It seems to me that Twitter is a channel very well suited to getting the religious Word out onto the street – short, sharp gems of faith-based inspiration delivered almost effortlessly into the hands of an hungry audience (preaching to the converted).
Yet comparing the Twitter activity of the The Dalai Lama and Pope Benedict XVI, only the former is on board, tweeting as @DalaiLama. HHDL opened his account over three yeas ago – as of today he or his aides have posted 783 tweets and amassed 4.42 million followers (small f). And of course he follows no-one…
But where’s Benedict? According to a recent article by The Guardian the Pope is getting ready to pop out of his newbie purple egg: “The tweet can be reformulated, redistributed, relaunched and disseminated,” said Father Claudio Maria Celli, the head of the Vatican’s pontifical council for social communications, as he announced the initiative. I’ve not heard a tweet explained in that way before – I should start taking this social media stuff more seriously.
HHDL is also including pics and videos within his tweets, along with links to his regular webcasts. No doubt a Pinterest account is in the making.
RT @DalaiLama On a personal level, we all appreciate people who are kind and warm-hearted
Online agencies – some of them are helpful and others, well, not so much. Based on my own observations here’s a hit-list of what any client should reasonably expect from you as their agency or consultant:
1/ If a client expresses interest, take the time to explain what you are doing, why and how – empower them at every opportunity to help themselves.
2/ Don’t charge for jobs which only take a few minutes to complete – even if the client thinks it must have taken you much longer.
3/ Freely hand over the login details for any online accounts which you have set up on behalf of your client.
4/ Don’t charge to send through data-laden reports – only charge for actionable insights you’re able to pull from the data.
5/ Don’t engage in black-hat SEO techniques (if a client seems to want this, explain the risks).
6/ Don’t pretend you can do everything – refer work onto specialists where appropriate (what goes around comes around).
7/ If a client is still without a website CMS that they can easily handle internally, take the time to explain to them why they are being disadvantaged in terms of time and money.
8/ If a client’s business is not suited to Facebook, don’t sell them a Facebook presence.
QR codes have been around a while. They’re big in Japan and South Korea, appearing on billboards, consumer products, vending machines, magazines, newspapers, or anywhere there’s room to insert the symbols – including within the haircuts of rock stars. Think of them as bar codes for consumers, or ‘paper based hyperlinks’ – scanning one automatically triggers any number of predefined responses or code actions, such as opening an URL, sending a text message or sending vCard contact information (there are many other possible ‘actions’ across various social media platforms, maps, WiFi connections and online video).
While QR codes have been slow to take off in Australia I’ve noticed a recent shift in interest from local marketers, and more importantly the public at large; I would expect to see plenty of them popping up in offline places near you in during 2012.
Generating your own QR codes
This is simple – I use a comprehensive online code creator from Kerem Erkan, but there are many others. There are numerous actions and code customisation options to choose from when creating your own QR code; the final code can then be copied and posted online, or downloaded in various formats and placed within any offline media as you would a standard image or graphic.
The QR code example below has an embedded action to open the homepage of the NET:101 website when scanned.
Scanning a QR Code
This is commonly done with a QR reader app on a smartphone, making them a convenient way to interact with a mobile audience (the reader app I use on my iPhone is Qrafter). Some phones are now coming out with QR readers as native functionality, making the scanning process a quick & easy one.
Customising a QR Code
Marketers are taking QR codes to the next level by applying customised branding. This can be a little tricky, requiring graphic design manipulation without braking the code – here’s a good blog post on how to do this.
The code below is a customised version of the code above – it still performs the same action but presents with softer code edges and incorporates the NET:101 logo and primary brand colour, red.
A few other examples of customised QR code design:
Before settling on a new brand name ensure you’re able to secure the key online properties that will be associated with it, namely:
Page 1 Search Results
Type the brand name you’re considering into Google (or your favourite search engine) and analyse the page 1 results. Are there exact or similar brand names from anywhere else in the world you’ll be competing with for attention? If yes, how strong is their page 1 presence? Brand name searches are popular online – as a given, your brand needs to come up numero uno for anyone running a search on it. And ideally anyone searching on your brand would prominently see a wide range of results which are only directly associated with you.
Domain Name
You’ll want to secure the Top Level Domain name for your brand in your primary geographic market, e.g. for an Australian business this would be the .com.au TLD (I recommend a country specific domain name over a generic .com). If the domain name you want is already taken, the hyphenated version may be available, e.g. www.the-box-people.com.au, but this has potential for confusion – people looking for your website might use the unhyphenated URL expecting to find you.
If the .com and the .net domains are also available for your brand names, go ahead and acquire these as a defensive play.
Registered Trademarks & Google AdWords
Check to see if anybody has your proposed brand name trademarked. In Australia you can run a trademark search here and apply to have a brand trademarked for $120 here.
Securing a trademark for your brand prevents others from claiming or using it for their own purposes. Furthermore, Google will not allow its AdWords advertisers to use trademarked keywords to trigger an AdWords ad, or to appear in the body of one. Be aware however that Google mostly relies on others to notify it of any violations; you can alert Google of an AdWords related trademark violation here.
YouTube Channel
Is your proposed brand name already a (popular) YouTube username? Usernames can be up to 20 characters long and can include both letters and numbers; they can also contain capital and lowercase letters. If you have a two of three word brand name, consider capitalising the first letter of each word, e.g. TheBoxPeople. Once you have created your YouTube account you cannot change the username associated with the account – choose carefully.
Twitter
While it’s nice to get your brand name into your Twitter handle, it’s not essential. The page can still be strongly branded and any Twitter name can get itself known over time. Although Twitter allows usernames of up to 15 characters, shorter names are preferable as they take up less of the maximum 140 character allocation of each tweet. As with YouTube, usernames can contain numbers, and capital and lowercase letters.
While you’re in setting-up mode you might want to look at opening up a dedicated Google account, Google Analytics for your website or blog, a Facebook Page, a Flickr account, a LinkedIn business profile, and Bit.ly. Also, activate Foursquare and Google Places listings if you have any physical points of presence associated with your brand.
I was asked yesterday if I thought the Yellow Pages had a future; my response: no.
The vid below is one out of the vaults – it stars the Yellow Pages, and features a mad beaver, a narky robot, wasps, sharp instrument rain, and of course 2 Sticks. Enjoy.
