Recently I’ve noticed an influx into the market of web-based Facebook builder apps: services which allow non-techies to create custom Facebook pages or Facebook apps without needing to understand code or hire a developer. Having tried some first-hand, I thought I’d do a quick list of some of these tools to help you choose which might be right for you. As most of my clients are small biz and/or non-profit, I’m not including any of the big fancy ‘platform manager’ things which cost a lot: these are all available for free or a low fee (usually monthly pay-as-you-go).

Pagemodo

Best for: easy Welcome pages

Pagemodo is designed to be easy-peasy, and you really can create a nice looking custom landing page (Welcome tab) in just a few minutes. It’s free if you don’t mind Pagemodo branding, and if you pay as little as $6.25 per month, you can have up to 3 pages: either 3 different types of ‘tabs’ (eg. Twitter feed, Welcome tab & map page) – OR – if you manage 3 different brands on Facebook, you could have 1 custom ‘tab’ on each. You can also add a gateway which forces people to Like your page in order to have access to content (use sparingly!). Be warned though, the tool is a bit buggy and clunky, and the templates are a bit rigid design-wise.

Involver

Best for: integrating other social feeds & content

On Involver‘s free plan, you can use up to 2 of the Basic level apps, most of which are designed to pull content from other social sites into Facebook: Flickr photos, YouTube videos, Twitter feed, or RSS (eg your blog posts). There’s also a coupon app, as well as the ability to embed docs via Scribd (PDF, etc), and an iFrame maker which will allow you to embed any web page into a Facebook tab… but use this last one with caution as Facebook’s area is not as wide as most web pages, so you’ll ideally need a designer to make it look nice. If you need more than 2 apps or if you want their Pro apps (Polls, Signup forms, etc), then the price jumps up a lot to a whopping $99 per month (ouch!). I’d love to see them offering some middle ground in terms of pricing in future.

North Social

Best for: all-u-can-eat apps

North Social is the ‘buffet’ option: all the apps you want for 1 price. The price varies depending on how many Fans you have, starting at $20 per month for less than 1,000 Fans. The choice of apps is quite extensive, ranging from a few types of special offers and integrated shops useful for commercial businesses, to volunteering and donation useful for charities or garnering support for good causes, to the usual practical ones such as maps, photo galleries, embedded video, welcome pages and integrated Twitter or RSS feeds. North Social gives you many options to help build your fan base, but if you already have thousands of fans, it may not be the cheapest option: more than 5,000 fans and you’re looking at $50+ per month.

Wildfire

Best for: competitions & short-term campaigns

Wildfire‘s approach is a bit different from the others, as they price on a per-campaign basis. The fee starts from $5 + $0.99 per day for a basic campaign, but you’ll want to spend $25 + $2.99 per day if you want custom branding options. Wildfire has a range of different types of competitions, quizzes and contests, including contests where you can allow your fans to choose the winner. You could also use their ‘flash deal’ coupon option to create Groupon-style promotions. The downside to Wildfire is that they include other people’s campaigns in the confirmation email that gets sent to your fans who enter your own contest, which may not be the kind of thing you want to push on your fanbase.

Booshaka

Best for: Top Fans leaderboard

If you’d like to drive a little healthy competitive spirit among your Fans, you might want to look at Booshaka, as that’s their core offering: creating a hierarchical list of your fans based on their activity. Hitting right at the gamification sweet spot, the goal here is to increase interactions by employing game psychology, aiming at our basal human need to one-up each other in public On the paying plan, you can even add Foursquare-style badges to the mix, but sadly I can’t see their pricing and I must admit there’s a real shoestring start-up vibe on their site as some of their own site links don’t work or take you to ‘coming soon’ pages. Time to grow up guys.

This isn’t an extensive list, but these are just some of the tools I’ve tried and/or know about. If you have any similar tools that you have experience with, please do leave a comment as I am always interested to find other ways of helping people encourage engagement through social media.

With more and more companies using social media for business, it’s increasingly important for businesses to have a set of guidelines or rules of engagement which can ensure that employees know what to do when interacting online. It’s equally important for managers and superiors to have these guidelines in place, as they may not be accustomed to the style of communication that social media requires. Too often companies jump on board with Twitter or Facebook, using these channels purely to send out marketing messages and press releases. And then they are surprised when the results aren’t there. I ask: “Would you tune into a TV channel that was 100% commercials?” I think not. So it’s no surprise that people are tuning out these constant sales messages.

Here’s my take on the rules of engagement for staff whose job it is to interact with people through social media and online communities. It may be their sole job, or part of their job. My version below is made up in large part from a great O’Reilly article in Forbes and AMP3 PR, who have done a great job in creating a working policy for their own employees – a big shout out to them!

Guidelines for Social Media in the Workplace

We expect everyone who participates in online commentary / social media to understand and to follow these simple but important guidelines. These guidelines cover all social media and online community platforms including but not limited to:

• Social networking (such as Facebook, Foursquare, LinkedIn)
• Micro-blogging sites (such as Twitter)
• Blogs (including company and external blogs, as well as comments)
• Video/photo sharing sites (such as Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo)
• Online communities (forums, discussion boards)
• Collaborative documents / wikis (such as Wikipedia)
• Review sites (such as Qype, WeLoveLocal)

Social Web Guidelines for Employees

Pick & mix.
Spend some time researching and reading up on various sites before deciding where it makes sense for you to spend the majority of your time online. You can’t be everywhere, so pick sites which rank well and are well-visited by the company’s target audience and/or connected to our core business. Then, feel free to mix in a smaller portion of less-popular sites or blogs when comments or topics warrant it.

Look before you leap.
Read, read and read some more. Learn the landscape and individual style of conversations on that particular site – every site has its own (usually unwritten) rules and quirks. The quickest way to make a fool of yourself or get banned from a site is to dive in without first understanding the lay of the land.

Listen before you talk.
Before entering any conversation, understand the context. Whom are you speaking to? Is this a forum for “trolls and griefers?” Is there a good reason for you to join the conversation? If your answer is yes, then follow these practices when engaging online:

Say who you are.
Always be transparent about who you are and who you represent. Use your real name, identify who you work for and what your role is. You can disclose this on your About page or bio, and please also indicate that your opinions do not represent official positions of the company. If possible, include a link to the company website in this page and/or your signature – but only if this is allowed on that particular site. Use your best judgment to determine when this might be appropriate.

Show your personality.
You weren’t hired to be an automaton. Be conversational while remaining professional. Bring your own personal flavour and experiences to your postings: be YOU first and foremost, and an employee of the company secondly. Part of the whole point in having you communicate online in a work capacity is to provide a real, human face to the business.

Add value, not noise.
Social media is about conversations, personal advice, recommendations and building relationships. It is not a sales channel or means for distributing press releases. Remember the 80/20 rule of thumb: 80% of your conversations should be about general topics relevant to the business and/or your own experiences, only 20% should be about the company’s products or services.

Build a following.
Promote yourself by finding and sharing information that will be interesting to your friends and followers and useful for them to share. Become a trusted part of the online community – not only by creating your own content, but sharing others’. Establish relationships online with other people you respect and trust.

Be responsive.
If someone responds to something you’ve said, be responsive and follow-up quickly. If you say something in error, don’t delete it, simply go back and update it with the correct information.

Know you’re always “On”.
You represent the company at all times and you must assume that your social media usage is visible to customers, managers and prospects. Be careful what and with whom you are sharing. Keep in mind that while we all have the occasional work frustration, Facebook and Twitter are not the best venues in which to air them as those comments are available to your customers and coworkers.

Be respectful.
Respond to ideas, not personalities. Don’t question motives, use profanity or demeaning language, or make remarks that are off topic or offensive. Always demonstrate respect for others’ points of view, even when they’re not offering the same in return. Take the high road: never pick fights and don’t say anything you wouldn’t say to someone’s face and in the presence of others. If you are sharing a negative experience or commenting on a brand or individual, please try to do so in a constructive way.

Don’t expect perfection.
Do expect to make newbie mistakes, and don’t expect everyone to love you. No matter how nice, calm or inoffensive you are, and no matter how much research you do, there will be times when you will trip up and say something unpopular. It’s OK – shake it off and just remember that how you handle this is more important than the misstep itself.

Have full disclosure.
If you are writing an advertorial or other sponsored content – or if you are contracting others to post on the company’s social properties in exchange for money – make sure there’s a clear distinction between the normal / free content and any paid content. Today’s web users are savvy people, and hiding paid activities are a quick way to a bad online reputation.

Know your facts and always give proper credit.
It’s OK to quote others, but never attempt to pass off someone else’s language, photography, or other information as your own. Always give proper attribution (by linkbacks, public mentions, re-tweets and so on). All copyright, privacy, and other laws that apply offline apply online as well. Be sure to credit your sources when posting a link or information gathered from another source.

Think ahead.
Everything you say can (and likely will) be used in the court of public opinion–forever.  Be smart about protecting yourself, your privacy, and the company’s confidential information. What you publish is widely accessible and will be around for a long time so consider the content carefully. Google has a long memory.

Be in it for the long haul.
Don’t expect instant fame, audiences or popularity: building a trusted online presence takes time.

If you respond to a problem, you own it.
If you become the point of contact for a customer or employee complaint, stay with it until it is resolved.

Play nice.
We encourage you to connect with other employees and affiliates online. In doing so, we ask you to remember that sharing personal information about co-workers may affect them inside as well as outside of the office. All standard HR policies apply to interactions between colleagues across the social web.

__________________________

If the above policy is not quite what your own company needs, have a look at this list of social media policies from a huge range of types of organisation, from non-profits through to large corporates. Or indeed check the online database of social media policies.

Twitter users who have custom messages in their Twitter backgrounds are suddenly seeing their messages chopped off or no longer visible at all, thanks to the wider width of the page on the new Twitter layout. The old width of the Twitter page had been static pretty much since day 1, and millions of people customised their page backgrounds accordingly, using the extra space on the sides of the floating content panel to display marketing messages, web addresses, email addresses and more. The new Twitter design being gradually rolled out right now is much wider, meaning many messages and images that were previously visible are no more.

Variable width = 20-67% less visible background messages

To complicate matters further, the width of the new Twitter content panel is now variable depending on what resolution your monitor is set to. Users who have a monitor resolution of 1024 pixels wide (aprox 23% of the population*), can now only see a small 48pixel margin outside the main content panel, meaning any messages are pretty much hidden entirely. Previously, these users could see nearly 3times more of the background image (130 pixels).

A small majority of the population (28%) have their monitors set to 1280 pixel resolution. This is the width that most designers used when creating Twitter background images. They banked on the fact that users would see around 180 – 250 pixels worth of the background, depending on which browser they use, and how it’s set up. The bad news is that Twitter’s new content panel expands to a whopping 1040pixels wide if your monitor is set to 1280 resolution or above. This means that users can now only see a measly 120 pixels of the background image: a reduction of more than half on some browsers. And of course that’s just on one side: while most backgrounds were designed to show messages on the left side only, some clever designers used the right side border to show things, too.

Why did they do that?

I can understand why Twitter have made this move: resolutions are getting higher and higher, and 27% of the population have their monitors set at resolutions higher than 1280 wide. Twitter are designing for the future, when most of us will have high resolutions. But the annoying truth is that today, more than half of the people who view Twitter pages will see a lot less of your pretty custom background than they did before.

So how can I fix my Twitter background image?

What can you do if you are one of the millions who have a custom background that’s no longer being seen by half of your audience? The easiest way to fix (part of) the problem is to simply reduce the scale of your background until your important messages fit within a 120 pixel space on the left. This will mean that the 28% of people who use 1280 as their resolution can see it. Sadly, this doesn’t help the 23% who use 1024 resolution. It’s pretty unlikely that your font size will be visible if you scale down far enough for things to fit within the 48 pixels that 1024 users can see, so the only way to get around that issue is to make a new background image.

My top tips for backgrounds that work with the new Twitter design:

• Type your most important message vertically, within a 48 x 500 pixel space (measuring from the top left). Almost everyone will be able to see this. Your brand name, logo or URL should go here if you want the maximum number of people to be able to see it.
• Use the space up to 120 x 700 pixels to place secondary messages such as email address, blog address, cross promotions or anything else you want to convey.
• Make use of Twitter’s new translucent sidebar area on the right: remember that whatever is in the background will show through this transparent area (on non-IE browsers). This is a great place for large, impactful simple shapes such as emblems or logos. Don’t put text or anything small or fiddly on the right because it will look cluttered.
• Remember your high-res users by making a really wide image. You don’t need to put anything aside from simple colours on the far right, but make sure it ends gracefully (with a fade out or something). Also remember that high-res users will also see a lot more of the page vertically, too – ensure your coloured background stretches far enough vertically and doesn’t just end abruptly. NOTE: At present, it seems Twitter doesn’t like images larger that 2600 pixels wide, so it’s scaling things down when they are larger than that.
• Don’t put anything important in the far right or far bottom, but you can use this space for a bit of fun to give your high-res viewers a treat. If your monitor is set to a high resolution, have a look at my Twitter page to see what I mean.

With thanks to Stephen Fry and Pete Cashmore / Mashable… hope you don’t mind me using you as examples

*Monitor resolution statistics from W3Counter.

Updated 28 September following Hugh’s comment: removed scrolling background mention.

Tomorrow night I will be speaking about blogging at the June Women In Publishing event. I’ll be sharing some of my previous experiences coaching people on blogging, as well as sharing some tips & things to think about before you start, as well as common pitfalls and hurdles – such as dealing with comment spam, blog guilt, writer’s block and more. If you are interested in meeting women who work in all areas of publishing (writers, printers, editors, publishers, etc), fancy a drink and some casual networking, and/or want to know more about blogging, why not come along? Details are here.

I see this question being asked a lot, and I’ve realised this is akin to asking a stranger ‘Which vehicle should I buy?’. What’s the answer: Ferarri? Hatchback? Lorry? Bicycle? Motorcycle? Without knowing what you will use it for, it’s impossible to answer. And even if you tell me you want a family car to cart your kids around and run errands, the best answer depends on factors such as whether price is more important than fuel economy, whether you have 6-foot-tall teenagers or triplet toddlers, and ultimately, which one feels most comfortable to you when behind the wheel.

So the answer to ‘which tool’ has almost nothing to do with which tool is the ‘best’, and everything to do with what it is that you are trying to achieve, and with whom. The very words ‘online collaboration’ could have lots of different meanings:

• I want to share documents online, and let others edit them
• I want to have meetings online instead of travelling for face-to-face meetings
• I want to manage a project that has lots of remote stakeholders, and easily keep everyone up-to-date
• I want to be able to easily track all of the things my team and our external partners are working on together
• I want a central place where all the discussions and files about a project can be stored and accessed

and so on.

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of attending Netsquared‘s London NetTuesday meetup which was focused on online collaboration. A representative from Huddle (Andy, I think?) was there, and he did a good job of covering what are the potential benefits of online collaboration, as well as covering the main features available. I think Andy and I are in agreement that the best tool depends on many factors, so I’m going to summarise his and my tips on how to choose the best tool for your needs.

What is it that you are trying to achieve?

Are you trying to save time – if so, whose time? Increase a sense of unity within a team? Cut down on resource-heavy meetings? Stop things slipping through the cracks by centralising information? Move away from email? Any of these are valid goals, and it’s a good idea to make note of your aims before you even start looking for a product. Make sure you revisit this at every stage of the way to ensure you are still on track to achieving it.

What tasks/processes do you need to perform?

Make a list of all the actions you/your team need to do, and prioritise the list into essentials and nice-to-have. It’s important to be as specific as possible, and make sure you are listing human actions rather than technical functions. For example:

Good:
Ability for remote team members to communicate through text, not necessarily in real-time

Bad:
Online forum

Why? Because the former is open and could be achieved in different ways (forum, wiki, chat room, etc). Stating something like ‘online forum’ is limiting, and is a statement of the tool (I want a handsaw) rather than the need (I need to cut wood). Limiting yourself in this way closes doors that could have led to better ways of achieving the same thing.

Who will be using it?

Are they technical or non-techie, based in one location or geographically dispersed, mature Sales Directors or young Office Assistants, native English-speakers or not, enthusiastic communicators or isolated solo-flyers? Many tools available can perform the same function, but the best one for your needs depends on who will use it, and how often. Also be sure to think about how they will be trained on the tool.

Who will be supporting it?

Many people make the mistake in thinking that externally-hosted online tools need no user support within the business. I think this is the number one factor contributing to failure of the tool being used and adopted. While it’s true most of these tools are very easy to use, and most offer some level of support from the supplier, you should always factor in having someone act as user support within the organisation. This person needs to act as the point-person for questions, training, adoption & embedding. They don’t have to be technical – tech questions can usually be referred on to the supplier – but they do have to be patient, good communicators, and pro-active. In large organisations, it pays to have a ‘champion’ like this in each department, with one overall administrator/super-champion.

What is the scale / duration of your project?

If you just need something for a few team members working on a short, fixed-term project, you can afford to choose a tool without much research aside from the above. However, if you are looking to create a permanent extra/intranet or manage a long-term programme with many stakeholders, you should consider going through a full evaluation process, including setting up trial accounts and gathering feedback on a few products before making your decision.

What is your budget?

The costs of online collaboration tools range from free to several thousands of pounds. The more expensive ones are not always ‘better’, but they do tend to come with greater levels of tech support… and often, greater levels of complexity that you may or may not need. But don’t be put off by free/cheap fees: many online tools operate on a volume basis so you might be surprised to find complex, feature-rich products even at the lowest price point.

How quickly do you need it?

Many tools can be set up within a few mouse clicks, while others will require installation and configuration. Weigh up the benefits of quick setup on an entirely external server, versus those of having something installed that your tech support team can have access to. How will the data be backed up? Can we survive if the tool is temporarily unavailable due to maintenance? How easy is it to get our data in and out? Or do we just need to get on with it NOW?

Do you have other systems to consider?

Would it be beneficial for your online collaboration tool to link in with Outlook, Google Calendar, LinkedIn or Facebook? Do you have existing internal data storage systems that will need to feed into (or out from) your new online collaboration environment – how will this happen, and is it even possible? Can you achieve what you want by simply changing the way we use existing tools or bolting on new modules, rather than bringing another different tool into the mix? It’s worth bearing these important questions in mind because the answers can have long-term ramifications.

I hope the above will help you in evaluating which tool is best for you. In a future post, I will try to mention a few ‘best of breed’ tools that you might want to look at for various different online collaboration needs. Remember, the best way to determine which car is best for you is to take it on a test-drive: no amount of good advice can replace putting yourself behind the wheel.

Last week I popped along to see a screening of Ivo Gormley’s documentary Us Now, presented by my old colleagues at NESTA. Not only was I curious to see the film, but I was also curious to see what was happening in the whole ‘social networking’ strand of NESTA’s Connect programme, as some potentially cool stuff seemed to be brewing just as I was leaving my job there.

Although I didn’t get much of an insight into the programme’s projects and output, I did enjoy Rohan Gunatillake‘s intro into the film, especially the tag clouds he had made based on the first names and employers of who had registered for tickets (no surprise that ‘Miko’ was a tiny speck in the cloud, dwarfed by ‘Paul’ and ‘Sarah’!). Rohan is the new member of NESTA Connect who is looking after the Web Connect side of things. I look forward to finding out more about what Rohan has in mind for NESTA.

The film itself was an hour-long series of interviews and case studies on various social media projects, based mainly in the UK. The intention of the film was to demonstrate how social media is not just a side activity people use to waste time and gab with their mates, but that the very nature of exposing connections and allowing for easier connection and collaboration between individuals could have a profound impact on society as a whole. Ivo Gormley introduced the film by stating:

more people can say more things to more people than ever before

- and there’s no way something as big as that can’t have an impact. I agree – there’s no denying this has had huge impact on the way business, governments and individuals now communicate. Transparency is now more critical than being ‘on message’; timeliness is now more important than dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. This was touched on in the film, but the core messages of the film were about connectivity, participation and trust.

I was glad to see some case studies I hadn’t already heard of, and I particularly liked the inclusion of an offline case study: that of Morecambe Council, who decided to let the town citizens choose how to spend £20,000 of taxpayer money on a project of their choosing. The projects ranged from improving playground facilities, to cleaning up the churchyard, to building new track for the model railway. Each project had a live 5-minute pitch, and the audience (town citizens) could vote on who got the money – a real return to town hall meetings of not-so-long ago.

It would be interesting to see if Gormley would have made a different film today, knowing what we now know about the Obama campaign and his commitment to returning power to the people. I think an interesting parallel could be drawn between the Morecambe case study and Obama’s decision to empower his constituency to canvas for votes using their own language in their own time. I think examples such as these set a precedent in which people expect to be involved, and once that’s set, it’s hard to go back to the old top-down ways. It’s this increasing expectation of participation that will create lasting, real change. The more we can collaborate, edit, re-write, comment on, vote, rate, review, participate, upload, remix, mash-up, link up and create content online, the more we will come to expect it as a baseline part of the deal, whether online or off.

It’s hard to convey the sense of hope and positivity the film embued, so I suggest you check it out for yourself. There’s loads of clips and info over here on the Us Now site if you can’t make it to a screening. And if you fancy seeing what impact the film had on the audience, Rohan has put together a Slideshare deck made up of people’s written response to the film on the night. Warm feelings just in time for Christmas!

An Interview with Helen Keegan

Mobile marketer Helen Keegan aka Technokitten has been blogging since the days of yore, and has been working in marketing and retail for even longer. It seems a natural fit that she’s now combining her passion for social media with her passion for fashion by doing some rather interesting online projects with Bicester Village, a chic outlet shopping village near Oxford.

I had the opportunity to visit Bicester Village a while ago as part of a bloggers’ day, in which Helen used word of mouth and tools like Twitter to invite a wide range of bloggers to come along and check out the place, with the hopes of getting a bit of blog coverage. While there, I thought I’d ask Helen about this and her other work with Bicester Village.

So tell me a little about today (bloggers’ day)…

This is the first one, an experiment, to see what bloggers think of Bicester Village and to see what kind of coverage might come out. We’ve invited some people because they have fashion & lifestyle blogs, but we also wanted to reach out to bloggers whose audience was ‘normal people’, because ‘normal people’ go shopping, and we wanted to reach people that other blogs or media might not reach. This is a small experiment; if it works we want to do larger events next year.

Were you inspired by the Stormhoek campaign or other similar ideas?

I took part in the Stormhoek campaign as a blogger, I got my bottle of wine and everything… it’s certainly been interesting to follow the results, but ultimately we want to reach beyond the blogosphere, beyond the influencers, to reach real people. I don’t know how far the Stormhoek campaign reached Joe Bloggs as opposed to Joe Blogger.

Have you been involved in other projects similar to this blogger’s day, aside from Bicester Village?

When working on a mobile launch last year, we persuaded the client to steer away from the traditional press launch and more into a blogger’s outreach event. Instead of a fancy press junket, we hired a room in a central London hotel for the day, and bloggers could drop in for tea & cakes and a chat. It was that relaxed, there were no 1-1 interviews, you could just come and have a chat with the CEO or the tech team. That worked brilliantly well for them, as the people who came were actually enthusiasts, rather than journalists who just turn up because they have to, because it’s their job and they have to tick the box saying they went. Sometimes for these journos to write something meaningful about it, it’s a step to far, but if you’ve got a blogger who’s enthusiastic about that particular interest, and who’s flattered and excited to have been invited at all, to have been recognised for their enthusiasm, I think you get much more careful copy out of it. The result was that the coverage was very different from the usual regurgitated press release, you had people analysing it and covering it in different ways. With apologies to the really good journalists out there, and there are some really good ones, there are also a lot of people who just rewrite the press release, and there’s not a lot of value-add there. I think where bloggers are more interesting, is that they want to add some value, they want to do something a bit different and have their personal take on it.

Can you talk a little bit about the handbag project, which is another strand of what you’re doing with Bicester Village?

Yes, we’re really excited about this one, it’s thrilling. Basically, we wanted to promote the 30 new stores that have just been built here at Bicester Village, and to get pre-December traffic. We wanted to offer people a 10% discount for registering their interest on a website. We started thinking about what we wanted the website to be, and eventually came up with the idea of ‘what’s in my bag’ or what’s in my handbag. It turns out one of the management team does handbag therapy, where she analyses people’s handbags, so there’s a real element of psychoanalysis going on.

We have been working with people at Tuttle Club in London to seed the campaign, and got people to empty out their bags and take pictures of them, and get them onto the website, to help people understand what was expected. And last week Debbie Percy who analyses the handbags, did some live video analysis of handbags at Tuttle and on the street. The reason for the video is so people understand what the handbag analysis involves, so they wouldn’t feel too scared or shy to have it done. Now every week, Debbie chooses a few of the photos that have been uploaded to the website to analyse. Everyone who registers on the site to either upload photos or vote on handbag photos gets a 10% discount, and we’ve already had fantastic success with it. The results so far are already way above any promotion I’ve ever done before, in terms of actual redemptions of the vouchers. Not just people registering and downloading them, but actually turning up and using them.

How have you gone about setting targets and success measures for the campaigns?

For the handbags, it’s about number of registrations, numbers of photos, and ultimately, about numbers of vouchers redeemed – and we’re definitely on target there. For the blogger’s day, “I don’t know” is the honest answer, because I don’t know what kinds of content or coverage we may get out of it. It’s only after we know what kinds of coverage we might get, through Facebook, blogs or other, that I can start to think about how we might gauge that in terms of success criteria.

How has your client felt about going into this kind of uncharted territory without having ideas of measures in advance?

We know we want to have measurements, and this is an experiment to see what kinds of things we should measure in this area for the future. It’s quite easy to measure something like the handbag promotion, because there are hard figures. But with blogging, it’s more esoteric. It’s more about media coverage, but what we haven’t yet worked out is how to weight those different types of coverage and different audiences. I don’t think anybody’s really cracked it. If someone says ‘I went to Bicester Village’ and it’s seen by 1000 people, it’s worth more than if someone writes a really in-depth article that’s only seen by 10. So it’s quite difficult to do that weighting. And moving forward, I’m hoping to work on some blogs for all the different villages, so that will be part & parcel of working out what the actual community criteria are. But the client has been really brilliant about wanting to experiment, and they are committed to getting some learning out of it.

How does this kind of marketing compare with Bicester Village’s other more traditional marketing?

We’ll be comparing registrations from the handbag site to registrations from their email marketing, but we’re using email to promote the handbag site as well, because not all of their audience are Web 2.0 clued up. Email marketing may seem a little old fashioned, but to people who aren’t accustomed to getting 150 emails in their inbox every day, it’s really nice to get an email newsletter, so we have to be careful not to alienate people by using different media for different audiences.

Which leads to my next question: do you think the people who are using the handbag site really represent the average Bicester Village customer, or do you think they are more the usual (Web 2.0) suspects?

Well, at first I thought they might have been ‘the usual suspects’ but so many of them have come to redeem their voucher. At Bicester Village, there are more than 120 shops, ranging from high end designers to high street, so it’s very difficult to say who the core customer is. Also there’s this myth that people who are interested in designer fashion and luxury items don’t do digital. Well, that’s just not true. But there is that myth in the luxury goods world that digital isn’t for them, so we’re trying to dispell those myths and challenge some of those perceptions.

I look forward to hearing more about the results of these social experiments, and will be following the developments so I can keep you posted. At the end of the interview, Helen & I had a nice chat about the current state of mobile marketing, web marketing and social media, so I’m thinking I might edit that down into a nice lil audio file for your aural pleasure

Whether you are a business, organisation or individual, this question can often be the first hurdle in starting to blog. There are so many blogging platforms out there, it can be confusing to decide which one is right for you. Last night at the first London NetTuesday Meetup, a group of bloggers, possible future bloggers, techies and non-profit peeps interesting in learning more about blogging met up to help wade through the confusion.

The answer really depends on your circumstances and needs. Each tool has its strengths & weaknesses, and the lovely people at Techsoup have made this handy chart as part of their review of seven popular blogging platforms, to help you match your needs to a blogging tool. Bear in mind this chart/article is from 2006, and there are new kids on the block (such as Tumblr or Habari) as well as other types of online tools that now have a blogging add-on (such as Community Server, ThoughtFarmer and Confluence)* just to make things more confusing!

The good news is that the Big 4 (WordPress, Blogger, MovableType and TypePad) are still going strong, so you can still use this chart as a base, as long as you remember that there may have been upgrades and changes to the services/products since the chart was made.

I’ll also give my own two cents about these in a moment…

But first, a little poll: last night’s moderator, Amy Sample Ward,  asked the group what platform they used, and it was no surprise that a majority of people in the room used WordPress. It’s free, extendable, has a great support community, so it’s no surprise it’s the most popular tool. A substantial proportion of people last night had started on another platform, but had moved to WordPress in the end. It’s pretty common to do this, so I thought I’d stick in a quick word about moving from one tool to another. In most cases, you can move your blog from one environment to another, but it’s not going to be painless, so it’s a good idea to think about what you really need from a blog and choose the right tool from the beginning. There’s a great article on ProBlogger about choosing the right blogging platform for you, so have a read through that if you want a detailed checklist.

As for me, I’m just going to summarise my thoughts in a nutshell, with some analogies to get you thinking:

Blogger

Blogging with training wheels

Great for new bloggers, especially people who already have a Google account (Gmail, iGoogle, Google Cal, etc). Because it integrates with your whole Google ‘world’, it’s free, easy to set up and requires no technical know-how to get blogging. There are limitations, but basic bloggers who need no frills should be fine on Blogger. I recommend Blogger for personal blogs rather than work ones.

Movable Type

The swiss-army knife of blogging

Great for companies who want a flexible platform that you can install and run multiple blogs or entire websites on, and don’t mind paying for it. You can effectively replace your content management system with Movable Type, but you’ll need a capable tech team/person/consultant to get it running the way you want. Amy suggested that it can be hard to change once it’s been set up, so make sure you plan well at the start.

TypePad

Package-holiday blogging

There are different levels (costs) of TypePad packages that offer different levels of customisation, numbers of authors and amounts of storage. It’s a hosted service, so there’s no real tech skill required to get started. TypePad is a good choice for companies/organisations who don’t have the desire or internal tech-nous to host blogs on their own servers, but still want the option of running multiple blogs cheaply, quickly and easily. However, like a package holiday, you may not be able to easily add extras to the basic package.

WordPress.com (Hosted version)

Stickle-brick blogging

The hosted version of WordPress is easy to use, with no technical skill to set it up, and there are hundreds of ready-made designs (themes) for you to choose from. The main thing to remember about WordPress, is that you bolt on bits to give you extra functionality or customisation. Some of these bits are easier to bolt on than others, and there are some overall limitations to the hosted version of WordPress. I recommend WordPress.com for smaller organisations or companies who want a basic, professional-looking blog for free, and may want to have multiple authors on a single blog (not multiple separate blogs).

WordPress.org (Installed version)

Blogging with Lego

The main differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org is that the latter is installed instead of hosted, there are thousands of different ready-made designs (that you can tweak if you know how), and there are loads of different add-ons that you can plug into your blog to give you added functionality. Just like Lego, the combinations and creativity is seemingly endless. The downside is that you need some basic technical knowledge in order to get the most out of the installed version of WordPress, but you can find web hosts that offer 1-click installation so you can get up & running without needing to install anything yourself. I recommend WordPress for organisations or people who are already using other web tools or social media, and want easy integration – for example, Google Analytics, Flickr, iCal, etc – or anyone that knows they’ll be blogging for the long-haul. WordPress itself is free, as are most design themes & plugins, but if you don’t already have hosting, you’ll have to pay for that.

WordPress Mu (Installed)

Toybox full of Lego

The only difference between WordPress Mu and WordPress.com is that Mu allows you to run multiple separate blogs off the same WordPress installation – and you can set different levels of permission on each, too. Everyone can play!

* A Final Note

Lots of people ask whether they should set up & use a separate tool for blogging if they are already using other ‘2.0′ web tools, such as wikis or community sites that have blogging add-ons. It really depends on a lot of things, such as:

• Are we willing to compromise flexibility or functionality for the ease of having it all in one place?
• Would we be splitting our audience’s focus too much by having things on different platforms?
• How well-developed is my wiki/forum/intranet/community/CMS platform’s blogging tool? How easy is it to use? How well-supported is it? How does it compare to standalone blog tools?
• Is it really cheaper to stick with one integrated system; what is the real cost (factoring in user frustration, time, etc)?
• If I use separate platforms, can they integrate in some way – through RSS, for example? Is that enough?

Remember that you can hammer a nail with a monkey wrench, but you may not get the best result, it may be a lot harder… and you may look like an idiot doing it!

The main thing to remember overall, is that no blogging tool will make you a good blogger. You have to start blogging for the right reasons, with the right voice, and in the right environment – something I’ll cover in my next post.

As Bebo is the UK & Ireland’s most popular social network, it’s no surprise there are many different ways that businesses and organisations can tap into Bebo as a means of engaging fans, spreading the word and just plain entertaining people. There are currently 40million user profiles on Bebo, and it has been the seeding ground for some groundbreaking developments in online communication, perhaps best known for onlilne drama series such as Kate Modern and Sofia’s Diary. The fact that Kate Modern won a BAFTA and one of the most popular episodes of Kate Modern received 1.5million views (when the Big Brother final TV episode that same year only received 900,000 views) is a testament to the success of the platform.

The most common and simplest way to market on Bebo is to create a profile page for your product or brand. Hundreds of these pages exist, but I wonder what percentage of them are ever actively in use. One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to hurriedly stick something up and then realise that they don’t have the resources to actually do anything with the page, explore Bebo and identify potential ‘friends’, or worse of all – respond to requests. Creating a page on Bebo is the easy part; managing the replies, requests, enquiries – and let’s face it – spam, is quite another. But by far, the most successful profile pages on Bebo actually offer something back to the community. Freebies, contests, fun games or useful widgets are sure to win you more brownie points than simply shoving a marketing message up on a profile page and expecting Bebo-ers to engage with it. No one wants to engage with an ad.

The Bebo guy* speaking at ad:tech  mentioned a good example of how to do it right: Fanta ran a contest on their profile page, in which every Friday at 5pm, they would choose someone from their community of ‘friends’ and get their profile pic on the main Bebo homepage for 15 minutes. Their profile pic would also appear on the big ‘neon’ at Picadilly Circus for 15 minutes at the same time. Naturally, the winners were more than thrilled to tell their friends to check out Bebo’s homepage or the lights at Picadilly Circus. The Bebo member gets to have their 15 minutes of fame, Fanta gets some free viral promotion, Bebo gets more clicks on their homepage (and thus more ad views): everyone’s a winner.

Another way to tap into social networks is to harness the energy of your existing fanatical fans. There are hundreds of unofficial fan pages on Bebo and other social networks, set up by regular people who just like whatever it is. It all started when Bebo added a module that allowed members to create fan pages for their favourite bands, but this soon evolved into fan pages for just about every product, service or brand out there. Can you believe that the unoffical Tesco fan club page on Bebo has over 62,000 members, and more than 10,000 members subscribe to the blog updates? Believe it or not, it’s true. And that’s just one of the dozens of unofficial Tesco fan clubs – on just one social network. And it’s not a conventionally exciting brand, either.

When Top Gear decided they wanted to get into Bebo, they noticed that they already had more than 90,000 fans on several Top Gear fan club pages. So rather than compete with these, they decided to involve the 3 guys from Wales who set up the first and largest Top Gear Appreciation Society on Bebo. They decided to give these guys all the photos, videos etc and just let them get on with it. To me, that’s the best way of marketing on Bebo: to let it stay in the community, and be run by the community. These 3 guys would have kept doing what they were doing anyway, so why not let them feel closer to the brand in this way. Furthermore, the folks over at Top Gear only need to be marginally involved rather than running the whole thing and moderating the page, so it’s a no-brainer, really.

Marketing on Bebo or any other social network isn’t for every company, and success rates will vary wildly. But there are definitely opportunities to be had, and I think it’s a much smarter move to tap into existing social networks than to try to build your own. People are far more likely to engage with your company or organisation from within a familiar framework than to sign up for yet another username & password on a community website based around a brand. Would YOU read and post on a toothpaste website’s forum? Don’t expect your customers to, either.

This post is Part I of Thoughts from this year’s ad:tech London conference. More to come as soon as I can type ‘em.

* Possibly Mark Charkin? Ordinarily I would have gladly referenced his name, but he was a replacement for the published speaker, and he’s not listed on the ad:tech site. Let me know if you know who this was.

I’ve been meaning to write this post since Gordon Rae tipped me off to this article, as I’m not 100% convinced that large enterprises make “superb test beds for social software”. Sure, there are many characteristics of large enterprises which make this true: high volume of users, geographic distances that make other means of communication pale in comparison, likelihood of cross-team projects that require collaboration, and common interests/areas of focus between people in similar roles in different parts of the business – not to mention the fact that it’s a closed system (environment). But there are also a few factors that make the opposite true.

Large enterprises are slow-moving beasts, and they usually have existing systems that they’ve spent hundreds of thousands of pounds building, configuring and implementing. Any new software project will usually need to integrate or otherwise link up with these legacy systems, and that’s something that not many social tools on the market today can do easily. Furthermore, the business will have spent a lot of time developing relationships with the suppliers of these legacy systems, and it can often be easier (or seemingly more cost-effective) to go back to an existing supplier when faced with a need for new functionality. In many cases, businesses will take whatever’s presented to them by these trusted suppliers rather than waste time exploring whether or not the offered solution is the best tool for the users.

Even more challenging is the circumstance when social software is supposed to replace existing system(s). The business has invested so much in these systems, that it can be very tricky to disentangle the legacy tool, and incredibly complex to figure out how exactly to migrate across to the new one. Plus there’s the burden of training & support. And funnily enough, there’s also the cost factor. Ironically, most social software costs a fraction of what large enterprises pay for enterprise tools, and it’s exactly this that is so off-putting to budget-holders. Most of them have been spending 6 figures on things for so long that they think anything with such a low price tag must be gimmicky, dubious or unfit for purpose.

In a large enterprise, it’s the IT Manager/Director’s job to support the infrastructure, keep the data safe, and ensure technology in the business is robust and reliable. These guys aren’t supposed to take big risks, and that’s just what many of them see when presented with most social web tools. It’s much safer for them to stick with the Microsofts of the world than to embrace some new kid on the block whose reputation is only a few years old at best. The world of “permanent beta” just doesn’t fly when it comes to large corporates; these guys need solid, tested, guaranteed secure, guaranteed working tools. Because if it all goes wrong, it’s their ass on the line.

The formal style of management is also a factor in large enterprises. There tend to be several layers of management in these organisations,  and each of these will have their own KPIs and goals. It can be hard to sell in the value of seemingly “fluffy” benefits like having a more connected workplace or better collaboration and knowledge-sharing. Unless it’s something that can be easily measured with cold hard facts or slots nicely into the SMART system of performance management, it’s difficult to get buy in from all the necessary stakeholders. And without their support, you can rarely introduce new tools into the environment – or see them succeed if you do manage to get in there. When a worker’s manager thinks “all this social web stuff is a waste of time”, she’s much less likely to spend time filling out her profile page, commenting on internal blogs or tagging documents.

I’m not saying that social software doesn’t belong in large enterprise; in fact I strongly believe the opposite. But all of the above means that social software rarely stands a chance of getting through the door in the first place. And getting through the door is just one hurdle: the biggest one is often the corporate culture itself. Social software has the potential to be revolutionary, and can change the very fabric of the underlying corporate culture, moving some businesses from a ‘silo-ed’, one-way, up-the-chain communication style, to an open, networked, free-flowing one. This cannot happen overnight, and it cannot happen without active engagement from people up and down the chain. And it’s the scale that’s problematic: it’s a lot harder to turn an aircraft carrier than it is to turn a rowboat, especially when you’re dealing with an intangible thing like attitudes and internal culture.

I’m optimistic that we are at the start of a sea-change in large enterprise, as the Baseline article indicates – but it’s going to take a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get us there.