AlphaQuad blog

First let me apologise for the tile of this blog entry, I just couldn't resist it.

Like everyone else in the UK we recently experienced the 'pleasures' of a very atypical bout of snow. Great for the kids, sales of salt and community spirit; not so good for getting into work and sustaining any sort of productivity. At least that used to be the case...

As we sat in the office on Tuesday, watching the snow fall, we decided to put into effect a plan we'd been working on for a while. The cunning plan would allow us to operate entirely from home, when the situation demanded it. Off we all went, like Arctic explorers, into a thickening snow storm to rescue children from school and partners from less accommodating employers. The following day and a half saw a real test of the plan but was the perfect way of finding out just how well we could work remotely in an emergency. So what was the 'plan'?

All staff were set up with a copy of Logmein, an excellent piece of software that allows a remote PC to take control of another at work (or vice versa). Large files were hurriedly copied and notes collected into folders. Servers and connections were checked, everything locked down and staff sent on their snowy way.

Very soon we realised that not all copies of Logmein were working as they should, not as a result of poor software but rather a hurried installation in some cases. A quick trip in a 4x4 soon solved that problem and all connections were checked as working. It's very strange, by the way, to be standing in the middle of a room surrounded by PCs all operating as if someone were sitting there, windows opening, characters appearing but with no one in the chair. It spooked our postman when I called him in to explain my comment that all staff were there 'in spirit'.

Once the initial glitches were ironed out all staff were working at their office desks, from home. Our most significant problem was with the studio staff as they required both high res images to display and had very large file sizes. Logmein can work at quite a high resolution but not if you are in any sort of hurry, and transferring large files backwards and forwards proved equally frustrating. Our amended plans for studio staff now include a lot more preparation in copying files to memory stick or hard drive prior to leaving the office. Fortunately our studio head lives very close so he'll be struggling in no matter what.

Working remotely was not as efficient as working at your own desktop but the event certainly demonstrated that it is not only possible but quite straightforward for the majority of staff to work from home at a moment's notice. Not a bad thing with deadlines looming and urgent jobs arriving with no deference to the weather.

As someone older than the microchip, I have the dubious advantage of recognising just how fantastic new technology is - and also how unpredictable. I remember watching those funny Tomorrow’s World visions of the future. Thing is they weren’t funny at the time.

Without the advantage of hindsight, their predictions of the future seemed sober and well-judged.

Ironically, it was left to a science fiction series - Star Trek - to create the most prescient gadget...the hand-held communications device. They even got the clamshell design right, or was the Motorola Razor inspired by the Captain’s communicator?

In online marketing we work on the edge of the future, where we are presented with a stream of new technologies, techniques, gadgets and ideas almost on a daily basis. The majority of these will, in a few years, seem ludicrous and unusable. We’re working on a Crystal Ball 2.0 but it’s still in Beta.

In the meantime, we need an effective method for judging what future technology to back.

Twitter is an interesting one: part-way through its life cycle and already evolving into something new. Who would have thought that 140-character text messages could prove to be an effective marketing form in the age of bouncing multimedia and zippy Flash. Well, it may not be!

Ok, Dell are selling a pile of leftover PCs and personality brands are attracting billions of groupies, but is Twitter an effective marketing channel for the average sprocket manufacturer or lingerie shredding business? The answer is quite simply, ‘I’ll tell you in 5 years’.

In the meantime, all we can do is to pick the likely candidates for success and apply a bit of common sense.

In keeping with the marketers favourite method of reducing prose into list format, here are five ways to help protect your online marketing budget in an uncertain technological world:

1. Learn from early adopters. No matter how fast you are off the mark, there will always be someone else there before you (the amusement park ride phenomenon). Watch what they do and learn from their mistakes.

2. No matter how shiny the new toy is, it is what it does that matters. What is this new thing supposed to actually do? Isolate that - and then measure it.

3. ROI – Really Old Idea, otherwise known as Return On Investment: your essential measure in an uncertain world. If it doesn’t return more than it costs over a sensible period, recommend it to your competitors.

4. Always have a backup plan. When you’re not sure that your new wonder child is going to be a fly-away success look at what else it can deliver, as there are always multiple benefits. Keep your focus on all of them.

5. Assess regularly!

6. Drop it if it’s not working. Remember that lie you told when you were a child that got bigger as you tried to cover it up? No matter how difficult it is to backtrack on a bad idea, it will be more difficult the longer you leave it.

New technologies and ideas can be a fast route to phenomenal marketing success but just like predicting how many items in a list, they can also be very uncertain. To further push the idea, the seventh point in the list of five is:

7. As with gambling, don’t bet more than you’re prepared to lose.

It’s been a great final quarter to 2009 for us, and we find ourselves recruiting for the third time in as many weeks. Testimony to the hard work of our team and the recent business wins here.

Having recently been inundated for applications for a Web Developer and Search Marketing Executive, we’re now looking for a Project Manager to join our outstanding team in beautiful Bidford-based countryside, to help deliver further peerless results for our clients across the UK.

The project manager role includes working closely with designers, copywriters and search executives, managing a small team, reviewing project briefs, writing proposals, delivering web projects from start to finish, liaising with clients, updating web sites, keeping up-to-date with best practice in online marketing techniques and campaign reporting.

In short, it’s a busy, varied and challenging role, and we’re expecting a strong bunch of applications.

We’ll be looking for candidates with experience of search marketing, visitor analytics, web design and/or web development, ideally.

Project Managers form a crucially important link between our in-house teams and clients, so the candidates for this latest vacancy will need to demonstrate strong creative, practical and problem-solving abilities. We’ll also be expecting to see degree-level applicants with at least two years’ Agency-based experience.

For further information, email a current CV and covering letter to careers@alphaquad.co.uk, with any supporting materials with which to ensure you’re one of the lucky candidates selected for first interview. We’re looking forward to seeing candidates passionate about projects soon!

Continuing our organic growth as 2009 draws to a close, it’s with great pleasure that we’re recruiting again. Despite the doom and gloom picture presented by the business Press for most of this year, we’re finding that a focus on online marketing is paying dividends for all concerned.

If you’re a talented Search Marketing Executive, you could be part of our success! We’re looking for a degree-level Search fanatic with at least two years’ experience, to assist us in delivering more excellent solutions and results for our clients.

The Search Marketing Executive’s role includes working closely with Project Managers, as well as being able to integrate with our design, technical, social media and copywriting teams as required.

Passionate about managing campaigns creatively, you’ll understand the importance of natural Search whilst also being savvy and comfortable with PPC. You will effortlessly handle report preparation, link building, assessment of Search positions and visitor analysis on a daily basis.

Interested? For further information, email a current CV and covering letter to careers@alphaquad.co.uk, with any supporting materials you feel will ensure that you’re one of the lucky candidates selected for interview. We’re looking forward to adding another star to our Team!

NOTE: Recruitment Agencies are invited to email the above address ONLY – no phone calls will be accepted regarding this vacancy, and our non-negotiable commission rate is 5%. Many thanks.

Really interesting item here today, concerning the increasing number of links on UK newspaper sites in recent months. It appears that the Link Economy is hitting saturation point.

The number of links noted on the main British newspaper sites, including the Mail, Guardian, Telegraph and Sun, has been exponentially rising, with some Home pages hitting more than 335 links, according to the findings listed. The links have become more important than the content.

This raises a contentious issue for us here at AlphaQuad given the nature of our online marketing activities, and our interest in linking Clients’ sites to the wider Internet as part of their online marketing strategies.

A word of caution is required, we think.

Link Economy means just that – be economical. Links are there to add value to the reader experience, as well as giving an additional push to the cross-linking nature of good website practice. When, however, the content is purely focused on linkage, there has to be a casualty.

The casualty is usually the interest level of the reader. If you lose that, it’s gone for ever.

Our advice? Use linking carefully, thoughtfully and strategically. Overkill means the death of online credibility, and we’ve yet to come across a Client who wanted that kind of result for their business.

Consider this post as advice and cautionary inputs from an ex-daily newspaper Business Editor to the uninitiated marketer trying to deliver PR to a newsroom.

Imagine the scene...you’ve sent your shiny, perfectly-formed press release to all of your target Press. All relevant Editors have been emailed. As an experienced marketer, you have confidence in the power of the story contained within your PR correspondence.

What happens?

Nothing. Nadda. Zilch. Three days pass, and not a single, salutary email or phone call response from any of the contacted Editors.

What do you do next?

Well, don’t fret, panic, or take it personally. Most Editors receive literally hundreds of emails daily from in-house marketers, corporate PRs, and PR agencies. From my time in the newsroom, roughly one in 10 press releases were worth actually reading and progressing to possible publication.

Worth reading to an Editor means fundamentally newsworthy, of interest to the readership, and with a complete absence of sales pitches, PR spin, fluffy language – just good, old-fashioned news.

Here are the killer questions to ask yourself before attempting to contact the Editor and ascertain why they haven’t published your press release:

1. Is the press release just a veiled sales promotion or is it newsworthy?
2. Is it relevant to the target readership?
3. Is the content current, or a re-hashed story from 3 months ago?
4. Is the editorial well-written, punchy and without waffle?
5. Does the press release have an accompanying image of appropriate quality?
6. Does the content succinctly convey the news?

If you can answer Yes to the above questions, then be patient.

Chances are, the email is in line with all the other PR contact, and if you have a trust-based relationship with the Editor, ie they trust you and your press release quality, then publication will happen in good time. One of the cardinal PR rules is do not, under any circumstances, ring an Editor to see if they have received an email or press release: it annoys and aggravates them, particularly if they are on a copy deadline. Patience is a valuable skill to learn when delivering PR to the Press.

One of the most exciting parts of being in business is undoubtedly enjoying growth. And this year, after a relatively quiet first six months, we’re seeing a big increase in new projects coming through from new and existing clients.

We are, obviously, very pleased. And if you’re a star web developer, you should be too! We need at least one excellent Web Developer to join our talented team, to help us continue delivering innovative solutions and great results for our clients.

The web developer role includes working closely with Project Managers, programming HTML and CSS, validating HTML to ensure rigorous standards are maintained, problem solving, keeping up to date with best-practice techniques and the latest plugins. In short, it’s a busy, varied and challenging role!

For further information, email a current CV and covering letter to careers@alphaquad.co.uk, with any supporting materials you feel will ensure you’re one of the lucky candidates selected for interview. We’re looking forward to seeing candidates with the XHTML-Factor soon!

Crucially so, we would suggest.

And quite a few of our clients would agree with us, according to the uptake of the AlphaQuad Consultancy Report service.

We found in the early days of 2000, when AlphaQuad was established, that we were spending a considerable amount of time simply educating business colleagues on things we were passionate about, knew a lot about, and were happy to share if it benefitted their online presence.

This hasn’t really changed since then, but it has developed into a range of stellar services, alongside an increasingly-popular Consultancy Report service. It has been a smash hit, especially as it opens up a number of service solutions for clients, whilst giving them top-line advice and suggestions.

We didn’t anticipate the Consultancy Report service taking off in quite the way it has – seeing as we’re averaging out three Consultancy Reports per month now – but of course we are delighted that current and new clients are gaining so much added-value from our detailed insights and online investigations on their behalf. Insights which can then be turned into positive business results.

In essence, a good Consultancy Report highlights areas where a client can expect to increase quality traffic and improve conversions.

Furthermore, our detailed expertise gives them a level of insight they usually haven’t experienced before, which also adds a new perspective to their business operations, and how they can utilise the tools in place.

As the saying goes, knowledge is power. We’ve seen clients transform their online success from the information provided from our unique Consultancy Reports. We allow the results speak for themselves on client projects, and the Reports are an excellent starting point for this to happen.

Want to know more? We’re happy to have a no-obligation chat on what we can deliver for you through one of our bespoke Consultancy Reports today. It could unlock whole new markets.

The publication of the annual State of the Blogosphere report by pre-eminent tracking site Technorati usually presents interesting reading, and this year’s addition presents further compelling information to the ongoing debate regarding the value of blogging.

Technorati currently tracks five million blogs across the blogosphere. There have been a few surprise facts coming from the statistics: the majority of bloggers, according to Technorati, are educated and affluent, and with the average blogger interviewed having written a blog for two or more years. This confirms that blogging is no longer the latest online trend, but rather a maturing and accepted part of the online media landscape.

There has also been a greater convergence between blogging and the mainstream media. What has come from the Report is that many bloggers feel their medium is ascending – in fact, 69% of those polled by Technorati think that blogs are taken more seriously as sources of information than ever before.

Another interesting fact, however, is that only 35% of the bloggers questioned get their news and information from blogs over other media sources, whilst only 31% think that newspapers will not be able to survive over the next decade. The majority of bloggers believe print will survive into the next decade.

Technorati concludes that bloggers realise they are moving along with the momentum of online media activity, but seem reluctant to claim the throne of print media for themselves.

This could well be due to the fact that so many current bloggers out there – both on an individual basis and the corporate bloggers – have worked as traditional newspaper editors and magazine journalists as little as three years ago.

Including the author of this blog, as it happens.

Interesting to see here that the Tories are utilising online techniques more and more in the battle to engage with potential voters across the UK.

The story highlights that the Conservatives are to use a Spotify ad campaign as part of their online arsenal, drawing further visitors to them across the Web.

Great thinking, and of course, the results for Obama in the States have been well documented already. Utilising online channels to push messages out there, engage with new audiences and grab interest is part of our core advocacy.

What will be interesting, however, is to see how traditional Conservative voters respond to the contemporary methods of communicating with them adopted by the Tories. After all, there are some voters who will only look at TV and newspapers, as they always have done, without considering online avenues.

In the final analysis, it is likely that more political battles will be fought and decided in the online arena, with social media playing an increasing role and influence.

We have seen this coming, and are huge fans of delivery online – whether it’s through web development, creative design, SEM or social media.