If you think you know about Social Networks and how they work, you'd better watch this Ted Talk by Nicholas Christakis. It's absolutely fascinating. Here's a brief overview:

Nicholas Christakis explores how the large-scale, face-to-face social networks in which we are embedded affect our lives, and what we can do to take advantage of this fact. After mapping humans' intricate social networks, Nicholas Christakis and colleague James Fowler began investigating how this information could better our lives. Now, he reveals his hot-off-the-press findings: These networks can be used to detect epidemics earlier than ever, from the spread of innovative ideas to risky behaviors to viruses (like H1N1).

For the past couple of months I have been weighing up various options on how to best provide students with digital information that they can use to learn more, use for research or apply to their businesses. Students attend either 1-day or 2-day classes through Marketing Tom Media and others attend an MSc Digital Media course that I deliver at Cardiff University Business School. I have used, and still use, blogs to write articles, post videos and display presentations (these can be found at Digital Marketing Essentials, Digital Marketing Planning and here on MarketingTom.co.uk). But what I really wanted to do was to offer up snippets of information - be it text, video, podcast, Scribd, google Docs, quotes, links, photos and more - from around the web that I have picked up and which I think might be of interest to students. I looked at Google Plus, Facebook, WordPress and Twitter and dismissed each: due to style, format, expected level of engagement, and other factors.

I decided that I was getting a little bored with the chronological, vertical, same-old style of blogs and wanted a storyboard mixed with different media which would visually attractive and would mean that I didn't have to go searching for appropriate images and permissions. I liked what Pinterest was doing with images but I wanted other media mixed in: Vimeo, YouTube, Instagram, tweets, images, infographics, text, Slideshare, Soundcloud clips, podcasts and many other social media plug-ins.

And whilst doing some research on micro-blogging platforms for one of my courses, I stumbled upon some Tumblr templates and found one in particular,  from a company called Style Hatch, which I felt would suit my needs perfectly. The Inspire Well theme is a grid-based layout which displays content in a clean, attractive format and "offers 40+ options in the Appearance menu including support Disqus, Google Analytics, Clicky, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and more." Perfect!

But the interesting thing is that I am adding relevant content for my students, on to a nice-looking page and without having to spend too much time thinking of what to publish. In fact, I don't think about what to create beforehand. I see, I like and I publish (after considering the interests of my target audience). What I am actually doing is curating information from around the web and using folksonomy (tagging) to archive articles. We are seeing an increase in use of content curation on sites like Pinterest (images), Evernote (bookmarked articles) and Storify (news stories and tweets) across the web. It could be said that the bloggers of yesterday are making way for the curators of today. But not to worry there is still a huge amount of content out there - and of a pretty high quality.

Related Links

Alun John Tumblr account

I'd love to hear what you think of this approach.

On the CAM Diploma in Digital Marketing that we offer, there is a module called Digital Marketing Planning. The assessment for the module requires students to complete 3 tasks: an audit of an organisation of their choice, a plan and an evaluation of the digital planning process. Typically, in the reports students will conduct a SWOT, PEST, competitor analysis, market analysis and much more. It wouldn't be unfair to say that many people tend to stick within their comofrt zones: their companies, known competitors and the industry. However, sometimes people reach outside of their comfort zones and explore what is happening in other industries and countries and, providng the scenario is relevant, they obtain better marks.

The other day I was reading an article in the Telegraph which talked about how Dave Brailsford, the Head Coach of Team Sky was focused on making the cycling team like Barcelona or McClaren as the most admired team in the world. What struck me as particularly intesresting was that some of the people who are charged with making this dream a reality, are actually from outside the cycling fraternity. People like Tim Kerrison, the head of performance science (now that's an inetresting title/role), who worked with British swimming for 4 years and Australian swimming prior to that and who also and who is a rower himself.

According to the Telegraph Braislford works with many people outside his sport and:

Among this “brains trust” are England rugby coach Stuart Lancaster; former Spurs director of football and ex-Liverpool strategist Damien Comolli; Chelsea performance director Mike Forde and Geoff McGrath, the man behind McLaren’s F1 technology drive

So, bringing this back to Digital Marketing, it shows the importance of moving your radar outside of your comfort zone. There are many things that we can learn - strategies, tactical approaches, ways of measuring, control elements and more - from other people outside our 'little world'. Like Dave Brailsford you may find that it pays HUGE dividends to work and learn from people from other spheres.

I run Social Media workshops and have done for the past 6 years and in this time I have trained hundreds of people. Yet it never cesases to amaze me how many people want to start using Social Media applications when plainly they need haven't put the digital marketing building blocks in place. B2C companies want to create a Facebook page but haven't sorted out their primary web presence, B2B's want to set up a Twitter account when they have no idea who is looking on their website or where they came from. I decided to come up with a checklist of 9 Things an SME Should Do Before Using Social Media and encourage you to read them and, if you can, add some more ideas in the comments section.

Build a Decent Website - it goes without saying that you should employ a designer/developer who knows how to build websites - that are attractive, easily navigable and can be picked up by the search engines. On the Digital Marketing Planning module we teach, we discuss the idea of customer acquisition and conversion objectives and look at how you should be focused on targeting the RIGHT audience (through Search Engines, Social Media, Directories, Online PR, etc) and sending them to the RIGHT website.

Your website should tell people who you are and what you do. Navigation to products, services and company profile should be clearly visible and easily reached. Don't forget the mantra of Steve Krug, website usability expert: Don't Make Me Think. To a certain degree you should design your website like others as quite possibly customers may be searching sites of the same genre. Don't forget that powerful solutions can be built yourselves by using tools like WordPress, which are designed to be spidered easily by the search engines.

Consider Calls To Action (CTA's) - let's assume that you have managed to get the right customers to your web page, what next? What do you want these Highly Valuable Visitors to do? As a business you should know what you want customers to do on your site and you may also consider where people may be in the buying process - viewing, researching, evaluating, buying or post-buying. CTA's may include contact forms, phone numbers, email sign-up forms, downloadable pdf''s, buy buttons, reserve buttons, call-back facilities, product evaluators or even calculators. They may include Social Media share buttons and widgets, product videos, press packs, images and much more. Their inclusion should signify that you have carefully considered your target audience and thought about their needs and expectations on arriving to your site.

Do your on-site SEO - have you thought about the content that you will display on your website? Do you actually know what keywords people are using to find your site?  Have you used online tools like Google Suggestion Tool or Google Trends to discover words? You will need to think about creating high quality page titles, using keywords that your target audience may type in to Google, headlines which match and content which follow the theme. You will need to pay attention to the use of keywords in anchor text (though not for the page you're on), image alt attributes, meta description and the URL. And make sure to keep away from keyword stuffing!

Do your off-site SEO - this is primarily achieved by people linking to you. Through company websites, blogs, news sites, directories, associations, even Wikipedia. You also have to add in to the mix social media and online PR. Ideally, people will want to link to you for the quality content and relevance of your site. They will, hopefully, link to you using anchor text, which looks like this: Social Media Class. You may want to use tools like SEOMOZ's Open Site Explorer to discover what your competitors are searching for and start speaking to those who rank highly for your targeted keywords. Here are some top tips from SEOMOZ on the subject:

Get your customers to link to you.
Build a company blog. Make it a valuable informative and entertaining resource
Create content that inspires viral sharing and natural linking
Be newsworthy.
Find directories or listings of relevant resources.

Add your site to Google Webmaster Tools - tell Google that you're the owner of your site. All you do is add a html page to your site, a html tag or connect your analytics and your site will be verified by Google Webmaster Tools. This resource allows you to upload sitemaps to Google, view 404 errors, find out who links to you and a whole lot more. It also allows you to control which sitelinks you DON'T want to appear in Google searches for your website. Webmaster Tools also allows you to add sitemaps of your website.

Google Places for Business - if people use a Keyword + Local Search word, e.g. "Cardiff Hotels", they will probably be served up with a SERPS page that has a few organic listings at the top (under the Google AdWords) followed by around 60 7 Google Places listings and then more organic listings underneath. People are increasingly clicking on these listings to get to website content. Make sure that you have claimed your Google Places listing and added descriptions and content. You may also want to encourage your clients to leave reviews on Google reviews, too - these will display when you type in your local searches.

Google AdWords - OK, we've completed all of the above and we still want more traffic. Well, Google AdWords could be the tool which will help you get to those customers who your SEO and Google Places can't reach. It can also help you target people in different countries and help you entice customers away from your competitors. But beware! You have to carefully plan and structure a Google AdWord campaign and think carefully about what you want to achieve. AdWords are triggered by keyword searches, in much the same way that organic listings are, and work on the principle that the advertiser only pays when their ads are clicked - the cost of each click can range from a few pence to upwards of £20 or more for high value words.

Set up Google Analytics - if you're driving traffic to your site, you will want to know that it is the right traffic and to find out what people are doing on your site. Google Analytics is an application that allows you to see where people are coming from, what keywords they used, what countries they're from, and what they're doing on the website. It lets you know which keywords resulted in which sales, where people came out of your website and which online activity works best for you (Google Organic, PPC, Email or Social Media). Every digital marketer needs to have as much information as possible to tell them how their online presence is working and Google Analytics does this - for FREE!

Email Marketing - we mentioned customer acquisition and conversion before, well Email marketing is one of the key tools for customer retention and extension. With your website presence you should be able to develop a quality database of contacts - from people purchasing, downloading documents, trialling your products, enquiring or just adding their name to your email list. These are people who ave taken the time to learn/buy/understand your business and its offerings and they are also people who will listen to you. Email marketing is one of the great tools of digital marketing and, when used correctly, can deliver huge rewards to your business.

Congratulations to all those who have received their results for the Digital Marketing Planning, Digital Marketing Essentials and Marketing Consumer Behaviour modules. Five of our students have not just passed these modules but have now gained the prestigious CAM Diploma in Digital Marketing.

Practically everybody who submitted got A's and B's - the highest we have ever had. And this week we are waiting for a new batch of student reports for submission to the December Exam Board. If you are interested in this qualification, please check out the CAM Diploma in Digital Marketing section or give us a call on: 02920 263655. The next module will run on 19th and 20th December with the next one taking place on 17th and 18th January.

Instagram, the photo sharing program, which was recently bought by Facebook for (allegedly) $1 billion has started to roll out Facebook-style web profiles. The new style features a top header, made up of a series of rotating images; your profile picture and a chronological isting of your images beneath. You can quite clearly see a similarity between these profile pages and those of Facebook's pages. Selected brands are starting to be rolled out this week with most of us seeing our profiles updated by the end of the week. Up until now Instagram has been largely a mobile-based app but this new roll out means that desktop and laptop users can now view people's profiles. According to the BBC this could cause some privacy issues. Sites like Webstagram have been aggregating Instagram images for a while but a clean, mobile and web-based 'channel' is certainly something that many have been clamouring for from Instagram.

Here are some examples of these new profiles:

NBC

Nike

Cucina Digitale

Many people tend to rely on Support guides, tutorials or articles from sites like Mashable and Search Engineland to inform them of new advances to platforms like AdWords, LinkedIn, Twitter and the like. However, a rich source of information can be found on the corporate blogs of companies like these. Product announcements, feature changes, tutorials, case studies and much more can be found on these sites. Here are a selection of those sites.

Here are some links to Digital and Social Media Marketing Blogs

Google AdWords Blog
Google Analytics Blog
Google Webmaster Tools Blog
YouTube Blog
Facebook Blog
Twitter Blog
Instagram Blog
LinkedIn Blog
Flipboard Blog
Pinterest Blog
Google Blog (including Google+)
WordPress Blog

As many of you are aware Marketing Tom Media have been delivering Social Media courses in London since January 2011. We are now, as an Accredited Study Centre, able to offer the Chartered Institute of Marketing Digital qualifications. Starting in November, and offered every month, we will start delivering modules of the CAM Diploma in Digital Marketing. This qualification is one of the foremost qualifications in digital marketing in the UK and is recognised internationally. There are three modules to this qualification (listed below).

We will deliver the courses from our centra London venue, Portland Place - an excellent central location for for rail, tube and airport connections

These are the upcoming dates:

November 8th and 9th - Marketing and Consumer Behaviour
December 6th and 7th - Digital Marketing Essentials
January 24th and 25th - Digital Marketing Planning

Social Media Interactive
Social Media Interactive (New!) - our newest social media course represents a break from traditional social media training and combines social media tools with management training and team building approaches. This two-day course is unique in that it bridges the gap between learning social media tools and the application/transfer of these tools into the workplace. It comprises a series of mini-lectures (Facebook, Blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn and Image/Video) followed up by action-learning sessions, designed to: teach the principles of Social Media and help you apply these principles to your own organisation.
More information can be found on our Social Media Interactive page.
Date: 15th & 16th November

Twitter Workshop London
Marketing Tom is pleased to announce that it will be running its first Twitter Workshop on 10th November. The course is aimed at beginner-intermediate users who want a hands-on, in-depth look at how Twitter could be used by their organisation. Run by two social media experts this course covers: setting up an account correctly, the art of tweeting, how to use mentions effectively, learning to use Twitter to listen, how to build a following, leveraging the power of 3rd party apps and monitoring Twitter.
More information can be found on our Twitter Workshop page.
Date: 12th November

A couple of weeks' ago Twitter introduced its new Twitter profiles. At the moment they are optional and allow you to place a header at the top of your tweets which gives visitors the ability to view your bio, check out your links and see your profile picture. They're quit neat in that the profile you upload appears across all platforms: iPhone, iPad and Android devices. The background image that graces many Twitter accounts remains unchanged.

These profiles seem to mirror what Facebook introduced in March with its Facebook Covers, though organisations seem to be a little slower introducing them than they did on Facebook.

Here are some diverse examples I found across the web:

Harvard University

Nike

General Electric

Screwfix

Mashable

How Do You Go About Changing Them?

1. Click on gears in the top left and select "Settings"


2.Click on the "Design" link


3. Click on "Change Header"

4. Save

Related Articles
Because you have more to show
(Twitter blog)
Up Close With Twitter’s New Header Photos For Profiles (Marketing Land)
Twitter Announces New Look for Profile Pages, Updated Mobile Apps (Mashable)

Pinterest is a great app for collecting and displaying images, in the form of boards, that you have discovered around the Internet. If you're a home decorator, you may use it to display interesting projects you have doen or work you admire; if you involved in manufacturing, you may use it to to display end-products, processes or staff; universities can use it to aggregate images from multiple social media platforms and websites. There are hundreds upon hundreds of decent uses of Pinterest. Here's one way that we are using Pinterest on the Marketing Tom website - flagging up companies who have have sent staff on our social media courses. At the moment we have simply created the image using PhotoShop - one day soon I look forward to seeing the Pinterest API coming out.