The Chameleon Net blog

Making SERPs work harder for your brand

2010-09-02T15:44:26.2320000+01:00

One thing we constantly hear from brand owners is that they are disappointed or frustrated with the way their website appears in SERPs (search engine results pages). This article aims to help you tidy up what appears in a Google SERP when a user searches a keyword associated with your business. NB The article presupposes you rank well for these keywords already.

If you do rank well for a term ask yourself this: what about the number of users who didn’t click on your link? Research suggests even position 1 on a Google SERP is clicked by less than half the people who look at it.*

So, here’s why you should read and act on this article:

Making your listing in a SERP as attractive as possible and building CTR is a great ‘quick win’ for building traffic.
Google constantly runs split tests on SERPs to make sure it’s serving accurate results to users. If better listings can increase your CTR you will perform better in these experiments.

Think of your brand's listing in a SERP as a shop window: is it untidy or does it tempt people into investigating you further?

What elements make up a SERP listing?

Your basic listing is made up of page title tag, meta description, and page URL:

Page title tag: a very important ranking factor (i.e. Google weights this strongly when formulating rankings) this tag should be no more than 70 characters otherwise it will be truncated. Ensure your targeted keyword is the first word of the title tag: for pages deeper than your homepage don’t be tempted to automatically have your brand name as the first word of the title: consistency looks nice but could hinder your rankings for non-brand keywords.

Your meta description is not important from a search point of view, but it will dictate your CTR: a recent study concluded that users spend much more time fixated on this element of the result than either the url or the blue title tag. This sentence has to convince the user to click through to your site, so really invest some time in writing quality meta descriptions: 150 characters or less and you will avoid any truncation.

Ensuring your keyword is in the URL is both an important ranking factor taken into account by search engines, and also for convincing the user your page is ultra-relevant to their search.

Advanced management of SERPs

Sitelinks: What about other elements of a SERP listing commonly seen for brand searches?

Sitelinks added below the main listing are proven to increase CTR and they help people access the most relevant area of the site as quickly as possible. As a webmaster you have some ability to control which links appear here; using google webmaster tools you can block links you don’t want to appear as sitelinks in a SERP, unfortunately you cannot force Google to include specific links (although it does tend to pick top-level navigation).

Rich Snippets: these are Google’s way of presenting more useful information from your site inside the SERP listing. They look something like this:

Again, this extra information helps to increase CTR, so how do you get this information into SERPs? Microformats. There are several types of microformats, and Google currently supports 6 of them. They are:

hcard –business card or profile information
hReview –individual user reviews
hReview-aggregate – summary of hReviews (i.e. overall or average rating)
hProduct –marks up products, prices, and all things e-commerce
hCalendar – dates and appointments
hRecipe – Recipes and ingredients

My example above utilises both hReview and hRecipe. It is simple to insert these onto your site using HTML: There’s an easy-to-follow guide at Microformats.org. Essentially, it’s as simple as tagging your content with classes.

This is fairly cutting-edge SEO – at the moment Google doesn’t even use microformats when formulating SERPs, but certainly click-through rates and page quality will be improved – both useful in improving your conversion rate. However, it certainly doesn’t take a great leap of faith to think that Google will eventually use microformats as a factor in formulating search rankings, especially as HTML 5 becomes more widely used.

The takeaway from all this is that you should think about the elements that make up a SERP as part of any SEO strategy: if you do rank well for a particular keyword it’s vital you give users as many reasons to click your listing as possible; maximising relevant traffic like this is the easiest way to boost conversions from natural search.

*Although this research is relatively old it is still widely regarded as being accurate

Be Smart, Think Mobile

2010-07-09T12:23:33.9330000+01:00

Over the past few weeks we have seen the launch of the iPhone4, heralded by Apple as yet another re-invention and revolution of the mobile phone market. While I wouldn’t quite go as far as Steve Jobs has put it, the handset did sell 1.7m units globally in just THREE days and the number could have easily been higher but for stock issues. Factor in the 50m iPhones that have been sold worldwide since its incarnation as well as the 160,000 Android phone activations Google processes daily and you begin to see how being prepared to engage your audience via mobile web is going to be very important in the next 12 months.

The growth of the smartphone market has been reported by comScore as expanding at a rate of 70% year on year in the UK, so there are now approximately 11 million smartphones in use, meaning that one in five Brits now own one. In December 2009 alone, these people viewed 6.7 billion web pages and spent an incredible 4.8bn minutes online via their mobile, of which 2.2bn minutes were spent on Facebook alone.

So it would seem that phones are no longer just a device for calling and texting your friends. In fact iPhone users only spend 45% of their time actually making voice-calls on their handset and the average Android & iPhone user spends 80 minutes per day using their apps, whilst downloading an average of 9 apps per month.

It must also be considered that smartphone ownership is actually double in teens and students compared to the rest of the population, making this generation the most receptive to mobile marketing. This younger generation is choosing their handset based on its ability to help them connect their online and offline lives into one harmonious existence. It’s no longer about the amount of megapixels the camera has or the size of the phones’ built-in memory, instead it’s the number of apps to download, the speed it browses the web, multi-tasking functionality and the ability to access their social media personas. Watch the first two minutes of the below video clip and you can hear some US students discussing why they bought the phones they did.

> > >

So why have we really seen the smartphone become such a booming market? The massive improvements in mobile web browsing speeds to 3G from WAP and the expanding 3G coverage across the UK (now at 54%) can be seen as a similar turning point to the ‘broadband revolution’, which saw faster internet speeds reach the whole country. In addition, the increasing reductions in mobile browsing tariffs to much more affordable levels for ‘unlimited download’ packages have made these phones more accessible to a mass consumer market.

There is a steady move towards the saturation of the mobile market by smartphones (currently at 20% in the UK and rising) and network operators are constantly making mobile browsing more affordable, so considering mobile web as a potential marketing channel and engagement tool is essential. Mobile browsing is only going to get faster, with 4G on the way and open Wi-Fi networks becoming more prevalent. If your organisation isn’t already thinking about how to approach mobile web, now’s the time to start. Don’t be left behind by more forward thinking competitors!

Chameleon Net is currently offering UK universities the opportunity to build their own Fresher’s Friend Mobile App at a discounted rate of £5,900 throughout the month of July. Please contact Ross on 020 7332 6373 or e-mail rossm@chameleonnet.co.uk for more information about this geo-location, campus navigation mobile tool with social media integration >.

The Un-Measurable Success of a Profitable Poker Night

2010-07-01T14:00:44.1480000+01:00

The general consensus is that no matter how good your idea, strategy or marketing campaign, without KPIs or specific goals it is hard to qualify the success of what you have done. Also, when it comes to social media activity RoI is notoriously hard to measure.

So how much is a positive mention on Twitter really worth to your brand or product? If you cannot measure something and assign it a monetary value, does that then make the actions that caused the comments harder to justify? Why am I even asking these questions!? Well I recently attended a networking event for people in the digital and eCommerce industries in the guise of a poker evening, paid for by my employers under the agreement that I was to return and blog about my experiences, so let me continue…

The event was definitely well received. It ran smoothly and was carefully organised with the 60 players drawing their table numbers before play started, with professional dealers on each table. The venue was pleasant, centrally located and the staff were always accommodating. We got a free drink, some dinner and the cash prizes were certainly well received by the top 6 finishers. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and am already looking forward to its next incarnation later in the year. I should probably add a qualifier that I finished in the money and went home with a tidy profit. However, regardless of my financial gains I enjoyed the experience and would happily attend again. But was the event a success?

Strictly speaking we were at an industry networking event. Before we were seated and the first cards were dealt, people seemed to keep themselves to themselves, with the conversation limited to colleagues advising less experienced colleagues on the rules of Texas Hold ‘em. As soon as our chips were on the felt steely glares were exchanged and any chatter between players became poker related.

After one hour we broke for the buffet dinner where people joked about the lack of networking taking place around the tables and the serious nature of play! However, this did prove to be an ice-breaker to allow us to at least exchange business cards.

After around another 30 minutes of play ‘Barry the Broker’ jokingly introduced himself and laughed at how we hadn’t even told each other our names after an hour and a half of play! As the hands went on and players dwindled the tension on the tables led to more banter, but again, it wasn’t as if we were discussing possible business partnerships as the re-raises went in.

By the time we reached the final table of 10 rapport had been built through shared experiences and bad beats. Even some of the players who had been eliminated were hanging around, gathering around the table watching as we duelled out the final hands as the blinds and antes escalated at an alarming rate. It was around this point that I began to realise that by virtue of staying alive by the skin of my teeth a few times and making some outrageous bluffs (which I then showed) I had become a recognised figure at the table which put me in the enviable position of being ‘rememberable’, which is surely the purpose of such an event for me!

The morning after I made an effort to track down anyone tweeting about the event, send a quick e-mail to those I exchanged business cards with and added one contact on Linkedin. People tweeting about the event were positive and even those that mentioned their losses did so punctuated with emoticons. Did I uncover any immediate opportunities for Chameleon Net on the night? No. Did I leave enough of an impression for people to remember me? I hope so… I just have to hope they also remember I work for a Digital Solutions Agency!

So why the intro about measuring success and RoI? Well I was trying understand if the poker night was a success in terms of it being a networking event. Strictly speaking on traditional criteria it would be hard to say yes, but in those difficult to define, social-esque ways, it was. My positive feelings towards the event organisers have increased. No-one I encountered had a negative word to say about of the event. I did hand my business card out to several people, some of who eventually saw me make some ballsy bluffs on the final table (all-in three times in a row with 2 6, 2 3 and 2 7 on flagrant steals!) which meant I was someone they now remembered rather than just a random card in their pocket the next day.

In the same way that it can be hard to quantify my success with interaction via social media, it is difficult for me to quantify my success in selling Chameleon Net during that evening, but what I did do was establish personal connections with people on a real one-to-one basis, which hopefully makes me an approachable person when their company needs a digital solution.

Our Thoughts on iPhone 4

2010-06-11T11:29:18.2440000+01:00

Busy times at Chameleon Net – so apologies for the lack of blog activity! The next instalment of our Google Grants blog series is in production – if I weren’t working on so many Google Grant accounts I could sit down and write it!

One piece of news has provoked me to take a break and blog this week though: Apple’s latest smartphone has officially been unveiled (you probably saw it about 6 weeks ago courtesy of gizmodo).

iPhone 4 is being released towards the end of the month, provoking the usual round of adoring plaudits in the tech press. That said, even if you strip away all the “this changes everything” hype, iPhone 4 remains an exciting prospect.

The design raised a bit of debate here; on one hand the current design is a modern classic, and changing it may dilute the iPhone brand, but on the other hand, the new handset looks nothing short of stunning. Many Chameleons are also pleased to note that it’s made out of even tougher materials: Ed might finally be able to own a phone without a cracked screen!

Whilst Apple announced a new ‘reader’ mode for browsing on the iPhone (AKA adblocking mode) it has also been shouting loudly about iAd – it’s new mobile advertising platform for advertisers and developers wanting to display adverts within apps on any Apple product. You can bet the ‘reader’ mode won’t block iAds.

This is one feature of the new iPhone 4 operating system that interests me. Will iAds be annoying? Potentially, but this new feature will bring mobile-specific advertising into sharp focus for brands. If you don’t engage in mobile specific advertising / communications, this could be the time to experiment, whilst user fatigue is low. If you’re developing an app, signs are that you can generate a lot of extra revenue through in-app advertising, and if you want to advertise on apple products, you’ll be in good company; $60m of ads have already been booked through iAds by the likes of Citi, Nissan, Walt Disney and Unilever.

I recently went to a keynote by Hugo Barra of Google’s mobile web team. His presentation made it clear that Google is focussing hard on delivering relevant ads to mobile web users, as well as making it as easy as possible for advertisers to manage this mobile advertising through their account dashboards. If Google are investing heavily in a revenue generating area, it’s usually a sign that this channel is going to become much more important in the near future.

One thing’s for certain; the iPad and iPhone 4 is not everyone’s cup of tea, and other providers have great rival products on the market. Many of us have reservations about the closed environment Apple forces developers and users to operate in, and the reporting of apple product launches is infantile at best. However, the fact is Apple products account for the vast majority of all mobile browsing on websites we monitor, and therefore these developments are significant to your brand. Apple products have driven /are driving the uptake of mobile browsing in the UK. Mobile browsing isn’t a user behaviour that’s going to disappear. If you don’t have a mobile strategy in place yet... start thinking!

To help you get into mobile Chameleon Net is offering some free assistance:
Dan Martin (our head of digital strategy) is speaking on building a business case for mobile and where the mobile web is going in the next few months / years at our seminar in Hoxton on July 14th.
I’ve put together some resources on how you can learn more about your current mobile users using Google Analytics.
One mobile site we’ve already put together is for Sitters, the UKs largest babysitting agency. Visit sitters.co.uk on your iPhone to have a look.

Google Grants 3: Tracking: How to prove RoI for Google Grant activity

2010-04-28T16:32:11.8320000+01:00

So what does the Google Grant bring to your business? Are you using the “free money” Google affords you to generate real revenue for your organisation? There are numerous ways to track this, but also numerous obstacles to getting this tracking in place as well.

The ideal situation
You tag all of your inbound traffic, and you can see at a glance which website, channel, campaign or keyword was the last referral point before a user came to your site and completed a key goal (download, sale, donation etc). You can talk in terms of marketing spend per completed goal for any channel, including AdWords.

AdWords Conversion Tracking
By implementing AdWords specific code on your goal completion pages, you will be able to see in your AdWords dashboard the cost / conversion for any keyword, ad text, ad group or campaign. Every time AdWords drives a user to a goal completion page on your site that conversion will be recorded. With some code adjustments you can also record the value of the conversion (e.g. donation amount or shopping basket total). N.B. these conversions only show up in your AdWords dashboard, and if you have several goals it’s quite hard to distinguish which goal was completed.

Good for: Grant accounts with one specific purpose e.g. purchasing from your shop. Requires simple code change to one page, so good if you have limited technical resource.
Not so good if: you have multiple conversions to record, or you’re interested in a user’s journey through your site from clicking an ad to converting.

Find out more here.

Goal tracking in Google Analytics
This is perhaps the best way of tracking the success of your Google Grant-funded AdWords campaigns, and also allows you to judge other marketing efforts against the same goals you judge your AdWords activity by. You can also measure the effectiveness of each stage in your conversion process (e.g. a shop checkout) using the funnel visualisation feature. If you are tracking this way you would find all stats in your Google Analytics dashboard.

Good for: anyone wanting to get serious about measuring RoI and site performance across all channels including the Google Grant.
Not so good if: You are short on time and technical resource for implementation.

Find out more here.

Barriers to tracking

Having processes hosted across different domains or subdomains.
As a user arrives on your site from a Google Grant ad, their session will be labelled as such. If you then force that user to leave the domain / subdomain for another in order to complete a goal, their session labels will change. It will appear as though goal completions originated in the previous subdomain, not your Grant ads. This makes comparing ad spend to completed goals difficult.
You will need to customise your Analytics code to ensure the correct session information remains attached to a user as they navigate across your domains / subdomains.

Find out more here.

Inability to set up goals correctly in Google Analytics
We see loads of Analytics accounts where goals are set up but not working. There are tons of help resources online for setting up goals correctly, although often you will need to use regular expressions to get these correct. One top tip is to always speak to your developer about the various pages a user could see upon pressing “submit” or “donate now” in order to make sure you aren’t missing any key conversions.

Find out more here.

Next time... I'll be talking about tailoring campaigns for seasonal topics and how to compete in very competitive keyword markets - for instance, how to stand out via PPC and sign up London Marathon runners.

Click for more on the tailored management and insight service Chameleon Net offer to organisations receiving the Google Grant.

Top Tips For Understanding Mobile Users

2010-04-23T10:24:18.7430000+01:00

This topic was covered at yesterday's "Money Talks" seminar. I said I would post some info on how you can segment your mobile users within Google Analytics; well here it is! What appears below is cut from an article I wrote for Marketing Pilgrim in the States. You can check out the full article here.

Understanding Mobile Users: Entry Level

Even if you feel the implementation of a mobile strategy is a long way off for your company, and you have no technical skills whatsoever, there is no excuse for not starting to try and get a handle on who your mobile users are, and how they interact with your site. This is a customer segment that will grow in the future.

Demographics You can easily build up a picture of mobile web users through the plethora of surveys currently being released. Here are a few recent stats:

74% of iPhone users are over the age of 25, (31% are 35-49) and more than 70% of iPhone users are male. [see here]

64% of key decision makers in marketing departments are using mobiles to view emails [see here]

Leading mobile browsing systems worldwide (May 09) = iPhone/iPod Touch 37.2%, Opera 24.6%, Nokia 17.9%. [see here]

In 2008 61% of all smartphone owners had a household income of greater than $70000, compared to just 49% of normal mobile owners. [see here]

40% of “smartphoners” in ‘08 would access the internet at least once a week on their device, (78% for iPhone owners specifically). [see here]

Behaviour as well as looking at the demographics of people browsing the mobile web, it’s also vital to understand their goals are likely to be different to those of folks browsing on a computer. Conversion points for mobile users are often basic things such as finding a shop location, contact information, or viewing product details. Generally speaking goals are more immediate and information based. More traditional goals such as purchasing or accessing documents will only be undertaken as a last resort where a computer is unavailable.

Mobile users break down into three rough categories:

“Time to burn”: browsing between events / meetings etc: your goal is to offer bite sized chunks of interesting content in order to attract repeat visits later via traditional browsing methods.

“Monitors”: Users who browse your site for specific data that changes over time: stocks and shares, sports scores etc. Identify the information on your site which gets repeat visits and make it as easily accessible as possible.

“Need it Now”: Live information e.g. running information, store locations, opening hours etc should all be easily accessible from your mobile homepage for those people who are relying on your brand rather than just browsing.

Understanding the key differences between your mobile and traditional users should directly inform the architecture of the mobile version of your site. For instance: An airline may focus on selling tickets online, but its mobile site should focus more on check in information, live flight times, and airport locations for people who are about to fly. Similarly, a financial services company might view their website as a place for prospective customers to research their products, but their mobile site could add value by offering simple services to existing customers e.g. balance checks.

With a bit more budget you can start to build up data specific to your organisation. Marketers should be equipped with smartphones, as using a mobile browser is the best way to understand and discover the difficulties and opportunities surrounding your brand and the mobile web.

Understanding Mobile Users: Intermediate / Advanced Level

Google Analytics provides a segment for iPhone users, but a broader mobile segment for analysing this traffic would be preferential. The most obvious way to construct this segment is by grouping together the different types of mobile browsers currently on offer, but this list is ever-changing and many of these browsers are poor at executing JavaScript: mobile data will be missed altogether and the segment will be less accurate. [ more info here]

A better option is to construct a GA segment based around screen resolution, as there is a greater accuracy of data collection:

Open a new custom segment within your GA dashboard

Select “screen resolution” as the segment’s dimension. You can find this by drilling down on “Systems”.

Select the match type “Matches Regular Expression”

Paste the following regex into the next field: (^[1-2]?[0-9]?[0-9]|^3[0-1][0-9]|^320)x([1-3]?[0-9]?[0-9]$|4[0-7][0-9] $|480$ )

For the more advanced technicians amongst you the installation of mobile-specific tracking software is a further option, however this can be costly and difficult to integrate with GA. Bango Analytics, Mobilytics and Amethon are key players in this sector.

UPDATE APRIL 2010: GA now offers mobile website tracking for FREE.

Once mobile users behaviour on your site is isolated marketers are able to analyse top content, entry and exit points, site search, etc. It is crucial to try and understand mobile user’s goals this data. These goals will define the architecture of your mobile site.

I hope that's useful: Try applying this segment to your website and looking at monthly visitor numbers over the past 18 months: usually a pretty telling statistic.

If you're struggling to get buy-in for a mobile site, why not sit your boss down, give them an iphone and get them to complete a key user action on your site?! - better still set them a time limit of the average time it takes a desk-bound user to complete that goal.

Social Media by the Book: A Publisher’s Guide

2010-04-20T11:29:43.4390000+01:00
Do you need a social media strategy?

If you’re dubious about the benefit of social media to your business, it’s useful to go back to basics and think about the power of word of mouth. How many restaurants have you eaten at, hairdressers visited, books bought, as a result of a recommendation made by a friend?

In the case of social media, we are talking word-of-mouth; only typed up. An effective social media engagement strategy that creates a constructive dialogue with your audience can and does lead to tangible results.

What happens if you don’t have a social media strategy?

Social media has significantly changed the media landscape. A company’s public relations or marketing department can no longer dictate the agenda in the way that they traditionally have through TV, print, radio and the first generation of websites. Failing to engage with those who are talking about your brand online could mean that you miss out on business opportunities, or damage your reputation.

In order to succeed in PR in an online environment, you must first accept the loss of control that that environment brings, and then work at socialising your way to your desired result. Sound fun? Well it’s not quite as simple as that, but hopefully you’re on board with the idea by now.

Join the party

The difficulty with social media is that it is a constantly evolving and relatively new marketing medium, further complicated by all the separate channels and sub-channels that sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and the user-created groups within those sites, present. So engaging with, and influencing, these online communities, as well as contributing to conversations that might be taking place on your own website, is no mean feat. Here are a few pointers to working your selected social scene:

1. Where’s the party at? Find out where your audience resides online; this could be in well-known or more ‘underground’ locations

2. Know who’s talking about you, and what they’re saying: analyse conversations talking place online

3. Go where the in-crowd go: identify the most influential online touch-points for your audience’s demographic e.g. fan pages, online book clubs

4. Stay on the scene: Commit to internal resource and / or external assistance to create and maintain a presence in your selected online communities

5. Be yourself: Know your voice, and research how best to communicate with your audience

Be the party

The publisher, with its access to authors, critics, readers and the wider public, is in an ideal position to build and place itself at the hub of an online community. So one option is to connect to all the relevant social networks through your own site or microsite. This is like choosing to hold a big social gathering at your house, the advantages of which are:

You can chat to all your friends, and potential friends, under one roof

Because the party’s in your house, people have easier access to your stuff (a good thing when you’re also selling books, remember)

You can keep an ear in on, and engage in, the conversation

Being the host means you can watch your guests’ every move, meaning you can also more easily measure the success of your social engagement in monetary terms (it’s easier to keep track of how many people actually ended up buying the book you’re trying to sell as a result of social engagement)

Whether you decide to join the party or hold it, you can get more advice on social media strategy from us by reading the dedicated pages on this website or giving us a call on 020 7332 6360.

Protecting books, embracing digital, satisfying readers

2010-04-19T15:17:31.2830000+01:00

With the Digital Conference of the London Book Fair falling yesterday, I wanted to put together a blog about the digital direction of the sector to act as Chameleon Net’s follow up. As a digital agency working with some great publishers in the UK – including digital advocates like Random House and Pan Macmillan – we are in a great position to provide commentary.

So when I started to assemble the various thoughts I’d had for the blog, I concentrated more on what really matters for publishers if they are to establish meaningful digital strategies, and less on the technology that is helping to support digital.
"Dear reader"
Naturally, I found myself at the doorstep of ‘the reader’. Without the reader none of this means anything; authors would write books no-one reads, publishers would waste a lot of energy and yes – even today – paper, technology companies would sell gadgets no-one wants.

Ask someone outside the industry what they think about e-books. They’ll often say “what’s wrong with books?”. Of course the answer is “nothing”. It’s just that there are possibilities opening up that weren’t there before, and once experienced they’ll become part of the reader’s expectations and desires for their book experience.

So what does the reader want from books now, and what will that experience look like in the near future?

To make sense of these questions it’s essential to recognize the nature of the revolution happening with books. Quite often there is a comparison made between reading books and the way listening to music has evolved. That is helpful in some ways, particularly around technology and rights, but in another very important way the comparison misses the point. Music’s revolution was different to the one we’re seeing for books.

What revolutionized how we think about, and consume, music was the fact that media and playback became portable in the 1980s. That was the point of no return for music and the music industry.

Almost every time I pick up my MP3 player I can’t help but remember the walkman-accompanied journeys I’d take in the 80s and 90s, the audio backdrop for which you would have to plan carefully in advance to be sure to take enough of the right C90 cassettes, often having to sacrifice a fair few candidates due to the space they’d take up. Even so, it was amazing to be able to take a soundtrack with you!

It has taken 30 odd years to get to a world with iPods, shuffle, Spotify for mobile and so on. In the intervening years, an entire generation has grown up with portable music… and in more recent times access to pretty much anything they could want, when they want it.

Viva the revolution
That latter point - access and immediacy - is something that is more recent and is an important point in planning for digital in publishing. Books have always been portable, so introducing new ways to carry them around – which is effectively what most e-books experiences provide at the moment - is not revolution no matter how smart the technology housing them.

Even digitizing books is not revolution. That has also been possible for many years, and while e-ink technology is exciting in improving the visual experience of reading on a screen, it’s still not the tipping point. Digital media is.

What will be revolution, and will make for an exciting ride, is a new model that combines access, choice and interaction. Digital media and an interconnected world make this a reality.

Back for a minute to the reader’s experience and intention in picking up a book in the first place.

Now, publishing is an industry that thinks very carefully about readers. The vast majority of people I have met in the book trade love books and care about the experience of the reader that buys or borrows them. So the potential for digital to be organically adopted into the way publishers work is enormous – so long as it’s good for the reader.

And what’s more the reader/publisher relationship is about to get much more important, more obvious, and more bilateral. That relationship has historically been one obscured by authors and titles, genres and subject matter. Readers understandably place more emphasis on the book itself that on its publisher.
Access all areas
Readers now and in the future will want to access related information, immediately, through internet connected devices and web-enabled publications. They’ll want to be able to choose what they read more easily, and have more choice. They’ll want to be able to engage with the material, the author, the experts (including publishers) and other people who are interested in the same material or topics.

The best opportunities for publishers will arise when you act as curator, by helping the reader select, understand context, and point them to related material or experiences, perhaps not even produced by you. You’ll also be combining media… text, audio, pictures, reader discussions, fiction and non-fiction will all be part of the experience. You’ll be breaking outside the book format, but not with disrespect.

The digital revolution for publishing has come at a perfect time for the industry, and publishers should react with relish. The timing is perfect because most of us can remember a time before the web and mobile telephony, but we can all see the benefits they bring. This means we’re afforded a unique way of thinking about the relationship between digital and books - we can both respect the past, yet embrace the future, and in doing so help to shape the reading experience in the best way possible.

Decisions publishers make now will form the future of digital book experiences. You will be facilitator of the experience, educator about the possibilities, and deliverer of the next wave of developments.

What better way to protect, and enhance, books for future generations of readers?

Chameleon Net blog highlights for book people

2010-04-18T22:58:17.9550000+01:00

With the London Book Fair taking place early this week, I thought it'd be worth putting some signposts up in time for the first morning of the Fair proper to highlight some of the digital publishing entries that have been posted so far on our blog in 2010...

Chris Thorn gave us his view of the impact the iPad may have. Hopefully Apple will get around to launching it in the UK sometime soon (I heard May from an industry source last week).

Jeremy Davis suggested that the ebook format in itself might be a distraction.

And I gave a viewpoint on how publishers should look at social media and marketing to engage more effectively with readers (first published in The Bookseller) as well as a write up of the Publishers' Associations Digital Forum in January.

There will also be a couple of new Publishing-related posts, one each on Monday and Tuesday, so keep checking back!

Google Grants Blog 2: Your first campaigns

2010-04-15T10:08:23.4920000+01:00

You’ll actually build your first campaigns before you’re account has been signed off by Google: this is because submission of well-targeted campaigns that meet Google Grant’s criteria is a requirement for receiving The Grant.

So what key areas should I cover with my first few campaigns?
I’d advise that to start with, you should just cover a few topics, so that you can get your final application off to Google with the minimum of fuss. You need to impress the people upstairs with the first part of any marketing camapign so not spreading yourself too thinly is vital.

You could start with a campaign focussed around your brand and the main topics that your organisation is focussed upon. I would have an Ad Group and associated keywords for each of these topic, as it allows you to create specific ad variants based around that theme. Most donations that you receive from PPC traffic will be triggered by people searching these terms so it’s important to get them live and start optimising as soon as possible.

A couple of tips:

If part of your brand name is common to other popular culture terms, ensure you use negative match keywords to stop your ad being shown unnecessarily. E.g. if your charity was called “Lost Children” and your brand campaign targeted keywords broadly similar to this you would negative match terms like “lost property”, “lost tv” etc to ensure you weren’t paying for irrelevant clicks.

Include as many misspellings and acronym keywords for your charity as possible to your “brand terms” ad group: this will ensure you reach as many of the people searching for you as possible. Take a look at your site’s entrance keywords in Google Analytics for inspiration. (remember to filter out non brand terms to save time)

It’s also worthwhile to create another AdWords campaign for promoting specific fundraising drives or “take action” campaigns. Your ads here should try to contain a call to action; remember you can fully customise the display URL in your ad so this is a bit of extra space to incorporate messaging if you’re struggling with the 95 character limit on the ad.

So there we have it: try to focus your first campaigns on your brand, your primary issues and your current campaigns and you should have a solid platform to work off.

Next time I’ll be talking about how to track your AdWords / Google Grant activity against tangible goals such as donation, newsletter signup, form downloads etc. Add our RSS feed to your reader so you don’t miss out.

Rich will be speaking at our seminar “Money Talks” for charities on April 22nd. You should sign up to come along!