We’ll I’ll stick my neck out and say that one of the areas I’m tipping to see exponential growth next is Social Commerce.

We’ll no longer have to search for products and services, they’ll soon start to find us! We know ‘word of mouth’ is one of the most powerful tools in a marketers armoury, and the technology is now in place for customers to see what their friends, colleagues and wider networks have purchased, found relevant, liked or commented on.

Imaging looking to book that summer holiday but noticing in your social network, news feed or status update, that one of your friends have booked a holiday to destination ‘A’ and another five of your friends and colleagues with similar imterests have liked or left positive comments about their choice. Imagine then being able to book the same holiday or similar through the same companywithout having to leave the site you are on! This could apply to any type of product or service. It would be fully trasactional, secure, searchable, marketable and be conveniently integrated in to the sites you visit most – your social network.

The trust you have in your network would be so much more powerful, than anything we have seen before such as blind reviews or testimonials, and the benefits this would bring for customers would include peace of mind, saved time, energy, fustration and money.

Now granted we have seen some steps in to this area with success stories such as Dells ‘Outlet’ store on Twitter, but I’m envisaging a much wider adoption which will be fully transactional with increased viral awareness across social networks – think referral programmes on steriods!

So what form do I think this will take? Well, the most ovious place and the social network most geared up to this currently, would be Facebook. Perhaps this will be in the form of custom tabs or canvases on a companies page and feature a secure shopping cart and checkout process.

Does this mean I’m predicting the end of the standalone e-commerce site? Of course not. Well, not in the short term anyway, there are numerous benefits for having multiple online precence across the web but this is another example of how companies should now be thinking, engaging with and leveraging the power of the customer, providing them with a choice of how to interact with your brand.

For those wanting to know more about how the best to implement social-commerce in to your social media presences, feel free to get in touch.

I was recently contacted by the Head of Ecommerce for leading clothing retailer Superdry and asked to carry out an appraisal of their website and propose a digital marketing strategy for the super-cool brand.

Now, it’s not everyday you are contacted directly by such a well known fashion brand, let alone one which is currently going from strength to strength. The company recently floated with a value of £395m and have posted sales of £139m with profits up 83% on the year before. Not bad ehy for a company who has only been around for 7 years! However, there digital presence could be working much harder for them.

I fall in to the target market for the brand and already own a number of their products. Together with my unhealthy appetite for all things digital, I have a relevant personal as well as a professional interest in their online efforts.

A copy of the presentation can be found here, but for those short on time, 5 key online areas of opportunity for the brand include:

- Optimise site user experience
- Allow users to filter & share products
- Enhanced eCRM programme
- Integrate offline & in-store digital strategy
- Embrace social media & ‘outside looking in’ thinking

Now don’t get me wrong, Superdry have a fantastic product (which is often half the battle), as mentioned I already own a number of their products, they do have a cult following (no pun intended!) and you don’t achieve the success they have without being on top of your game. However, if we specifically look at their digital communications, they really do have an unbelievable opportunity to take their business to the next level and maximising online revenue simply through re-assessing their digital strategy.

They are guilty of ‘inside looking out’ thinking as opposed to ‘outside looking in’ thinking, which of course is nothing new for a business. But the marketer’s job has changed from creating and pushing messages to one that now requires listening, engaging and reacting to both potential and existing customer needs. However the rewards are there for those who embrace this shift.

One example of the current approach can be found by carrying out a product search. For example, clicking on ‘t shirts’, generates 135 results with no option for the user to filter by colour, size, in-stock, style or even to ‘view all’ filtered results on one page. Instead users are expected to scroll through all the results.

One suggestion would be to make it easier for the customer to find exactly what they are looking for, which will ultimately make it easier to purchase, result in a more pleasant user experience, reducing shopping cart abandonment and increase the likelihood of repeat purchases.

Another example is through the existing email programme, where recipients are currently sent details on non-gender specific items – a more beneficial and targeted approach would be to segment the database so that recipient ‘A’ who is Male – only receives details on products for men along with the details of the nearest stores, thus making the communication more relevant and work harder. A nice touch would be to also allow the recipient to share the email with their social network on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Ultimately SuperGroup are in a fantastic position, there are vast opportunities to do some really cool, unique and interesting digital comms with this brand whilst making a fundamental and positive return on investment. By making a few tweaks here and there and adapting their digital strategy the brand could really take their online presence to the next level and continue to experience phenomenal growth.

I for one will be watching with fascination over the coming months and hope this has provided some food for thought for others with a similar product or offering.

I was recently asked by a colleague ‘How do we get more followers to our blog? It’s on Facebook and Twitter, now we don’t know what to do!’. As this is an issue likely to be experienced by many a blog owner, I thought I would post my initial response below;

- It may sound obvious, but give the audience a reason to follow your blog and return for more (Think, what’s in it for them to read/follow you?)
– Create interesting content that isn’t necessarily about you, but the market/sector in which you operate
– Include your blog address / Twitter name in all communications including email signatures/press releases etc.
– Follow others/likeminded people and groups and they may be inclined to follow you in return
– Similarly look to target an influential blogger who could re-tweet your content and thus increase the likelihood of their followers following
– Get active! Start engaging and leaving comments (and of course include your url in your email signature) on other relevant blogs/forums/sites, remembering to be open & honest about who you are
– Think about generating some kind of buzz like x amount of followers will be entered in to a prize draw or selected to receive a pre-launch content/advanced VIP access – (if you select the right people they may even review the content or product/offering site and post it online!

Now whilst there is much merit in the above recommendations, I can’t help but think that there is now a flawed approach to this king of strategy. Of course, these suggestions should still be undertaken and are great for SEO, awareness and PR. But the saying, ‘Fish where the fishes are’ could not be more apt! Perhap’s the question asked should now be ‘How can we engage with our target audience and build stronger more influential relationships?’

My response and suggested approach for this would be;

- Establish where your target market spend most there time online and are already discussing topics in your area/market
– Listen to there interests, needs, wants and concerns
– Engage and respond in a honest, open and relevant manner
– Add value, building trust and authority in the area/market

Ultimately brands who do this are more likely to build trust and become recognised as a leader in their field ensuring the audience are more likely to listen and value the opinion, increasing repeat visits and encouraging them to reference and share content across their social networks, thus increasing awareness and driving traffic to your blog for you.

Let me know if you have any tried and tested methods for driving relevant traffic and building stronger relationships with customers for your blogs.

So Microsoft has finally launched its predecessor to Live Search, the newly titled Bing. Promising to find and organise the answers we need, so that we can make faster, more informed decisions!

But we are creatures of habit, so what will stop us from Googling and start Binging???

Whilst added features such as the elongated text preview of a site, so users can get a better idea of what’s on the page before clicking on the result are a nice touch (despite the similarity with Ask.com’s page preview offering) - its relevancy and quality of the results that will be key.

If Bing can achieve this and improve on the quality of results supplied by Google then just maybe we’ll begin to change our ways – only time will tell.

One of the more interesting features promised is the integration of results with Microsoft’s existing Farecast system. Which predicts whether displayed prices for a particular search, e.g. ‘Flights Abroad’ are going to go up or down in the next week – thus recommending whether you should buy now or wait for a better deal. A feature which I will definately be using once live and when looking to book my next holiday abroad!

Whilst more improvements and features have been promised over the coming year, Microsoft will need to significantly up there game if they are to break our habit and if one thing is guranteed, Google won’t be standing still – so let the battle commence!

SEO – otherwise known as Search Engine Marketing is the practice of improving a websites ranking through natural or organic search results on sites such as Google, Yahoo or MSN.

With increased demand of PPC keywords and increasing costs, a greater emphasis is now being placed on the natural ranking of a website. So much so, that SEO has evolved in to two fields;  On-Page  Optimisation and Off-Page Optimisation.

As a result, I thought this would be a good opportunity to distinguish between the two and provide a quick reference guide to the type of activities which fall in to each category.

On-Page Optimisation

As it says on the tin, on-page optimisation primarily involves editing the content and HTML coding of a websites pages to increase relevance of specific keywords (the stronger the match to the content, the better!) and removing potential barriers to indexing for search engine robots or spiders.

This can include, but isn’t limited to;

Title Tags
Meta Tags
Alt Tags
H1 Tags
URL Structure
Meta Data
Image Names
How the site is built (E.g. CSS not tables)
Formatting of content
Usability (Remember, a viewer should be no more than 3-4 clicks away from what they want!)
Internal linking
No duplication of content
Site maps
Site architecture

Off-Page Optimisation

Off-page optimisation primarily concerns strategies that are done off the pages of a website in order to maximise the performance in search engines for specific keywords relevent to the page content.

Once again, these can include but are not limited to:

Press releases
Article distribution
Local marketing
Social networking/bookmarking (E.g. Twitter / Digg)
Promotions (Competitions/Freebies)
Keyword research & analysis
Duplication checks
Website analytics
Link campaigns
Directory listings
Link exchanges
Blogging
Anchor text