online marketing

New social media courses and dates announced

Posted Wed, 24/02/2010 - 16:27 by Graeme

Reach Further are pleased to announce a raft of new course dates coming up in the next few months. As well as the hugely popular LinkedIn and Twitter courses, there are courses to help with blogging and all aspects of social media.

So whether you’re a complete newbie to social media or are familiar with it but could do with a boost to help in maximising the potential of your social media activity and gaining as much as you can from it, then attend one of our courses or workshops and let Liz or Helen guide you through the process and begin using social media to have a realistic impact on your business.

Our upcoming courses include:

Social media marketing taking over from direct marketing

Posted Mon, 25/01/2010 - 10:23 by Helen

Many companies are moving their marketing budgets away from direct marketing and into social media. A survey by Brand Republic of over 1000 marketers around the world found that 66% of respondents were to invest in social media and 40% said that the funding would come by cutting the direct marketing budget.

Another important area of investment is likely to be in measuring the return on investment of social media. An area that has not been as important for many of the early social media innovators, it's now essential to be able to measure ROI. As early adopters and established practitioners and influencers in this sector, Reach Further have been aware of this from the start which is why we have developed a model for social media strategy in which ROI informs every step. Canny companies are not prepared to make investments without a clear procedure to monitor and evaluate the success of their social media activities.

As David Eldrige is quoted as saying in the report:“The rise in the number of marketers turning to social media monitoring tools is reflective of a maturing of the market and a growing understanding of the role social networking can plan in marketing campaigns.”

Have you got a corporate blog policy?

Posted Fri, 15/01/2010 - 13:36 by Helen

At Reach Further we’re often asked by clients for whom we’re setting up blogs what they should have as their blog policy.  Where a company or organisation has a very clear handle on its image and brand and the way it wants to appear to its customers, potential customers and the world in general, then there may be a place for a full blog or social media policy that is integrated with procedures for print and other marketing. 

Microsoft, have a very simple policy: “Blog smart”. Microsoft employees are encouraged to blog honestly about the company.  Common sense and knowledge of the company ethos can be good enough for an intelligent blogger.  For those who need a bit more guidance than “blog smart”, there are a few major principles of corporate blogging that can serve as a starting point for a blogging policy:

Five main principles:

  1. be honest, open and responsive,
  2. stay on topic,
  3. abide by existing rules, eg corporate branding guidelines, copyright,
  4. be aware of and respect the company’s confidentiality and proprietary information,
  5. be polite.

A full blogging policy can contain several more points, but they develop from the above principles. For example, a policy on encouraging and responding to comments develops from point 1, being responsive. These five principles are an positive start in creating a company blogging policy.

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