Danny Brown

podcaster - author - creator

social media

Hiring an Agency for Your Business

As social media continues to grow as a business tool, hiring an agency for your business’s social media needs can be confusing.

For a business owner, it can be pretty stressful deciding which agency is best for your needs – especially with all the impressive claims and stats many consultants and agencies fire at you.

We thought we’d put a quick Bonsai Interactive guide together for you, with some of the key points you should be referencing when choosing an agency for your business.

Anything you’d add?

This is a cross post with Bonsai Interactive

Social Media for Good ? The #CitizenGulf Project

One of the greatest aspects of social media is how it’s been adapted to helping charitable causes and non-profits.

From reacting to the Haiti disaster to raising funds for a kids school in Tanzania, social media continues to show just how much we can make a change where before we may have thought there was nothing we could do.

A perfect example of this is the CitizenGulf project, which my friend Geoff is a part of.

Social Media #CitizenGulf project

Organized by a mix of business owners, cause marketers and social good causes, the CitizenGulf project aims to help fishing families affected by the recent BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf Coast.

As the clean-up for the mess continues and red tape and legal issues hold up some of the aid packages, CitizenGulf wants to help make a difference now. The great thing about the project is that it takes very little from us to get involved, yet it can make a huge difference to those affected.

This includes the fishing families whose livelihoods have been destroyed; locals affected by how the economy has been hit by the spill; and wildlife left to fend for themselves without our aid.

And with hurricane season fast approaching this area, the need for our help is clear.

So how can you help?

There are a ton of events planned around the U.S. to benefit the area, and you can find these locations here. If your city isn’t on there yet but you want to help, you can contact the CitizenGulf team to organize your own event.

You can also donate to organizations recommended by CitizenGulf, if you prefer that.

The oil spill in the Gulf is one of the biggest ecological and corporate disasters in the U.S in recent times. CitizenGulf wants to give us an easy way we can help the locals and the landscape.

Seems a pretty straightforward decision, no?

Austria and Social Media – A Digital Native’s Perspective

Antonia HarlerThis is a guest post by Antonia Harler, an Austrian and soon-to-be graduate who wrote her diploma thesis about Twitter as a tool for Relationship Marketing. She?s awesomely quirky as well as open-minded and she?s also kind of a big deal ;). For more information check out her blog Social Glitz or follow her on Twitter @antwizzel.

When Danny asked me to write this guest post about how social Austria is, my reaction was ?hell yes?.

One of the reasons for that was that it?s a question that I?ve been thinking about a lot myself. I was lucky enough to experience the social media hype that?s been going on in the US and to some extent in Canada.

Many wouldn?t believe it but I am actually a late bloomer when it comes to social media. Not only because I?m Austrian but also because I had serious doubts in the beginning.

Social Media is What?

I created my Facebook account in 2007 whilst I was on vacation in Toronto, didn?t have a cell phone and was basically cut off from the outside world in the sense of not being reachable.

I?m a free and open-minded spirit and met a ton of people in no time and after being asked for my cell number, which obviously I didn?t have, I was asked if I was on Facebook. My reaction to that was ?WTF is Facebook??!

I signed up, though, and for a long while I didn?t see why on earth our society would need such a platform. However, I was sold once I was back on Austrian soil because really it makes many things so much easier.

Soon after I started to realize the immense potential social media had for businesses, no matter the industry or size.

In 2009 I went on to study in New York for a semester and, oh boy, the US is social media crazy. I was blown away and soon enough the word Twitter entered my vocabulary. Again, I obviously had no clue.

By then however, I was sick of not knowing what was going on in that industry so I started to read and learn. Businesses all over the world popped up on Facebook and Twitter. But where on earth were all the Austrian businesses? They remained invisible for a long time. I guess we are all late bloomers.

Recently however, we have started to catch up. We are finally on the way to ?austrianize? social media (though it?s still mainly the big names such as Red Bull that are taking the plunge).

Austrianizing Social

In my opinion, the company that is doing extremely well with their social media strategy is Swarovski .

They managed to build an extremely successful Facebook fan page with 454,000 fans worldwide. Recently they also started to embrace Twitter. And whilst they are off to a ?slower? start on Twitter they are doing it right, in my opinion. It?s one of those companies you want to engage with, simply because they will engage with you. Not something that you see very often, no matter the nationality of a business.

When it comes to small and medium sized businesses however, I don?t see social media being embraced the way it should be.

To many, ?social? is still extremely intangible and, unfortunately, it?s often approached with the wrong mentality. For them it?s important to realize that a social media strategy is not a quick fix and that it needs planning, strategizing and continuous execution just like any other business strategy. Austrian businesses need to learn how to embrace social media and not dismiss it as a fad or even fear the unknown.

In other words, we need to stop being late bloomers.

How about you? Is your country embracing social media, or are you the exception to the rule? The comments are yours.

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 social media and digital marketing agency

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!

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.

Danny Brown 52 cool facts about social media SEO

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.

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.