The search for the holy grail, that is of course the digital holy grail

In my quest to maximise ever limiting budgets, I’ve turned to digital media.

While I always thought of myself as rather au fait with all media, silently turning my nose at those who can’t seem to see past their single pages, gatefolds and coverwraps, I’ve only today truly realised the difficulties of abandoning the comforting solid base that print provides as I stare into my latest media plan.

I have always been a fan of the great research that the IAB (http://www.iabuk.net/) puts together and it is through my search for further digital enlightened that I came across this white paper on branding building: (http://www.iabuk.net/sites/default/files/white-paper-docs/Building%20Brands%20Online%20Trilogy%20Whitepaper.pdf).

I found the following:

“Our research shows that online channels have the ability to reach audiences where more traditional  media struggle. Additionally, we have learnt that online can incrementally extend the reach of any  campaign. However, the extent of this incremental reach is heavily dependent on the place of online within the total media plan. As you would expect,  when there is no large scale TV campaign, online is  much more likely to add incremental and exclusive  reach.”

TV delivers larger reach but digital is more effective in delivering against the right target audience. Specificity against reach I suppose… Online delivers in IAB’s words “[the] ability to connect the brand message with the desired audience in a highly targeted manner.”

This seems rather obvious but is this enough? I have long since accepted that clicks and CTRs are a disappointing and scary metrics if considered alone and that you need to look at the larger brand awareness picture.  I now just have to work out how to really do this…

 

Stumble upon stumbleupon

Ok, so it may have been a while but I’m determine to get better at this posting thing in order for this blog not to become a bi-product of all the blogs and social accounts that lay by the waste side (no fingers pointing).

With that said, check out stumbleupon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/home) Minutes will melt into hours with this additive distraction… Literally the whole premise is to click the Stumble! button and it takes you to a new website based on your preferences – never again to face boredom.

No I haven’t been lazy (she sheepishly says) but a combination of a nightmare few weeks at work and lack of funds has delayed me with getting stuck into delving into the world of PPC, SEO and other exciting digital things.

While this is on the back burner for now (until I come back from my US trip – I promise), I thought that it would be interesting to share the following:

WordPress Sharing

While sometimes navigating wordpress.com can be   shall we say “frustrating” at times, they’ve added a really handy in-programme (not really sure what to call it) tool for sharing content.

To do this, go to Settings then Sharing (left hand column) and your readers will be able to share, share and share some more (hopefully anyway)……

The other thing I wanted to share with everyone was that I’ve recently completed my IAB Rising Voice programme and drum roll please…… passed with distinction (thank you for all those e-pat on the backs that I am currently receiving as you read this). Well I’d like to proudly display this on my blog but I have no idea how to. While I’m working on solving that problem, I have solved another image related mystery.

I have before not been able to add an image at the position that I want (thats why all my previous post images are always at the beginning of the post). After reading the WordPress online guide, it was so bleeding obvious that I am almost too embarrassed to write about my issue – “Your image is now inserted into the post at the location where your cursor was last active.” OOOHHHH!!!! So in celebration of this, please find below my badge:

When I figure out how to display it as a badge on the side of the blog,  I’ll let you all know.  In the meantime, any tips, hints and general guidance would be greatly appreciated….

Sudden Inspiration

Having wondered if anyone was reading anything I wrote, I was surprised to have my first blog comment –  thanks sampichardo.

This has got me thinking – I’m not alone in my puzzling,  myself questioning and continue search for more digital knowledge. Using a corney movie as my base (Julia & Julia),  I have decided to look at getting a dummy guide to digital and looking & writing about each topic – one step at a time…

So to get me started – any suggestions on the book?

i-a-b: Social media framework

Having finally got my a into g and looked into my second Rising star assignment – apply the new social media framework for measuring social media effectiveness to my blog. Here it goes:

i is for intent
Looking into my objectives for this blog – I suppose it was to:
-simulate discussion (failed at that one – come on folks give us a comment or two)
-outlet for my thoughts on media, social media and all things digital

the 4 a’s (or one in my case)

Awareness measured against:

Search rankings (digg, technorati, google)

1. Google blog search (0 referrers) – Oh Google please don’t hate me. I promise to produce more content and more frequently if you promise to visit me with your spider
2. Technorati – ranked 82558

Total visitors

1. April – 7 visits
2. May – 56 visits (700% increase)
3. June – 42 visits

b is for benchmark

Other Rising star blogs (now how to find this out)

WordPress.com – why do you hate plug-ins???

Integrated stats system – yes, you may claim this as a “benefit” wordpress.com but to an innocent, under experienced blogger looking for how to add Google analytics, you have lead to much googling, head scratching and general feeling of puzzlement.

What was a girl to do? Turning to Twitter, a very helpful fellow twitter tried to assist. Then the light bulb moment – it’s called a plug-in. Upon searching for Google analytics plug-in, I discovered:

“WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

The distinction between WordPress.com and WordPress.org can cause some confusion for people. Let’s clear it up. WordPress.com is brought to you by some of the same folks who work on WordPress, the Open Source blogging software. WordPress.com utilizes the same WordPress software which you can download at WordPress.org. With WordPress.com the hosting and managing of the software is taken care of by the team here at Automattic. With WordPress.org you need to install the software on your own server or with a 3rd party provider.

…

WordPress.com Cons

*We provide 90+ themes (and adding more every day) which you can modify and edit the CSS, but you cannot run a custom theme*
*You can’t hack the PHP code behind your blog*
*You can’t upload plugins”

http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

So Integrated stats system it is….

Tipping point: Is anyone listening?

Despite sounds like the intro to a Sex and the City episode, our second task for our Rising Stars course is analytics.

While secretly I relish the thought of number crunching, excel sheets and bar charts, I had managed to convenience myself that my pearls of wisdom (being the put) were being read by all the world. Of course upon closer expection, this was not the case.

A grand total of 99 views over the last three months is what I can report. While not challenging the likes of Style Bubble or Stephen fry’s blog, I am quietly enthusiastic by the results. Although I do wonder if this is simply one or two people, who have visited my blog over the course of the last few months (thanks fellow Rising Star’ers).