Mike managed to complete the course in 3 hours 41 mins, putting him in the first 20% to cross the finish line.

Mike was running for the charity Water Aid, and along with a friend who was also taking part in the event, managed to raise a total of £1800.

There is still time  to make a donation.

Just go to: http://www.justgiving.com/Cat-MikeParis2012

In the electronics sector , NEPCON ceased some years ago as did ECIF and numerous other lesser known shows in the UK. Some say it is that there just isn’t a strong ‘show culture’ in the industry while others say the size, and the now global relevance of German-based shows such as Electronica, and to a lesser degree Embedded World, PCIM and Productronica, have caused people to focus beyond the UK. Others say that the Internet, including engineering forums, powerful websites that can provide a wealth of data and support, plus the capability to transact online, have all had an impact on engineers’ and sales and marketers’ perceived need and desire to travel to tradeshows.

The very recent National Electronics Week in Birmingham was held in one truncated hall, and the anecdotal feeling on the booths was generally of a fairly low turnout. Meanwhile, earlier this year Embedded World in Nuremberg was packed to the rafters with not only German visitors, but masses of engineers and others from the UK and further afield; no doubt Electronica and the other German shows will be the same. For the sake of the UK electronics industry it would be good for shows like NEW to live on but marketing budgets, especially in the current uncertain climate, are not bottomless.

With all of the tools at our disposal in the digital age it can seem easy to solely use email and the Internet to gather knowledge, ideas and data to adequately complete design tasks. However, there really is still no substitute for occasional face-to-face interaction with others in your sector; things can happen, ideas can be hatched and inspiration gained when two people converse face-to-face! This can never happen in the same way, for whatever reason, via email or even telephone interaction.

So, parking the issue of the environmental impact of travel to one side, there really are good reasons for the trade show to survive, both in the UK and in wider geographies – for the good of innovation and to get us away from the ‘safety’ of our PC screens for just a few days or hours each year!

Although Mike has previously competed in 10 km races and half marathons (including Cardiff, Antwerp, Brussels, London Royal Parks and the Great North Run) this is by far the longest distance he has ever run. 

If any of you would like to make a donation, it is certain to be greatly appreciated. Just go to: 

http://www.justgiving.com/Cat-MikeParis2012

Facts about WaterAid:

- 900 million people do not have access to safe water

- Water-related diseases kill 4,000 children every day

- 2.6 billion people don’t have adequate sanitation

But how well does your website perform on mobile devices such as an iPhone, iPad or an Android smartphone?

Google recently announced that mobile searches have grown by 400% since 2010 and many forecasters predict that by the year 2013 there will be 1.7 billion mobile internet users. That means there will effectively be more people using mobile phones than PCs for web browsing. If your website isn’t up to scratch for mobile devices then statistics show that 80% of visitors will simply leave straight away.

Whilst it can be a good idea to create a mobile website for your business, you can take a number of steps to ensure that your existing website is mobile-optimized.

1. Ensure your website’s navigation is intuitive. Mobile users are more reluctant to make multiple clicks in order to find what they’re looking for; so present your content and menu in a way that reduces the number of clicks needed to get around.
2. Consider the size of navigation buttons. Clicking a link can be quite fiddly using a touchscreen device. Most mobile devices have the option to zoom in on smaller text and links but if you make this process more comfortable with sufficiently sized buttons then it will be a much better experience for the end user.
3. Limit the length of pages on your site. This will minimise the amount of scrolling required to view your content which can also be a discouraging factor for mobile users.
4. Optimise web pages for faster download. Most mobile users will be browsing your website using a 2G or 3G connection; so it’s important to keep images and other file sizes to a minimum.
5. Avoid using Flash. Many mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad do not support Flash; so if your site relies heavily on the software (e.g. for its navigation) then you should at least provide an alternative for mobile users as many of them will simply not be able to browse your website properly.

To encourage businesses to make their website more mobile friendly, Google have set up their GoMo initiative, which features a handy little tool which lets you check the mobile friendliness of your website.

Is your website mobile friendly? What steps have you taken to ensure your site is optimised for mobile devices?

Working in communications we sometimes have to explain the value of what we do. Why is media coverage important? How does it affect the bottom line? How can you measure awareness?

The fact is that while we do specialise in creating awareness, we do it with a specific purpose in mind: achieving a tangible, measurable objective.

You may or may not be familiar with the acronym AIDA: attention, interest, desire, action. It is a marketing term and process that any business, organization or government must stimulate amongst their target audience to achieve a desired result. And AIDA is more or less an easy way of describing how we use awareness as a tool.

Awareness is the first goal of any campaign, not the end objective. We do not sell awareness as a standalone service, it is part of a cycle which we know ends with an action that is important to both the user and provider.

Let’s break this down even further…

Do you have their attention?

Motivating an audience towards a course of action is the ultimate goal of any campaign, but what is always a challenge is persuading the sceptics that awareness building (although somewhat hard to measure) is a worthwhile use of resources. A good campaign should provoke a response and leave an impression – and time, money, and creativity are essential to achieving this.

Next, you need to know where to go and how use your chosen medium. Find out which platforms your audience prefers and meet them there with your message in hand. We all know first impressions count so let them know what you can do for them and do it in a way that is memorable.

The way to do this is by utilising the traditional and new media tools available to help you reach your audience. It used to be that traditional media led to word of mouth and that was the best way to grab attention. Now with the internet at our disposal fostering social engagement can happen on any number of platforms. Word of mouth is spread faster and farther.

Get them interested

Sparking interest is both as simple and as challenging as it sounds.

First off, if your message isn’t of interest to your audience, it is time to retrace your steps and head back to the drawing board. But assuming you know your audience and you have a story to tell that is relevant to them, make it easy for them to access necessary information.

Set up a webpage with details, images, and create a story or experience! If they’re interested enough to visit your website, make sure they stay that way.

Engagement →→ desire

Once they are hooked, the next step is to create mini-ambassadors to help you spread awareness. Do this by ensuring your audience can interact with your brand and share their thoughts and opinions. People (being social creatures we are) love to comment on, share with like minded individuals and become part of a brand story. And it’s probably safe to say that once they have done so, you have created an invested consumer; someone who cares about the message and has a desire to take action.

Time to take action

With your case made and your goal in sight it is time to give your audience the final push toward the next step: Action. Make it as easy as possible for interested parties to understand what needs to be done and when. If you want them to enter a contest, buy a product or service or vote for something, clearly outline the process.

And track these results to ensure that your awareness campaign is on track.

A living example:

A topical case study that vividly illustrates the above is the popular viral campaign initiated by the organization Invisible Children. Their Kony 2012 campaign to bring about the notoriety and arrest of Joseph Kony, Ugandan leader of the Lords Resistance Army, has harnessed the power of the social media to push awareness of the atrocities being perpetrated in central Africa.

With a clear objective in sight, they have used social media, viral marketing, etc. to create attention, viewership and media coverage. Now, as people become aware they are interested in the issue and their desire to help is leading them to take action.

Whether or not you agree with this awareness campaign, all the coverage it has received in the last week had been sparked by awareness building. And this is a framework that any organisation can tailor for use on a smaller scale.

Our job is to help businesses communicate and spread awareness, but this is not awareness just for awareness’ sake; the bigger goal, the ultimate goal is to persuade people towards a course of action that will benefit them.

I’d be interested to hear your opinions on the value of awareness building.

The report reveals that 89% of all consumers now use search engines to make purchasing decisions.

At Pinnacle, this comes as no surprise to us. We provide search engine optimisation (SEO) services for a number of our clients and the results which we regularly see reinforce the above statistic. A recent analysis of one client’s web traffic shows that after just 6 months of implementing a focused SEO campaign, the site is now receiving 30% more search engine traffic.  

This has been achieved by targeting rankings for a number of keywords that meet specific criteria; based on relevance, level of competition and volume of search. By adopting this kind of strategic, analytical approach, you give your site a far greater chance of being found in the search engines by those people who are actively searching for the kind of products and services that you offer.

To find out how you can reach the 89% of your market online, contact us on +44 (0) 208 869 9339 or email info@pinnaclemarcom.com

One fundamental and novel approach to establish your company’s social media maturity comes through a 5-stages model from Forrester Research. It splits businesses into laggards (dormant stage), late majority (testing stage), early majority (coordinating stage), early adopters (scaling and optimizing) and innovators (empowering employees).

Forrester may have undertaken this study to answer questions of how businesses change by adopting social marketing tools however we found that this model could also be a good starting point for companies to reflect on and establish where they are at this moment in time and having established the maturity level the way towards a more unified, coordinated approach lays open.

Read more about each stage here

In the world of social media marketing, the latest networking tool that everybody is talking about is Pinterest.

Described as “an online pinboard to organize and share things you love,” you might think that the website is nothing more than a scrapbooking hobbyist’s dream; a place to pull together your favourite images and ideas and showcase them as collections. However, Pinterest is starting to drive some serious traffic and this is one of the reasons why it is being widely tipped as “the next big thing.”

Launched in March 2010, the site has enjoyed a modest following for much of its existence, but in the last few months, traffic has increased massively with more than 7 million unique visitors reportedly registered in December.

The basic premise of the site is that users create ‘boards’ which they can ‘pin’ items of interest to. Users can follow other users, ‘re-pin’ content, like, share and add comments.

At the moment, a large proportion of Pinterest’s users are made up of individuals and businesses whose interests and markets are geared towards visual content. For instance, interior designers, fashion labels and wedding planners are using it to create themed boards and the site appears to work well in these scenarios; providing a platform for ideas, products and services whilst also generating credibility for their business.

One obvious benefit that we can see is the potential to generate traffic to your website. Any image that you pin to a board contains a link to the original source. So if you pin content that exists on your own website, you’re effectively creating a link which will contribute to your website’s search engine rankings whilst also having the potential for Pinterest users to find their way to your site via the link. 

It’s difficult to say at this stage whether the site will have a broader impact as a marketing tool. However, as with any social media platform, the most important issue when deciding whether there is any value for your business is whether or not your market is using it. Given the exponential growth of Pinterest’s following, it might well be worth taking a look at.

What do you think?

Can you see a use for Pinterest as a marketing tool for your business?

All because of a ‘cookie.’

Find out if you’re about to become a law-breaker by reading this blog post.

The system, with the consent of the reader, tracks how and what is read, what comments are made and if the reader likes the book or not. Data is stored online and then processed in order to highlight interesting annotations made by others, recommend similar books to those just read and appreciated, connect readers to each other.

But let’s be frank: is it worth losing our privacy and having our reading habits scrutinised in exchange for a personalised recommendation service? And do they ever recommend items that you would be interested in reading anyway?  

A fascinating blog post I read recently raised many interesting questions about lending eBooks. It explains the challenges users face due to licensing restrictions. Apparently many eBooks can’t be lent – well some of them can -but it is possible to share them only once and after that, no more lending.

Lending is entirely up to the publishers, and the publishers, despite charging real book prices aren’t providing real book benefits, such as the ability to send the book to whomever you want, much less resell the book.

So can we still talk about “social reading” if we are not allowed to share books with other readers as we used to do?

“Can eBooks Meet Changing Social Demand”? Maybe the right question is “are they trying to shape the Social Demand”?