Have you ever been at a presentation or workshop where the speaker has been so magnetic that you are able to retain and recite what you learned to others?

The chances are that the facilitator or speaker used stories. Story telling in building your corporate brand, your employer brand, your internal brand or your personal brand is a great way to facilitate engagement with your brand.

I am delighted that Kevin Kelly, author and speaker on the subjects of leadership and motivation will be joining me on Monday 11 February 2008 at 1pm ET/ 6pm Ireland and the UK to discuss with me the art of story telling.

Amongst other things we will be covering how to get clear about your personal story that supports you in building your personal brand and reputation so that you can attract more clients and the career opportunities you are looking for.

You can join me by registering at Biz Growth Live - it is free to attend and I will be podcasting an extract of the conversation in a few weeks time (the full recording is only available to members of our membership programme the Biz Growth Gym launching this Spring).

If you have a question about how to develop your brand story, you can leave your questions here, email me or post your questions to our Biz Growth Live question desk.

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I was just reading a post by Shel Israel, co-author of “Naked Conversations, How Blogs are changing the way we talk with customers”, where he was remarking on a commentary by Hugh McLeod (who was a speaker at the IT@Cork conference) and Robert Scoble about the fact that it’s a time to end blog conferences.

Shel fortunately recognises that that may not be wise.

I won’t repeat my post to Shel’s blog, which you can access here, however in summary, whether it’s blogging, podcasting or frankly any change that is being implemented in a business, because you are a visionary leader and ready to move on to the next exciting change project, don’t forget the majority of your community who are still probably stuggling to get their head around the concepts you shared with them and what it means for them.

With any new programme, project or technology, there is a huge gap in knowledge and expertise between the visionary leader at the bleeding edge, the early adopter at the leading edge and the majority of the community.

A key strategy in building a strong corporate brand and strong employer brand in relation to engaging clients and employees is how you translate your ideas and vision into action.

You’ve heard the term communicate, communicate, communccate.  But it’s not just about communication, it’s about making the message relevant and engaging for your audience so that they in turn are equipped to take action.

So if Hugh McLeod and Robert Scoble are ready to retire from their speaking careers on the subject of blogs and move on to new technologies and strategies I am sure they will be missed. 

They have now paved the way for the early adopters in business blogging who are able to translate the theory and concept of blogging into how it is relevant for building brands, buzz and boosting reputation and profits so that it is able to be easily understood and implemented by organisations.

And if like me you missed the IT@Cork conference you can access podcasts of the key note speakers at their blog.

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I recently heard a great speaker at an event and was so impressed with their message that I was sharing their story with a journalist friend of mine.

They were so interested that they wanted to get in touch to feature them in their publication so I offered to connect them both.

But what a job I had to find their phone number or email address. Continue reading

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There has been a dialogue ongoing at the Irish Blog Awards site about women in Ireland who blog.

Mary Gilmartin has just compiled a list of female bloogers here in Ireland.

Mary invites you to check that your details are correct on her list and if you know someone who is not detailed on the list do let her know.

It’s great to know there are so many of us blogging - thank you Mary for compiling the list - it’s especially great to see the diversity of subjects people are writing about. 

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Recent research by the Internet Advertising Bureau has reported that spend on online advertising continues to grow and in the UK was valued at £917 million for the first six months of 2006 - this gives the internet an advertising market share of 10.5% (compared to press, TV etc) up from 7.3% for the first half of 2005.

This takes online advertising to within one percentage point of national press, which recorded an 11.4% share for the first half of 2006.

Internet marketing in the UK continues to grow with 40.3% like-for-like annual growth for the first half of 2006.  This takes the medium to a half year high of £917.2 million - compared to £630.5 million a year ago.  The new findings from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), carried out in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC), reveal that in just six months online advertising expenditure had reached nearly £1 billion and looks set to overtake spending on UK national press advertising before the end of 2006.

Whilst TV, press, radio, and direct mail have all experienced declining revenues in the past six months, online has buoyed the advertising market by contributing an additional £284 million to total UK advertising revenues.

The internet in the UK is the fastest-growing advertising medium in the UK.  By comparison the internet is now:

• Double the size of outdoor (5.1%)
• Double the size of consumer magazines (4.6%)
• Three times the size of radio advertising (3.4%)
• Half the size of the TV advertising market, which recorded a 22.7% market share following a decline of 1.3%

Interestingly, interruptive formats, including ‘pop ups’ which are used by many internet marketeers, declined by 9% to £6.8 million - the format is now worth just 0.7% of all online advertising expenditure.  Possible in relation to the fact that these are found to be seen by the consumer to be an irritation.  When they click to leave a site - that is what they want to do.

Recruitment and finance remain the highest-spending industry categories, but other sectors are increasing their online advertising spend.

The fastest growing online medium continues to be Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, accounting for 58% of all money spent on online advertising.

The growth of PPC has been rapid, having almost tripled in value in the last two years as seen in the following value of PPC advertising (source Internet Advertising Bureau and Price Waterhouse Coopers)

• 2004 - £181 million 
• 2004 - £249 million
• 2005 - £337 million
• 2005 - £431 million
• 2006 - £531 million

Much of this growth is due to the clear benefits of PPC advertising - unlike banner advertising (where you pay for the advertisement whether or not it succeeds).

With PPC you only pay for the traffic you receive, this means that PPC is a totally results based form of advertising as you bid on the price you want to set for specific key words in your PPC advert and you can set a budget.

You can also change your adverts to target very specific key word searches.

Google Adwords is much easier to set up than you think - you don’t need to be investing several hundreds of euro’s a month with your advertising campaign as many of the internet marketing firms will have you believe - some mention it will cost you €600 a month to put in place.

It literally takes a few minutes to set up your own campaign and is definately worth considering in your marketing mix.

As you develop your advert remember:

1. Be creative - your ads should stand out from the competition
2. Make sure you include the key words within the title and body of the advertisement
3. Use ‘Phrase Match’ and ‘Exact Match’ - this will lead to less impressions for your ads, but they will be more relevant and therefore increase your click through rate
4. Test and test again - try different ad-copy, positions, keywords and landing pages to evaluate what works and what doesn’t
5. Direct your traffic to specific landing pages on your website - the destination link in the advertisement should take visitors to the exact page you want them to visit, don’t put unnecessary clicks between a visitor and the intended content or your visitor will most likely leave you and you will have wasted your investment.

Remember your goal is to drive targeted traffic to your web site and then convert that traffic to join your list.

It’s unlikely they will invest in your solutions as a first time visitor. 

If you entice your website visitor to join your list then you are going to be able to market to them over time and if you provide consistent value it’s only a matter of time if you have attracted qulified leads through your PPC advert that they will invest in your products, programmes and services.

Source: Internet Advertising bureau

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