I have received far more ‘phone calls and emails about integrating social marketing than I did in a comparable time span last year and my feeling is that this is the year of the tipping point, when most businesses acknowledge that they could do more themselves to build relationships with their clients and customers – which of course, it the basis of social marketing (whether it takes place on line or in the physical world).

As many of you will know, I’m a big fan of Wordpress as a content managment system for websites and in the course of promoting some workshops I’ll be running over the next couple of months, I was asked what the business case for using wordpress might be.  Naturally I responded by email, but then I realised I had the beginings of a great blog post too  And you can find out the business benefits of using wordpress by reading that self same blog post.

I’ve also been keeping up the LinkedIn Made Easy website too – sure I didn’t quite reach the dizzy heights of 200,000 e-books sold, but I did sell over 200 and so I decided to keep the project running  as a blog about personal branding (one of the big buzz phrases of the next couple of years I’d imagine).  You can still buy LinkedIn Made Easy from the site, and 40% of the profits will still be donated to charity.  Next month I’m hoping to be able to let you all find out where exactly the money already raised during the challenge went to, I’m just waiting for it all to come in at the moment and it seems to be taking a bit longer than anticipated.

Michelle Fischer and I also completed our online survey about the use of Social Media in the Recruitment industry and you can now download a copy of the social media and recruitment report we produced.  I’m also pleased to say that the prize of a bottle of champagne went to Bill Boorman.  Just in case anyone thought we might have cheated, the winning email address was drawn out the envelope by Laura McHarrie at the January Chines BXC meeting.

Two Day, INTENSIVE Weekend Workshops Coming Up

• Business Blogging Bootcamp – TWO Day Intensive Workshop – 27 and 28th February 2010
• Wordpress Training & Development TWO Day Intensive Workshop – 6 and 7 March 2010
• Marketing for Authors TWO Day Intensive Workshop

Upcoming Half Day Seminar/Workshops

• Practical Search Engine Optimisation Made Easy – Half Day Workshop – 24 February 2010
• Social Networking for Business Made Easy – Half Day Workshop – 24 February 2010

Next Presentations

• Presentation to Dorset Open Commerce on LinkedIn – 2nd February 2010
• Presentation on The Business of Social Enterprise to Fish on Toast at Southampton University – 18th February 2010
• Presentation on Twitter for Business to the Hampshire e-Commerce Group – 9th March 2010
• Linking in with LinkedIn – Presentation to Dorset Junior Chamber – 13 April 2010

That is not to say, of course, that in some quarters a lot of ground is already being gained by those innovative enough to take the plunge and embrace the changes that are taking place.

Some of the main findings included:

• Despite the vast amounts of money spent on advertising the availability of radio for rescruitment – only 3% of our respondents had used in the last 12 months
• Social media was 6% MORE popular than traditional advertising
• Almost 70% of the respondents reported that their cost per hire was less than £1000
• Unsurprisingly perhaps, this reflects the reduced costs were cited as the biggest drivers towards the use of Social Media

I hope that’s given you an appetite for more, and if so why not download the complete Social Media in Recruitment Report now.

Laura McHarrie of the Brilliant BusinessXchange drew out the winning email address in front of the entire BXC audience.

That was definitely one of the those questions that makes you stop and think before replying.  When I did reply, I sent back an email with 15 business benefits (in my opinion, you may have others or even counter arguements) which I’ve listed below:-

1. It’s free software that will help you build a professional looking and easy to manage website
2. You can extend the basic installation through the use of plugins that cover virtually every requirement ever known to man (or woman), including forums, event calendars, e-commerce, membership sites, online learning, directories
3. Most plugins are free to use, occasionally you may want to pay for some that are particularly useful or relevant
4. It is easy to update, maintain and amend the software
5. It is business standard software, used by lots of large companies for part of their websites: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/, http://blog.us.playstation.com/, http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/home/index.html
6. It is 80% of the way there for SEO – in other words, you can concentrate on the message and words without having to worry about the rest of it as it does it for you
7. You can easily manage multiple users with different access requirements
8. It operates in wysiwyg mode for most functions.  But if you want to get into the programming you can do so as it is completely open source
9. It integrates easily with all sorts of other software and online systems
10. It works very well with screen readers so there is accesible to the visually impaired (although this does depend on the theme you use)
11. You can make the changes you need at a time to suit yourself with no need to get a third party involved if you don’t want to
12. It’s powerful content management allows you to keep your data and design separate, thereby reducing risk of problems.
13. It handles 1000’s of concurrent users easily – I know, I have a couple of hundred thousand users every month on the hysterectomy association website
14. You can creates permalinks – custom links to the various pages for SEO purposes whilst many content management systems don’t do this easily
15. It allows you to engage and interact with your readers through the comments system

My prediction for 2010 is that this will be the year that social marketing really hits the mainstream as businesses realise the impact that they can have if they build the right relationships with their current and potential customers.  For those of you that were following what I was doing on whoselinked.com, you will know that I started writing about the importance of personal branding and this fits right in with the whole concept of relationship marketing.  You can read all the blog posts about personal branding on the whoselinked.com website.

My first piece of news is, however, all about how my 30 day challenge to raise £400k for charity in 30 days.  Well … you could say that it was less than successful in many ways, but in others it was a huge globabl success for me personally.  Although I didn’t raise the full amount I wanted to being just £399,600 short   I did raise over £400 for the two charities that actually deigned to get in touch with me.  I also decided to continue the challenge ad-infinitum as well, after several wise people informed me that 30 days just wasn’t long enough to gain the momentum needed for the networks to take effect.  I learnt a huge amount though and did have many great successes along the way, and you can find out more in my LinkedIn Made Easy challenge update.

Social Media in Recruitment – Survey Update

The survey that Michelle Fischer of Creative Leadership and I were running into the use of the social media in recruitment completed just before Christmas and some initial findings are now available to read.  We will be posting the complete survey results very soon and if you would like to receive a copy please do email me and let me know.  We will also be revealing the lucky winner of the bottle of champagne.

Knowing that Personal Brand, Social Media and Relationship Marketing are all going to be BIG news in the coming year, I have confirmed that I will be running a number of different workshops, training courses and seminars over the coming months to help businesses make the very best (and easiest) use of the opportunities that they present.

• Social Networking for Business Made Easy,  26 January 2010 @ 9.30 – 12.30am – BOOK NOW
• Practical Search Engine Optimisation Made Easy, 26 January 2010 @ 1.30 – 4.30 – BOOK NOW

Each sessions costs just £35 and every attendee will go away with a useful ‘how to’ guide to the subjects covered in the workshop.  Why not bring you wireless laptop along too – we’ll be doing some practical exercises to get you started and you can do them on paper OR on your laptop!

Business Blogging Bootcamp

This is advance notice of a two day weekend workshop to take place at the end of February 2010 which will be YOUR opportunity to grab new clients, keep your existing ones engaged and build YOUR personal brand in to the bargain.  Limited places are available because of the in-depth nature of the work.

Wordpress Training and Development Weekend

This is advance notice of a two day weekend workshop taking place to teach you everything you need to know about using wordpress software as a content management system.  This TWO DAY WordPress training course will provides a you with a comprehensive hands-on guide to using WORDPRESS to set up and maintain a website or blog.  WordPress is a popular open-source application which allows users with little or no knowledge of web design and programming to build professional, standards-compliant sites. Our WordPress training course does not require delegates to have any previous WordPress experience.

With the regular upgrades the core of Wordpress is regularly modified and updated to reflect current trends, making it simple and easy for everyone to use and administer.  This TWO day workshop is designed to take the Wordpress beginner through the process of setting up and maintaining a Wordpress managed website or blog.

At the end of the Two Day Training Event delegates will be able to:

• Set up a hosting account, domain name and database for their new website
• Download and install Wordpress
• Find, install and configure basic or custom Wordpress templates
• Build, set up and administer a website using the Wordpress software
• Find, install and configure both plugins and widgets that extend Wordpress functionality
• Create and manage users and administrators
• Manage content match the objectives of the website or blog

Specifically, delegates will be able to:-

Configure all options at Wordpress setup

• General Settings
• Reading Settings
• Writing Settings
• Permalinks
• Discussion Settings
• Miscellaneous Settings

Administer Wordpress

• Determine the function of the new site/blog
• Upgrade Wordpress quickly and easily
• Set up users, administrators and roles
• Install Akismet to prevent spam
• Implement tools that will help measure the effectiveness of your site/blog
• Back-up and restore the database and the site/blog

Adding Wordpress plugins and widgets

• Understand the difference between plugins and widgets
• Identify appropriate plugins and widgets
• Download and install plugins and widgets

Adding Content in WordPress

• Understand the difference between posts and pages
• Know how to find and write about RELEVANT topics according to the objectives of the site/blog
• Set up and use links (if appropriate)
• Set up and use media (if appropriate)
• Create and manage categories
• How to manage content using parent and child pages
• Understand the function of tags
• Understand the relevance of comments
• Understand the purpose of excerpts for Search Engine Optimization/SEO
• Understand the purpose of custom fields

Managing Media in WordPress

• When, how and why to use media in the site
• Upload and manage images
• Upload, embed and manage video
• Upload, embed and manage audio

It is also the ideal way to establish both corporate and personal brands and is a quick and easy way to establish a web presence which is easy to update, monitor and measure.  A business blog gives you the opportunity to both demonstrate and explain your areas of expertise to the audiences that are most receptive to listening.  Effectively, you are able to establish yourself as an expert in your chosen market sector.

However, they don’t operate in isolation – nothing does in the wildly eclectic world of the web these days, and when used EFFECTIVELY in conjunction with many of the other social media opportunities, your blog can become a highly efficient (in terms of TIME & MONEY) marketing machine.

So, what will YOU learn and take away from the TWO Day Business Blogging Bootcamp?

• Learn the fundamentals of business blogging; what to say, why you say it and who you say it too
• How to write appropriate, relevant and timely content
• Transform your competitors into collaborators through the use of comments and links
• How you can make your blog socially compatible
• Embedding video with YouTube
• Understand AND implement an effective Search Engine Optimisation campaign for your blog AND your website
• Determine the PRIMARY purpose of your blog and implement a secondary purpose too
• Create your own blogging/marketing strategy
• Set up, implement and get started on your own professional Wordpress blog
• Learn how to tweak the design quickly and easily to make it look similar to other web sites
• Link your blog to multiple social networks and kick start your email marketing strategy
• Find out how to add products and sell services or events from your wordpress blog, including which services to use and which to avoid
• Implement and use embedded AND third party tools to monitor and measure the effectiveness of your blog
• Link your blog to YOUR own unique web address

The vast majority of tools we use in the course are available completely free of charge to you, there may be some minor changes that you may wish to implement that MAY involve small additional charges to third party providers.  These include:

• using a unique web address for your blog – around £6 per year
• creating a completely custom look for your blog – around £22 per year
• creating a completely private social community – around £22 per year

The vast majority of bloggers NEVER use these tools, but they are available if you feel they will help the objectives that you set for your business blog.