May 24, 2012

Twitter: A Real Tweet for Business

This guest post was kindly contributed by Katie King, MD of Zoodikers PR. Zoodikers and Ditto work closely to roll out brand strategy through PR and social media communication, helping brands find a platform for growth and attract the right customers. Katie regularly trains and speaks about PR, and has a slot on BBC Radio Kent. Read more of Katie’s tips on her own blog, Unblinkered

Through the evolution of technology, the way in which businesses communicate with their customers has consequently had to change also.  Access to smart phone technology means consumers are now able to find out about anything, practically anywhere, at any time.  Furthermore, the explosion of social media has led to consumers spending more time online, proactively seeking information and discussing products and services with others.  In short, greater consumer sophistication and fragmentation of society continues to have a diminishing effect on the impact of traditional marketing communications.  The playing field has indeed changed.

To stay relevant to your customer this change must be embraced.  Whereas businesses before primarily went about forcibly bombarding messages to consumers via advertising, they must now adapt to the social media way of doing things – by actively encouraging, participating in and managing discussions with their customers online.

Capable of doing this, Twitter is, if used correctly, a powerful marketing communications tool available to any business.  Communicating with users publicly offers the following marketing opportunities to businesses:

  • Brand building and personification
  • Relationship marketing
  • Customer service and support
  • PR tool to facilitate relationships with the media, journalists, bloggers, opinion leaders
  • Promoting other business content such as blogs, video, podcasts posted elsewhere
  • Stimulating interest surrounding activities
  • Measurement and tracking of discussions regarding brand, product, service
  • Generating sales leads
Below are some guidelines which any business should keep in mind when using Twitter.

10 Top Tips for Business Tweeting

    1. Keep it in perspective.  Thinking about the perspective from which tweets are written will, or ideally should, determine the type of account that is used.  Business accounts should focus on keeping users informed of products and services, events, press coverage, relevant news and provide customer service and support information.
    2. Brand/ personalise your account.  The company’s brand name and logo should be used for the Twitter handle (username) and avatar for obvious reasons.  Just as you would for your products and services, your Twitter account represents your company online therefore branding of the account is essential.  This should include changing the twitter background image of the page, and completing all fields in the profile page with company information such as the company website URL, and a bio (limited to 160 characters) of the company, its products, services, slogan and so on.
    3. To tweet or not to tweet?  What to tweet about varies greatly, and as already mentioned the type of account or ‘persona’ you have setup should be reflected in the messages.  Most tweets are that of personal observations, referencing to content, plans, conversations, and ‘retweeting’ (or rather, the relaying of tweets from other users).
    4. Be the thought leader.  It is critical that the tweets posted hold some value, since if what you’re saying is not interesting, why would anyone want to hear it?  Make sure your tweets contain useful information and relevant tips, linking to either your own content or that of a third party.  This will help you be regarded and respected as a thought leader in your particular industry.
    5. It’s all public.  All tweets on Twitter are publicly visible therefore care should be taken when writing.  Keep it professional.
    6. Engage and follow to get followed.  To attract a following on Twitter, or rather the number of users who subscribe to your tweets, you must first invest time and effort in deciding who else to follow.  Following other users, building networks and taking part in conversations are what Twitter is all about and can be both enjoyable and valuable.  Twitter’s “Who to Follow” feature and search engine can assist with this.  An easy way to encourage users to follow you back is to initiate or participate in conversations with them on topics they have posted.  Additionally by connecting with industry-relevant journalists, bloggers, opinion-leaders, on Twitter will allow your company to acquaint themselves with the press.
    7. Promote content to drive traffic. Promoting new content published on your company website via Twitter is an easy way of keeping your followers up to date about you.  This might include an interesting article, newly launched product, or an event etc.  Furthermore this allows the possibility for followers to spark a conversation regarding your tweet/content and to further re-tweet to their followers, thus increasing the reach of your initial tweet.
    8. Brand Monitoring. Keep track of what people are saying about your company and its products/ services, using the search tool provided by Twitter.  This will provide an insight into real-time perceptions, as well as allow responses to be made.
    9. Make it easy.  Advertise and integrate your Twitter page on your website, blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube channel and any other affiliated site, to enable users to easily follow you. 
    10. Measure. Checking the effectiveness of your presence on Twitter and how it is affecting your business is vital.  Number of followers (reach), tweet response rates, number of company/products/service mentions in tweets (awareness), and website traffic generated from Twitter page are useful indicators to start with.

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Filed under Find Your Voice, PR

May 24, 2012

Can branding really make a difference to income?

As a director of a company dedicated to helping businesses improve their brand identity, of course I’d say yes. But here’s why: branding is built around your unique promise to your customers (hint: make sure it’s a promise that you can fulfil every time – and that it’s one which really matters to your customers).  Without proper thought or planning to your brand, you’re generic. You’re destined to compete on price alone. You may well turn a profit, but you won’t have built any loyalty, and are unlikely to have won any strong ambassadors in your customers – because those who buy on price alone are fickle and will be easily swayed by the next cheapest offering. And when you’re competing on price, they’ll always be someone who comes along and undercuts you. When you look at it in these stark terms, building a successful brand is essential to engage and win new clients.

Consumers need direction.

With a choice of two companies in front of them, both of which have a similar price positioning and identical product or service, I can guarantee they’ll choose the one that the recognise (think of Apple versus an unknown technology brand – Apple will always win the sale!). It’s just human nature. Successful branding builds familiarity. Strong branding identifies the needs of a given market, and is built upon a promise which really matters to their customers. In turn, this builds trust as consumers feel as though their chosen company really ‘gets’ their problems. Trust inevitably equates to a purchase. So I urge you to think about what it is that you promise to your clients – make sure it’s something that really matters, and ensure you communicate it consistently.

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May 22, 2012

Introducing our new web to print software

Introducing: a money-saving, time-saving, super-duper new way to order print

WARNING: shameless sales-y blog post coming up!

We love all of our clients equally, but we know that if you’re a business employing ten or more people, your needs are often different to those of smaller businesses. As your local printing.com studio, we’re really excited to be able to offer our new intelligent ordering system that provides on-demand printing at a low cost. Designed for companies who employ 10 or more people (or multi site or franchised businessses), the system enables you to maintain brand alignment while eliminating the job-by-job artwork costs usually incurred through name and detail changes. Orders are placed when you need them via our user friendly online software, allowing you to order within minutes while benefiting from heavily discounted print prices (up to 50% off our list prices!).

How it works

Using your online account (if you’ve ordered with us before, you’ll have one already – if not, get in touch to find out how to get your free account), you can manage orders, view artwork files from previous orders and track current jobs. Using our new software, we can create a ‘template’ from your artwork files – anything from business cards to leaflets, folders and letterheads can be converted into your custom template – which you simply edit online to update the relevant fields. You can even upload logos and photos, if that’s your thing. The artwork is still yours and is bespoke to you – we just made it really easy to edit and order.

This is a truly innovative way to order print which allows you to order any time you need to – be that 10am on a Tuesday morning or midnight on a Sunday (we know what you lot are like!). We’re already speaking to lots of companies about this system – please do get in touch with us if you’d like to find out more. Call us on 01732 456944 or email studio@ditto.uk.com and we’ll be very happy to help!

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Filed under Ditto News, Marketing, Printing

May 16, 2012

Announcing: Dates for our next workshop

If you’ve been meaning to get yourself along to one of our workshops but haven’t made it to one yet, I have good news for you! We’ve just booked two new dates; 7th August at St Julians in Sevenoaks and 19th September at The Royal Wells Hotel in Tunbridge Wells. Run by me and Katie King, our resident PR and Social Media guru, Katie King, we’ll lead you through the world of branding for small businesses, and teach you how to use social media as a powerful platform for your business.The day will be hands-on and interactive (expect to be worked hard!), but we can guarantee that you’ll walk away armed with tonnes of new knowledge to apply to your marketing. The vast majority of our guests score our workshops 10/10 for content, value and presentation.

‘Thank you so much for the smooth, effective and expert delivery of course content I’ve been dreading getting my head around and could not put off any longer! The course was intelligently crafted to cover a lot of areas in a relative short amount of time and the follow up notes were excellent! A must for all those ‘social media’ shy out there!’

Catherine Hill, Catherine Hill Photography

‘Your brand awareness workshop was superb.  Getting us to get involved and write down what we think our business offers, who our customers are, our long term goals etc and then discussing was excellent as I really feel like it all went in.  I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop and you made it so much more interesting than just sitting and listening. I love Hannah and Katie’s relaxed, friendly and informative attitudes’

Laura Gilmour, Synapse

So, will you join us? I very much hope so!

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Filed under Marketing, Powerful Branding, PR, Workshops

May 15, 2012

Inspired by: unique and quirky print finishes

Over the weekend I received this incredible sample pack from a company I’ve spoken to recently, packed full of gorgeous and quirky print finishes. I’ll confess to being a bit of a print geek. I go all daft when I see beautiful print, but I defy anyone not to get a bit carried away with these gorgeous samples – it brings out the magpie in all of us!

There are loads of different finishes you can apply to print, from spot UV, to foil blocking, thermography and embossing - it’s all about making your marketing that bit more memorable. Yes, it’s more expensive than conventional print (unless you take advantage of our May print offer – half price spot UV), but I promise it’ll make your business look a whole load more premium than your competitor.

Samples photographed courtesy of Windmill and Ditto

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Filed under Creative Design, Inspired by, Powerful Branding

May 10, 2012

Designing for your own business: like banging your head against a brick wall

This afternoon, aided by several cups of tea and more than a couple of cookies, I’ve been working on formulating some new marketing items for Ditto. As someone who spends all day every day creating marketing pieces for our clients, you’d think that I’d be very well placed to whip something up in a matter of minutes for my own business. I wish.

Designing for your own business is hard

And so the value of working with someone just slightly removed from your own business has become startlingly evident. Often during discussions with our clients, I’m amazed at how quickly golden ideas just fall into our laps, and how incredibly pleased our clients are that they’ve finally hit upon the solution they’ve been searching for. Helping business owners come up with creative and effective marketing ideas isn’t necessarily rocket science – it’s simply taking a pragmatic approach to an objective and then letting the visual part work around that. And I tell you what, once I mentally took a step back and asked myself the same questions I’d ask a client when they hit a wall with putting a brief together, I got much further in the space of 5 minutes than I did all afternoon! Who do you turn to for help with marketing your business?

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May 9, 2012

And next on the to-do list: time to write my first e-book

Time to focus (on our own business for a change!) – I’ve started on my first e-book. Another thing to add to the ever-growing list of demands – am I mad? Possibly. But I’m really excited about this! I really enjoyed putting together the workbook that accompanies our Branding workshops, and the feedback we get from the workbook is excellent. It’s designed to give our clients a real insight into how to build a powerful brand for their business, and we know that it gives our clients the knowledge that they need on a real-business level (as opposed to the graphs, charts and theories that can be found in most of the business guides you can buy about branding, usually written by the ex marketing director of a huge blue chip, who benefitted from the time and budget afforded to you when you reside upon such a position – I’ll stop ranting now…). As with everything we do at Ditto, it’s our honest and genuine perspective, combined with the experience of having launched and promoted our own business, that drives the advice we give – and it’s how we know that our approach really works.

I want to help to inspire you and ask yourself the difficult questions about what truly goes on in your business and what you stand for. It’s not easy – our workshop guests always tell us that taking an objective look at your business is tough – but they also tell us it’s really worthwhile.

‘Your brand awareness workshop was superb.  Getting us to get involved and write down what we think our business offers, who our customers are, our long term goals etc and then discussing was excellent as I really feel like it all went in.  I thoroughly enjoyed the workshop – I love Hannah’s relaxed, friendly and informative attitude’

Laura Gilmour, Synapse

We thrive on educating and motivating our clients to grow their business, so this is a natural step for us. I’m blogging about this because I’m really hoping that you’ll support me with my new project! I’d love to know what challenges you face when you think about branding your business – what turns you off, what excites you and what do you need to know more about to help you make sense of branding and get it to work for you?

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