Personally, I am a reports junkie. I need constant feedback and even if a given report isn’t available, I will try and ensure there is some way of obtaining it.

However, not everyone shares this sentiment and it is often hard to relay the cold hard facts of a report in a meaningful way to someone (your boss, your board, your wife?) without some form of translation from numbers into plain English and/or pretty pictures.

Well, a genius by the name of Nicholas Felton – part designer, part statistics junkie – decided to put together a series of meaningful ‘annual reports’ into a format and creation all his own; for the unacquainted, they are marvels in their own right and will catch the eye of even the most glass-half-empty naysayer.

Interestingly, we both studied the same course at university and although this would not necessarily seem to be all that interesting, Interaction Design is still not quite a widely known subject.  I am also a maths geek.

Take a look at some of the Feltron reports now.

With the recent David vs. Goliath battle of Facebook Places (circa. 500 million users at time of writing) head-to-head with the relatively unknown, (yet ubiquitous in its own right), Foursquare (circa. 2.5 million users at time of writing); this quick poll of user activity has proven that yet again, niche-level services continue to prevail.  One is led to believe that Facebook Places will only survive as an internal ‘app’ within the Facebook framework, if it recognises that Foursquare addresses the cognitive behaviour of its users in a congruent manner and seeks to either emulate or work with the said newer network in order to further its own proposition.

The Rise of Mobile

There has been much discussion and speculation regarding mobile as being the future of the web, but relative to the growth of technology in the last couple of decades – mobile’s influence on the market has been relatively slow to reach critical mass.

Indeed, it has been the charge of one particular industry innovator – that is, Apple – who have sought to capitalise and shape the industry almost single-handedly with its iPhone product and platform.  Even Google with their army of genii could only limp into the market, post-hype, with their Android platform; this now dominates the rest of the mobile smartphone market and has set the scene for a new wave of technology, software and user adoption.

Geo-location

So, working slightly backwards in this post, this leads me back to Foursquare, which like any great new startup, has found its niche and stamped its authority on the market very quickly.

It does what it does well; it provides a fun and addictive platform for users to ‘check-in’ to locations; collect ‘badges’; leave ‘tips’ for places that they enjoy visiting; and add other places on a virtual ‘to-do’ list for whenever they are in the area in future.  Even I have found it a particularly useful tool and as active as I am in the digital space, I tend to keep my personal social media activity to a minimum – especially with all this talk of future identity issues.

Perhaps the smartest planning involved in the makeup of Fourspace is its clever attention to business and the model for revenue generation.  This has always plagued the social networks when stepping up to the IPO plate, so it looks like these guys have their bases covered.

The Future?

From my perspective, it does appear that the industry is moving even further into the long-tail – perhaps even more so than was original envisaged by Chris Anderson.  It will perhaps become more likely that generic behemoths like Facebook (or perhaps, just Facebook on its own) will continue to provide the basic structure for sharing a little of everything with your friends – but it will be the specialist and niche social networks that will continue to innovate and form the fabric for new communities going forward.

Services like Flickr, for example, are quickly becoming very large communities in their own right and I don’t see this trend diminishing anytime soon.

The importance of technological convergence looks equally important in this social media revolution; key, converged, but niche-focussed products like the FitBit and Amazon’s Kindle could well be pivotal in forming the social networks of the future.

This applies for many reasons.

Matching Ads with Consumers

Facebook is basing its matching criteria almost solely on 2 factors – Profile Page information submitted by users, and geo-targeting (this could be a combination of IP address tracking and user-submitted information).

Now, when you compare this database of user-submitted information – yes, there are however many millions of Facebook users (then subtract all inactive/spam accounts) – this simply pales in comparison to the quantity of data in Google’s database, alongside its user base, i.e. anyone with a computer. (I’ve even intentionally left out the content network and search partners that Google offers as additional sources of traffic.)

Arguably, you will say that this is actually a niche factor when using Facebook, but unfortunately I think it really affects its ability to achieve any kind of real effectiveness – especially when up against such strong competition.

Now, I don’t want to come across as some kind of Google fan boy, but criticism of the Facebook advertising network continues.

Review Time

Wow, review time on Facebook takes what feels like an eternity. Google adverts are reviewed and can be seen online very quickly – you’d barely notice there was a review process at all. It took over 24hrs for the first advert on Facebook to be reviewed and approved, and only slightly less for the second.

Keywords

Facebook does allow you to enter keywords, but only from a preset selection, which I assume is derived again from the content that is submitted by users on their profiles. What becomes immediately apparent, is that the selection of keywords is incredibly limited – again, this is easily understandable, as the majority of Facebook profiles neglect ‘wordy’ information as users would rather interact via chat, pokes, photo-sharing and applications. Google on the other hand allows an almost unlimited amount of fine-tuning when it comes to keywords. In Facebook’s favour, however, due to its undeniable restrictions, it does present you with an exact audience figure that will be targeted from your campaign, which is a nice touch.

Advertising Blindness

Additionally – and this is a fairly personal view in terms of my usage of the social network – Facebook is used primarily for social reasons. Keeping up-to-date with friends and family, sharing photos etc. I feel that advertising blindness has never been more present for contextual adverts than they are here. I even started to question myself halfway through running the campaign; could I even recall adverts I had seen when using Facebook myself? This is in stark contrast to Google’s contextual adverts, which run along the top and side of search pages, which I’ve found to be incredibly useful in the past, when the organic search is sometimes a little lacklustre.

CPM vs. CPC

This is where I believe Facebook may have a gem – albeit a tiny one – in its crown.

CPM (cost per mil) is the old method of paying for advertising on the web, which didn’t work for advertising buyers, so internet advertising began to fall out of favour. Most of the networks switched to the CPC method of billing – also known as PPC – where the advertiser only pays when a user takes action and actually clicks through to the target site.

However, Facebook offers this as an option when setting up your advert – and it is much cheaper than I can remember – you can spend just 10p per thousand impressions. Google offers this only on its content network, but not on its search or search networks.

As an example, in the last few days I ran two almost identical adverts in parallel on Facebook, one CPC and one CPM to compare the results, to a very focused target audience. On the CPM side, the advert achieved around 60,000 impressions with about 12 clicks. On the CPC side, the advert achieved around 3,000 impressions, but no clicks. Both of the bid rates were the suggested averages.

Now, although the overall CPC cost was higher on the CPM campaign, the cost was relatively cheap considering the amount of impressions that were displayed and I feel that in the long run – for a branding exercise – this could well help a brand achieve critical mass. But, of course, the issue with branding is that it is fairly difficult to measure success in a short period of time.

Conversion

From a conversion point of view – and the vast majority of online advertisers will probably be focussed on this, rather than exposure – the results are very clear. (The budget was approximately the same for both.)

In the Google campaign, from just 2 days – the advert achieved around 200 impressions, 15 clicks and 1 transaction.

Facebook achieved 60,000 impressions on the CPM campaign, 12 clicks, no transactions. The CPC campaign achieved 3,000 impressions, no clicks and no transactions.

I don’t think anymore really needs to be said.

This leads me to the subject of importing goods to the UK, which brings a whole new range of issues to any company that is new to the import workflow.

Here I will try to give an overview of the major points I have recently encountered, in establishing a brand new import business, since a lot of this information wasn’t readily available in a single source. I will try to make it read in layman’s terms too, so not to scare you with the jargon that complicates much of this procedure.

VAT

Import VAT is payable on any imports from countries outside of the EU. Please refer to this page for the full list of countries included and excluded:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/VAT/managing/international/esl/country-codes.htm

Customs Duty

Trade between EU countries is Customs Duty-free.

Customs Duty for imports from countries outside of the EU can be quite a complex beast. I’ll try to explain my understanding of it, but I would suggest you read more on the sites provided below.

Any goods arriving from countries outside of the EU will be subject to customs duty, if over the value of £120, and depending on their classification according to a book published called “The Tariff”. Luckily for us there is a free online version of this available at the Business Link Tariff website.

You will need to try and classify your product according to the online tariff, which will tell you whether you need to pay any Customs Duties. Although the online tariff is a good guide – if you are unsure about your product’s content or make-up, then you should consider using the HMRC Classification Service.

Lastly, consignments below £18 are customs duty-free.

Excise Duty

Excise Duty is strict. If your goods are alcohol or tobacco products, then excise duty has to be paid. Excise Duty doesn’t apply to other goods.

Labelling

Ensure that the labels attached by your supplier clearly state the following:

• The full value of the goods including shipping fees and any local taxes
• A full description of the goods
• The senders full name, address and telephone
• The recipients full name, address and telephone

These are important for both customs clearance and in case the parcel gets lost! Common sense, yes, but necessary.

EORI Numbers and Why You Need Them

The Economic Operator Registration and Identification (EORI) scheme was introduced 1 July 2009 to tie-in with the European Union, and replaces the previous TURN system that was in place here.

The bottom line is that if you are bringing goods into the country for trade or commercial use, then you really need one of these. Even private individuals regularly importing goods are required to register for one of these numbers.

Luckily, the process is fairly straightforward (very unlike HMRC in general) by submitting a Word document to them via email.

EORI Application Information

Surface Mail – Shipping – Air Freight

So, at this point you have your ducks in a row, and are ready to decide on a shipping method with your supplier. This decision very much depends on the quantity, size, weight and value of the goods you are importing.

Generally speaking – and especially for the new importer – the likelihood is that Surface Mail (often referred to as EMS) will suffice. This service uses the normal postal service (with air-mail services connecting the two countries) and has some limitations on weight/size/value depending on the operator, so this is something you will need to research and ask your supplier about.

Larger imports will require either a shipping service or air freight, but this is really out of the scope of this post.

The Parcelforce Monopoly

Now this is the fun part that almost nobody out there will tell you, except for perhaps a few forums or blogs.

You’ve finally got your tracking number and are checking it far more frequently than you probably should.

But you’ve realised, what actually happens when it arrives in the UK?

• Does it just appear at your door?
• Who gives it to customs?

Well, as it happens. Parcelforce are the logistical ninjas working behind-the-scenes to help do all this for you.

• They will kindly pass the goods over to customs for inspection.
• They will kindly pay any fees including VAT, Customs Duty and Excise duty on your behalf.
• They will kindly deliver the parcel on to you finally; but only once you kindly pay them back for the fees owing, including either £8 or £13.50 (EMS, GLS or items over €1000) in handling charges from Parcelforce themselves.

My suggestion is that once you know the goods are in the country, contact Parcelforce, and keep contacting Parcelforce until you finally receive the notification slip at your door, that you need to pay fees.

Once this is received, your goods should be ready for delivery or collection from your local Parcelforce depot – so quickly pay the outstanding fees online or by telephone.

Done!

I’ve worked out a little formula to understand the costs involved.

Import Cost = Cost price + Shipping + Shipping Insurance + Customs Duty + VAT + Excise Duty + Parcelforce Charge

And there you have it – my little guide to importing your first Purple Cow into the UK. Good luck!

Anyhow, installation of this platform is interesting to say the least – but this post is about post-installation. This is a very general checklist of all the things that I found needed tweaking. Some of these are very obvious, but the list also includes those tricky hidden elements that you might only find via customer feedback after launching your site!

Here is the list:

• Find a good theme (if you haven’t already)
• Fix mod_rewrite issue if your SEO-friendly links aren’t working (check .htaccess in Magento root)
• Check file permissions on all Javascript files (loads of issues arise from this)
• Up the php memory limits to 128M or higher (depending on your server)
• Delete all irrelevant country <codes> in magento/app/etc/config.xml (this helps to avoid admin login issues)
• Learn about ‘Magento Connect’ (official plugins/themes from the Magento site use this process)
• All ‘Transactional Email’ templates
• Newsletter templates
• Newsletter cron job (to get newsletter to send)
• Contacts
• Remove all sample data (as long as you are comfortable with customising everything)
• Check/change all text in CMS pages and static blocks
• Setup and test payment methods (Paypal/Google Checkout etc)

Ok, that’s all I have for now but if I remember more later, I will add them.

Good luck!

Obviously, this is good news as this new scraped content will be aggregated somewhere and redistributed, meaning that your content is finding new channels of distribution. They are a little like self-homing ping devices that also allow your readers to share your content with their friends and followers.

The example I found, specifically, was the Tweetmeme button (as found on this site, but my discovery was actually on another site) which invites the Tweetmeme bots to your website party.

As a side note, I have found it helpful to install these buttons yourself, rather than using an all-in-one plugin that can often be found for installations such as WordPress or Movable Type. Firstly, this allows you to cherry pick the social networks that are most appropriate for your business, and secondly gives you the flexibility to position them carefully on your page templates, rather than the generic positioning (or lack of) that most plugins offer. Obviously this takes a little technical effort, but if you have a web designer, insist they install these buttons manually. It’s worth the extra effort.

There are many .psd Photoshop templates flying around the internet, but if you are stuck for time or just can’t be bothered to make one then this site will make your day.

Simply go to Flavor Studios here, decide which type of icon you would like to create and upload your desired basic image. The website will then create the logo with the right dimensions and the glare effects that make the iPhone icons unique.

Once you’re done, you will be given a little zipped package containing .ico and .png files with your new site webclip.

When you’re ready to add the webclip to your site for your visitors to use, simply add the following code to the header of your page(s) within the <head></head> tags, obviously replacing the address with that of your new webclip:

<link rel=”apple-touch-icon” href=”/custom-icon-name.png” />

Once this is in place, you’re all done!

“Eating lunch at Pret”

“Seeing my mum”

The marketing potential, or potential for anything great on any level completely escaped me as this social network’s roots were forming. To me, it seemed like an inexplicably rubbish form of Facebook, where you only get the status updates – which in my opinion, could be the feature most easily left out of Facebook.

Interestingly, what I failed to notice, was the rapid speed of movement this network had, compared to any other before it. Sure, the growth of MySpace and Facebook, when compared to any other form of social network (especially those prior to the digital age) was incredibly fast and spread like wildfire among children and adults alike – but anyone who had a modicum of something interesting to say on Twitter could easily end up with tens of thousands of followers (if not hundreds) within a matter of weeks or months. This instantly translates into influence and influence – as all marketers know – equals money.

Another odd phenomenon which has popped up recently – is the name-dropping of social networks as part of potential employee CV’s. It is literally bizarre that you can now read lines like:

“Twitter account of over 5,000 followers”

or

“I have a large Facebook/LinkedIn network”

But the truth is, this is a sign of the times. Social media and online marketing as a whole, are finally being taken seriously by the marketing industry, and by every industry that is affected by marketing. Even the large financial corporation (as old-school as they come) where I used to work were forced to cut jobs heavily across the marketing department in all regions; but not one member of the online marketing team lost their job.

John Chow (no relation of mine, I swear – well, not recent ancestry anyway) recently bragged about being paid a figure like $6,000 to Twitter about something or other. Imagine that – an Essex girl’s dream!

Now I have to say, although Facebook wasn’t so great at this due to its really quite good implementation of privacy tools (Ok, so they were breached a few times) and focus on friends and family – MySpace did achieve a similar phenomenon when it grew a certain attachment to the then up and coming online music industry.

So, maybe it’s just me getting old or slow on the uptake (I hated MySpace originally too – now it is a must-have tool in the arsenal of any musician looking to ‘make it’) but I have finally embraced Twitter and would recommend it, not just on a marketing level, but for anyone who even uses SMS or text-messaging on their mobile phone; you can keep up-to-date with all your friends, family, celebrity chefs and Big Brother contestants literally anywhere with your mobile phone.

I wonder if there have been any flash mobs initiated on Twitter?

1. Ease of use – looks just like any other blog backend
2. Familiarity – due to the free WordPress.com offering
3. Flexibility – built on PHP so easily extendible for almost any type of use
4. Community – WordPress is arguably the largest scale project in the open-source CMS arena with a huge amount of support
5. Plugins – leading on from the last point, there are also an enormous amount of plugins to enable quick and easy site expansion

The last point is really important as this ease of expandability is what creates the framework to allow WordPress to become a true platform and not just another user-installable blog.

So what kind of sites can be built in WordPress? The truth is, there isn’t really a limit to what can be built; its only limitation is with the developer that is using it. Between static pages and looping posts, WordPress really does have everything covered.

E-Commerce is easy with plenty of integration with popular shopping cart options and even full-on e-commerce platforms that have realised that their clients want to use WordPress to manage content. Audio and video integration also have a plethora of options including various Flash player options and YouTube and Vimeo integration. I have even used a plugin that allows basic video editing from right inside the player itself. Social media plugins aplenty can be found, which allows fairly complex API integration with many of the top social media platforms in just a few clicks.

The best part of all though, is the way in which the data is organised. It’s so search engine friendly; Google loves sites built on WordPress. After installing just a few helper SEO plugins and a little online marketing, Google will pick the site up in a matter of days (if that long).

If you have been questioning the ability of WordPress as a capable CMS and have been contemplating Drupal, ModX, Joomla et al, then you really should take some time out and look at what WordPress has to offer. I have yet to hear any real complaints.

Check it out here.

What many forget is that this really is old hat; obviously, the platform and the technological gimmickry that support them in the form of applications, ajax popups and games are all new, but the underlying concept of social networks – people who are grouped by shared values or beliefs - can really be dated back as far as the turn of the 19th century, when sociologists (I cannot believe I’ve found a use for A-Level sociology) such as Émile Durkheim identified the existence of social networks when studying the interactions between individuals.

So how have things changed apart from the technology?  Well, there is one huge change which I mentioned earlier, which is that some of these networks are now colossal.  Never before have so many individuals been able to congregate and exchange thoughts.

To try and engage a sense of how large some of these networks are, I dug out a few statistics – for example – Facebook currently boasts a community in excess of 300 million – so that’s 300,000,000.  Still not impressed?  Well according to UK National Statistics, in 2008 there were about 60 million (60,000,000) inhabitants in the UK, which means that the population of Facebook, if it were a country, would be 5 times the size of the UK.  How pathetic does our government look now?  Mark Zuckerberg must be rubbing his hands in glee at the thought of that kind of power.

So this obviously brings me round to the point of all this discussion (I know I’m a little long-winded but there is always a point); marketing is always about communicating a message to as many (relevant) people as possible and naturally, marketers will always love social networks.