Instagram & Facebook – Why?


A few hours ago I read that Facebook had acquired Instagram for $1bn… aptly enough, this news came to me via my Facebook feed. There’s also an official release here from Mark Zuckerberg My first thought once I checked the legitimacy Read more

Return On Influence: The New ROI


There is not a single activity in business which is exempted from a query regarding return on investment.  Focused strategic planning and expenditure to optimise your e-commerce mix is known to be an investment worth making for product and Read more

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Blogging – Where to Start?

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Mike in Blogging, Digital Marketing | 1 Comment

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Excerpt: It seems to be a trend at present with our clients asking about blogging and any possible benefits it could have to a digital marketing campaign. In its rawest form blogging is simply keeping a log of events, news and interests online to share with the world via the internet. To many, blogging has become a habit especially for those who like to express thoughts and views with others. In-fact many people make a living from it, by utilising AdSense and affiliate advertising surrounding the topic of the articles and content within the blog. Blogs seem to be making a rapid return to mainstream internet content sharing and are now used in such a way that they can help increase traffic and conversion on your website, whilst also improving your brand visibility and overall footprint or presence online. Several key elements need to be considered when starting to blog: 1. Platform, Structure and Appearance 2. Search Engine Optimisation 3. Advertising and Social Media Integration Platform, Structure and Appearance Before you do anything else you need to decide which platform you will choose to build your blog on. Most platforms are free and open source, with the most common being WordPress, Blogger, Drupal and Joomla. WordPress is the industry preferred platform and this very blog is built around it. Considering how you will structure your blog is the next important stage, deciding the subject and the subsequent categories which you will use. The majority of blogs are branded to match the main website, taking with them the colour scheme, Through various colours you are able…


Facebook – Fun = LinkedIn

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Fayaaz in Social Media | Leave a comment

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Excerpt: By now, most of us are familiar with LinkedIn and even more of us are familiar with Facebook. As the biggest social network in the world you would have to be living under a rock to not of hear about Facebook by now. It is incredible, mainly because we can all look at pictures of our ex’s and laugh about fat they have become or see what that idiot from high school is up to nowadays. Kill time at work by using the instant messenger or comment on pictures from last week’s drunken night out. That is also why LinkedIn is so great. By incorporating all of the silly gossip elements that we love about Facebook they….oh wait…LinkedIn is like Facebook without all of the good stuff. So why has LinkedIn just hit 100million users? Think of social networks like clothes, Facebook is the Friday night bar outfit while LinkedIn is the conservative business suit that you wear to interviews (unless of course you got to the bar in your business suit, in that case stop reading and go clothes shopping). LinkedIn is a place for business and although it may not be as exciting as Facebook it is an incredibly powerful networking platform and is an almost essential tool for the modern-day business person. Plus when you compare playing on LinkedIn to sitting doing actual work for the whole day then suddenly it sounds much more fun. In order to make sure you make the most out of this business networking…


My Marathon

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Mike in Other stuff | Leave a comment

It was hot and it was a long (long) way, but after 4 hours and 43 minutes I finally crossed the finishing of the Virgin London Marathon. So far, no ill effects and I’m able to hobble around the office in relative comfort. My starting position was right at the back, which was good fun as this was where all of the crazy people wearing fancy dress were; the downside to this was that it took a long while to get through the traffic and by the time I was at Canary Wharf it was over 20 degrees…. Training in January/February does not prepare you for that! I would really like to thank everyone for their sponsorship and well wishes; particularly my wife Donna who has supported me through more training sessions than I care to remember. It’s an amazing experience and I was proud to run once again for Tommy’s charity. I still have a little way to go in terms of reaching my fund raising target, however once I add in the people who have said they would sponsor me then hopefully the gap will begin to shrink. The link for the donation n page is here: http://www.justgiving.com/Mike-Robinson1 Thanks once again to everyone… suggestions for the next challenge?


Case Study: Truck Auction World – Email Marketing Delivers Nearly 3000 Visits a Month

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Fayaaz in Customers, Email Marketing | 1 Comment

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Excerpt: For the past few months Generate UK have been working with Truck Auction World to increase awareness about their bi-weekly online commercial vehicle auctions using email marketing. Truck Auction World are a specialist used truck and plant equipment auction website that allows companies to quickly and easily sell their ex-commercial fleets. When Truck Auction World first came to Generate they were looking for a way to increase bidder registrations and keep these bidders up to date with the latest auction offerings. Bearing this in mind Generate UK designed a bespoke, Truck Auction World branded email template. In order to do this the email template had to be visually appealing to get recipients to click through to the website. The template features: Images of featured lot Key specification/details of lots Links to the individual lots The campaigns are sent out to several mailing lists a few days before the auction and have managed to seriously increase traffic to the site. Between February 2nd and March 4th, 19% of all traffic to the website came from people clicking on links within the email newsletter. That is a total of 2998 visits, making it the second highest medium of traffic to the website. Generate UK also developed a second newsletter template that was designed to include more lots using text based links instead of images. We ran a split test to determine which template was more effective using Google Analytics & the Generate UK Email Statistics tool to measure click through rates and traffic. From this process we were able to…


An Introduction to QR Codes

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Fayaaz in Other stuff | Leave a comment

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Excerpt: Can you imagine a world without barcodes? Think about your weekly shop at the supermarket. The jungle that is the car park, the kids racing around the shop asking you to buy anything that looks like it might contain chocolate, the lines at the checkout, the unnecessarily loud self checkout, it’s a nightmare as it is. Now imagine that without the efficiency and ease of use that barcodes bring to the table. It’d be more horrific than the opening sequence in Saving Private Ryan. Barcodes are the best thing in supermarkets and now the next generation of barcode, the QR code, is going to make the rest of life more enjoyable too. What is a QR code? QR Codes or Quick Response codes are barcodes similar to the ones you find on everyday retail products like a tin of beans or a can of coke. The difference is that traditional barcodes are linear one-dimensional codes that can hold up to 20 numerical digits while QR codes are two-dimensional matrix barcodes that can hold much more information. Why would you want a barcode that can store more data? More data means that when you scan a QR code using an iPhone or any other smartphone with a camera, you can actually prompt the device to perform certain tasks. These tasks range from linking to a webpage all the way to activating the phone’s email or SMS function. How do you read a QR code? To read a QR code all a smartphone user needs to…


Curiosity Killed the Social Network

Posted on March 31, 2011 by Fayaaz in Social Media | Leave a comment

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Excerpt: Facebook has done it again. All hail the saviour of the marketing world and kneel before King Zuckerberg and his Social Empire! This time Facebook has launched an updated version of his its questions tool that apparently makes it such an amazing opinion gathering resource that the next general election will be held on Facebook. Let’s hope no one “frapes” one of the candidates and ends up starting a war. Since its launch questions has been a huge success with many users adopting the new easy to use service. And why wouldn’t they? That is the brilliance of questions, people love to be asked questions and give their opinions. It makes them feel special, like their opinion counts. Why do you think so many people phone into Radio 2 when they could be doing something productive in society? The first question that I came across in my news feed was “which university is better?” In three days the question has been answered almost 90,000 times clearly displaying the enthusiasm of Facebookers and their serious interest in the topic. At first I thought my university was doing well in this poll as it appeared at the top of the list, but then I realised that Facebook places the answers your friends vote for at the top of the graph (social influence at work). Upon further examination I found that the University of Manchester had received the 2nd highest number of votes with a respectable 2498. Do you want to know what people chose…


10 Ways to Improve Your SEO Using Twitter

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Mike in Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media | Leave a comment

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Excerpt: It has been widely accepted now that both Bing and Google have integrated with social media platforms to improve their own SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages.) One of the big two social media platforms –Twitter, Now provides you with huge potential and power towards improving your SEO results. For those not sure, Twitter is a huge network of micro bloggers which allows its users to communicate through 140 characters or less and has become a very effective marketing avenue. An effective Twitter account does not just help with your SEO, but it will help to build your online brand, and increase visibility of your company by building new connections. These ten points are designed to help you get the most out of the micro blogging network and help improve your results. 1.              Building your Presence Determine a purpose for your Twitter presence. As with most things it is important to have an end goal in place to help establish ROI and avoid confusion further down the line. Do you want to share product and service information, Do you want to focus on customer support or would you like to engage with people from your own industry? These types of questions help you determine and define the purpose of your twitter account and allow you to measure its results. 2.            Choosing the Right Username Your username should best reflect your brand and or services when possible, as every time you post a tweet or receive a RT (retweet) it will…


I Hate Call Centres

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Fayaaz in Online Reputation, Web 2.0/3.0 | Leave a comment

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Excerpt: Thank you for contacting the Generate UK blog. All of our blog writers are currently occupied; however your visit is very important to us so please stay on the site…Your visit is now in a queue and we will be responded to as soon as one of our writers becomes available…If you know the name of the digital marketing service you are interested in please say it after the tone. For all enquiries including video production please contact Videre Video Productions. *BEEP*…Did you say ‘Search Engine Optimisation’?…Welcome to the latest Generate UK blog about Online Customer Service… If you hadn’t guessed already by the title of this blog I am not the biggest fan of call centres. Aside from wasting your time whilst being on hold, getting transferred to the wrong department and being forced to listen to 80’s rock classics, they also expect you to interact with an annoying robot lady that sounds just like the voice of your sat-nav. I am not that keen on my sat-nav either, probably because it always sends me in the wrong direction and wastes a lot of time (I guess voices aren’t the only similarity between my tomtom & a call centre). Anyway, I may be going slightly off track so back to the point. At the risk of sounding like the ‘tech-obsessed youngster’ of the office, I would much rather go online to find the answer to my problem than use a phone (it’s 2011 people, using a phone as a phone makes…


Improve Local Search Results

Posted on March 17, 2011 by Mike in Local Search | Leave a comment

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Excerpt: One of the more important factors we see each day for clients is the importance of local search and how it impacts traffic and conversion. Here I have covered some of the more important factors that will help you improve your websites position for local search results through the likes of Google places. Local search is no different to the basics of SEO which includes: Keyword research is vital to ensure you know your market and how you will be targeting it. Ensure all of your content is read and available to be crawled by the search engines. Utilise original, quality content with the use of rich media where possible. Build some related authoritative external links. Submit your site to the search engines, following any changes and updates. At the early stages of a local search campaign research is the most important factor you need to consider. Find quality local directories and portals which are relevant to your business and locality. These are often very cheap forms of digital marketing and more often than not will have a good ROI whilst showcasing your brand or business in the local area. Be sure to target sites which have pages that rank well for your keywords and these can form an actionable list of possible link targets. Check your local chamber of commerce website as this will more than likely provide business listings which will be in front of the right people. Local Domain Registration and Hosting: If you are a UK business which deals solely within the UK ensure your primary…


Case Study: Mytreefrog.com – Bespoke Development of Carbon Calculator

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Fayaaz in Customers, Web Design | 1 Comment

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Excerpt: The aim of Mytreefrog.com is to start a revolution in the way that consumers buy carbon producing products and services. Aimed at private citizens or small businesses, Mytreefrog.com have identified that we all emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through; Consumption of gas and electricity in the home/workplace. Emissions from our cars and other motor vehicles. Our travel habits with short/long haul flights and car, train or bus travel. Asking people and firms to be mindful of their consumption and emissions and where we can be more efficient in our domestic and travelling behaviour is essential, but we all know how difficult taking real action can be. That’s why mytreefrog.com believe we need to do the best we can to reduce our outputs, as well as offsetting what we produce from the activities we can’t or won’t realistically go without The Carbon Calculator The purpose of the carbon calculator is to create an indicative value for your carbon footprint. This calculator is not designed to be a scientific assessment of your lifestyle. In fact, Generate UK worked closely with mytreefrog.com to ensure an easy to use and rounded up estimation of the carbon emission values, based on the highest standards of research material available. The Carbon Account Once the user has found out how much carbon they emit they can use their individual “my carbon account” to purchase carbon credits and watch their carbon balance become neutral. The account can also be used to find and purchase services, such as car insurance, home utilities and travel offsetting from affiliate…


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