As the News of Micheal Jackson’s death swept the world the internet reacted, twitter crashed (although that’s nothing Stephen fry can’t do on a wim) and the virals began. In case your in any doubt of the impact of Michael’s death check out the google trends data below.

That small bump in March (A) was the announcement of his comeback, whilst the announcement of his death is shown by the massive spike at the end of June (B).

React to market trends and opportunities

This is why reacting to market changes and trends quickly can have a massive impact on your business. The public crave something, live and breathe it, and then move on. By making sure you’re in a position to adapt your online presence like this, you’re bound to reap the benefits.

There’s loads of simple ways to do this, get a blog, use Twitter, build a relationship with your web developer - they’ll be able to come up with some great ideas to make the most of your situation and make sure your site is optimised for Search Engines.

Have a goal

Always link marketing activity with a goal, or link it to a product realese. According to Billboard Micheal’s solo albums increased from 10,000 sales the week before his death to 415,000 the week after.

Start a discussion

Get people involved, it was individual fans that created and passed round the virals, not companys. The more links you get in to your site, the more your google page rank will increase, which will do wonders for your search engine position.

Our favorite MJ Virals

Is Michael Jackson alive?

If you’re in any doubt www.ismichaeljacksonstillalive.com will answer this question for you.

Eternal moon walk

www.eternalmoonwalk.com

Ghost at the Neverland ranch

Michael Jackson Tribute by Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppets

Have we missed your favorite? Let us know in the comments below.

Last week we were very well looked after at the 2009 Thinking Digital conference at the Sage, Gateshead.

It was an amazing event, well done team Codeworks! As well as meeting lots of old friends and making lots of new ones, we came away with a load of new insights and answers to questions we didn’t realize we had.

Here 19 of our favorites:

1. You are less complex than your lunch. The rice genome is many times more complex than a human - Matt Ridley, author of Genome
2. Social Media isn’t actually that social - Stowe Boyd, The /Messengers
3. Newspapers can be easily put together in small numbers - Russell Davies & Ben Terrett
4. Animation is the best way of showing how data changes with time - Hans Rosling via videolink from Stockholm
5. When 2 drums and a cymbal fall off a cliff they actually do go ‘ba-boom tish’ - Tom Scott
6. Elections are won by swing voters - Bob Baskin, Spotlight Analysis
7. Don’t fight pirates, compete with them! - Matt Mason, author of The Pirates Dilemma
8. The world’s problems are more likely to be solved by us rather than the politicians - Paul Miller, School of Everything
9. The Beatles were a template for entrepreneurship. The right team, with the correct mentor - Mike Southon, The Financial Times
10. Richard Branson answers questions from the public directly and Virgin are making a moves in the social arena - Alex Hunter, Virgin Group
11. People trust blogs more than print media, and they should. Blogs are more trustworthy - Dan Lyons, Newsweek Magazine
12. Microsoft are creating an impressive but loud and very dangerous 3D projection using plasma - Johnny Chung Lee, Microsoft
13. Someone created the smell of communism in West Germany - Chandler Burr, The New York Times
14. Pleo is the new Furby and we want one - Caleb Chung, Toymaker & Creator of the Furby & Pleo
15. Be nice to people and build a network - Tara Hunt, author of The Whuffie Factor
16. When doing any public speaking, take a conehead, some plastic balls, table tennis bats and a siren - Darius Pocha, Enable Interactive
17. If your content isn’t being bit-torrented, then it’s not that popular - Ben Hammersley, Wired Magazine UK
18. The BBC think ‘The North’ is anywhere outside of London where people eat fish and chips. But Kerstin Mogull handled the questions thrown at her brilliantly
19. We don’t want to miss Thinking Digital 2010

If you missed out this year, tickets for Thinking Digital 2010 have already gone on sale - and as it was sold out last time, we recommend you get in there early.

1. You’re restricted to 140 characters, so it’s quick - you can fit it around any schedule
2. It’s a chance to announce examples of work, without having to write an essay
3. You can track what people are saying about you, and respond quickly
4. It’s informal, so you can get your personality and values across
5. Your competitors are there, and if they’re not, you just found an untapped market - well done you!
6. It’s free
7. It’s easy

These files get downloaded from emails, networks and servers onto local hard drives, but how much thought is given to how that file’s name will look on someone else’s desktop?

A classic mistake that we witness most often is when we receive hundreds of Curriculum Vitae (resumes to the non-latin speakers) each with the file name ‘CV.doc’, which once downloaded onto our network can make filing or finding the correct one again a nightmare.

In a company that only has one website, a file named ‘website_text.doc’ may be crystal clear, but when it lands on your web developer’s desktop with the other 52 files with similar names, chances are that name is no longer exceptional.

Problems caused by flaky file names

Mostly, file names like this cause inconvenience or just plain frustration. More embarrassing files with more generic names, can get wrongly attached to emails.

More drastically, files can get overwritten or deleted, changes to files can get lost and the most up-to-date version can get left behind, as well as the progress you’d made.

Yes, we know you can rename it!

But what happens if the file gets sent again? Or if I’m passing the document back and forth to other people? Or if I’m not sure what that document is about till I read it? By naming the file accurately to begin with your going to save a lot of headaches later down the line.

Other advantages

As well as saving you and the people you swap files with time, it’s a good habit to get into. If you upload files to be downloaded online, all these issues are going to affect all the users that download the file and Google uses the name of the file to assess what it’s about, so it will help your search results too.

How to fix it

• Name the file by its title and use version numbers, eg.”how_to_store_files_v1.doc”
• Use dates in the title to distinguish between files that will be created regularly, eg. “ki_minutes_12_4_09.doc”
• If it’s an image, give the dimensions in the name, eg. “trees_230_130.gif”
• Think about what makes the file unique to the reciever, eg “jim_wozname_cv.doc” not “cv.doc”

Because of it’s popularity and ease of use, email marketing, done in the right way, is a very effective way for businesses to communicate with both potential and existing customers.

There are loads of ways you can use email marketing, (other than just reminding your customers you exist) but here are a few ideas to get you thinking:

• Announce new products/services
• Share news about your business/group/website
• Cross-sell or up-sell products/services
• Direct users to your website
• Tell/remind customers of a deadline/event

Benefits

Unlike web marketing, as long as you get in the inbox at the right time and in the right way, you’ve got a captive audience. What’s more, your competitors are more than a click away, which gives you the chance to get your message across.

Email is proactive, and you can plan other business activity around it. So if you email asks people to ring you, you can make sure you’ve got plenty of people available to answer the phone. Or if you’re selling a product, make sure you have enough in stock.

Email is a lot cheaper than print, and it’s also more enviromentally friendly. And unlike print media, with an email system you can measure pretty much everything in real time.

If you use a template, anyone can send targeted campaigns, which means you can send your campaigns almost as quickly as you can write the content.

Context

There are a number of different types of email you can send to clients to achieve different goals:

• Periodical - weekly/monthly/quarterly newsletters with general information/updates
• Event/action based - received by the client upon sign-up or purchasing
• Date specific, eg Christmas, Valentines day
• Emails which target specific people on your list: eg customers who haven’t bought anything in the last thre months, or whose birthdays are coming up in the next week.

Avoid purchased lists

Don’t buy lists that aren’t relevant - in fact we’d recommend not buying lists at all. If people haven’t signed up for your emails, it’s very unlikely they’re going to read them. Unless you’re confident that what you’re sending is of genuine, specific interest, your email is going to end up in the spam folder, unopened and unread.

It’s also unclear how up-to-date those email addresses are or how they were gathered. You may be paying for incorrect information that has no chance of getting read.

Stay out of the Spam

It’s worth being aware that spam isn’t just unsolicited emails, it’s also emails that come too often, or that are not relevant to the recipient. Most email clients (email receiving/viewing systems such as Outlook or Hotmail) allow people to flag emails as spam. This means that if you irritate your clients in future they won’t have to even ignore emails from you as they won’t even be aware you have emailed them.

Every email that reaches the inbox is run though spam filters, such as Spam Assassin or McAfee Security Center. Spam filters assign points to various elements of the email that could be indicators that the email is spam.

Things that might get your email marked as spam:

• Too many pictures and not enough text
• Certain phrases such as No Obligation, Over 18, Free trial
  
• Coming from an email address that is “at something-offers”
  • Get an email management system that will give you statistics, so you can see what’s working and what isn’t.
  • Make sure you have something to say and say it quickly, link them to your website for more information and set up a new page with targeted messages.
  • Time it well - try to avoid being lost in the Monday morning email backlog.
  • Send it from a real email address, so people can contact you.
  • Get your email tested, to ensure it gets past the spam filters and looks right in lots of different email clients and have web version of the email incase it doesn’t.

Tips for good email marketing

Want more advice on how to make the most of email marketing? Contact Jo York from Ki Media on 0191 645 2442 / jo@ki-media.co.uk