Provoke Design

Provoke's Online Marketing Insight, What Would You Like To Know About?

Bitter Twitter Doesn’t Get Better!

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It really does seem that the case for implementing subscription internet, or Web 3.0, gets stronger everyday! Email intrays and blog comment forums are clogged up with over 85 per cent spam. News that Twitter crime has risen as usage has increased is only as expected!

Website hackers, PC jackers, password pirates, zombies, trojans, and worms threaten to totally crash civilisation online at any given moment. Firewalls, AntiMalware, PC Defenders and Spyware Terminators – endless security software is needed to simply try and guard you from the ceaseless hordes of cyber barbarians trying to find a way past your precious portals!
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Online Blow! Half Of UK Sites Have No SEO!

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Nope!

Seems the message has not been getting through! A new 2010 study finds that nearly half of the UK’s SME websites contain little or no SEO, are not indexed with search engines and thus, fail to make any visible impact on driving visitor traffic, whatsoever!

According to a recent State of UK Business Websites Study, of a sample 1,000 SME websites analysed, around 47 per cent contained little or no SEO content.
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Social Media Spells Out CRM Today!

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In today’s crossover world where business, social and personal can often mingle, traditional CRM is not necessarily eclipsed by Social Media connections, but informs the new platforms and channels, which are bringing to business and their customers, alike, opportunities and rewards not possible just months ago!

Great claims are made for the dizzying array of social networking forums and messaging mediums buzzing incessantly around today’s web 2.0 space. But for many companies, just getting to grips with the idea of a blog, or a Twitter account, when they are perfectly happy with their original website design announcing ‘Welcome’ to their visitors, and simply using email, the whole social media thing is starting to gnaw!
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Email Marketing Tips To Beat The Spam Filter!

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Spam now accounts for around 80 to 90 per cent of email traffic, which will choke up inboxes unless secure gatekeeper software filters the unwanted junk and protects from serious system attack. The battle to get email marketing messages through and read becomes harder, so in today’s increasingly socially connected web, how can email compete to regain attention?

Recent research has found that that as many as 10 per cent of all UK marketing campaign emails do not reach their intended inbox, the figure sometimes peaking as high as 20 and 30 per cent. While we all know that some emails seem to just not get through, the scale of the issue is bigger than most people think, which makes deliverability a key concern affecting outcomes of email marketing strategies.
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How To Website Refresh In The Cut Back Economy

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The rise of Social Media has been running alongside the descent into, and recovery from recession, and now faces the coming cut backs. Yet at the same time, businesses have been handed new online marketing opportunities to engage with new consumers, if only their websites were ready to take advantage!

Everyone has heard of Twitter and Facebook by now! And a business website is now considered a working part of brand identity presence online, towards which, social media messaging helps drive a wider audience engagement.
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Waking Business Up To Website Accessibility For Mobile

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While it’s true that some businesses will always take a ‘wait and see’ attitude to changes resulting from emerging technology, there are many who readily see the online marketing opportunities for taking a competitive lead in their particular niche.

Of course, all the high profile publicity given to the teething problems of Apple iPhone4 have not helped! In any event, some business owners will a take the view that most technological changes are no more than a passing fad, citing that they can’t see how social media would work to make money for their particular business.
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Mobile Marketing – Third Screen Life Arrives!

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A ‘Third Screen’ wave is underway, transforming online marketing and offline interaction; mobile access is anywhere, anytime, when you want. But beyond the early adopters, will business be now savvy enough to recognise opportunity or wait too long to see if mobile apps can play a long term marketing role before investing?

The professional website design and marketing practitioners are often best placed to quickly evaluate the viability of emerging web technologies and software platforms. It is their job to inform and advise their clients how to formulate best practice marketing strategies to engage niche market audiences.
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Website – Designing For Social Experience

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The expectations of online experience in 2010 are very different from just ten years ago. Social media is now taking the lead on how we interact on the newly emerged platforms and creating sophisticated channels which provide unique, interactive and information exchange experiences.

Designing websites as a social media tool for rich, two way user engagement means providing a versatile portal in today’s fast moving environment for static, mobile, multi platform content sharing spaces.
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Social Media 2 Business, Now We’re Talking!

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It’s often pointed out that social media is the realm of building relationships between business and customer so the necessity of applying a similar engagement to b2b contact is thought mostly inappropriate. The value of b2b social media interaction and the tone of exchange is yet another key online marketing issue that can make a meaningful difference.

There may be shades of difference and businesses can be both colleagues and clients to each other at the same time. Either way, reinforcing brand identity, reminding and defining exactly how and why a business can be of assistance, still stands as a crucial issue to be communicated. Once again, key rules come into greater focus, when talking b2b!
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Twitter Hard Hitters Show Business How It’s Done!

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Latest figures estimate that 65 per cent of the world’s top 100 companies have a Twitter account! Twitter receives more than 600 million hits a day, more than Bing and Yahoo per month. Yet some businesses appear to still be unsure by social media, assuming it to be no more than free product advertising.

Some business attitudes die hard! They really don’t get it most of the time, especially if they can’t see the ROI. Building brand identity on the web through social network messaging channels is not a publicity campaign for online marketing of newest products, services!

You often see the obsolete attitudes reflected on company website pages, still hiding behind unreadable corporate jargon, trying to impress as if it was a glossy print brochure! For eCommerce to succeed or even within simple online retail ‘basket’ sites, the key to driving potential visitor traffic to audience engagement is openness, transparency and being yourself.

It’s not about selling product on Twitter! It’s a concept that some business owners will never get their head around! It’s about being interesting – maybe the hardest content of all! Potentially interested customers will more likely be attracted to become engaged and ‘make friends’ with a person than with a brand.
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Website Design and Marketing True Value

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Does this week’s railing against the free web by Prince, quickly following on the heels  of the paywall now firmly in place around the Times and Sunday Times, seem to be heralding a new era of two-tier online engagement between paying for original quality content/news and free access to all other common sources?

It’s possible that the assumptions of whole generations of users who have grown up to believe that the essential web, websites and content is grown, run and consumed in a so-called ‘no overheads’ Garden of Eden, are about to be challenged.
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