Chris's Blog

Fresh thinker

Jimmy Wales's fresh thinking created Wikipedia, an internet phenomenon, and I came across this quirky feature (click here) about him in The New York Times.

Wiki now has 10 million entries, and has been visited by 685 million people in 254 languages.

And it's still evolving-Charlton Heston's passing was posted on it before the major networks broke the story.

It's the essence of Web.2 . Period.

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Head First Marketing & Public Relations, Gloucestershire.

The web has changed the rules of the game. Are you still playing by the old ones?

Google’s Nikesh Arora who’s speaking this week at the Google Summit makes it as plain as the nose on your face; companies that don’t embrace the Internet into their marketing will fail.

It’s changed the rules of the game, and marketing strategies need to adequately invest in it.

He states the facts:

It’s becoming a level playing field as SME’s can now compete with multinationals online. Lower marketing costs create more opportunity.

Local businesses can now play nationally online

Small business no longer means local business. Specialists thrive. Niche business such as Dustbag.com grew by 50% in a year.

Britain leads Europe in e-commerce. With online sales in 2007 up 50% on 2006, 15p of every £1 spent in the UK is now spent online.

Media consumption is moving online. Between December 25th and the middle of January more than 1 million people watched 3.5 million programmes on their computers via BBC iPlayer.

iTunes didn’t exist 5 years ago. Last Xmas Day alone they sold 20 million songs.

Teens spend more time online than watching TV.

Overall people spend up to 7 hours a week online-twice as long as reading a newspaper.

All this may seem obvious to many. But the key is identifying the value it can add to your business.

What role does it play?

What additional opportunities can you exploit with it?

How can it help you better engage with customers?

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Read all about it! But where?

Visitors to online newspaper sites are at an all time high, and we know that it’s a viable route to market for advertisers-our clients can attest to it.

This is how Hitwise ranked them: -

(Source: Hitwise)

But interestingly is it editorial that is attracting traffic rather than hard news? Maybe the BBC could tell us?

Historically magazines online are a different proposition. We still prefer to stand and read in Smiths, Borders or a supermarket, and indulge ourselves in our favourites when we want a bit of ‘me time’.

A new site launched in the US could change that. Called Alltop it allows web browsers to pick and choose articles and features by interest category, from a virtual rack. Click here to see what you think.

It’s got a lot of hype over there-but I still need to be convinced. Give me the mag to browse every time.

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Head First Marketing & PR, Gloucestershire.

Online continues to grow despite tough times

E-marketer suggests online advertising will rise this year to £3.4 billion, and will enjoy double-digit growth to 2010.

They say ‘because online channels are more accountable and cheaper than television, print and other traditional media, they can help advertisers to boost brand and market share even when money is tight’.

Search takes the lion’s share. 50% of all online spend in 2006, increasing to 60% in 2007.

This data is released at a time when IMRG and Capgemini indicate that UK Internet users are spending more online than ever. £42 million in February, equating to £69 per person. 46% up on a year ago.

The current economic climate is challenging, especially in retail, however, online would appear to be one of the most resilient routes to market.

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Head First Marketing & PR, Gloucestershire.

(Photo hat-tip Morgue File)

'Artcetera...etc...etc'

Good friend and former colleague Joe Aronstein was inspired by James Surowieski’s book ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’ when he exited American corporate life just recently and opened his own gallery in Boca Raton, Florida.

Everyone in his extensive social network got to participate, suggest and challenge his ideas for store name, ranges, designs and display ideas, before he whittled it all down ahead of launch (and we got the benefit of many asides and jokes at Joe’s expense!).

Proof that a social network can be used as a powerful creative mechanic to develop ideas.

I was sceptical at the outset that it could be done so informally, but Joe took the ideas and made the decisions, and it worked extremely well.

Artcetera is the name, The Polo Shops the location. Online coming soon.

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Head First Marketing & PR, Gloucestershire.

Accidental Innovator

Sometimes fresh ideas are stumbled on. I'd guess we'd all subscribe to that.

The seasonal issue of the Economist profiles Internet entrepreneur Evan Williams. He's stumbled on a couple of very big ideas in Blogger and Twitter, and fervently believes that the best ideas are a) not sought out, b) are difficult to explain, and c) are obvious in retrospect. It's all about using the right (rather than left) brain.

OK, so Blogger seems obvious with hindsight (and is now part of Google mainstream), whilst Twitter is a little hard to explain. Both arose from Williams’s belief that radical constraints lead to simple ideas breaking through.

To read more click here.

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Why some of today's stories won't be fish and chip paper tomorrow

If only all information was as insightful and easy to read as the BBC's online stats ( click here). They clearly present the popularity of content on their website, and the location of visitors and volume of traffic to it.

Interestingly, from a PR perspective it frequently shows how stories can live for much longer on the web –several months in some cases- than in traditional media, such as newspapers and magazines, as a result of the proliferation of news sites, blogs and comments posted online etc.

When creating and distributing press releases today, harnessing the reach and functionality of the internet is essential. The power of the web to sustain news through comment or the viral benefits that can arise in terms of reach ensures that stories might be read today or tomorrow, but they'll also be around for longer and be searchable.

Which is why your news might be published today, but not always wrapped around someone's fish and chips tomorrow.

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'Silver Surfers' nearly largest online group

This Hitwise report reflects the shifting demographics and impact on the web - the number of over 55's surfing the web is growing at a rate that suggests they'll be the biggest web constituency within months.