by Francois Muscat | May 21, 2012 | Articles
On the 27th of April I attended the opening day for the #vocalislekker PSA conference.
We had a number of international keynote speakers and they are all awesome.
Charles Marcus was our opening keynote and he left such an impression on me I just had to write a post on his keynote.
He starts by stuttering for the first minute and my heart just reached out to him. I was not sure what we were going to hear from him. It brought visions from the movie The Kings Speech.
He then stops and tells us without a stutter, that, that was what he was like before he overcame his challenge in life.
Wow, I was gob smacked.
The message I got from Charles was that you can overcome diversity with a vision that takes you where you want to go.
He says that people talk a good game but very few play a good game, how true. And a one liner that was worth a tweet, “Relationships are the key to everything in life, Technology may rock but relationships rule”
That is something the younger generation should consider, as they are more into using technology to maintain relationships.
He goes on to talk about sustainability and how you need to keep relevant to stay in the game. Here’s one of his golden nuggets, “People are not looking for speakers, they are looking for experts that can help with things that they do.” I’m taking note of this as I position myself as a Digital Marketing Expert, who speaks, trains, and consults
His statement on the value proposition for speakers is so true, “Never think that value and price are the same. You must differentiate yourself with value or die on price.” “You will be a commodity as hired help” How true.
Value is the expertise that we as speakers bring, it is our duty to be memorable and provide a WOW factor as part of our service.
A great tip I picked up; as a speaker you should notify your organiser that you have just arrived and are looking forward to speaking at their event tomorrow.
Speakers who are struggling need to have guts. Guts is a game changer. Get on the phone to all your clients, ask them if they need your services and while you are about it, ask them if they can refer anyone to you. Overcome your fear for adversity. There are many people who are doing well in spite of the recession.
Be memorable and have a great attitude. But remember having a great attitude will not guarantee you success, but having a lousy attitude will guarantee failure.
He shared a defining moment in his life when he worked for Vidal Sassoon, a famous hair stylist business. He met Vidal while he was a junior working in a salon washing hair, cleaning up and making coffee for clients. Vidal came up to him and asked his name, and Charles said that he saw his whole life flash before him. As saying your name is one of the things that stutterers have real difficulty in saying.
He started to stutter, and Vidal bent down to his knees and took Charles’ hand and said, “don’t worry son, take your time.”
My eyes welled up and I had to swallow hard. I could just imagine what he was going through. from that moment on he changed his life, set his vision and accomplished it to become a highly sought after keynote speaker.
His message, “Have all the time in the world for the people in your life.”
I love it, thanks Charles for your transparency and courage to open up and let us see the real you.
You may know that I consult on online reputation and one of the things is to develop credibility and have people trust. You can achieve this by being transparent and authentic.
by Francois Muscat | May 3, 2012 | Articles, Training
As many of our followers, colleagues and clients know, I’m often presenting at digital marketing conferences and events in Gauteng, South Africa and all over the world. One of my favourite types of events is boot camps and one that I’m particularly looking forward to is the Mpumalanga Social Media Boot Camp in May.
The boot camp, organised by Red Carpet Marketing, will be held at the Wrinkler Protea Hotel in White River on 24 – 25 May 2012. The content is geared towards high-level marketing professionals and executives, which gives presenters the opportunity to really take discussions regarding implementation, ROI and measurement to the next level.
I’m going to be presenting on the first day of the boot camp (the 24th of May) and I’m going to be talking about the unique social dynamics that Web 2.0 has delivered to the world. We’re going to take a look at how self-forming communities work, how social media levels the playing field between the corporate giants and small business owners and how to take these new online dynamics and use them to your advantage. I’m also going to be presenting a 12 step social media implementation strategy so that attendees can leave the boot camp and know exactly what they need to do to kick-start their social media marketing initiatives.
Trevor Madondo, Managing Director of Flowamedia, will be presenting on the second day of the boot camp and I’m looking forward to his presentations. Trevor used to co-host the YFM Breakfast Show as well as manage the show’s social media accounts. The show has morphed into a TV channel that broadcasts to the community of Soweto (as well as the rest of Africa thanks to DSTV) and Trevor was a vital component of the show’s ability to reach listeners using social media. I look forward to his presentations on measuring the return on investment (ROI) of your social media initiatives and which traps to avoid when using social media.
Whether you’re a marketing professional living in Mpumalanga or you’ve been waiting for an opportunity to dedicate two solid days to figuring out exactly how you’re going to implement a social media campaign, this boot camp is for you.
The cost of the boot camp is R499.00pp per day and all meals and parking will be included in the event. People who wish to attend the Mpumalanga Social Media Boot Camp can contact Mash Malibe on (+27)13 752 3776 or e-mail info@redcarpetmarketing.co.za
by Francois Muscat | Apr 20, 2012 | Articles
Most people think social media is only used for marketing purposes. Did you know you can use social media for customer service issues? There are many ways you can use various social media channels such as Twitter to help you with this. One good reason why you can use Twitter as a customer service platform is because of its real time update nature. If you use Twitter for customer services, you will be able to view and correct customer service related issues as soon as it happens in real time.
The other reason you can use Twitter for your customer services is that the exchange between your business and your customers are public. This means that the issues your customers are having will be public, and how well your business resolves the issue. This is seen by many and it can greatly enhance your transparency and earn the trust of potential customers.
Your communication line is open
In order to use Twitter in your customer service department, you must notify your customers that your communication line is always open. Start by inviting your customers to follow your Twitter account by promoting it on your blog, website, offline advertising and business listings. Once your current customers are busy following you on Twitter, be the first and share some information about your company to them. You can tweet about your services and any promotions you are running. Encourage them to mention you when replying to your tweets to let them know that you are ready to help them.
Are there already people on Twitter complaining about your company? Respond to these people first and make sure their issues gets resolved as soon as possible. If you help people online, you will be seen as trustworthy and attentive to other Twitter members. When you start using Twitter for customer service related issues, be sure to have someone monitoring your Twitter profile closely and alert you when you are mentioned online.
Using Twitter for your customer service issues will not only show that you care about your customers problems, it will build trust for your business. This can also show your company that you are an up to date company using the latest technologies to take your business further. Maintaining open dialogues with your customers and allowing them to speak directly to you through social channels will encourage them to share positive information about you.
by Marelise da Silva | Apr 16, 2012 | Articles
One of the advantages of WSI is that you get to meet ICs from across the globe. Chuck Bankoff is based in Los Angeles and has an eye for good web design. Here is a post by Chuck on website design 101. – Francois.
The best website designs are not always a conceptual masterpiece… but sometimes just an accumulation of small subtle but eloquent touches that taken in their entirety, have a subliminal effect that separates them from the comatose inducing vanilla website designs churned out hourly by Bob’s Website Shack (I’m hoping I just made that up).
I’m pretty demanding when it comes to the creative look and feel of our website designs, so we only hire the best and the brightest. Still, sometimes that creativity has to be harnessed.
The last thing I want to do is stifle the creative juices of my design staff, but at the end of the day we’re not filming an episode of “designers gone wild”, we aren’t designing websites for ourselves. Believe it or not, we aren’t even designing them for our clients. We’re designing websites for our clients’ clients.
Whenever we bring in a new designer to the team, I usually like to have a “philosophical orientation” to create the expectation of quality design standards. These are typically interactive sessions, but I thought you might like to see my outline:
Website Design 101
I generally start with a list of attributes that I look for when evaluating my designer’s work:
1. Restrained use of soft shadows in the right place
2. Image Interaction
3. Color and shape balance
4. General composition
5. Appropriate design for the industry and the target market
6. Appropriate image selection (meaningful images with the right colors)
7. User friendly (and interesting) navigation
8. Easy to read text (appropriate font, size and spacing)
One surefire way to get the point across is to show actual examples as we explore the finer points of web design. The website we developed for CalPac online charter schools in California is a good example because my designer Adrian did a phenomenal job of tying in all the elements of good design into a package that showcases this online charter school while telling the compelling story to the students and parents of students.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the more subtle elements of design:
Soft Shadows: notice how the slight shadows around some of the basic shapes give them a 3-D feel as they seem to pull away for the page. The use of shadows is very common in web design, but I applaud Adrian’s restraint to not over use them…and in keeping the “spread” minimal so that there is just a subliminal hint of shadow instead of overstated “in your face” wide shadows. The watch-word here is “restraint”.
Image Wrapping: Actually the images don’t technically wrap around each other, but by placing one image on top of the other and allowing it to extend past the edge, it gives the appearance of wrapping behind the base image and enhancing that 3-D effect. Notice on the CalPac site how the navigation on the upper left, and the decorative ribbon on the lower right appear to wrap around the back. Clever and restrained use of image and shadow.
Color & Shape Balance: This is a little harder to explain. It’s also something that is difficult to teach. It’s more something you have to feel… or sense. Everything on a page has what I call “visual weight”. Colors and shapes can draw your attention…not necessarily by themselves, but in conjunction with each other.
It is typically a good idea to stick with a primary pallet of colors and a secondary highlight color. In this case it’s various shades of blue and green while the photo selection brings in a variety of complimentary colors. How colors and shapes interact? That’s the part you need to have a gut feeling for.
The other elements in my list are somewhat self explanatory, however there is one more bit of subtlety that I want to draw your attention to. That is the way Adrian treated the navigation. Hold your mouse over the navigation buttons on the Home page and any of the “Enroll Now” buttons. Notice how the colors gently reverse out, signifying that is the button you are interacting with at the moment. Did I mention small eloquent touches?
By the way, here is another article I wrote on my personal blog featuring Six Website Page Layout Tips you Absolutely need to Consider! That article focuses more on the layout aspect of a web page rather than the graphic design elements.
Kreative Webworks is a professional digital marketing firm in Orange County California since 1999. Our website designers are always on top of their game, and throughout the year I will be showcasing and critiquing their work from our website portfolio. Even if you don’t have the patience for my comments, you’ll probably enjoy our website designs.
Chuck Bankoff
by Marianna Muscat | Apr 12, 2012 | Articles, Social Media Marketing
Hopefully when listening on Social Media, you may know what you want to get out of it and have all the data needed, but without clear instructions on how to interpret and analyse the data you will be looking for a shining light to guide you.
Social media listening tools, services, and dashboards that help us count brand mentions, generate new followers, and build new “likes” attempt to measure our social media investments are gaining popularity, but what do these numbers really mean? What insights are they designed to provide? How effective are social media dashboards in helping us drive sales or create advocates?
The top five questions that marketers want to answer through social research are:
- What are my competitors doing and how do I compare?
- Where are people saying about my brand and are they asking for change?
- Should I change my messaging?
- How do they feel about us vs. the competition?
- Quantify the biggest brand topics.
Everyone—in every country and culture—is directed by a similar set of needs, desires for such opportunities as accomplishment, adventure, connectedness, creativity, play, wisdom, transformation, and/or other motivations. By listening to the conversations of consumers across social networks, we can detect what motivates them about a particular category of products or services.
Marketers seek answers to their questions to help shape their communications strategies, and they are discovering that dashboards are inefficient. Dashboards do offer a huge amount of data; however, they leave marketers without the blueprints to build meaningful, actionable insights.
The key to finding the answers is to do more than just ask, “What are people saying about my brand?” You also need to take the time to first create a blueprint with the questions you really need to ask followed by a strategy on how, when and what channel you are going to use to respond. Using tools such as a competitive analysis of your top 5 competitors and what they are doing with social media will assist in positioning yourself to plan a strategy that quickly exceeds what your competitors are doing and addresses what your clients are asking or saying about you.
by Francois Muscat | Apr 11, 2012 | Articles
It is known that a well planned and optimized social media marketing strategy can provide you with massive amounts of traffic, attention, and brand recognition. Apart from being low-cost, a social media marketing campaign can encourage your network to engage with you and can greatly increase your up selling strategies.
The best way to launch a new social media marketing campaign is to identify which channels you are going to use in your campaign after you have research who you would like to reach, and how you are going to reach them. Find below a couple of the most popular social media channels you can use.
Popular social media channels
Facebook: With more than 750 million members spending billions of minutes every month sharing interesting content and engaging with one another, the mother of all social networks provides businesses with opportunities to connect with their clients through their own branded Fan pages, groups, games, and more.
Twitter: Twitter provides a super fast way to promote link worthy and interesting content. This micro blogging channel helps businesses promote their brand and profile with people in real-time, through 140 characters or less. News travels much faster on Twitter than Radio and Television could ever provide because it is real-time. Nothing beats real-time results.
LinkedIn: This is a professional social network and is a very effective resource for business marketing. By creating and optimizing your LinkedIn profile to be 100% complete, interested members will be able to connect with you. There are many professional niche groups available on LinkedIn that you can join to start engaging with the members and to share interesting content.
LinkedIn with its strong profile rankings is an effective resource for any business. By setting up a basic profile (with a followed link), businesses are able to connect with an online network through groups and events.
YouTube: YouTube is the biggest and fastest growing video network channel. According to Alexa.com, YouTube is the 3rd most visited site with Google first and Facebook second. Video marketing is a great way to engage with targeted people on YouTube. When uploading a new video to YouTube, optimize the title, description and the Thumbnail image for the video to help it get the most views.
