As a marketer and especially one that loves using the web, I can safely say the best purchase I’ve made lately is the Flip Cam.

What’s the big deal?
The Flip Cam fits in your pocket & can record 2 hours of HD video footage.   Perfect for video testimonials, impromtu (or planned) interviews, product demos, recording a presentation, video blogging and much more!

And content is king after all.  Plus keep in mind most people prefer watching TV to reading a book, so having video content on your website is a good idea.

The big red button records

Is it easy?
Yep. The big red button records. Point and shoot!

It’s actually worth getting a small portable tripod if you get shaky hands.

How do I put it on YouTube?
That’s the ‘flip’ part… the the USB  flips out so you can plug into your computer and you can upload straight to YouTube.  But you could edit the footage with iMovie or equivalent if you wanted to.

Draw backs?
You need to be careful you don’t cover the microphone with your finger & block out the audio!

USB flips out & you can upload to You Tube

Plus it’s a bit annoying that Flip Cams are AA battery operated. It would be better if you just plugged it into your computer and they recharged like an iPhone.  It just means I have to carry spare batteries around in case it runs out of juice.

And it doesn’t take still pictures, so you do need your normal digital camera as well.

Rating:
9/10.  They’re available in most electronics stores for around $200 and like most things, Flip Cams are available on Amazon.

It is such a useful tool, you just have to get in the habit of using it, so I take mine everywhere. Check out our YouTube channel to see some videos we’ve made.

PS. You’ll be able to tell which You Tube videos were shot on the Flip and which were shot using an old digital camera – the difference in quality is huge!

You Tube Marketing:  If you’d like a hand getting your videos on to You Tube (or filmed on a Flip Cam for that matter), give Bluewire Media a call on 1300 258 394.

Have you ever felt daunted by the number of communication options available to you on the web? I know I have.

There’s my website, Facebook page, YouTube channel, iPhone app, email, Flickr, Twitter, articles, blog posts… The list seems endless sometimes! Now, though I feel like I am starting to get a better understanding.

Back at high school, I remember sitting in classrooms sometimes listening, sometimes not. I knew I should be listening, but that didn’t mean I actually listened. I think of the different teachers I had and the ones that truly stood out have 1 thing in common.

Variety.

My best teachers often employed different methods to grab my attention and help me learn. They used a mixture of routine (eg weekly quizzes – biology) and surprise (eg a spontaneous game of petanque on the school oval – French). They stood in front of the class and lectured us as a group on simultaneous equations and then monitored our individual progress on solving x-3 = y, x + 2y = 30 (answer at the end of the post!). Some lessons would be by audio tapes, other lessons by educational videos, others with handouts. And of course there were always experiments to be done.

How does this tie back to your web strategy?

At the heart of good web strategy you are trying to solve problems for your audience. Knowing, like teachers know, that everyone learns in different ways means it is your responsibility to present your information and solutions to those problems with as much variety as you can. This doesn’t mean you have to take on every possible option immediately, but keep in mind how your audience would most like to learn.

Whether it is by video, audio, download, article, photo or interactive application ask yourself:

1. How can I make it easy for my audience to learn?
2. How can I cater for their different styles?

Then you’ll be able to start making decisions about your web strategy and how you share your content.

Answer: (x = 12, y = 9)

Managed web strategy: If you’re wondering how to solve the simultaneous equations of your web strategy, please call Bluewire Media on 1300 258 394.

If you want to get to(wards) the top of Google, I’d like to share my story.

I’ll confess, 12 months ago SEO wasn’t part of our marketing strategy.  Yet in one year, we’ve climbed from unfindable to #3 for competitive search phrases like:

‘website design brisbane‘ (#3)
‘web designers brisbane‘ (#3)
‘website designers brisbane‘ (#3)
‘web design brisbane‘  (dropped to #4 today, it was #3…)

Being competitive, I’m striving for #1 in all those categories, but so is every other web design company out there. Healthy competition is good and I enjoy the challenge!

What’s the Secret?
Well, there really is no secret.  Despite what some SEOs will have you believe, there’s no magic to topping Google.  If you follow the rules, you’ll get there!

But I do want to acknowledge and thank my ‘SEO mentors‘ from whom I have learnt everything I know.  I can definitely attribute our success to our friends at Reload Media (Bluewire’s SEO partner) and also to SEO copywriter Glenn Murray who wrote the brilliant e-books SEO Secrets and SEO Copywriting. Thanks guys.

In a sentence, I’ve learnt that if you focus on producing the most interesting, relevant & useful content for your buyers, you’ll automatically be optimising your website.

But that isn’t juicy enough is it…? So, here are the:

Top 5 things I’ve done to reach #3 on Google:

1.  Commit to a keyword phrase to optimise for.
In my case, I chose Web Design Brisbane and two or three obvious combinations that are similar.  This decision was based on the high search volume for this phrase.

2. Align Web Copy, Page Title and Page Description with your keyword phrase.
My chosen keyword phrase Web Design Brisbane appears consistently in my Web Copy, Page Title and Page Description.. BUT it shouldn’t be too repetitive for a human since Google is smart enough to know what the page is about if you only mention it once in each.

Page Title & Description

3. Get Quality Backlinks
I changed the footer tags on all the websites we built to Web Design Brisbane by Bluewire Media. You could also write testimonials for suppliers or write articles for other websites and put back links on them. I do both.   You’ll also notice I use the keyword phrase as the anchor text not the company name.  This is an important habit to get into.

Anchor text on back links

4. Blog every week
I try to blog every week with useful information for our prospective buyers. This means there is fresh, keyword rich content that Google loves (and more importantly, so do people reading the blog)! If it’s a popular blog post, people will link to it.  This is known as ‘link bait‘ – content so good that other people will link to it!

Blog at least once a week

5. Tweet every blog post
I tweet every single blog post to our followers. If the blog post is interesting enough people will retweet it and more people will read it.  And if people really like it they’ll link back to the blog (which helps our Google ranking).

Tweet every blog post

What’s our #3 ranking meant for Bluewire’s business?
Well now we have on average 5-10 qualified web enquiries per week that found us through Google… And we’ve doubled our traffic to ~500 unique visitors each week.

We aren’t #1 (yet), but I’ll let you know if we make it!

SEO Brisbane : If you’d also like to see the view from the top of Google, give Bluewire Media a call on 1300 258 394.

Have you ever sat down to write blog post and just gone blank?

Have you ever sat down and wondered where on earth you’re going to start?

Have you ever sat down and wondered what on earth you’re going to write about?

I know I have and so I figure there might be a few others out there that could use a few tips! While this is specifically related to writing a blog post, I hope you’ll see that it can be applied to other areas of your web strategy – facebook posts, news articles for your website, email newsletters etc.

Step 1:

Answer this question: What is a problem that you might be able to solve for some of your audience?

You now have your topic. (Note this post – How to get your blog post written!)

Step 2:

Set a deadline.

I was fluffing around with what to write about this morning so I employed a Timothy Ferriss method (author of “The 4 hour work week”, one of the most thought provoking books I’ve read in business). I set a deadline of 53 minutes (on my iPhone timer function) to get this done.

Step 3:

Start it and finish it.

“Perfection takes infinity.” They were some wise words from one of our mentors. Don’t wait til your post is perfect to get it up on your blog. You can’t please everyone all the time and if you’ve chosen your topic by addressing your audience’s problems, then you can’t really go too far wrong. At least you’ll know it’s relevant. (If you’ve left a bit out… well that just means you’ll have more up your sleeve for your next post!)

So that’s it! Hopefully you’ll find that useful for getting past those small but sometimes overwhelming tasks like blog posts.

PS: 14:17mins left on the timer and the job is done! Pumped!

PPS: Here’s the link to Tim Ferriss’s book if you’re interested in reading/buying it:

The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content.

Managed web strategy: If you’re still daunted by the thought of writing your next blog post and would like a helping hand, give Bluewire Media a call on 1300 258 394.

• The top 5 web design debates that cause the most riots — Line 25
• How to make remote team collaboration work — Six Revisions
• All about web accessibility — Konigi
• “Mad Libs” style form increases conversion 25-40% — Luke W Ideation & Design
• 5 reasons to be on Twitter, even if your audience isn’t — Smart Blog
• 7 creative ways to introduce social media to your team — Learning Putty
• Usability review of charity websites taking the lead — Smashing Magazine
• How much are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn worth? — Mashable

 
How to save $US148 on an iPod Touch

via Gizmodo Australia.

When I had the pleasure of seeing marketing strategist, David Meerman Scott present live via satellite at the Growth Summit in Sydney, I was so impressed that I just wanted to ask a few more questions.  Luckily, David graciously accepted our request.

In the Part 1 of this interview, David explains:

- what the ‘New Rules of Marketing & PR’ are and how they work.
- how he personally used the ‘new rules’ to reach 30 million people for the launch of his book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR“.

In Part 2, David shares:
- how people can overcome their social media fears, specifically the fear of  ’looking stupid’ and people saying ‘bad things’ about you.
- how he met the CEO of General Motors and became a “badvocate” for them.

Thanks for your time, David. You can follow David on Twitter @dmscott.

If you’d like to discover more, you can visit his blog Web Ink Now or his website DavidMeermanScott.com.

Or you can download one of David’s many free e-books (some of which have been downloaded 1,000,000 times):

Gaijin Male Model (2010) - A Case Study in Conflict-Driven Business Writing (PDF – 0.7 MB)
Lose Control of your Marketing (2009) – Why marketing ROI measures lead to failure (PDF – 1.2 MB)
The New Rules of Viral Marketing (2008) - How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free (PDF – 1.5 MB)
The Gobbledygook Manifesto (2007) - Chosen for the Viral Marketing Hall of Fame! (PDF – 0.2 MB)
The New Rules of PR (2006) – How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly (PDF – 0.3 MB)
How Will You Create a WORLD WIDE RAVE? (2009) – Making of the Video (PDF – 1.3 MB)

Plus you can you can read his books:

Managed Web Strategy: If you like David’s ideas and need a company to help manage your web strategy, give Bluewire Media a call on 1300 258 394.

So here’s a story. It’s not a new one but I stumbled on it again the other day and was reminded of a few things.

Radiohead are widely regarded as one of the most successful rock bands in the world both critically and in terms of popularity.

Coming into their most recent album InRainbows, they had completed their contract with the record company. Their contract had pre-dated iTunes so the band had received no royalties from iTunes downloads for their previous albums at all… It was time to do something different.

Rather than going down the old path of printing CDs and distributing them, they opted to release the album on their website. This isn’t entirely unusual. What was truly different was that they let their users pay what they thought the album was worth. No limits – you could pay nothing if you wanted.

Wow.

While the exact figures aren’t available, some websites have estimated over a million albums were downloaded and that the band made millions with this strategy. Thom Yorke, the lead singer, in an interview with Wired magazine said: “In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together…”

Why did this work so well for Radiohead?

In my mind, the lesson here is the importance of mutual trust online.

Radiohead had an extraordinary track record for delivering outstanding albums, so the fans were prepared to take a punt – without listening to the music – to pay for it. Equally, Radiohead trusted the fans to respect their music and so handed over the control for payment to the user.

One of the goals of good web strategy is to build that long term trust that was so important to Radiohead’s success.

So ask yourself:

1. How are you building trust with your fan base and the online community?
2. Are you thinking about what your customer would like?
3. Are you prepared to hand over control to your user and empower them to make choices?

Regardless of what you think of the band, the web strategy worked for them because it:

• Was interesting (no one had done the “pay what you think it’s worth” approach before in music and hence generated a huge amount of publicity)
• Was relevant (it was the first album they’d released in 4 years)
• Made it very easy for the customers to go and buy (allowing them to control the price)

If you manage your web strategy with these principles in mind, then you’ll be on the right track.

Managed web strategy Sydney, Brisbane – To find out more about our managed web strategy services, please call Bluewire Media on 1300 258 394.

• World’s leading telcos unite to take on Apple — Sydney Morning Herald
• The comprehensive guide to saving images for web — Six Revisions
• e-Commerce design resources: the ultimate round-up — Hongkiat
• Information gathering: a round-up of UX applications — UX Booth
• CMOs: Your brand is on digital time — Forbes.com
• The $5 guerrilla user test — Bumblebee Labs (via @joelflom)
• Relevance meets the real-time web — Official Google Blog

 
What did we do before Google?

Via Informavore.

• Successful strategies for selling ad space on low traffic websites — Smashing Magazine
• Onboarding: designing welcoming first experiences — UX Mag
• Interview with the authors of Remote Research — UX Booth
• Tableau Public: data visualisation service — via Konigi
• Unique blog posts and wordpress tips — Web Designer Wall
• 10 keys to effective non-profit organisation websites — Vandelay Design
• 15 highly-useful resources for cross browser testing — designm.ag
• 35 useful jQuerylugins for slideshows, graphs and text effects — Noupe

 
Bing Maps raise the bar in online mapping technology

“To blog or not to blog” is a question many marketing managers and business owners grapple with…  Sure the results can be magnificent, yet where do I find the time and how long until my blog ‘breaks through’?

Legendary blogger, Jonathan Crossfield (who also happens to be Communications Manager at Netregistry – domain & hosting company) was generous enough to answer many of these questions when we caught up in Sydney.

In this 7 min interview, Jonathan answers:

- How he got started his first blog?
- Why his blog succeeded when so many failed?
- What his breakthrough moment was?
- The level of commitment required?
- How he hit it big?

Follow Jonathan Crossfield (Kimota) on Twitter

Follow Jonathon’s blogs:
CopyWrite
Atomik Soapbox
Brainstorm

Business Blogging: If you’d like to start your own blog, so you can follow Jonathan’s tips, give Bluewire Media a call on 1300 258 394.