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Twitter and IBM to enable businesses to effectively mine social data

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Twitter & IBM to enable businesses to effectively mine social dataStop for a minute and think about the amount of data that passes through Twitter every single hour. Then multiply that by the amount of hours in a day, a week, a month etc and try to comprehend how much social data Twitter actually possesses. To aid your thought process or maybe just blow your mind, 500 million tweets are sent via the platform every day.

So it’s safe to say that Twitter holds tonnes of data. And now, in a recent announcement made on the company’s blog, it seems that businesses may get the opportunity to mine that data going forward.

Every day, people share a piece of their lives via Twitter. Whether it’s their lunch plans, a cute picture of a pet or a special occasion, Twitter inevitably knows about it. Moreover, every single one of those tweets holds value.

But accessing Twitter data itself isn’t something revolutionary. After all listening tools have been around for a while and give businesses direct access to the metrics. However, until now there has been a challenge when it comes to actually deciphering the data and turning it into something tangible that businesses can leverage.

Twitter and IBM’s new partnership will effectively allow businesses to utilise Twitter data as part of their decision-making processes through a variety of IBM tools, solutions and services. Heard of IBM’s cognitive supercomputer Watson?  Well it could potentially have access to Twitter data in the future and allow companies to answer such questions as, “What do our customers like best about our service?” or “Why are we growing so fast in Asia?”

With access to such insightful data, businesses will be able to unlock previously hidden realms and shape their customer experiences more intuitively. This will allow products and services to be targeted at specific customer needs and wants.

Tens of thousands of IBM Global Business Services consultants will be trained on how businesses can best apply Twitter data in their day-to-day operations.

This announcement is fantastic news for companies who are already using social media channels to their advantage and engaging with their customers on as many levels as possible. Just imagine the scope of engagement that will be possible in the future.

Social media marketing requires your business to listen. In fact, that’s probably the primary activity you should be doing across all your social channels. But how can you listen effectively if you’re relying on memory as much as anything else?

Utilising social data is more than just checking how many followers you’ve got. It’s about building a picture of your audience; understanding what makes them tick; and creating material that is relevant.

The collaborative force of Twitter and IBM represents a turning point in social data manipulation. One that will allow businesses to take value from every piece of micro content that’s available.

 

How to Achieve a Better Work-Life Balance

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How to acheive a better work-life balanceToday, we’re more connected than we’ve ever been. What with laptops, smartphones and tablets padding our bags, there’s never been a better time to be a remote worker. Add to this the profusion of tools and applications, like Dropbox, Gmail and Skype – all of which put our vital files and messages within arm’s reach wherever we are – and you can see why the lines between work and life are more blurred than ever.

As a mother, wife and professional virtual assistant, I often find myself working when I perhaps shouldn’t be. Not because I can’t manage my time – I can do that standing on my head – but instead because I’m always attentive to my clients’ needs. For example, if I get an email in the evening from one of my clients asking me for some out of hour’s assistance, I’ll more often than not oblige.

An article I recently read on the Huffington Post really got me thinking about work-life balance and was ultimately the inspiration for this post.

So how can you start achieving a better work-life balance today? Here are my top tips:

Hire a Virtual Assistant

Oh come on, don’t look so surprised – it was always going to be on this list. Not because it’s my livelihood, but rather that I genuinely believe in the real value that most Virtual Assistants afford for their clients.

Hiring a virtual assistant is something you should absolutely consider if you find yourself spending too much time on the mundane tasks and not enough time enjoying the fruits of your labour.

Virtual Assistants like myself can help people like you get back to doing what you do best – growing your business.

Scrutinize your workload

Time is our most valuable commodity and we can’t simply buy more of it. That’s why you need to ensure that you are using every minute of yours in the most productive way possible.

Scrutinize every task you carry out and decide if they all add real value. The ones that don’t should be offloaded to someone else, either internally or externally.

Learn to switch off

What I’m referring to here is your multitude of devices. The gadgets that make you constantly contactable both day and night are the things that make you super-efficient, yet inevitably destroy a small part of your balance.

Simple things like turning your smartphone off during dinner or if you’re on holiday, leaving your tablet in the hotel room and not taking it to the swimming pool. Out of sight really is out of mind, right?

Respect your self-imposed boundaries

You’ll never realise a better work-life balance if you cannot learn to respect your own boundaries. As with any change it will seem slightly alien in the beginning but you will learn to embrace going forward.

Routines are a great way to teach yourself, to adopt different ways of working. You almost want your boundaries to become habits. Unwritten rules that you don’t even need to think about because they come so naturally.

If you don’t respect your own boundaries then other people definitely won’t…

Pinterest & Snapchat Offer two Fresh Advertising Platforms for your Brand

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We all know that having an active social media presence serves to promote your business and allows you to engage with your customers and prospects. But while Facebook and Twitter are often the two social networks that get the most attention from brands, Pinterest and Snapchat have introduced paid advertising offerings that provide different angles for your business to leverage.

Pinterest & Snapchat Offer two Fresh Advertising Platforms for your Brand

Introducing Pinterest promoted pins

Pinterest is rather unique in that it’s a highly visual social network which allows users to create stunning visual collections (boards). However, Pinterest is often overlooked by brands but why? After all, at the last count Pinterest boasts more than 70 million users. Furthermore, the majority of its user base are women – some 80% in fact.

Therefore, if your business/brand uses a lot of visual content and your target audience are predominantly women, Pinterest could represent a great opportunity for you. Plus, with the announcement of promoted pins, there has never been a better time to get interested in Pinterest or Pinterested! (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Promoted pins are Pinterest’s paid advertising offering and operate on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. They allow you to promote specific pins based on set criteria that you stipulate. For example, you can choose to target certain demographics, specific locations and even different types of devices.

The best part is that you only pay when somebody actually clicks through to your website from your promoted pin. There’s also no need to worry about spiraling advertising costs as you are able to set daily budgets and duration for every campaign.

There are, of course, a number of rules that advertisers must follow, but these are run-of-the-mill and to be expected.

Promoted pins are still in beta and currently only available to select US-based businesses. However, it’s inevitable that they’ll be rolled out across the board in the future and will present another advertising platform for your business utilize.

Snapchat Advertising is upon us

Ephemeral messaging application Snapchat may not seem like a lucrative platform to focus your marketing efforts on, but don’t dismiss it just yet. Especially as, the start-up – which has been valued at $10 billion has now opened up its gates to advertisers.

With some 100 million active monthly users – 71% of who are under 25 – Snapchat presents quite an opportunity for brands who want to get their marketing in front of millenials (that’s generation Y for those of you who aren’t familiar with the term).

The announcement that Snapchat would start rolling out paid ads was made on its blog last week. The company said that US-based users would see an advertisement over the weekend and judging by the online buzz that definitely was the case.

Snapchat wanted to emphasis that its ad offering would not detract from the user experience that people have come to love using its app. Ads will only appear in the Recent Updates section and never in personal communications (chats).

Snapchat’s decision to roll out paid ads shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, they need to justify their huge price tag and the company’s own blog post states that their reason is simply to make money.

However, they further added: “We want to see if we can deliver an experience that’s fun and informative, the way ads used to be, before they got creepy and targeted”. A statement that’s quite ironic considering that the first ad to be displayed was for Ouija – a horror movie by Universal Pictures.

Pinterest’s promoted pins and Snapchat’s paid advertising may not yet be available to UK businesses but they almost certainly will be. Will you be utilizing them?

Introducing WEST by Box, Facebook and Pinterest

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Introducing WEST

Last week, the Facebook Newsroom announced a new initiative that the social network has launched in conjunction with Box and Pinterest. WEST, as its known, stands for Women Entering and Staying in Tech and, in my mind, is a fantastic program.

When it comes to Computer Science, there has long been a gender gap in the industry, both in workforce’s across the globe and in the educational pipelines where tomorrow’s generation of Computer Scientists will emerge.

In fact, the United States Census Bureau has reported that technical roles in the country will continue to increase and are expected to reach 1.4 million by 2020. However, the number of women filling these positions has been steadily declining since the 1990s.

That’s why Facebook, Pinterest and Box have teamed up to create WEST, a one-on-one mentorship program that is designed to help more women adopt and ultimately flourish in these types of technical role.

The aim is to bring together highly experienced women from the top technology companies across the industry to help build and maintain a focussed mentorship program. It will be driven by the day-to-day work that these individuals do and geared towards the exciting technical opportunities that are becoming available.

Opening in 2015, WEST will be looking to attract female mentees in their early to middle career stages. It will feature a series of 1:1 and group interactions face-to-face, as well as online sessions over the course of a year.

Initially, the program will be open to women in the Bay Area in the U.S. but if it proves successful then we can hope to see an expansion going forward. I for one, hope that UK women will be able to take advantage of this great initiative in the future.

Mentorship is something that is very powerful and can help shape an individual’s life including their career choices, lifestyle outcomes and overall success.

Influential individuals, like Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, have long voiced their opinions about the need for more women in technical roles. The Facebook COO famously said in an interview with 60 Minutes that, “A man and a man at a bar at a hotel during a work trip – that looks like mentoring. A man and a woman at a bar at a hotel on a work trip, that doesn’t look like mentoring to anyone.”

It speaks volumes that three huge companies, like Facebook, Box and Pinterest, have decided to undertake this venture. They obviously want to tackle a problem that has been developing for some time. Hopefully, their lead will make other businesses take note and perhaps even offer similar programs.

When industry giants make a decision to create a bespoke mentoring program for women from the ground up, it can only lead to more diversity in the technical industry as a whole going forward.

You can find out a little more about WEST here. There’s even an application form but unless you live in the Bay Area in the United States it’s obsolete at present.

What’s your view on WEST? Should women be given a helping hand with mentorship programs like this or will doing so ultimately put men at a disadvantage?

I’d love to hear your thoughts below…

The German Answer to the Post-Holiday Email Nightmare

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The German Answer to the Post-Holiday Email Nightmare As many of you will know, I’m currently enjoying a family holiday in Canada.  And, whilst I’m trying to forget about work for the time being, I know that I still have to be available in case any of my clients need to contact me.

It’s not all bad though. By spending a few minutes each day online, I am keeping on top of anything urgent that needs addressing. However, I am fully aware that once I am back in the UK and working my regular hours again, I’m going to have a significant amount of emails to wade through.

Yes it’s all part of returning to work with a bump and an inevitable reality of taking a holiday. But that’s not the case if you work for one of the progressively forward thinking German companies such as Daimler or Volkswagen.

These two German car giants have realised something very important: take care of your employees and they will, in return, take care of you and, therefore, your business.

At Daimler, they have just implemented a new policy for when an employee goes on holiday. It’s called the Mail on Holiday initiative and basically sees any emails that are sent to an employee who is currently on holiday deleted. The sender is subsequently informed that their email has not been received and an alternative person to contact is given.

The result is that when the employee returns from their holiday they are not immediately swamped with hundreds of emails requiring their attention. But why have Daimler adopted this approach? Surely all employees understand that the email nightmare that awaits them following a holiday is just part of life.

Well, the Daimler Mail on Holiday program was introduced following a work/life balance research project that was conducted with the University of Heidelberg. It seems that while the Germans understand the importance of working hard, they also know that working smart is a must.

Daimler highlighted their thinking in a statement announcing the policy: “The aim of the project is to maintain the balance between the work and home life of Daimler employees.”

But Daimler isn’t the only German company to implement such cutting-edge initiatives. In 2011, Volkswagen made a decision to stop sending emails to their employees after the end of their shift.

Deutsche Telekom have a similar policy which sees no emails after hours and even Germany’s Labour Ministry have advised their ministers to not bother employees after hours unless it is an absolute emergency.

Work/lie initiatives such as this prove that modern businesses are waking up to the reality that the wellbeing of their employees is paramount to their overall success. Its part of a growing ‘data detox’ trend in European corporate life that is designed to reduce employee burnout.

Perhaps more British companies will adopt a similar approach in the future. After all, remaining competitive in the European marketplace is in the best interest of UK businesses.

Daimler’s Mail on Holiday policy is apparently optional. I doubt, however, that many people choose not to take advantage of it – do you?

 

 

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Use Negative Reviews as an Opportunity to Improve

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Use negative reviews as an opportunity to improveIs there ever a time when we should look upon negative reviews about our business, its staff and products/services as an opportunity? You bet!

A recent article that caught my eye just proves how trying to suppress freedom of speech when it comes to reviews – even if it was meant as a joke (maybe?) – can really come back and bite you.

Whether or not the hotel in question had indeed meant the policy as a joke is still unclear but it seems the damage is done. But joke or not, why does it seem that some businesses are so terrified of negative reviews?

After all, we don’t get everything 100% right every time and that’s just as true in life as it is in business. Therefore, negative reviews should be seen as an opportunity to improve going forward and maybe even see our negative review updated.

So what should you do if your business receives a negative review or unfavourable feedback?

Comfort your employees

Whilst you may be feeling slightly miffed about reading something bad about your business, spare a thought for your staff. They’ll be experiencing mixed emotions and will be looking to you, as their leader, to pick them up.

People hate to hear criticism and your employees are no different. You need to understand that they’ll be feeling demoralised, despondent and as though they let you down. Comfort them, raise their spirits and get them fighting fit for another day.

Remain calm

The hotel in the article I cited at the start of this post definitely approached negative feedback in the wrong way. The trick is to remain calm in the face of criticism and never overreact.

Often, knee-jerk reactions can have the total opposite effect of what we want and make a bad situation even worse. For example, attempting to respond to a negative review defensively will just draw more attention to the situation and turn your potential opportunity into a public nightmare.

Reach out personally

Get on the phone or send an email to the customer in question expressing your regret that you didn’t meet their expectations and seek further advice – that’s right, ask them how you can improve going forward.

By doing so, you show that you take their opinion very seriously and want to use their experience to better yourself for future customers. If you can resolve any issues that were highlighted, you might just see that negative review be updated to reflect your business much more favourably.

Discover the root causes

Negative feedback and bad reviews are almost always due to only a handful of factors:

1. A bad customer experience – poor service, low-quality product, tardiness. In this instance a negative review should serve as a wake-up call to your business that you’re perhaps missing the mark on occasions.

2. Customer expectations mismatch – they expected one thing but what they got was quite another. This is a bit more difficult to remedy than the previous point but the customer’s feedback should be analysed carefully and your marketing, pricing and staff approach be reviewed accordingly.

3. Your business is inaccessible – people don’t want to deliberately bash your business in public but if you don’t give them any other options, what can you expect? That’s why your customer service channels need to be effective and act upon any feedback you receive.

By tackling negative reviews/feedback head-on you can really turn them into an opportunity for your business to shine. Reacting rashly or overly defensively will not help the situation. Show all your customers that you value their opinions and use feedback, positive or negative, to improve everything that you do.

 

 

Image courtesy of Master isolated images / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

5 Crucial Elements that all Business Websites Must Have

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5 Crucial elements that all business websites must have

 

How many times have you heard the phrase, “Check out our website for more information?” I’m going to suggest that the answer is on an almost daily basis. That’s because our business websites have become such a crucial part of our success and we want people to utilise them. After all, they champion our brands, promote our products and give useful information to our visitors.

However, no matter how elaborate or how simple your website, there are certain elements that it absolutely must incorporate. This checklist is obviously open to interpretation and there will undoubtedly be other aspects that you want to include, but I would definitely start with these five as a bare minimum.

A Logical Design

Stunning graphics, a plethora of multimedia wizardry and all manner of bells and whistles are great, but if your website is difficult to navigate your visitors will soon get fed up. They might even go to one of your competitor’s websites to find what they want! That’s why a logical design is an absolute must.

Websites are often designed on paper first and the layout finalised before anything else. Logically-designed websites feature easy-to-navigate menus and intuitive signposts. For example, when was the last time you visited a website that didn’t have a familiar-looking navigation bar running across the top?

Clear Contact Information

This is particularly important if your website is in addition to a bricks and mortar business. A lot of the time people visit your website with the sole purpose of finding your contact information. Therefore, it needs to be clearly displayed – even on the homepage – and not be hidden away out of sight.

You may run the risk of losing potential sales if you neglect to display your business’s contact details and offering them openly helps to build trust and stronger relationships with your customers. It’s also important to provide a range of contact options like email, telephone and physical address (if appropriate).

A Blog

A business blog (like this one) is a great way to reach out to your clients and prospects. Not only does it give you a platform on which to provide useful information, but it also gives your business a voice. And the beauty of a voice is that it helps to build an online reputation and, more importantly, a loyal following.

Moreover, your blog can even help boost your search engine rankings and by providing useful, original and engaging content, your visitors will keep coming back again and again. At the end of the day, the more followers your blog attracts the stronger your brand will become.

Social Media Integration

You will have probably lost count of the amount of times you’ve visited a website and been presented with a range of social media buttons. That’s because businesses want to boost their social media following and if you’ve visited their website then chances are you’ll like their Facebook page, start following them on Twitter or add them to your Google Plus circles.

Social media activity sends strong signals to search engines and so business websites incorporate it wherever possible. After all, by ‘liking’ a company’s Facebook page you are basically signing yourself up to receive further updates from them. It’s kind of like building a mailing list.

Mobile Compatibility

Now more than ever, people are using their smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices to access your business’s website. Therefore, it absolutely has to be mobile compatible. At the very least you need to have a bespoke mobile version of your site or a responsive design that adapts to mobile devices.

Your customers and prospects will be very disappointed if they try to use your website on their mobile devices only to find out that it’s a horrible experience. If your competitors have fully mobile compatible websites then you need to ensure that yours is at least as good, if not better.

 

 

 

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

How to create killer content

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How to create killer contentDo you ever feel as though creating online content for your business is stressful? What with blog posts, social media updates and promotional material all forming part of your digital marketing strategy, it can sometimes feel like a struggle to keep creating decent content.

This is especially true if you aren’t much of a writer and crafting engaging material doesn’t come naturally to you. However, by using a content creation checklist – like this one – you can sculpt not just content that people want to read but also be consistent in your writing.

After all, writing is actually a learnable skill and the more you do it, the better you become at it. And by following these simple guidelines you’ll start creating better content right away:

Be alluring

The internet is absolutely littered with content and to make yours stand out you need an alluring title that makes people want to click-through. You could have written the best blog post in the world but if it’s let down by a boring title then chances are people won’t even get to read it.

But what makes a good title?

  • A sense of urgency – For example, a title that begins “Don’t miss out…” automatically makes people curious about the content that follows.
  • Look to inform – The ‘how to’ format is used a lot on the internet because it works. People want to be given knowledge that they can use going forward.
  • Use numbered lists – “Top 10”, “Five Top Tips”, or “20 Ways To…”
  • Incorporate bold/strong language – Notice the word ‘killer’ in the title of this post? Can content really kill? No, but it stands out right.
  • Ask a question – Questions are a fantastic way to engage your reader right off the bat. “Do you dread creating online content for your business?” will probably have most people thinking, yes! Why? Are you going to help me make it easier?

Make people want to continue reading

So you’ve managed to get someone to click-through to your blog post with your alluring title but now you need to keep them hooked. So many pieces of content fail to fully engage the reader at the start and they inevitably navigate away again – don’t let this happen to you.

By using a staggering statistic or a question at the start (like this post does) you further engage the reader and they are more likely to keep reading. Intrigue is very powerful and by triggering it in someone you will get your content read right to the end.

Be personal throughout

One of the best pieces of advice that anyone ever told me was, “Try to write like you talk.” Sounds obvious right? But it really is the best way to approach content creation. Not only does it make the whole process easier but it also gives your posts a sense of personality – people appreciate that.

Show the reader that you care by interacting with them throughout. But how do you do that you say? By asking questions like I just did. It involves the reader and shows that you are writing with them in mind.

The word ‘you’ is extremely powerful throughout an entire post and is more likely to lead to the reader becoming one of your customers in the long run. Plus, a sense of personality will see readers returning to your blog again and again.

Be consistent

Finally, it is important that you are consistent with your content. After all, building a list of regular followers is the key to success. Your audience have become your audience because they like reading what you write. The quality of past blog posts isn’t going to be enough to keep them interested if your new content isn’t up to par.

Always try to:

  • Post new updates frequently – don’t post five updates in a single day and then disappear for a fortnight.
  • Be recognisable – structure your posts carefully and let your audience become used to your layout. People enjoy consistent posts that look familiar every time.
  • Offer real value – By doing this you’ll inevitably increase your search engine ranking as well as pleasing your readers. Just don’t focus on the former, however, too much. You should always write for people first and search engines second – always!

To attract more followers and win more customers, you need to make your content stand out from that of your competition. Stagnant, boring content will just sit there. Lively, fresh, engaging content on the other hand will entice big audiences.

 

 

Image courtesy of Gualberto107 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net