HHME Marketing & PR

Power to the Pen

Let your fingers 'do the walking' with flare!  As your fingers 'walk across the keyboard' they give the power of the virtual pen. The keyboard is the tool used as the replacement for the pen.  When using a mobile phone the numbered keypad is the keyboard that replaces the favoured tool of the pen.

Writing, when used as a tool, can have such powerful impact.  It can bring feelings from one extreme to the other - pleasure or pain, sadness or joy.  Two little words -thank you, can create such impact.  When spoken they can mean the world to the recipient.  If given substance as written words they give the receiver a permanet record they can be proud of.  The British company 'Royal Mail' ran an advert a while ago that carried the slogan, 'I saw this and thought of you' in an attempt to encourage people to write more and make use of the postal service.   Now email and the internet in the form of the world wide wide allows everyone to spread such happiness through the net.

With the advent of the mobile (phone that is), the art of the 'text' has emerged and with it a new language is evolving.  It is with sadness that I view this, I cannot join in this new phenomenon.  Abbreviated prose is sacrilege, the written word needs to be perfectly punctuated whether it be written on paper, typed into a phone keypad or word processed on a computer.  The art of conversation is dying and with it that most basic of abilities - how to write.

Cries of teachers outrage hail from them marking scripts.  'Text speak' has now migrated into the children's written word. 'LOL', 'UR', '4', '8' are all used to replace the original words. 'Laugh out loud', 'You Are', for or four, ate.  This is a symptom of society's constant striving for extra time.  A quickly grabbed minute here, a crafty half hour there, a constant need for speed.  Is it any wonder this has now filtered through to written language itself? 

Will this constant quest for those precious extra minutes ultimately lead to the written word becoming illegible?  Shorthand was first designed for speed, to allow us to record the spoken word more accurately, now it looks nothing like the written word at all.  Now we ask, will language follow the same path?  Answers on a postcard

Social Bookmarking to help promote your blog

Most bloggers use social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com, StumbleUpon and Del-icio.us. These sites work by providing feedback on submitted articles via a judging and voting system.  A well received article can ring a multitude of visitors to your site.  Beware of falling into the trap of becoming ratings obsessed; make sure you do not detract from your original goal of writing for your subject specific readership.  

When considering your Search Engine Optimisation strategies it is best to choose one maybe two of the social media sites.  Using a multitude will give you a never ending task within the promotion stakes and this is where you will fall down with your original goal - that of writing.   All will help create further web presence and can bring traffic to your site, each work in a slightly different way.  StumbleUpon can give you a good influx of traffic from just a few votes; Digg however needs far more votes to help lift your article to the front page, once there your stats will show a huge traffic peak or spike.

Social media sites can help boost your exposure throughout the web which will help considerably   with your optimisation objectives.  The more traffic the search bots encounter visiting your site the higher up the rankings you will go.

 Here I must emphasise once again the need not to get enthralled by the obsession for traffic and lose sight of your initial goal to write.  Although all the social media or community sites mentioned in this article will help send initial traffic to your site if the content the readers find there is not well written and worth reading the traffic will be short lived, when aiming to build the popularity of your work not only do you want those tell tale spike sin your stats leagues you also want a loyal audience that read your work because they enjoy it.  Here is where social networking sites come into their own.  

By building up a large network of likeminded people you have a good start to a ‘reader list’  you know these people enjoy similar ideologies as yourself why else would they be within your network or circle – here is where my deals of networking may change to those  of some others.

 In building my network in LinkedIn I have looked to link with other likeminded individuals that share similar interests and goals, in this way we can help each other within our networks.  I have not actively searched for a massive list my network has grown through connection with others within my professional arena - be it through similar career goals or industry experience or those whose expertise I value and I would like to learn from.  By simply building an enormous list for 'list sake’ you run the risk of putting the worrying thought of spam into people’s minds.  Large communities or networkers can still easily be built but you need to constantly keep your reasons for building uppermost in your mind. 

 

Love the new logo

Content considerations

Are you content with your content?

Does your content sell your profile?  Have you put across the message you are trying to convey.  Do you have your key words included within your content does it make you content?  Are you offering your service or giving your customer a must have item there is a big difference.  Do not sell your key points sell the dream of the customer’s ultimate goal.  What do you provide for your customer do they receive value for money?  These are all issues you need to consider when producing content for any business literature.  Ensuring that your prose includes the key words for your subject matter helps to optimise web content. 

So many considerations that’s before a word is created.  Article compilation is so very much more than the written word itself. 

• Who is your target audience
• What tone do you adopt in your piece
• Persuasive or informative?
• Useful or unique?
• Entertainment value
• Educational in format
• Topic for debate?
• Newsworthy?

Who is your target audience?

This should be your first consideration.  Who why and what are you writing for?  Who is the audience you hope to attract? Why do you hope to attract them – sales, readership following, advice or expertise? What is your goal with your article?  Once you have decided on these key aspects you can then choose the tone you wish to use in writing your article

What tone do you adopt in your piece?

The overall tone adopted in your writing is essential for your prospective audience, use of language coupled with the style you adopt needs to be suitable for your target audience.  Avoid the use of detailed and complex wording unless aiming for an academic audience forgo the need for elevated language.

Persuasive or informative

This needs to be considered alongside the tone of your article.  What is your ultimate goal?  Sales- the piece needs to inform yet convey enough of a persuasive nature that your ultimate aim of a sale is achieved.  If providing a ‘how to’ article you do not need to emphasise the persuasive element as highly.  With all work the writer will take their lead from the target audience they are writing for.  Everything in this article is for consideration; feel free to try all or none of the suggestions.

As you will see each of these suggested tips add or build from the previous notion.

Useful or unique

This idea builds from the previous if you are writing to inform your work needs to show it provides useful information, this will reflect throughout the tone of your piece.  If however, you are offering a unique insight into a subject area this again should reflect in the use of language, style and tone of your work.

Entertainment value

All work should strive to entertain and engage with the reader/audience.  If your article does not provide interest to the reader you will have further audience.  Once you have engaged with your audience piqued their interest and shown you can deliver on the promise of your given title you have begun to achieve your goals. To build up a readership or following you need to provide something that people will want to return to,  like any good book you need to illicit narrative greed, entice so that your readership want more.  If you can achieve this you can notch up n achievement indeed.  Net Linguistics or the exploration of language discusses these issues further, it also builds upon the use of language within a set context, something to consider when approaching your tone and style in a work.

 Educational in format

Once again this builds upon ideas discussed previously. For an item to be educational it needs to be informative, the tone and register of language my need to change depending upon the age and understanding of your readership.  In order that you can connect with your audience the use of humour could be considered but once again this should be in context with your audience and the aim of your work.

Topic for debate

This is especially key if writing a blog article or similar.  The more thought provoking the subject matter the more chance of interaction with your audience hence leading to a comment string that builds audience participation within your blog or other chosen arena.

Newsworthy

Keep this key point uppermost in your thoughts when producing work.  Is what you are producing newsworthy?  Would others want to read it?  If you cannot answer a resounding yes to this key point perhaps you should look to engage the services of a copywriter, marketing professional or communications specialist.   

 

Viral Marketing Pros and Cons

Viral marketing

I have recently been looking further into the ideas of viral marketing.  Most definitions of viral marketing agree that:

 Viral marketing is:

 Definition

Marketing phenomenon that facilitates and encourages people to pass along a marketing message.

Information

Viral marketing depends on a high pass-along rate from person to person. If a large percentage of recipients forward something to a large number of friends, the overall growth snowballs very quickly. If the pass-along numbers get too low, the overall growth quickly fizzles.

At the height of B2C it seemed as if every startup had a viral component to its strategy, or at least claimed to have one. However, relatively few marketing viruses achieve success on a scale similar to Hotmail, widely cited as the first example of viral marketing.

 Quoted from http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/viral_marketing/

 The Classic Hotmail.com Example

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and,
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
4. Who see the message,
5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
6. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.

 Quoted from http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com/viral-marketing.html

I tried a ‘viral marketing’ software to encourage further traffic to sites, the jury is still out on this.  Yes the traffic increased by at least 1000 visitors on a daily basis but the way the traffic was encouraged to the sites was not necessarily beneficial.  Previously I have always used Twitter and other social networking sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn with keyword postings to encourage targeted traffic.  Numbers have grown month on month; the viral marketing saw a large jump in traffic but no more interest than that generated by SEO and Social Networks.  I am coming to the conclusion that ultimately this is all simply a numbers game, no matter if your traffic is targeted or simply encouraged it is merely a matter of numbers, the more traffic you have the greater the chance of take up of your ideas or goods. Perhaps I am being cynical.  The constant use of annoying pop ups definitely brought more traffic to the sites and this is a tactic shown by many internet marketers, they seem to make a profit from doing these things yet every ounce of my being says this is wrong and is not the way to encourage followers, perhaps I show I naivety that the marketers exploit in me and others, there are many quotes I can think of for this analogy.  These tactics work even though they seem offensive in the extreme, there must be a psychological example of why this behaviour encourages interest, yet for so many it offends;  perhaps this is a topic to be considered in further articles.  

If you use viral marketing how do you find it?  Does it work for you or do you have as many complaints as followers generated by the viral software? If viral marketing works for you which software/tactic would you recommend? 

 

 

Net linguistics or the explanation of language

How topical!  Following on from my post ‘Power to the Pen;’ BBC News ran an article discussing much the same topic where LJ Rich Blogger discussed the idea of net linguistics (21/04/09). It was a pleasure to hear Laura-Jane extol the virtues of the well written word.  The news article began with the horror statistics that very few teenagers know how to address or even write a typical letter these days.  With the introduction of email, text and blogs, the art of written language has been dissected to such an extent that it is unrecognisable as the same linguistic process. Derrida and his plea for La Différance would feel his work had been futile when viewed within the aesthetics of linguistics as considered today.  
Once again the need for speed and the accessibility of space leads to the condensing of letters to their confining parameters.  Twitter offers only just 140 characters each post, the need for language condensability becomes obligatory to get your point across. Mobile text message programmes offer up to a maximum of 6 message blocks that can be sent at any one time, again the need for abbreviations to be introduced into common language has arisen from the dexterity of use of a keypad coupled with the constant clamour of speed to reply as soon as possible. Linguistic rules need to be implemented to ensure that the art of language is not lost on the younger generation. Abbreviated net speak or net linguistics need to be kept within the confines of that arena perhaps a glossary of net etiquette for net linguistics should be circulated within blogging domains. Please accept my ignorance if such an article already exists.    We are left wondering if the art of grammatically correct language will go the way of the forgotten applications our fore fathers used to pass down to us such as crafting techniques.  
Comments welcomed.  Thread to be continued... 

hoping to launch the new HHME website this week watch this space

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