets, updates and articles to make the required impact.

Though a great portion of good social media management is creating quality content, it’s no use without the right followers. However, growing a social media network isn’t always easy and does require delicate handling, so make sure you stick to the tips below:

Organic Growth

The best way by far to grow a social network is to generate organic growth: that’s people subscribing to your page out of their own interest.

To maximise natural subscriptions you need, firstly, to create great, readable content, or at least be offering something to your followers, but you can use various tricks to maximise who clicks. Attracting shares and re-tweets should help to expose your network to those not currently inside.

Adding Subscribers

Careful adding (or following) of those who may be interested in what you have to offer can be an effective way of reaching new contacts, but it can be very time consuming. ‘Random’ adds are unlikely to get you very far, particularly on networks like Facebook or LinkedIn where the target may reject you in one click.

However, use the resources you have: most email addresses on your mailing list will be linked to a Facebook or Twitter profile, so an add may be appreciated.

Quality Links

The most successful preacher speaks to the most interested audience, not to the biggest one. A large social network may seem like an obvious target, but it’s much better to have a small number of active and interested followers.

Size will help you to attract new links, but be careful: it’s very easy to make someone lose interest in your business if you’re too forward with your social media.

Great web capital should, in theory, bring in readers by itself, but you should be active in finding new links and growing your network. The right audience is essential to maximising the potential of your web activity, so make sure you’re nurturing it carefully.

3 out of 4 of the Top 100 Brands Have Active Google+ Pages

google plus circlesGoogle+ has finally secured its foothold in top brands’ social media marketing strategies, and when coupled with Google’s YouTube, Google has become a strong player in the world of social media.

That’s according to the January 2013 SocialShare report from BrightEdge which tracks social adoption and trends among the Brandz top 100 global brands.

Brands and Google+

The SocialShare report reveals that Google+ has experienced a 94% growth rate among the top 100 brands during 2012, and today, 75% of the top 100 brands have active Google+ profiles with a total of 20.9 million followers. However, it’s important to point out that 78% of those fans (16.3 million followers) are following the top 10 brands. The top 10 breakdown includes four car brands, two technology brands, one retail brand, and two food and beverage brands as follows:

  1. H&M = 2.49 million followers
  2. BMW = 2.22 million followers
  3. Mercedes-Benz = 2.04 million followers
  4. Nissan = 1.95 million followers
  5. Google = 1.90 million followers
  6. Porsche = 1.79 million followers
  7. Red Bull = 1.53 million followers
  8. Samsung = 913,000 followers
  9. Starbucks = 843,000 followers
  10. Coca-Cola= 724,000 followers

One of the most important takeaways for brand marketers to learn from this report is that 25% of brands link to Google+ on their website home pages, and 20% of brands have their Google+ pages show up in search engine results (up from zero in 2011). The report authors explain, “As brands continue to attract Google+ followers, these [brand Google+] pages look set to become a mainstay of search results.”

The importance of becoming active on Google+ and linking your content via Google properties, particularly Google+, cannot be understated in 2013. As more and more Google+ pages turn up at the top of search results pages, consumers will start to expect to see them there. Brands that aren’t there and fail to meet consumers’ expectations could lose opportunities.

Brands and YouTube

The SocialShare report also shows an 87% brand adoption rate for Google’s YouTube among the top 100 brands. In total, those brands’ videos received 3.15 billion views in 2012 and have a total of 5.1 million subscribers. Google has made changes in recent months that link Google search, Google+, and YouTube even more closely together, so YouTube should be high on every brand’s social media priority list in 2013.

Two brands are really leading the way on YouTube — Google with 718,000 views and 1.12 subscribers and Red Bull with 535,000 views and 1.41 subscribers. Far behind in third place based on video views is Samsung with 160,000 views. In terms of subscribers, Apple takes the third spot with 964,000 subscribers, but subscribers nosedive after that. Nintendo ranks fourth for YouTube subscribers but has just 190,000 subscribers.

Of the top 100 brands, following are the 10 with the most YouTube views:

  1. Google = 718.4 million views
  2. Red Bull = 535.5 million views
  3. Samsung = 160.2 million views
  4. Nokia = 139.2 million views
  5. Coca-Cola = 135.0 million views
  6. Apple = 103.3 million views
  7. Disney = 83.6 million views
  8. Nintendo = 78.6 million views
  9. Pepsi = 66.2 million views
  10. VISA = 66.2 million views

Consistent growth for Google+ throughout 2012 and Google’s efforts to fully integrate its products to benefit search results ( as well as its social search initiatives) make it clear that Google+ has become a strategic imperative for brands.

You can follow the link at the beginning of the article to download the complete SocialShare January 2013 report from BrightEdge.

Image: Fabrizio Van Marciano

Tweet a Hashtag and Make a Purchase with American Express

american express card sync twitterThis week, American Express announced an enhancement to its Card Sync technology that attempts to close a gap in social ecommerce for Twitter users.

First, some history: When Card Sync launched in March 2012, American Express cardholders could sync their credit card accounts to receive couponless savings by tweeting specific hashtags from participating merchants. When a hashtag was tweeted by a Twitter member who had synced his American Express card to his Twitter account, the savings would automatically be added to the card account. When the cardholder made the actual purchase tied to the hashtag through a retailer, the savings would be refunded on his next American Express statement.

With the launch of the new Card Sync feature, people can make a purchase by tweeting specific hashtags. For example, an American Express cardholder who has synced his account with Twitter can tweet a special offer hashtag and automatically receive a verification from American Express (via @AmexSync). That verification which will contain a verification hashtag that the user must tweet within 15 minutes to confirm the purchase. Once the purchase is confirmed, the item will be shipped to his home. Shipping typically occurs within two days, and it’s free.

You can see how it works in the video from American Express below:

This is the first time that consumers can make a purchase simply be tweeting a hashtag, and if consumers catch on and start buying with hashtags, you can bet this type of brand promotion and direct marketing will explode in popularity. However, making sales is just one benefit of Card Sync and making purchases via hashtags. American Express also gets free brand promotion every time someone tweets one of the special hashtags or confirms a Card Sync purchase.

Adding the ability to make a purchase to Card Sync is a natural progression for American Express. Will other credit card brands follow? They’d be crazy not to, don’t you think? It’s 2013, and brands that aren’t finding ways to sell via social media are going to fall behind the more tech-savvy brands very quickly.

Image: American Express

Seven Best Practices for Sustainability Websites | Part 1/2


Last November Two Tomorrows published their 2012 Tomorrow’s Value Research report.

It was a bit of an eye opener.

The drive for transparency, the report concluded, is distracting businesses from tackling issues and many risk losing sight of the overall sustainability picture.

A telling statistic is that only half the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) supersector members measured up to Two Tomorrows’ “leadership” criteria.  You would have expected these to be unanimously in the vanguard.

To try and galvanise the remaining companies, the report seized upon seven areas of best practices they had come across, which are repeated here with a website gloss on them.

[Read more…] about Seven Best Practices for Sustainability Websites | Part 1/2

Successfully Communicating Your Technical Expertise

I invited Cathy Wellings, an expert in business communication skills, to write another guest post for us, this time about communicating technical matters to a non-technical audience.

Her advice is particularly relevant if you need to communicate a technical subject online, where you cannot assume that your audience will have a technical understanding of your subject.

Over to you, Cathy…

Technical Writing for Non-technical Audiences

Technical experts whether in IT, engineering, scientific or other specialist fields are not always well known for the simplicity of their communication. More often than not their spoken presentations or written reports risk baffling their audience or ‘blinding them with science’. Full of jargon, confusing and/or irrelevant charts and graphs, and lengthy technical explanations, technical reports in particular, can seem like a labyrinth of unfathomable concepts and assertions to the uninitiated reader.

It is the responsibility of the writer and not the reader to ensure that the message is understood. And furthermore, technical experts are increasingly required to write to persuade, convince and inform decisions and making the need to create impact even more imperative.

Below are some simple tips that any good technical writer should have at the forefront of their mind when communicating complex subjects to audiences that potentially have less knowledge than they do.

  1. Consider your Audience

    For any writing to be effective it needs to have its reader at the centre and this is paramount when it comes to technical writing. What is the point if it doesn’t make sense to the reader? Wherever possible engage with the reader to find out what they require and how much they already know. Why have they requested the document and what will be its end purpose? Speak in language you know they understand and make reference to their context.

  2. Say What’s Important First

    Your audience will not thank you for leaving the best until last. The reality is that many readers will not reach the end of a lengthy technical report and if you want to create real impact it is much more effective to make your most important points first.

  3. Talk Benefits not Features

    Technical experts often have a tendency to spend more time describing the ‘what’, giving detailed descriptions of the product or process rather than explaining the ‘why’, focusing on the benefits or added value of what is being described. It is only human to want to know ‘what’s in this for me?’ or ‘how will this add value to what I do?’ and so to be an effective technical writer you should focus on providing answers to these questions.

  4. Avoid Jargon, Acronyms and Technical Language

    Make sure your language is user friendly and accessible to your reader. Using jargon and expressions that our audience doesn’t understand risks alienating and confusing them. If you need to use very technical language make sure that you define your terms.

  5. Resist the Temptation to Show off

    Writing a successful technical report is not about showing how much you know about the subject but more about how well you convey your message and convince your audience of its value. Again, keeping it simple will be more effective than using overly complicated language and structure. And you certainly don’t want to run the risk of making your reader feel less intelligent.

So, the message is clear. Keep your audience at the forefront of any technical writing and make sure your document gives them what they really need rather than what you think they need.

Thanks Cathy!

Cathy Wellings is Head of Communication Skills at Communicaid a communications skills consultancy offering business writing courses and other business communication skills training.

Employee participation, European Companies and CSR


Last month I was reviewing the latest events in EU corporate reform when I came across the concept of a European Company, or SE, and how it embraces employee participation in management decision making.

Making a mental note to come back and investigate I moved on.

So here we are .. investigating.

One of the principal commercial drivers of the European Union is to create an open market where national borders dissolve as barriers to the free trade of goods and services.

There is, though, one big problem with this: company law.  Company law requires that a business must have a registered office in one particular country and conduct operations from there.

However if a business wants to move its base between countries, open a subsidiary in another country or merge with a business in another country, it has to jump through all the different legal hoops and regulations each country demands.

This flies in the face of “free movement of capital, goods and services”, so the concept of an SE was created.

[Read more…] about Employee participation, European Companies and CSR