Digital technology is growing and growing. In this TV show Nigel Huddleston explains why the future of Google+ is exciting for business and pleasure.

Social digital technology

We’re really excited about Google Plus because as a social platform it’s not a standalone, we’re integrating it with search. But it’s really exciting because we’ve not only got more than 400 million unique users, but they’re using it in a really creative way that maybe they aren’t with other social platforms. The video content capability is great, showing photos of course is really, really important. But what we’re seeing from an advertiser’s angle as well is that they’re able to example, link to their Google Plus page in the advertising. We’re seeing a five to ten percent uplift in click through rates, to the link to the Google Plus page. So that’s really important, we call that social extensions. So there’s a meaningful impact from an advertiser’s side in terms of having that Google Plus social platform.

Keep an eye on Inside Finance if you are interested in social digital technology. There will be more TV shows from knowledgeable business insiders like Nigel Huddleston.

 

In this business growth show, Colin Stevens of Better Bathrooms discusses how his win at the National Business Awards gave him a publicity boost and increased his sales.

Business growth show: Awards publicity

Staff turnover’s reduced, sales have continued to increase. On our website we have but ‘award winning company’ and that improved conversion rates, which improves sales. People walking into the store say we just read you in the paper. On my twitter feed loads of people started following me, I got interviewed on Sky. This is a funny story. After winning at the National Business Awards it deserved to be celebrated. So we stayed out pretty much all night long in London and had a great time and after two hours sleep I went to Sky news. I was lying on the coach going I don’t think I can go on. I got made up and got the mic on at the studio. As I walking over to Kay Burley I had to dodge all the camera wires. As I was about to go on there was a war hit and I didn’t think I would get to do my bit, but Kay Burley is also from Wigan and she was adamant to get me on. So I did about seven minutes on Sky news. They did a fantastic piece on us they showed the business and the store. Getting that publicity is priceless. We could put it on our website and it provided credibility.

Look out for more business growth shows on Inside Finance TV. We will continue to follow ideas around publicising a business.

Social media policy should extend outside the marketing department, as Bob Barker explains in this TV show.

Social media policy - Companies need to leverage their employees.

So companies are just waking up to the fact that they need to leverage their employees.

There’s a terminology that says marketing is far too important to be left to the marketing department, and that is the terminology that’s becoming true now with social media.

So if you just do push only marketing you’re not you know, you’re back to your 2% response or less, or if you’ve just got that mind-set that is, it works but it’s not terribly efficient and people don’t trust that marketing anymore.

So what companies are beginning to realise is that the that sales people and individuals in the company represent a really good way of getting their content out there, the important content that people need to engage with, particularly in the business to business area.

And so people are beginning to realise that if their sales people and their key executives aren’t good online they need to do something about that because if they haven’t got.  For example, if they’ve got ten people on LinkedIn and they’ve got no picture of them.

They  may be brilliant, but anyone of a younger generation is gonna look them up and think well, I don’t want anything to do with them. They obviously don’t understand this new world.

So there’s the companies beginning to realise that. LinkedIn has gained huge momentum the last few years as a defacto platform for people connecting in business.

So companies are beginning to realise the power of LinkedIn, companies are beginning to realise the power of content and getting people to share that content through social channels.

And it’s very important that individuals are used to share that content. It’s much more easy these days.

You’ve got these share buttons on the bottom of all the content. But even people knowing that they can just click on that content and it will share it, people generally don’t know that.

So there is a big opportunity to educate people who haven’t had that education because nobody told you how to use a PC, nobody told you how to use social media to get that education and help the firm do its marketing.

_____________________________________________________________________

Inside Finance will have more TV shows about social media policy, usage and trends. Why not bookmark the page?

Merger and acquisition can happen across industries and across borders. In this TV show Giles Murphy goes through the typical merger process.

Merger and acquisition in reality

In theory it should be a simple project management exercise. Unfortunately, in our experience, most people prepare very poorly for such an event and in practice spend a lot of time focusing on the merger transaction itself and forget to put effort into the integration process that should happen afterwards. Much would depend upon whether it is a simple domestic merger or whether there’s international firms coming together, but if we take a simple domestic merger, our view is, in terms of the negotiations, really a period of six to eight weeks should be enough for the negotiations to identify whether there are any key deal breakers that one might have to consider. As I say, what often happens is that people focus on that element of negotiation. They then breathe a sigh of relief when the deal actually gets done, and yet what we would say is that’s when the difficult work happens where firms need to prepare much better for the post-deal integration because that ultimately determines how successful the merger will be.

Browse Inside Finance TV for many more videos on merger and acquisition processes.

The age of big data is a new and exciting time for business. In this TV show John Halpin shares his thoughts and experiences of data.

The age of big data creates unknown territory

Big data is basically saying, it’s not just all about big brands and big systems and the back office of big head offices, it’s about social media and Facebook and online and Twitter and that’s all data. It’s about blogs.  It’s about, videos.  It’s about news. It’s all this information being captured somewhere.  How can you use that from a company perspective? And the answer is, we don’t really quite know.  It’s very new. Rather than get quite excited about big data and all this additional information and terabytes of new data going into organisations, and basically being quite pleased with yourself that you’ve actually got it.  To me, it’s just like well, there’s always been lots of data. I’ve been involved in lots of data for many years.  It’s how you have it and use it.  If I was going down the route of beginning, doing something in data, rather than get quite excited about big data and how it’s used and how it’s interact. First of all, understand your customers, know what they are, have the information on them.  Can you speak to them? There’s laws in this country about, speaking to customers.  You might have all the information, you’ve got to legally be able to speak to them and say, if your customers are a prospect, all that kind of thing. There’s regulation around the financial services, which is even tighter as well.  But big data is quite exciting in terms of a phrase I used before, is dealing with the fact. If I can prove something on the data that I have now, it helps me very much to go back to my directors or people who are on the budgets and say, “Right, to move us into the realms of big data and transactional behavioural information via social media, I’ll need some software to do that. I’ll need some money.  And the reason why I need money, because I’ve just proved something with you with the data I have already. The age of big data is another exciting aspect of the connected economy. We will continue to bring you expert insight into the impact of social media and digital innovations.

Connected marketing relies on well developed personal brands to share company content. Our latest video from Bob Barker explores the issue:

Connected marketing comes from individuals

A lot of companies out there have been using traditional marketing mechanisms.

They’ve been using digital marketing, and what we see is that more and more marketing has got to rely on the individuals in the company to help get the messages out because it’s those individuals that are often the sales people and it’s the individuals who themselves have got networks.

So what we do a lot of is helping people to understand what their personal brand is all about and to make sure, for example, on LinkedIn that they’ve got a decent profile because Google’s going to find you on LinkedIn if somebody’s looking for you quicker than any other platform, so you need to look the part.

You need to be dressed well, and so on and so forth. And then there’s the whole thing about network maintenance, or understanding and managing your network.

So we’ve all built up contacts on our Outlook or whatever it is, and we’re beginning to build up more and more contact on LinkedIn as it becomes more the de facto business platform for business people connecting.

So we have to put time in and understand how we build and nurture our networks using something like that.

And then the other thing is that now we’ve got a brand and we understand our network, we’ve then got all this content that the company’s produced that might be relevant to what we’re talking about but nobody’s sharing it.

So a lot of companies are building all this content and people aren’t sharing it, like these videos.

We see in large companies, when you look at the shares, nothing’s going on, and so we help companies to understand.

We help the individuals in those companies to understand it’s their responsibility to help get this content out there because on the internet when people are researching companies and they’re looking for what people, you know, what companies are all about, they’re doing a lot of their research without the company knowing.

So unless that company’s got content out there and people are interfacing and being out there, and having their brand out there, they’re not going to be visible when companies are looking for who they want to do business with and who they might trust.

Inside Finance TV will continue to explore connected marketing and the surrounding issues- look out for more TV shows from Bob Barker.

Marketing communications strategy has a pattern. In this TV Show Ibrahim Ibrahim looks at consumerism and status symbols within emerging economies:

Marketing communications strategy in developing economies

The developing economies are going through the cycle of consumerism that we went through two decades ago. I think this idea of buying stuff and buying logos and just accumulating status symbols is prevalent. But I think, like in the developing economies, there’s a shift from status symbols to status skills, no longer. At the heart of consumerism is status, but no longer is the status, you know, in owning this bottle of whiskey, it may have cost me 80 quid but, you know, two decades ago the status was in owning it. Now the status is in knowing whether it’s east coast, west coast, is it peat, is it honey, where is it from, is it made on the Isle of Skye, is it by the sea, because it’s got beautiful flavours of peat or you know, it’s the stories. So if we’re talking and go full circle back to the notion of the store, stores are no longer about shops, they’re about stories. And I think that is really important, the idea of shifting shopping from stores to stories is really key. So how do you equip customers with those stories, and that are engaging and relevant, that they can then gain status, because that’s ultimately what we all want. It’s the dematerialising of shopping. Look out for more discussion about marketing communications strategy from experts like Ibrahim Ibrahim on Inside Finance TV and our new Connected Economy channel

Business communication methods can be approached with a process.  Bob Barker takes us through the journey:

Business communication methods need adapting on several levels

We look at a journey that all companies have got to go on. So at the first level they need to understand, they need to think about the internet, they need to think how the internet works, so there’s a cultural thing. They need to start understanding that the digital world is going to impact them and it’s going to affect their culture, it’s going to affect how they do business. They’ve then got to have a look at how they operate online. So Cloud is really affecting the cost of IT, it’s affecting the capability of IT, you know, sensors that are providing data. There’s a whole sort of revolution there. Then there’s a revolution in the way you collaborate, so how you operate internally. There are lots of these systems that now help us to operate much more collaboratively within the company. People need to look at that area too and how they might use technology to cut down the amount of email people use and to do more video conferencing and all that kind of stuff, and use collaborative applications. Then we get into marketing, which is where we’re trying to use content and trying to get inbound marketing because people are interested in the people that are in your organisation and the content that you’ve got. So you’re trying to attract people inbound. And then finally there’s the area of community, so the new way of leading is forming around community as you know. Based on your own contact as individual because people are following you because you’re well known about what you do, or because the organisation has built a community and you’re trying to get people to join that community and become part of that community, and you’re trying to nurture those people in there. And they will do the marketing for you, and there's examples of people doing the servicing for you, and you’re trying to create a community around what you do. That’s a whole journey that companies have got to go on and it takes time. Hear more about business communication methods onInside Finance TV, where we also have more from Bob Barker.  

Geo-targeting is a stronger marketing strategy than ever before. Nigel Huddleston discusses how the hospitality sector is personalising offers.

Geo-targeting advances with technology

We’re in a really exciting phase of the hospitality sector when it comes to technology and the use of the mobile devices. There’s a whole host of opportunities that weren’t there before in terms of getting your messages out to the consumer. You can know for example if somebody’s getting off a plane at say Heathrow Airport. We can now target them and know that they’re at Heathrow Airport. We can probably put an offer to them that’s very relevant, you know, discount, 30% off for the hotel that’s just three miles away. So really using that geo-targeting in a way that was never possible before. We will be sharing more ideas about geo-targeting and marketing strategies on Inside Finance.

Graeme Codrington discusses his use of social media and why Facebook for CEOs is a great way of keeping in touch with the world while travelling:

All my friends and family are on Facebook.  But pretty much anybody and any audience who wants to connect with me can.

I once hit the 5,000 friend limit and then went through and did a massive purge and dropped it down to three and it’s now drifting up over four again.

So when you hit that 5,000 limit you maybe have to think differently.

But for me, Facebook is a place where people can get to know me, me as a person.  And I think some CEOs, some business leaders are starting to see the benefit in doing this as well, in just making yourself accessible.

I’m passionate about cricket and most other sports, but cricket in particular.

I am passionate about my family.  I enjoy travel, although I hate travelling, if you can see the distinction between those two things.

And for me, I just thought, well Facebook is the opportunity for me to just let that all hang out.

In the same step as I’m travelling, as I’m with my family, as I’m watching sport, as I’m engaging with my clients, I’m getting a sense of what’s changing in the world.

Facebook for CEOs is a great way to stay in touch with the world.

Inside Finance will continue to look at the uses of Facebook for CEOs and we will have more videos from Graeme Codrington.

 

 

if you’re better governed you become more efficient. Secondly, that once you’re better governed and you’ve got all of those systems into place, that you are enjoying stronger stakeholder support for what you’re seeking to achieve, and that’s very important. But that said, we are acknowledged globally as one of the leaders, one of the proponents of good practice, governance. And that’s good feedback for us because we want to know that we are getting somewhere. However we still continue to encounter organisational collapse. We still continue to encounter cases of value destruction. And that tells us that we can’t be complacent about the systems we are putting into place. But certainly as far as the financial sector is concerned, despite the fact that we’ve had a double recession and people even talking about a third recession after that, most of our corporate world have survived intact and continues to perform well. And we will put that down to the fact that our companies are well run and well governed.

I’m not an IT expert. But there are certainly small changes that companies can do and there are specialist organisations out there that can help them to do that. There are a number of small changes companies can make that will effectively stop 80% of them. And that is an incredibly cost effective way to go. You can never stop it completely. The world of IT is such as we all know with computer viruses, as soon as you close one loophole or close one avenue then another one opens. So this is an ongoing struggle. People who are working in this area are developing new ways all the time. And like I say, sort of 80% of it can be dealt with in a very cost effective way which leaves you 20% exposed, which is probably always going to be the case. What is being stolen from companies can be as serious as their future strategy, detail, you know, through details of their customer base, all that kind of intelligence that is so important to companies in this competitive environment. If a competitor can get hold of it then obviously that’s very damaging for a company. But we’re not talking about competitors within the UK, this is a worldwide problem and the most cyber attacks are coming from overseas.

Anthony Hilton, Financial Editor, The London Evening Standard, on why social media should be ignored

There are times when you do have to react quickly clearly.  Social media’s a difficult one.

I mean 99% of stuff on Twitter you could … has been dismissed as complete garbage.  And so the entire range of vaguely interesting through to useful is sandwiched in that one percent at the top

Companies are mentioned, you know, companies used to be discussed in pubs all the time, and they didn’t know about it so they took no notice.

And most of the stuff on social media, I mean a million people will read it and a million people will forget it thereafter.  So there’s a tiny amount of stuff, a tiny, tiny amount that actually will go viral and could damage a company.  Now, how you spot that and know how to react to it, I’m afraid I don’t have the answer

But I think most of it could be ignored.  And I despair of companies that spend their time endlessly monitoring social media in case something pops up.  They ought to have something better to do with their lives, you know, get a life.

Dr Stephanie Hussels, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, Cranfield University on the digital world and entrepreneurship

I think it has offered a lot of opportunities.  I mean when we look back, 1998 Google was only set up.

I mean LinkedIn, Twitter is only recent phenomenon we have.  Personally I think there's great opportunities in terms of reaching your customers, reaching clients whether it's B to B, B to C.

But  I always think there's also... the world's become more visible so maybe things you got away with in the past is no longer possible.

So I think my view is using social media is a great way of promoting your business but also keep aware of social media also comes with potential pitfalls if you don't use it in the right way.

Graeme Codrington, Futurist, TomorrowToday on social media marketing tools.

According to Graeme Codrington, the popularity of social media marketing tools are best understood as customer behaviors rather than new marketing channels. Yet businesses, focussed on their traditional internal processes and org charts want to treat social media marketing tools as channels. Facebook is not even a channel, it’s actually a behaviour. And companies don’t understand this. Yet companies are trying to treat Facebook like a channel, they’re trying to work out how do you do marketing? How do you do recruitment through this social media space? I mean I say Facebook, but Twitter, LinkedIn, and all the others are going to be in the same category. They are behaviours that have simply found technologies to make them happen. And that means that companies really need to adjust their attitudes. This is what we call "beyond the hype". You know, we need to go beyond the hype of the 13 million so-called social media experts listed on Google, who will come in and tell you how you can increase sales and how you can increase staff retention. Maybe you can do those things. But on a long-term basis something else is going on in social media. It’s about building communities. It’s about engaging, interacting, involving people in conversations. It’s about connection. And these are not things that you then use in your marketing team or your HR strategy. These are ways of living, ways of engaging, and that’s the mind set shift, that needs to take place. These are not technologies, these are behaviours and we need to adjust our behaviour and attitude to match the technologies that are available. For more on social media marketing tools and how they impact on business check out all Graeme Codrington's videos here

Martha Lane Fox on the connected economy.

According to Martha Lane Fox, UK Digital Champion, the connected economy brings new and cost-effective solutions to business in the UK. The connected economy is characterised by the use of digital technologies like social media, smart phones or cloud computing to unlock greater efficiency and cost savings. Although the UK has seen difficulty in key sectors like retail, the connected economy or digital economy has been booming. The UK's £121Bn internet economy is the largest of any G20 country "I certainly think that there are more ways to be more connected into the things that are important because of technology, than perhaps there were in the last economic downturn. So you know I believe very deeply that the opportunity that digital technologies afford you will give you more robust ability to survive. So for example, you know, how would it have been possible to just get out there and select some customers and talk to them in the past as easily as it can be now through a Facebook group or through a LinkedIn group or through a Twitter profile? You know, there are so many ways that you can connect into your customer base, stay close to it. But also though, you know, the opportunity to save money by using digital technologies more smartly, whether it’s with cloud computing through to how you actually talk to your employees, suppliers, whatever the thing might be. So both on there and outside your business and internally, I think that technology can help really ride the wave." According to Inside Finance TV experts like Graeme Codrington, the connected economy is more than just marketing. It's a fundamental change to the way businesses will operate.