The First One Thousand

May 18, 2010

celebrate 1000 The First One Thousand We’ve passed a significant milestone: over 1,000 posts published.

We celebrated reaching 500 posts just over a year ago, and, just as I did then, I’ve identified the most popular posts over the last year in each of our main areas of interest.

Not surprisingly, these cover a very wide range of topics, from the use of twitter in IR, through tuangou to transparency, and from leadership development through swine flu to diversity.

However, there does seem to be something of a trend in your focus towards discussion of transparency, ethics, responsibility and leadership, with a strong dose of branding and social media. There’s definitely food for thought for us in there…

I’m using Google Analytics and Statcounter to measure your interest in our posts – among other tools (more on tools in the next edition of our newsletter). According to Google, then, these are the topics you found most interesting over the last year.

We hope we’re providing posts that you find interesting and useful. If there are other topics you’d like us to cover, please let us know by commenting below, or by email – or tweet me.

If you’d like to read more, please browse the site; to receive regular updates in your feedreader, you can choose from our range of feeds in our RSS centre.

And sign up for our occasional newsletter (see the link at the top right); this contains additional items that haven’t been covered by one of our blog posts.

Thanks for reading!

Written by Lucy · Filed Under All stakeholders, Best Practices | Comments Off

What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 16: Visibility

May 18, 2010

Having completed 15 blog posts on what makes for effective investor relations sites, I recently stepped back to look at the topics I’ve written about to see if I had overlooked anything. As I reviewed the various subjects, it occurred to me that I had overlooked one of the things I stress with my students about effectiveness in investor communications. Namely, visibility and its effect on the delivery of a company’s message. In short, you cannot effectively communicate with your investors if they cannot find you.

This may seem over-simplified, but there is a lot of truth to it. Think of the following scenario: an investor goes to a company’s home web page looking for information about a company’s stock. From there, one of two things can happen – he can find the link quickly and happily go on his way or, he can spend a couple of fruitless minutes parsing the company home page looking for something that vaguely looks as if it will lead to an investor relations site. In the end, the investor may wind up having to click on a variety of links before he arrives, somewhat irritated and frustrated, at the investor relations site. You really don’t want your investors irritated and frustrated when they visit your site for information.

For example, using a common shortcut for web browsing, I typed in “Tesco.com” into my web browser and up popped the Tesco site that I have reproduced below. You can look long and hard for anything that refers to investors on the home page and you won’t find it. You have to figure out that you need to go down to the bottom of the page and click on the link for Tesco plc, the corporate site, before you will find a link for their investor centre.

Doing the same thing for the London Stock Exchange yields a similar result, except this time you have to figure out that it is the link at the upper left hand corner you need to click on to navigate to a corporate site with an investor relations page.

It is understandable why some entities have multiple web pages, to serve different constituencies.

However, when that is the case, it is quite simple to clearly label and direct visitors to the appropriate site. The most effective way to design your main page is to have a list of links either at the top of the page or along the left or right hand side of the page, where visitors can quickly figure out where to go. For example, the screenshot below shows the Whitbread home page with an easily navigated list down the left hand side.

Simplicity and good design can avoid a lot of grief.

In this series:
Previous post: Blogs
Next post: Making the individual shareholder feel welcome

Written by John Palizza · Filed Under Best Practices, Investor | 1 Comment

Wikipedia Puts Usability on Top around the World

May 18, 2010

Wikipedia is a popular site whether you want to admit it or not. Sure, the content is user-generated and often flawed, but it is a handy place to get quick tidbits of information. Personally, I find the links in the Resources section of articles to be a quick and easy way to verify facts and gather more information. Again, it’s quick and easy, but we all know you need to do some additional research before you rely on anything you read on Wikipedia.

With that said, we’re all familiar with the boring, plain, text-heavy pages on Wikipedia as well as the iconic Wikipedia globe logo. When you land on a Wikipedia Web page, you know where you are before you even have to scroll.

Despite that recognition, Wikipedia spent the past year researching the usability of its Web site, and last week launched a prototype new Wikipedia site design that is being beta tested with nearly 700,000 users. The new look is shown below (you can get a better look here) and offers more color, a ‘boxy’ look that puts more content above the fold in a more organized design, and what looks like easier navigation.

wikipedia prototype Wikipedia Puts Usability on Top around the World

Additionally, the new Wikipedia logo — an updated 3-D globe — has been launched, which is described on the Wikimedia blog as representing, “a new chapter in the history of the logo … as volunteers examined languages and scripts that were not represented in the previous iteration of the puzzle globe.”

Users are even invited to create local versions of the Wikipedia logo to make it more relevant to local cultures. I have to give Wikipedia credit for investing the time and money into making these changes. Regardless of how you feel about the content on Wikipedia, this branding effort and usability initiative are both strong positives for the company and site overall.

What do you think?

Written by Susan Gunelius · Filed Under Best Practices, Brand | Comments Off

On Being Chatted Up by Social Brands

May 17, 2010

I have a secret life.

Or not so secret, actually, but not obviously connected to this one.

I am the editor here at Corporate Eye, but I also have a personal blog about living gluten free, and raising a coeliac child. In that role, I am occasionally courted by big name brands.

influencer social web On Being Chatted Up by Social Brands

These brands want me to think well of them, and – more importantly from their point of view – write positive posts about them and their products. They want me to be on their side, an advocate, using my small influence to support them, because we have a shared audience.

I’m not naive. I know what is going on here, and despite that I have to tell you that it works, at least partly (independent bloggers have their own personal brands to maintain, after all, and don’t want to sell out).

Everyone likes to be validated, and it is undeniably flattering to be invited to cook in Sainsbury’s kitchens, or to dine with them, or to have afternoon tea at Claridge’s with Genius. Not just flattering, but if they’ve got the approach right, highly enjoyable and engaging.

New US rules say, quite rightly, that this kind of interaction, or receiving of goodies, should be declared. There is the beginnings of a code of conduct for bloggers – though whether there is one for the array of covert marketers is quite another question – and this should help both sides in being transparent and open about the relationship.

How is this relevant to you?

If you haven’t identified influencers in your market, start now. Your competitors are probably talking to your shared influencers already; relationships – even alliances – are being forged. There are companies eager to help you find them and/or to talk to them, and to help you spread the word. The influencers will almost certainly be interested to hear from you, if you are indeed relevant to them – after all you do need to be an enthusiast to maintain a blog on a particular topic, because it is hard work.

And if the influencers are just not that into you: don’t you need to know that too, and why?

Try to genuinely engage with them as individuals, setting up a real two-way relationship. There is value to you in what the influencers have to say about you and your products, and they will probably have insights that haven’t occurred to you. Yes, as a blogger, the gifts and events are nice, but it is even better to feel heard, and to believe that your opinion matters. Keep it small-scale, and have a real conversation.

If a crisis hits your company (when it does?) it will be good to know where the influential people talking to your market are likely to sit on the issues involved. Will they support you? Can you provide them with your side of the story?

Pop-up influence, or spot the influencer

Not only have I talked about Sainsbury’s and Genius on my gluten free blog, I am talking about them here, helping to bring their marketing messages to a different group (to some of whom it will be personally relevant, as 1 in 100 of you are coeliac, after all). Do they know that? They won’t be expecting it, because to them I am Lucy at Free From, but if they’re using monitoring tools properly, they will pick it up.

Unless you look, you won’t know who the people talking about you are talking to, where they are talking, or what they are saying. And it won’t always be what you expect, or where.

Note: this was Coeliac Awareness week here in the UK. Coeliac disease is an autoimmune condition in which eating gluten (found in wheat, barley and rye) damages the lining of the small intestine, and is managed by a gluten free diet. It is estimated that 1 in 100 people have coeliac disease, not all of whom are diagnosed.

Written by Lucy · Filed Under Best Practices, Media | 2 Comments

Adobe and Apple Battle over Flash in Ad Format

May 14, 2010

Adobe Apple Flash ad Adobe and Apple Battle over Flash in Ad Format Comparative advertising has been making a comeback in recent years with the Progresso vs. Campbell’s soup comparative ad campaign bringing back memories of the Coke vs. Pepsi challenge from decades earlier. This week, Adobe and Apple have jumped on the comparative advertising bandwagon but with a catch. Instead of trying to differentiate two brands or products, Adobe’s “We Love Apple” ad, which is part of its “Freedom of Choice” campaign, attacks a business decision made by Apple which Steve Jobs communicated quite clearly recently — Apple’s mobile devices, including the iPad and iPhone, do not and will never support Flash.

The Adobe ad making the rounds across the social Web this week is pictured above and includes copy that says Adobe loves creativity and flash, but, “What we don’t love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the Web.”

According to Adobe, the campaign is intended to defend consumers’ freedom of choice claiming that big companies with deep pockets shouldn’t be able to dictate the content people can view online, and since 75% of online video content still uses Flash, that’s exactly what Apple is doing by refusing to support Flash on its mobile devices.

Of course, tech-enthusiasts argue that Flash is “old school” and it’s only a matter of time until it’s completely replaced with better technology. However, Adobe has a point. The change from Flash hasn’t happened yet, and it’s unlikely to happen overnight. Regardless of whether or not the technology is appropriate for mobile devices, people will still want to use it until it’s completely replaced across the Web. Considering that the vast majority of online video is viewed on YouTube, and YouTube still relies on Flash, Apple is denying access to a big chunk of online content that iPad and iPhone customers would probably like to view.

What do you think? Which side of the debate do you stand on? Should Apple support Flash on its mobile devices or should consumers understand that Flash technology needs to be replaced on mobile devices, so they’ll need to live without access to Flash content until the shift to that new technology is made across the Web? In the meantime, which brand looks better or worse in this feud? Is Apple a bully or is Adobe a sore loser? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.