DTM Comes to Those Who Wait at Internet World

A free bag of jelly beans and a chance to see what DTM have up their sleeves.

Sounds like an ideal day out to me!

This year's Internet World exhibition at Earls Court 2 in London promises to be a highlight of the year so far, as more and more companies wise-up to what new media can do for them.

Given the current state of the UK economy, it doesn't take a rocket surgeon or a tree scientist to realise that many companies may have to 'streamline' and 'tighten their belts'.

To make the most of their limited advertising assets, firms formerly dependent upon traditional advertising (like TV, radio, billboards, newspapers and magazines) are realising that SEO, PPC, virals, newsfeeds, and the power of social networks can be tailored to dovetail with their existing publicity campaigns.

As ever, it seems that DTM have some experience in these matters, as illustrated by the 12 o'clock seminar in the Digital Marketing Theatre at Internet World tomorrow.

In Putting Your Pint Across we'll hear the story of how AMV BBDO asked DTM to help make a success of the online aspect of the Tipping Point campaign for Guinness by marrying viral and SEO techniques with traditional advertising.

It almost goes without saying that any marketing for Guinness tends to make people sit up and take notice, and the TV ad featuring a unique domino rally was complimented by an amazing amount of interest and feedback online.

More amazing interest and feedback will undoubtedly be buzzing around DTM at Stand E573, as people seek the secrets behind their success.

I'll be at IW tomorrow, so I'll see you there!

Where's the competition?

As you may remember this blog is part of a study that was conducted in association with my thesis on corporate blogs. To be more precise, this blog was set up to evaluate the impact of a corporate weblog on the search engine presence of a company. We have been monitoring certain keywords to see how the weblog's ranking changed. Ah, and by the way, the results are publicly accessible. Just hit the link "Ranking Statistics" on the right (below the diagram).

Anyway, last time I checked on the number of incoming links from search engines and the ranking of DTM, I did a more general search out of curiosity to see where the company stands for various sets of broader keyphrases.
As you may know, the more specific a keyphrase is, the less search engine result pages (SERPs) it will produce. Therefore optimising a page for specific keywords is easier since the number of "competing" pages is lower. Imagine searching for "canon printer bargain" as opposed to "canon printer s520 bargain london" as an example.

Now, what I did was check DTM’s ranking for keyphrases that people would be using when performing a broad search for information or services related to the industry of online marketing, e.g. "marketing news" or "online marketing".
I was impressed to find that DTM was ranking with page one positions in virtually all cases. Also some of the largest competitors were ranking significantly lower, sometimes not even anywhere among the first 100 results.
It’s a little odd that some of the competitors have been paying so little attention to ensuring that they can be found by their customers in the simplest of all ways today: via organic search.






What do you think? Do you consider the ranking of a SEO/SEM company to be an indicator for the quality of service that they offer?

Corporate Social Responsibility

Funny, ey? I thought it was. But don't they say there's a grain of truth in every joke? Thinking about this one, I suppose the grain must be "risk".
Why? Well, maintaining a corporate blog is all about corporate responsibility.
First, it's a tool for communicating to the outer world that your company acknowledges the interests of society. There is no law that requires companies to be proactively honest and upfront with anybody. But communicating through a blog demonstrates that the company realises its impact on society and is anxious to improve the (social) relationships to clients, employees, local communities or the general public.
Second, a blog also requires corporate responsibility. Once a corporate blog is published and has reached a certain number of visitors you can't just take it offline if somebody posts faulty information or makes an undesirable impression. A corporate blog will become the company's premium medium for online communication and will have a significant impact on the overall perceiption of the business by the general public. And that needs to be present in the mind of those employees who are thinking about posting to the corporate weblog of their employer.
Otherwise, the blogger one day might have to face his boss as shown in the cartoon above, only this time the conversation will leave no room for amusement.

That is the risk. And not just a risk for the blogging employee, but also a risk for a company that has decided to implement a corporate blog. After all, blogging inadequate content will reflect on the image of the business and will result in serious damage if the issue is picked up by other blogs or even the press.
Cerrtainly, this is a risk that businesses have to wage against all the advantages that speak in favour of a corporate blog. But there's also some good news: It can be minimised.
The solution to prevent conversations as illustrated in the above cartoon is to implement a corporate blogging policy.
But that's another topic - one that I might take up in another blog post...

[cartoon source: Brad Fitzpatrick]

11 Don'ts for Corporate Blogging

Hey, remember how I wrote that post on how to get your first Corporate Blog online in just ten steps? Well, being online is one thing, but you will need to organise content. And not just any content. But before I go into details about that, here is something I found on the web today: BetterBusinessBlogging has published eleven ways to sink your corporate blog "titanic style" ;-) Here we go:

• Don't focus on any subject area
  
• Make sure the domain name can be misread
  
• Over-optimise your posts
  
• Always sign your posts with "lots of love"
  
• Avoid pictures
  
• Don't update your blog
  
• Cater to a multilingual audience
• Don’t respond to comments
  
• Calculate your blog's ROI
  
• Use lots and lots of external advertising
  
• Avoid expressing an opinion
  

Want to know more about Mark White's no-gos? Visit his site!

Blogging for PR

Being from Germany myself, I am naturally also keeping a close eye on the developments of corporate blogging in Germany. A couple of days ago, the car manufacturer Daimler published its first corporate blog. In case Daimler doesn't ring any bells with you: they produce the car brand "Mercedes". Until recently known as Daimler-Chrysler, the partnership with Chrysler was terminated just recently.
Subtitling "Insight into a corporation", the employee blog aims at increasing the transparency of the company for the general public. So far a couple of employees have already presented themselves and their work on the new online platform.

Actually, the new Daimler weblog is a pretty good illustration of another benefit of corporate blogs: Public Relations.
Now, maybe you're going to say: How? There's no PR department or agency involved here, right?
Correct! But I say, does there have to be?
Since PR has been around for a long time, I consulted my Encyclopedia Britannica edition from 1961 for a concise definition. There it says on page 744B: "PUBLIC RELATIONS, the activities connected with interpreting and improving the relationships of an organization or an individual with the public." It does point out that persons in charge of these activities are usually referred to as public relations or pr consultants. USUALLY. And there is no mention of a PR department or agency.
I believe the rather common association to be a clichee that has evolved out of the subconscious perception of corporate spin being attached to any information that is published by a company.
Indeed, there is research to prove that most people feel businesses neither offer enough transparency nor are they being absolutely honest when communicating with the public.

In a way, corporate blogging can fix that. What's a better way to (re)gain the trust from the public than to have your employees talk about themselves and their work, thereby offering company information from behind the scenes? It also gives the customers a voice, since direct feedback is encouraged through the built-in commenting function.
Therefore, businesses cannot only increase their transparency but close the gap even further by engaging in personal conversations with their readers. What sticks is the impression of an honest and open company that takes its customers and other interested parties seriously.
And knowing how PR works for a company, that is ultimately going to reflect on its brand and how well it is going to sell.

Related links:
Daimler's Corporate Blog
ZDNET blog on how "Honesty, transparency can offset customer service disasters"
Article on transparency in Social Media
News on Daimler divorcing Chrysler

Interview with the new CEO

I can tell you, the past few days have been busy. Not only am I reaching the end of my diploma project, I also had to get upto speed on the newest developments here at DTM. Yes, I am talking about Nigel Bridges, the new CEO who was announced a week ago. And being eager to bring you more information from the inside I managed to organise an interview with Nigel for Friday evening last week. Here's the outcome:

Tobias: Hello Nigel! I am glad you could spare a few minutes for a short interview. Everybody seems very busy... Anyway, before we go into questions I have been itching to ask about Direct Traffic Media for quite a while, could you - as a kind of introduction - just tell us a litte about what you did before joining DTM?

Nigel: Yes, we are busy at the moment. Business is strong and there are a lot of exciting things going on.

Tobias: And about yourself?

Nigel: I graduated at the City University Business School in London. I then worked for an international boutique IT/Management consultancy where I gained experience in consultancy, business development and management - both in the UK and in Hong Kong where I ran the local operations. I then moved to a global systems integrator where I was again involved in both the client-side and in business management, running and growing a number of their businesses in the UK and Europe. Prior to coming to Direct Traffic Media I was with the Brains Group, a provider of offshore software development and other IT services. Working there as a CEO I helped them develop from start-up into a more substantial business that was later merged with Concise to become what is known today as Endava.

Tobias: Ok, that'll do for references. When you were announced to be the new CEO for DTM on the 8th of this month, you said that you were looking forward to, I quote, "working with the existing team who have worked very hard to establish the current leading position, and build upon it in the future." Can you give a brief overview on the history of Direct Traffic Media?


Nigel: Sure. Direct Traffic Media was founded three years ago in London when a gap in the market was discovered that allowed us to give our customers real results and visibility on Search Engines. We developed the system for two years and slowly grew a loyal customer base while we developed and fine tuned the software. We successfully proved the system and went forward from there...

Tobias: ...and how many people were involved back then?

Nigel: At that time just two founders, but not for very long. In the following year or so ten more joined the team, and as we are rapidly growing new people are joining us on a regular basis.

Tobias: Really? What sort of people are you looking to hire?

Nigel: Well, for instance in the UK we are looking to fill positions in Sales, Customer Services and IT Development. Internationally we are also looking to recruit as we move into new geographies as we have just hired our first country manager to look after our business in Benelux and the Nordics.

Tobias: I say, sounds like some serious ambitions here. Maybe I should get my CV brushed up. What are Direct Media's plans for the future then?

Nigel: Well, in many ways it’s quite simple. We intend to grow by being the best at what we do and by delivering on our promises to our customers. Our software solution behind our market leading product is not only excellent but world-beating. Thus, our plans for the future include international expansion plan, which I mentioned earlier, as well as growth in our home market in the UK. We plan on expanding in Europe and we are also looking further afield – we have the opportunity to become a global player if we grasp it properly. The way that we tend to operate is by setting up a core team at a new locations consisting of sales, client delivery and a publisher manager, and take it from there as the business grows.

Tobias: Sounds to me like a company that is convinced of its potential. I am sure that is reflected in your financial figures as well. Can you give us the heads up on annual turnover and net profit?

Nigel: Yes, it does reflect through to the numbers. I can’t tell you any specifics but I can say that we are a growing in terms of both revenue and headcount, and we are profitable. I’m afraid that further details need to remain confidential – for obvious reasons!

Tobias: Too bad. What's the secret? In that case, lets hear with what kind of philosophy DTM intends to pursue those ambitious plans?

Nigel: The philosophy of not just the leadership team but the whole company is driven by three core values: 1 - to work with the utmost professionalism at all times, 2 - to treat our stakeholders as well as we would expect to be treated ourselves and 3 - not to work with clients in certain business sectors such as pornography. I believe that if we commit to do our best for our customers and other stakeholders at all times then we will succeed in what we aim to achieve. Our stated mission is to empower businesses to position themselves in front of their target audience on the internet. This is not always easy, so we need to use a range of skills, capabilities, techniques, partners and software engines to help drive the right traffic to the right web sites so that our clients can increase both their brand awareness and their direct traffic. We don’t know of any other organisation positioned as we are in this area of digital media outsourcing.

Tobias: Since I am not a customer: what do your clients value the most about you?

Nigel: They value our ability to deliver on what we say we will deliver. We are proud to say that our customers perceive us as good people to do business with. Something, that may sound a lot more matter of fact than it actually is these days. We don’t get it right all the time, but we do get it right most of the time and when we fall short we will try to go the extra mile to recover.

Tobias: Righty ho - Nigel, once again: Thank you for having taken the time for this interview...

Nigel: Anytime. Thank you.

Tobias: ... and all the best for your future as the new CEO of Direct Traffic Media!

Nigel: Thank you, and very best wishes for your thesis on Corporate Blogs.

***
That's that. Any more questions from you readers? Be sure to post them in the comment section and I'll be happy to not only pass them along but to follow up as well... For more information on Nigels announcement to becoming the new CEO visit our news section.

Business Blogging vs. Corporate Blogging

While browsing through Google's search engine result pages (SERPs) to provide a to-the-point definition of "Corporate Blogs" for my thesis, I found that most sites seemed to be using Business Blogging and Corporate Blogging synonymously.
On the other hand, I had a really hard time finding a website that actually deals with the question of what business blogging is. Not even Wikipedia, who usually is ahead of everybody else when it comes to defining things, holds an entry. Instead most of the pages to be found when searching for business blogging talk about blogs set up by companies. Even with the definition I found in Mark White's "Glossary of Blogging" @betterbusinessblogging.com you could be led to assume corporate blogging and business blogging were pretty much the same, which is NOT the case.
Inspired by Debbie Weil's rather sketchy thoughts on business blogging in her "Corporate Blogging Book", I decided to phrase my own definition:

Business Blogging is a company's or an individual's activity of involving and utilising the blogosphere for business objectives and commercial success.

The definition implies what Debbie states in her book: Instead of being equal, Corporate Blogging is merely a small portion of Business Blogging. Business Blogging encompasses a lot more: A person living off their blog falls into that area. Marketing agencies that publish ads on public weblogs just the same. So do media companies publishing adsupported blog networks.
Business blogging is everything to do with the question: "How can we make money out of the blogging phenomenon?"


Related Links
Mark White's definition of a business blog
Wikipedia's definition of a corporate blog
This blog's definition of a weblog

Your own Corporate Blog in 10 steps

Have you ever thought about creating a blog for your company? Believe me, it is easier than you think. Today I am going to demonstrate just how easy, by showing you pretty much exactly how Direct Traffic Media set up the very same corporate blog you are reading right now. And it only takes ten steps to get your first post online under your own domain!
I do assume you have your own domain/website already. If not check this site to find a hoster to suit your needs. For the following step-by-step guide which is based on using Google's blog API for publishing you will need to have your ftp details ready. So, here we go:

• Step 1: Browse to blogger.com and hit "Create your blog now"
  (Click on the picture to enlarge the screenshots)
  
  
• Step 2: You will need a google account. Enter an existing email of yours, followed by a password for blogger.com, a name that will appear as author for the posts. Enter the word verification. After reading the terms of service, tick the box to accept and hit "Continue". (In case you already have a google account this page/step will be skipped)
  
  
• Step 3: Leave all fields blank. Instead, locate and click the hyperlink "Advanced Blog Setup"
  
  
• Step 4: Fill out the required fields.
  
  • The Blog title is the title that will later appear as the name of your blog.
  • I recommend selecting "Listed" to get your blog indexed in the blogger.com directory.
    
  • Ftp server requires the adress of your ftp server, an URL looking something like ftp.****.co.uk.
    
  • Select ftp, or if supported secure ftp (sftp).
  • Enter a subdirectory if appropriate. If you plan to set the blog to be on top level you need to enter the path of the web servers main directory (look out for an already existing index.* file)
    
  • Specify a filename for the blog's mainpage, e.g. index.html
  • Type the full name under which the blog will become available to your visitors
    
  • Enter username and password for logging on via ftp.
  • Enter word verification and hit "Continue"
    
    
• Step 5: Choose a template and hit "Continue"
  
  
• Step 6: Hit "Start posting" as soon as the success message appears
  
  
• Step 7: Type in your first blog post and hit "Publish Post"
  
  
• Step 8: Wait for publishing to finish and click on "View blog"
  
  
• Step 9: Admire the first post of your corporate blog online!
• Step 10: Get back here and post your feedback! Did you experience any problems? Need any assistance? I am looking forward to reading your comments in the comment section...
  

Blogging is branding

"A blog is something you can hack away at in ten minutes a day - and at the end of four months you have something phenomenal". That is what J.D. Iles once said when commenting on the blog he set up for the Lincoln Sign Company, a small sign-painting shop located in New Hampshire in the USA.
Using the typepad hosting service, J.D. regularly presents the latest products along with some trivial chit chat. Ultimately, having this blog as an addition to the already existing website aims at attracting prospective customers who may later be encouraged to place an order.

And that brings us to another use of blogs for your business: global branding. Just to be clear what we are talking about, "branding" is the process of creating a brand, i.e. the visual, emotional, rational, and cultural image associated with a company or a product.
Now, global branding, or by marketing consultant Hugh McLeod referred to as global microbranding is nothing new and basically only implicates two characteristics:

• First, that you are a company or an individual involved in branding and
• Second, that you are doing so on a global scale

The prefix "micro" in this context simply emphasizes that were talking about a tiny brand potentially selling all over the world. Unless of course you're working for Coca-Cola ;-) But then you wouldn't be looking to build up a brand now, would you?

You will find that global microbranding has already been happening long before the internet was invented.
Whether it's a famous Italian impressionist selling his pictures to fans in Asia, a Swedish pop group publishing records in the States, or a fine Scottish Whisky distillery that has made a name for itself on the continent.

Now having said that, there has been a major development since the introduction of the WWW that is now being amplified further by the concept of blogs: branding has become a whole lot easier!

With blogs at hand, here are just some of the things you DON'T need to spread your message far and wide beyond your immediate client base and local market:

• High profile name
• Large marketing and PR budget
• Goodwill of mainstream media
• Profound marketing knowledge
  

That's what drives J.D. Iles with his sign painting blog, that's what Hugh McLeod (and his partner) found when creating the brand for their microbusiness of selling high price tailor made suits to international business men and I imagine that is also the reason why British entrepreneur Butler Sheetmetal Ltd. is still keeping up the posting on his corporate blog"the tinbasher".

Stay tuned if you'd like to know, exactly how simple it is to set up your first blog and why blogs more than any other website help you reach prospective customers!

Related Links:
Lincoln Sign Company
SignsNeverSleep - The Lincoln Sign Corporate Blog
Tinbasherblog - Butler SheetMetal blogs about business
Hugh McLeod on the issue of Microbranding
Free bloghosting with Typepad
How to use blogs in business (part 1)

How to use blogs in business

Admittedly it's been a while since my last post on this blog. And I was glad to see that somebody at Direct Traffic Media took the opportunity to fill the gap by reporting straight from the DTM stand at the ad:tech London conference last week. I do hope that those of you who were there took the time to pop round to our stand for a chat!

By the way, did you see we integrated a link to our blog ranking stats into the blog sidebar?
Click on the hyperlink just below the graph to get to the page that we use for monitoring our corporate blog rankings for a list of specified keywords.
You can validate the results by typing the keywords into the corresponding search engine yourself, e.g. "corporate weblog" which should appear on 4th position in Google UK.
Now, try searching for "ad:tech london blog"! A fabulous position 6. Switching to "uk pages" only will even get us up to 3rd place.
Isn't that impressive? I certainly think it is, and that is one of my top reasons why I like to blog.

Which brings us to my next topic: Corporate Blogging benefits.
Expect answers to questions such as the following:

• What do I do with a corporate blog?
• How can a blog help my business?
• What are the reasons for creating a corporate blog?
• How do I use a blog in business?
  

Actually, this topic is so huge that I have decided to split it up into several blogposts over the next days... or possibly weeks.
For today, I bring you:

Blogs as the new company website
There are a lot of people out there criticising Web 2.0 and the hype it currently receives. But even they cannot avoid acknowledging that, with applications such as weblogs, some major developments and improvements have finally come to "live" on the WWW that were long long overdue.
The world wide web has traditionally developed into more and more of a mass medium for communication in our society. Unfortunately, this has led to two major undesirable side effects from the recipients point of view:

• one: lack of personality
• two: lack of interactivity
  

Weblogs as a homepage put an effective end to that. They are personal because they are written by real people and in a conversational tone of voice. And they offer the means for interactions through a couple of functions such as post related comments, trackbacks and pingbacks.

Quite a few companies, especially small and medium sized ones, find the advantages to be so overwhelming from both the readers' as well as publishers' point of view, they have begun relaunching their corporate site using a blog engine. That way readers can profit from weblog functionalities such as commenting and RSS-alerts while the company has a very easy way to maintain their business presence online via the blog's integrated content management system (CMS). Also used by publishing and news agencies but on a much larger scale, this downsized and simple CMS enables non-technical employees to instantly update the website without knowledge of programming or professional web layouting.

So to sum it up, a Corporate Blog can save you money because it reduces the amount of expertise and personell required to maintain a professional corporate website. Also, Corporate Blogs are one step towards meeting your customer's rapidly changing needs in a WorldWideWeb where communication has become increasingly one-way and impersonal.

Related Links:
Google Search for "Corporate Weblog"
Google Search for "ad:tech london"
Tim O' Reilly, the first to come up with "web 2.0", explains what it means
Tim O'Reilly comments on blogs as being the drivers of Web 2.0
Short definition of a Content Management System (CMS)
Blogs as business opportunity drivers in the UK