Busy day in the 360innovate office today, we have three brand new staff members.
With everything being busy, busy in the office (and it being a Monday morning) I thought instead of me writing a long and boring bio they could do it for me!
The first of our lovely gents is Mark McNee, and here is what he had to say about himself!
Another exciting new website launch this week, this time in the shape of Clothes From the Show, a 
website set to become a firm favourite for fashionistas all over.
Clothes For The Shows is a new website service offering a unique fashion and retail experience. Ever see something on TV but can’t find it in the shops, well Clothes For The Shows will hunt down and find the item for you!
Clothes From The Shows approached 360innovate looking for an exciting website that would be the primary point where people could contact Clothes From The Shows and a new logo for the company. 360innovate proposed a high design website with simple navigation that allows users to easily enquire after their items.
360innovate are pleased to announce that the Strathclyde Police Authority website has officially gone live!
Strathclyde Police Authority is an independent public body made up entirely of locally elected councillors. Together with Scotland’s Justice Secretary and Strathclyde’s Chief Constable, they are responsible for the management of policing in Strathclyde. Strathclyde Police Authority has a duty to ensure the local police force is effective and efficient and hold the Chief Constable to account for decisions taken and services delivered.
The Strathclyde Police Authority approached 360innovate looking for rebranding and a new website. By rebranding we aim to present a clearer, more defined image of the police authority. By creating the website, the Authority aim to bring themselves into line with all other public bodies as well as making themselves more accessible and encouraging their target audience to access information.
Working closely with the Authority 360innovate developed branding guidelines, which included the development of a new corporate logo and stationary, followed by the design of a new corporate website.
360innovate has provided a high level of creative and professional expertise and we are confident it will produce a strong and focused identity and website for Strathclyde Police Authority. Vanessa Ewing, Strathclyde Police Authority.
Yup, officially every single person is on Twitter… including the Queen.
The Royal Household has set up an official Twitter page, which you can find at @BritishMonarchy. Whether there are in fact any Royals actively updating the Royal Household feed I very much doubt. However, the
relationship between the British nation and the Monarchy can be pretty turbulent, to say the very least, and this leap towards social media if implemented carefully could definately help the monarchy reconnect with its audience.
If you think about it the British Monarchy is very much like a business and over the past few years they have suffered a severe image and reputation crisis, with the Monarchy being branded stuffy, old fashioned and over indulgent in recent times. However, some new Royals, cooler and more ‘in touch’ Royals, have been making the headlines; Harry, William, Beatrice and Eugiene have all hit the headlines, for various reasons and not all of it good, but they have got us talking about the Royal family again and for the first time, in a long time, young adults are interested in hearing about what our Monarchs are up to.
With the increasing popularity of the younger Royals it seems timely that they would take steps towards connecting with the younger market on social media platforms. However, just like any business careful planning is required. There is great potential for a monarchy Twitter profile, giving snippets of information about who they are and what they actually do, sadly, however, the @BritishMonarchy is simply a press machine churning out links back to the official Monarchy website. If, which I am presuming they are trying to do, the Monarchy are trying to shred their stuffy image then an impersonal and PR fuelled Twitter pages isn’t going to cut it. I am not too sure if I am a fan of the Monarchy or not, which is mostly down to the fact that I know very little about them, but I would certainly pay attention to something that showed me the true personalities within the Royal family and this Twitter profile is that opportunity.
Of course the potential risks they face by ‘sharing’ online could be damaging to the Monarchy as a whole; they could lose the respect of the ‘non-twitter’ generation and the potential media frenzies that could result from a poorly thought out Tweet is enough to bring their press team out in hives I am sure, but, and this is a big but, I am fairly confident this risk would be worth it. There is a potential new audience out there waiting to be engaged with, they’ve read all about the young Royals antics in the newspaper and I am pretty confident they would also be interested to hear what they have to say online.
To create a successful website the design is highly important in order to achieve the primary goals of the site; commonly being to communicate brand awareness, target their specific market, increase sales or enquires and lastly to give the company an online identity. However, for successful web design to be able to fulfil all of these goals there needs to be something else added into the mix, this being SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
Many web designers forget about the importance of creating a site that is not only designed well but is also able to have the best chance of being found in the search engines. With the internet advancing all the time, web design must keep up with the new demands. One of the biggest demands is having a site that performs well in terms of search engine rankings to make sure that it is received by its audience.
So how can web designers create searchable designs? With a few easy and often underestimated tricks, a website can have a much greater chance of being found online. Here are a few tips that web designers should take into consideration while designing a site:
Headers – Headers of pages should always be text. Many designers use images for headers which does not allow search engine to read the text making it detrimental to the sites rankings. These text headers should be bold and descriptive.
Title tags - Often it can be seen that a title tag of a web page includes the company name and thats about it. But in order for search engines to know what the page is about, these title tags should be optimised to include keywords that describe what the page is about. They should also try to create a call to action.
Description Meta tags - Like the title tags, this too should be a detailed description of the content of the page , including keywords to accurately describe it.
Alt tags - These tags describe images that are on web pages and should be used to include descriptive keywords that keep in line with what the page is about, to amplify its meaning and therefore look more authoritative to the search engines.
Content - When designing sites, content is one of the elements that if lacking, then the ‘searchablility’ of the site really suffers. Search engines like to see lots of keyword rich unique content to make the site look informative and useful, so when designing a site, make sure you include content, content, content.
Creating Call to Action - The design of the website should be able to create a clear call to action in order to achieve the aims of the site, whether it is to sell products or services, or to promote them. Either way, website design should be able a successful create this call to action.
Usability - Web design is all about usability so it’s no surprise that its getting a mention here. Usability is something that is important to make the site easy to use, creating a pleasant user experience that will encourage people to use the site and help with its online success.
Make it social - These days it’s important to give a site a social aspect. By including the company’s social networks on its website it boosts their online identity and makes it much easier to create a buzz, promote and increase awareness of the brand.
Analytics - Adding Google Analytics onto a site is not only easy, simple pasting in code supplyed by Google, but iot also allows you to see how the site is performing, such as the amount of traffic to the site, what keywords the site is being found for, making it easy to see what the sites disadvantages are and improving on them.
All of these tips may not be suitable for every site but they should be considered when designing a site to ensure that your design is not only seen and used by the company and its current customers, but seen by new and potential online customers too. Getting these SEO tips right in the first instance, at the design stage, overall ensures the site more online success.
Many marketers believe that if you don’t exist in the search engines you don’t exist at all, this may have 
some truth to it. However, little is ever said about existing in the minds of the target audience before they even contemplate the search engines. Would this not be far more beneficial? Firstly build the trust and awareness in the potential client/customer then utilise the search engines to ensure your brand is found.
Search engine optimisation, and pay per click, create a solid foundation to market any website, however, you must look beyond it to truly get the best results possible. By integrating search engine optimisation into an online marketing campaign you are ensuring that not only is the customer/client aware of the brand prior to the search, they will find it easily in the search engines, recognise it and thus select it.
As with more traditional methods online marketing has long term benefits such as increasing brand awareness and engaging the target market. Email marketing, PR, banner advertisement and viral marketing are various methods employed in an online marketing campaign; all of which have the potential to create a buzz about your brand and create inbound links to your website, the latter of course having a very positive effect upon your search engine optimisation campaign.
The integration of search engine optimisation, however, should not stop with online marketing. There is nothing preventing it from becoming an integral part of traditional marketing methods. Several multinational companies have integrated search into large scale advertising campaigns encouraging customers to search targeted keywords, for example Orange; this enables them to utilise a pre exisiting relationship to strengthen search effort and their online profile. Further to this upon being exposed to traditional marketing methods audience members do not act immediatly, having some form of invitation to search or direction to the website gives greater reason for them to take action. Having said this, many companies are not even marketing their company website on the most basic of levels, many are still failing to include their web address in televised and print advertisements.
There is a long way to go before companies are fully utilising search engine optimisation across multiple channels, however, the amalgamation of online search marketing and traditional marketing methods is immenent.
As one company who utilises multi level marketing might say:
“The future’s bright, the future is search”
When it comes to social media are your employees getting as involved as they could be?
A report published by TechCrunch revealed that research conducted by ÜBERCEO on the worlds largest companys has uncovered that:
- Only two CEOs have Twitter accounts.
- 13 CEOs have LinkedIn profiles, and of those only three have more than 10 connections.
- 81% of CEOs don’t have a personal Facebook page.
- Three quarters of the CEOs have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those have limited or outdated information.
- Not one Fortune 100 CEO has a blog.
Some people may consider these CEO staying well away from social media is for the best but I would have to disagree, yes social media is not for everyone but the company CEO should be setting an example for the rest of the company and making themselves available online is the new digital equivalent of the open door policy, non? Well its an idea…
Anyway, its not just the responsibility of the CEO, or the marketing department, to get involved with the social media marketing. Employees across the board should be getting involved, not only to bolster the success of a campaign but to put across a strong front. There is nothing more impressive to potential buyers or customers than seeing employees demonstrating an involvement and it can really communicate a solid and reliable image.
One company that has really used their employees enthusiasm to boost their image and reputation is American airline Southwest Airlines, whose impressive social media campaigns are devoutly supported by the employees. From employees posting their own Southwest related videos, responding to customer comments to CEO Gary Kelly openly discussing plans to abandon assigned seating on the company blog (plans which were then quickly dropped after a barrage of comments from customers), the involvement of employees from every department has done nothing but benefit the company.
How Southwest Airlines manages to get employees involved in the online activities of the company in the first place I’m not too sure, the company would like us to believe it is because they have such a close relationship with all employees and the employees really do feel pride in their employers, and I kinda believe them- the social media and marketing is obviously working!
But in all seriousness getting employees involved in your online social activity has to start with them being happy in the first place. From there incentives and even some training, showing them how to use all the various bits and bobs online, could get the ball rolling.
Here are some small ways employees & coworkers can get involved with your company social media:
Contribute to the company blog by writing a post relevant to their specific department and commenting on existing blog posts.
Connect with the company on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, although remember that potential clients will be on the company profile pages so no naughty comments or office gossip, and it is worth remembering that these clients may then go onto employees profiles, seeing pictures of the post boy fat necking a bottle of Buckfast at T in the Park may be somewhat offputting.
Respond to any comments or queries that customers are posting online, again keeping it clean and professional.
Talk about your brand, don’t be scared to say nice things about work on Twitter or Facebook.
Send any offers and exciting news to friends and family, viral marketing on even the smallest scale can have an effect.
Many people may believe that social media is only for the experts which I believe is untrue, it is the experts job to plan and to put it into motion, when you get the full support of the employees then a social media campaign can really come to life.
