3f Digital have completed stage one of an ambitious project involving Chinese Copyright Protection.

The web portal, for Dumfries company Maclean Veit Associates, MVA, involved many hours of complex negotiation with Chinese authorities in Bejing.

The site offers UK and international companies a tailored copyright protection service.

Maclean Veit Associates is the sole international cooperation partner for the International Copyright Exchange- Beijing.

MVA register copyright, on behalf of major companies, and enter it into the International Copyright Exchange,  a trading system linking thousands of potential rights buyers across China with sellers from China and abroad.

Managing Director of MVA, James Weatcroft said ” I cannot praise 3f Digital highly enough. At one stage we had to bring the project forward by three weeks. The fact that 3f were able to deliver on time is a testimate to the world class expertise of the company.”

China has vowed to crack down on video and audio makers that are involved in piracy during the Shanghai World Expo.

The National Copyright Administration (NCA) announced that many licensed video and audio companies were found to be involved in making or selling pirated publications in a recent crackdown beginning March 5. Many of the pirated publications are sold online.

The spokesperson of the NCA said any organization or individual involved would be severely punished.

Internet Service Providers are urged to shut down websites selling pirated publications.

About 3.07 million pirated audio and video products have been confiscated and 3,238 illegal sales outlets shut down during the crackdown so far.

The administration has started an emergency response system in an effort to protect the copyright of pavilion designs, mascots, anthems and logos during the upcoming Shanghai World Expo which runs from May 1 to October 31.

3f  has launched a new website Argyll Free Press. The site will feature news and views about Argyll, Scotland – from home and abroad. The site links to our ArgyllBook Social Network which has been attracting a lot of attention from America.

3f Director, David Farrell-Shaw, said ” This is a great opportunity for the people of Argyll to have something that belongs to them and not to publishers. Citizen journalism in on the increase and we will help focus the content and give it an international voice.”

The site will rely heavily on user submitted reports and video and is linked via several social media sectors.

Further information can be found at

Facebook

Twitter

As web manager on the business transformation team, David Farrell-Shaw, led the marketing and customer services sections of SE. The task was to reduce the number of websites owned by the agency and transfer all valid content, products and services onto a one stop shop – or portal as it became known.

The established a process for migration of websites by creating a top level information architecture sympathetic to the Government Category List. The duplication of services on old sites was simply enormous. When the dust had settled  it was estimated that around £9 million had been saved from the public purse.

“If you can’t measure it you shouldn’t be doing it” – I always used to say. My opinion changed with the social media boom. There were, I felt, benefits to getting a brand onto the SM bandwagon that outweighed the need to measure the results too soon.

Companies want to see a RIO, often in their ‘own’ format rather than anything an analytics programme can provide. Too many established outfits, however, are not prepared to invest the time or resource in learning new analysis. Sadly ‘back of cigarette packets’ calculations still drive many SME businesses. They expect it to ‘just happen’. They don’t understand how things have changed.

Sure some take a stab at SM marketing, or web marketing, or email marketing but then panic when there isn’t an immediate result. I call this Wylie E Coyote marketing.

So what’s the solution? How do we provide real detail behind our gut feel for SM?

Amber Naslund has written an excellent article on SM measurement. She outlines some of the areas you should consider.

Revenue and Business Development: (benchmark before and after SM initiatives begin)

• Speed/length of sales cycle
• Number or % of Repeat customers
• % of Customer Retention
• Number of customer referrals (new business), net number of new leads
• Transaction value per customer
• Customer lifetime value
• Conversions from blog/email subs to leads or customers
• Website conversions for leads or sales
• Organic search rankings > converted leads
• % of Converted leads from online vs. offline sources

Potential Cost Savings:

• Shorter customer service/issue resolution time
• % of issues resolved via offline vs. online channels
• Number of support calls before/after outreach effort
• Recruiting costs through online presence (vs. recruiters)
• Training costs
• % of quarterly or annual customer/account turnover
• Overhead costs for communication (measure costs of online outreach vs. analog as compared to resolution ratios)
• Number/ ratio of viable community-driven product ideas
• Length of concept-to-development cycle (use of online community as testing/focus/idea development)

Value, Awareness, Influence

• Brand Loyalty
• Sentiment of posts online – advocates, detractors
• Share of conversation/voice
• Number and frequency of mentions in media (online or print)
• Net Promoter Score (likelihood of recommendation)
• Subscribers to blog/email/newsletter
• Comments/engagement on posted material, downloads of ebooks, etc. (interaction with content)
• Inbound links to site/blog (total as well as on-topic/relevant)
• Number of Tags, votes, social bookmarks
• Fans/followers/group members for social profiles (implication of a brand following)

I recommend reading the full article  from Altitude.

Online PR & Social Media Roundtable | Roundtables | Events | Econsultancy.

Overview

Overview:
Circa. 12 – 20 attendees, no journalists, no audience, no sponsors, chaired and facilitated by E-consultancy.

Objectives:
To share knowledge, experiences and best practice on the topic in question, also covers issues, trends and developments. Network with like-minded industry peers.
Typical agenda covers – Market Watch, Best Practice ‘Clinic’, Research & Measurement, Budget allocation & Resource allocation, Other key resources.

Timings:
20 mins     Arrive, Coffee and Registration
80 mins     E-consultancy facilitates debate around key issues and trends
20 mins     Follow up conversations / networking / close

Just some of the services we can offer you – contact us for details.

• Blog Con­tent Cre­ation  Ser­vices
• Blog­ger and Jour­nal­ism contacts that will boost your cov­er­age
• Guest Blog­ging Place­ment Ser­vices
• Buzz and Viral Mar­ket­ing
• Online Com­mu­nity Building
• Online Mar­ket­ing
• Rep­u­ta­tion Posi­tion­ing
• Search Engine Opti­miza­tion (SEO)
• Social Media Mar­ket­ing
• Social Media Train­ing
• RSS Feed and Syn­di­ca­tion Planning
• Twit­ter Pro­mo­tion Services

Could it get any more addictive? I keep trying to stay away from Facebook but get drawn in with the lure of  ‘just one more level’ of Mafia wars.

I’m not one of those who leads his life totally online. Sure, I have numerous memberships of  this that and Twother, but I see these as being more of a research exercise. What is everyone working on these days? Who is playing with what? Is there a business use of this tool?

In contrast, when I tried to get my buddy Russell Simpson to join UNYK he declined. Russell doesn’t like to leave a digital footprint and hasn’t signed up for any of the social networks. That’s all good and well, but I just ‘know’ that he would relish the challenge of Mafia Wars,  like me, however, he would hate the amount of trivia that ends up on Facebook.

I think, now that the Bebo generation have joined the Facebook bandwagon, it’s time to move on.

Then Mafia Wars makes me an offer I can’t refuse – and I’m dragged back in again.

Flicker, Twitter, Diggit, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube – toowit twooo – I don’t know about you, but trying to keep up with it all has my head rotating further than your average owl.

No one can claim to be an expert in all the social networking tools, there are just too many. Every day seems to herald a new tool for the marketer’s bulging toolbox. Take twitter for instance how many additional tools does it have. Here’s a few:

TweetDeck, SeesMic, Statuzer, HootSuite,  coTweet, Twaitter and Tweetvisor

For a more complete list see 30 Twitter Tools for Business – which will probably be 50 tools by the time you read it.

So let’s cut through the confusion with 3 easy steps.

• Blog – use a blogging tool regularly. Choose from among the big guns WordPress, Blogger, Typepad or all 3. Don’t duplicate content. Try not to write the same thing on every blog. Vary what you say and how you say it. Different words for different audiences. Keep your content short, no long rambling monologues-please!
• Links- tie your main website to your blog and everything to Twitter.
• Share – don’t lock your content away. Allow people to re-post or quote your articles. Make it easy for them to do so by adding functionality to tweet etc.

So there’s a start.

Let me know how you get on.

By Shiv Singh

Well worth a read.

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