Latest posts from Danny Brown

Enjoy the latest posts from Danny Brown, and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments after the post.

Bonsai Interactive ? Kind of a Big Deal

So today saw the launch of the Bonsai Interactive website, something that had become a labour of love over the last week or so.

Bonsai Interactive itself launched back in June, though it was more a soft launch with our social profiles. The website would have launched sooner, but we had some server hiccups so we transferred over to BlogOnCloud9, who also power this blog and who I have nothing but good words for.

So, Bonsai Interactive. What is it, and why are we kind of a big deal?

Bonsai – The Art of Growing

Bonsai Interactive grew from three people – myself,?Troy Claus and?Selina Jane Eckersall. Troy and I had founded the SRM Group, and Selina owned Sublime marketing agency. Troy knew Selina from way back, and we all became good friends.

It soon became clear that we had the same values, business ethics and determination to have fun along the way, both ourselves and with our clients. It also became clear that a merger was the natural way forward – and so Bonsai Interactive was born.

Why Bonsai? Simple – bonsai means “the art of growing”, and everything we do to help your business grow we’ll treat like a work of art – with care, delicacy, respect and most of all love.

After all, if you don’t love what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with, may as well stop now. So, that’s where Bonsai came from.

SRM Group and Sublime

Obviously, whenever there’s a merger or coming together, one of the main questions that needs answering is what happens to any existing companies? Well, the good news here is that pretty much nothing changes.

While Bonsai Interactive will be the core business and look after marketing, strategy, branding and a host of other solutions, SRM Group and Sublime will remain as two separate entities under the Bonsai umbrella.

The SRM Group will offer social responsibility and education; organizational development; and strategies and workshops on social media for business and non-profits.

Sublime will continue to develop agency relationships and enhance the reputation and respect that Selina has built around the Sublime brand.

With Sublime, we’ll help other agencies get acquainted with the social web, both from their perspective and from that of their clients. Again, this will include workshops, outsourced projects and offering both an introduction and ongoing education for agencies not currently active in social media and digital marketing.

And then there’s Appficient. Still under wraps at the minute, Appficient will be our mobile application arm. We’re currently finalizing a very strong partnership and core team, with offices in Canada, the U.S. and Argentina.

Primarily developing for iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry, Appficient will offer a different way of looking at mobile apps, and we’re looking forward to releasing more information very soon.

What Next?

While these arms will continue to operate individually, it may be that eventually everything falls under the Bonsai Interactive roof, if it makes sense to do this operationally.

In the meantime, Bonsai Interactive is live, and we’re looking to keep having fun, and adding a little bit of zen to the marketing space.

We have some very cool client projects we’ll be unleashing soon (including some funky branding exercises in Toronto). We also have some fun live events coming up, the first one being this fall to celebrate the release of The Social Network movie.

We’d love for you to join us online, and you can find us over at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr or our blog. And let us know all about you while you’re there – after all, that’s what we’re all here for, right?

Oh, and the “kind of a big deal” tagline? We just kinda liked it.

Hope to see you over at Bonsai Interactive sometime – cheers!

Ambassadors of Quan

Friends Marketers are savvy.

Marketers make you want what you don?t need. Marketers embed a desire whether you?re hot to trot or not.

Marketers are the Ambassadors of Quan for sales targets and brand focus.

Or are they?

Does your decision rest on your head or your heart? Is there an emotional reason for buying something or a logical one?

Does it matter??As long as you buy, the marketer?s job is done, right?

Maybe, maybe not.

Take a look at some of the key tools in marketing?s make-up:

Target markets
Products
Promotion
Distribution
Pricing
Support services

These aren?t all that marketing does, but they?re the ones that need to be done well to succeed and measure the success. Savvy marketers would use a combination of these and instill a want for a product or service, collect the check and move on. Game over, new challengers please.

That was then; this is now

Today, marketing is different. Today,?consumer marketing is the new tool-set. Communication channels have changed and the message distribution model has changed with it.

Today, it’s not word of mouth but world of mouth that’s leading the charge of marketing. Services like Twitter, blogs, Youtube, citizen journalism and more mean a single marketing message isn?t enough anymore.

Consumers no longer like to be told what they want; they like to be asked what they?need. Want is the old; need is the present?and the future.

But not everyone?s on board with this idea.

Companies are still spending thousands, and often millions, on a message that isn?t being heard. Or if it?s being heard, it isn?t being listened to. Marketing agencies are just as at fault ? many still cling to the power base they used to have and feel they can ride out the storm that is social media.

After all, what do us consumers know, right? Wrong.

Today, we?re connected in ways that marketers can only dream off. We have instant access to the best information on anything we need. We?re now the tool-set that used to be the sole domain of the marketer.

And still many don?t get this. And they wonder why results are crap.

To paraphrase?The Cluetrain Manifesto:

?When we?re not busy being your ?target market?, many of us are your people. We?d rather be talking to friends online than watching the clock. That would get your name around better than your entire million dollar website. But you tell us speaking to the market is Marketing?s job.?

It is marketing?s job; but today the target audience is the marketer.

We?re your people too, marketers ? isn?t it about time you opened up to?our tool-set?

photo credit:?Kippras

Why Arkayne is Good for Your Blog and Business

For any blogger (especially if you’re using your blog for your business), Arkayne is a pretty solid platform that you might want to check out.

I’ve been using Arkayne on my blog for the last month or so, and I gotta say, I’m enjoying the experience so far. I’ve not used all the features to their full advantage yet, but that’s more to do with me than the tool itself.

So what is Arkayne and why should you be bothered?

Simple. Two of the most asked questions by bloggers is how to get more traffic and how to monetize it. To grow and monetize your blog you need readers but, as any blogger will tell you, finding those readers initially can be tough.

It takes a combination of content worth reading, strong search engine visibility and social network sharing and relevance. Arkayne can help with all three.

Search Engine Optimization

Arkayne’s built-in SEO Analyzer helps you increase the visibility of a page or post to the various search engines. Once your post is written and saved to draft mode, you can use the analyzer to test how well it’s optimized.

The Arkayne SEO analyzer scores the post according to title, meta description and content. It then tells you where you’re going wrong and how to improve. You can make the changes and then re-analyze until you get that magic 100% (or A rating).

It’s similar to the Scribe SEO system with one main difference. With Scribe, you’re allocated credits depending on which package you buy. Each analysis uses a credit, as does each re-analysis when fixing your content, which means your credits can soon be eaten up and you have to buy more.

Arkayne’s SEO analyzer allows as many analysis checks and corrections as you need without charging extra – a nice touch.

Update – Arkayne has just published a comparison chart between Arkayne SEO Analyzer and Scribe SEO, which shows Arkayne’s offering ahead in most comparisons.

Network Sharing

Another nice feature from Arkayne is the social sharing and network syndication options it offers. There are a few ways it does this and each one offers a great way to increase your traffic by building relevance into each post and share.

For example, if you link your Twitter and/or Facebook account to Arkayne, you can post an update from within your dashboard to your profile. Arkayne then posts this link as a status update on Facebook, or a tweet on Twitter. So what – just like any other content sharing platform, right?

Not quite. Where Arkayne differs is that the link goes back to your publisher page on Arkayne, and offers your profile along with related links to more content you’ve written on a similar topic. But that’s not all.

By searching your content and providing even more relevant links, Arkayne is constantly figuring out how to connect to your site from the link you provided, and increase its traffic and relevance every time.

Arkayne also offers the option to show related posts at the end of your own blog post (both from your blog and content across the web), which again helps decrease bounce rate on your blog while sharing content with and from others.

What I like about Arkayne’s approach is they take the time to find the most relevant links and then add to your post, so it’s not just a bunch of links grabbed by keywords only. It does mean that related posts don’t appear immediately, but when they do you know they will be relevant.

Another way Arkayne helps your blog grow is by its own social network of bloggers and publishers. You can use Arkayne’s recommendation engine to either recommend blogs or publications you read, or help find ones that would be useful to you. And of course this works in reverse.

Each recommendation or connection you make appears on your publisher profile, offering more visibility to that blog. So if you connect to other publishers and they find you relevant, your blog will then appear in their feed, increasing your visibility again.

Using Arkayne for Business

So far, I’ve looked at some of the features that make Arkayne a very cool platform for bloggers, but it doesn’t stop there. It can also help you with your business goals, regardless the size of you and/or your campaign(s).

For example, you can use Arkayne to examine your existing content (web, publisher strategies and relationships) and the social relevance options of Arkayne, and make sure you’re using the right approach (and amend if you’re not).

Additionally, you can also use Arkayne’s engine to find those that can help you spread your message more, as well as manage any syndicated news and content and adapt if any updates about your business are made.

Then there’s the analytics integration with Google Analytics, Omniture and Core Metrics to manage your campaign and click-throughs or tracking codes; traffic metrics to see who’s the best partner for your campaign; and white label branding to make Arkayne part of your client offering.

And that’s just brushing the surface – depending on your needs, you can really get deep into how you manage Arkayne for your business or enterprise goals.

Is Arkayne Worth It?

From my own (still limited) use so far, hell yes. As a blogger, the SEO Analyzer, as well as the RSS syndication and social integration options, makes it worthwhile to me.

And as a business owner, I can see where the various publisher and campaign solutions would be useful as well.

From a price standpoint, Arkayne also makes a lot of sense. As well as a free account, you can also purchase plans for Pro, Pro + SEO (the one I have), Business and Enterprise.

I’m still playing with all the features that Arkayne has, but I can already see the benefits. My bounce rates have dropped since I activated a related posts option, and my SEO visibility has improved too.

Would I recommend Arkayne? Yes – especially since you can test a lot of the features with a free account. Though to really benefit, I’d recommend the Pro + SEO package.

What about you – is Arkayne something you can see benefit from? Or if you’ve checked it out already, I’d love to hear your thoughts – as always, the comments are yours.

The Art of the Story

Apple’s come in for a lot of stick over their new iPhone 4. From reception issues when held a certain way to discoloured screens and other problems, there’s no doubt Apple’s new baby isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

And yet…

With one single advert, my view of iPhone 4 (as a consumer) is immediately positive again.

Yes, I know it has issues. I know Steve Jobs doesn’t really seem to care about us, as product users and advocates. I know that using all its features will set me back an arm and a leg for contract costs.

But seeing this advert last night makes me consider buying the iPhone. It makes me think that, despite all its issues, the possibilities opened up by this one feature alone make it worthwhile.

Funny how telling a simple emotional story can change our mindsets, huh?

Virally Fungal

A virus is something that comes along, knocks you for six for a while, then usually leaves your system once your immune system kicks in.

A fungus, on the other hand, usually gets its teeth into you then never lets go. It’s there in the background, and just when you think you’ve seen the last of it, there it is again. Ever-present, ever-ready to keep its grip on you.

So many businesses try to go viral with their promotions. Great. Get the extra eyeballs while you can and ride the wave.

But wouldn’t it be better to be fungal instead?