Resurrecting the SIPA UK blog to let you know that we have a fantastic event coming up next month in London.
Resurrecting the SIPA UK blog to let you know that we have a fantastic event coming up next month in London.
Posted at 08:12 AM in Conferences, Marketing, Publishing, SIPA, social media | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
On Tuesday Robin Crumby of Melcrum hosted a fantastic half day round table event on managing a specialist information business in a downturn. There were lots of good contributions and anyone involved in the industry should try to come along to future events - including our upcoming full day E-marketing Conference.
Posted at 07:56 AM in Conferences, Marketing | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
The final panel of the day at the SIPA Congress last week debated whether content was still king. I am running an open question on LinkedIn at the moment - feel free to contribute or leave a comment here with your thoughts.
Rory.
Posted at 05:46 AM in Blogs, Conferences, Editorial, Marketing, Publishing, SIPA, social media | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
But this morning's bacon sandwich was a stroke of genius.
Last night's SIPA marketing networking group was a success on many fronts. It was still going strong at 11pm when I took an executive decision to leave the kids to it.
We had three excellent speakers on the night - who inspired me to take a close look at our email marketing. Any marketer who does not get stupidly excited about being able to see what your customers are doing, be it through open rates, click throughs or conversion to order, is in the wrong job.
Everyone who came along will get a full copy of the presentations, for everyone else - here are the best email marketing tips from Sean Hayes, Sara Baugh and Paul Crabtree of Incisive Media, Electric Word and Adestra.
What your reports tell you
Email marketing as art and science
Rip up the research. Watch your customers and competitors instead
Watch this space for details of the next networking group. We'll be meeting in August for more practical take-aways and I suspect more beers/shots/cocktails.
Everyone who attends gets the full presentations and a complimentary hangover - so don't miss out. Come along and better still volunteer to present the best things you have done this year. Even where we compete, we are all in this together and SIPA is all about raising standard across the industry.
Please email me or Karen Hindle at uksipa@btconnect.com join the group, speak and to suggest topics.
Louise
Posted at 04:44 AM in Marketing, Publishing, SIPA, Social networking | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
The great Seth Godin, author of 'Permission Marketing' had some choice things to say about Conferences and meetings in the age of social media.
I think he's right too. With budgets under pressure, the format and focus of our conferences need to be updated and refreshed to make them unmissable.
..."I flew all the way here for this?" is going to be far more common than it used to be.
If you think a great conference is one where the presenters read a script while showing the audience bullet points, you're wrong. Or if you leave little time for attendees to engage with others, or worse, if you don't provide the levers to make it more likely that others will engage with each other, you're wrong as well.
Here's what someone expects if they come to see you on an in-person sales call: that you'll be prepared, focused, enthusiastic and willing to engage honestly about the next steps. If you can't do that, don't have the meeting.
Here's what a speaker owes an audience that travels to engage in person: more than they could get by just reading the transcript.
And here's what a conference organizer owes the attendees: surprise, juxtaposition, drama, engagement, souvenirs and just possibly, excitement.
Posted at 06:16 AM in Marketing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
30 May 2008
As a freelance marketer, I believe marketing lies at the centre of all business. Without a market, you don’t have a product. I therefore investigate any business I can learn from, whatever or wherever that is.
What marketing tricks is he pulling?
Obama’s website has a really effective USP and a prominent
‘donate’ button. You can’t miss them. But Hillary Clinton’s messages are mixed
and all over the home page. Her USP (‘I’m a woman. Make history’) is negated by
Obama’s (‘I am black. Make a change’) Hillary’s donate button is found under a
list of five other options.
Take a look here: MarketingObama.com
Inside Obama's Internet
marketing team
I discover the inside story on the expert Internet marketing
team Obama has assembled. (This is beginning to sound like Electric Word..)
The Clinton’s didn’t even bother to visit Silicon Valley when they were in California – whoops!
Now - how clever is
this?!
We can all learn from how the Internet team was brought
together. Obama doesn’t waste time going around interviewing dozens of Internet
wizards (all of whom have probably arrived from the distant planet of
Gobbledygook.)
No - Obama is far wiser than that; wiser even than the average publisher. Instead he recruits a partner in a San Francisco venture-capital firm, Mark Gorenberg. These VC guys invest in Internet entrepreneurs. So instead of loosing his sanity listening to fast gobbledygook from a long list of computer guys, each who will insist he can build the right fund-raising system at the right price, Obama gets this guy Gorenberg to do it.
(How to run a company, lesson one: if you know Jack about Internet marketing or indeed, not much about marketing at all – delegate the job to someone who does).
As a venture capitalist, Gorenberg spends all his days listening to and investing in computer people talking fast gobbledygook. So he has the experience to quickly spot what he wants. But Gorenberg, like Obama, is also a wise man - wise enough not to take on the task himself. He teams up with a friend whose job it is to recruit executives for tech firms. So she does all the listening and all the hiring.
(How to run a company, lesson two: that’s how ‘networking’ at
the top works).
These tech-types think in terms of networks. That is why Obama has a hugely successful viral marketing email campaign and why he has pulled in much more money than anyone else – around 23% more than Hillary Clinton. That’s enough to give Obama market leadership.
Posted at 12:22 PM in Marketing, Social networking | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Whenever I talk about Twitter my fellow committee members tend to laugh. I must admit that when I first came across the service about 6 months ago I was baffled and couldn't see the point. But now I am starting to..
For those who have not come across Twitter the basic concept is that it is a 'micro-blogging' platform. Users register accounts and then decide whose tweets they want to follow. The principle is very similar to instant messaging but instead of your messages being one-to-one they are one to how ever many people chose to follow you in return.
Now, this could all be viewed as a massive time suck. And it can be. But there are some interesting business applications - especially in the marketing and information sectors in which I currently work. I'll list a few of them:
I mentioned Twitter at SIPA's great "How to make money from online content" session last Thursday [if you weren't there you missed a great session & well done Lindsey Greig for organising], a quick poll showed that no-one in the audience was using it. That's a shame. While there will probably be a new fad along any moment I would urge all publishers to try these tools. You have to be operating in the new digital world if you want to really understand how everything fits together and how your business might need to adapt in the future.
www.twitter.com/rorybrown
Posted at 02:42 AM in Blogs, Marketing, social media, Social networking, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
SIPA UK ANNUAL CONGRESS 2008
- the 14th annual conference for specialised information publishers
8-9 July 2008
The Tower Hotel, St Katherine's Way, London E1W 1LD
We're back! Many apologies for the brief hiatus on the SIPA UK blog - day jobs and all that..
You'll be glad to know that your committee haven't all been slacking. We've been working on the best ever programme for the SIPA UK Annual Congress. If you haven't already done so please register to attend and make sure you bring along colleagues, friends, relatives, pets.. anyone who is interested in the world of specialised publishing.
Full programme details can be found here. A few of the highlights:
... there are many more influential and knowledgeable speakers throughout the day and delegates have the chance to tailor their attendance based on interest areas with breakout sessions, round-tables and discussion forums.
On the 8th July, the day before the main congress, SIPA will also be hosting 2 half day round-table discussion forums.
Senior Marketers Discussion Forum led by Louise White, Group Marketing Director, Incisive Media and Caroline Frost, Group Marketing Director, Informa Healthcare
Publishers Discussion Forum led by Lindsey Grieg, MD at Cecile Park Publishing
I would urge senior marketers and publishers to make the effort to attend these optional half days. They will be highly interactive and you will get to set the agenda with your peers from around the industry.
Finally, there will also be a small exhibition area at the congress featuring key suppliers including: Datamatics Financial Services; Adestra; Ant Marketing; Premier Print Group; WorksSiteBuilder; Abacus E-Media; AI Digital & PureLabs. There are a few remaining sponsorship and exhibit opportunities for any companies interested.
All details of the programme, sessions, speakers, awards programme (forgot to mention that earlier..), drinks receptions etc can be found here.
We expect some 200 people to attend the SIPA Congress and I very much hope you will join us. Phone Karen Hindle on 020 8288 7415 or e-mail uksipa@btconnect.com for any further information.
Look forward to seeing you in July.
Rory Brown, Incisive Media, UK SIPA Chairman and Congress Chair.
"Up to the minute, thought-provoking content delivered by speakers who know exactly what they're talking about"
Emma Warren-Jones, Marketing Director, Informa Healthcare
"A superb day, laden with value, practical advice and expertise - worth every penny"
Michael Smith, Marketing and Business Development Director, Kogan Page.
Posted at 04:10 AM in Blogs, Conferences, Marketing, Publishing, SIPA | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Yesterday the newly acquired VNU division of Incisive Media hosted our 2nd Blogs & Social Media Forum. It was a fantastic event which, unfortunately, I only managed to stay for the morning of.
Some of the key takeaways for me were:
1) The use of blogging and social media technology within all of our businesses is no longer a 'nice to have' or a whizzy geeky add on. Blogs are mainstream communication channels and when used properly can generate significant marketing and search exposure.
2) The prevalence and reach of blogs will continue to put pressure on paid content. One of my colleagues in the US always uses the phrase that content 'wants to be free'. The new waves of citizen journalism and efficient distribution mechanisms mean that it is increasingly hard to compete on (and charge for) news.
3) Embracing blogs, social media and user generated content means giving up large elements of control. This is a very uncomfortable things for larger corporates to do - especially when they are public companies. The view of the panelists was that you had to accept mistakes will be made and content will be posted that you'd prefer wasn't.
4) The software to implement some of this technology is cheap. The Economist were using a service called Pluck. It was the same service that USA Today had implemented in a fundamental revamp of how their news was displayed. Look at the way in which they embed personalisation, recommendation and feedback into every element of their new site.
One final point made by Ben Edwards, the Publisher of Economist.com was that in order to get momentum behind blogs an element of compulsion was important. He set minimum posting guidelines for everyone on the team who contributed - maybe a lesson for us here at SIPA UK?
Rory Brown, Incisive Media.
Posted at 06:15 AM in Blogs, Conferences, Marketing, Publishing, social media, Social networking, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
So having made bold claims about writing 'live' from the conference, I failed miserably. Too busy scribbling down ideas to share them. And oh-so quick, I am now home again after a whirlwind tour.
There were a pitiful number of Brits in attendance. Less than 5, compared to more than 35 from Germany and VNR, courtesy of Helmut Graf's hard work. The consensus is that the June 27 UK SIPA event is too close to the Washington International conference, forcing people to choose on both sides of the Atlantic.
The key themes of the event and the challenges rearing their ugly heads were:
1. What does user-generated content mean for the paid content model? How do you mesh them together and make money from social networks, blogs and podcasts?
2. Google: great presentation from their head of content partnerships showcasing how specialised publishers can get better visibility for their content and better results.
3. Online training: going beyond audio conferences and webinars to deliver certified training programmes.
I will write up my stuff and share some of the highlights at the SIPA London event on June 27th. See you there.
Robin.
Posted at 01:14 AM in Conferences, Marketing, SIPA, social media, Social networking, Web 2.0 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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