How quickly we forget a name, a contact, a business, when they are not visible to us.

Marketing and PR is about visibility and there is no more important time than now to be visible. If you are not visible there is always the thought in some that you might not be trading.

I worked with a very successful digital marketing agency called CTI in Manchester – it is very much growing in staff, clients and reputation today. But the first piece of PR I worked with it on was the Dale Street Fire story (April 2007).

The fire affected two buildings, which housed many marketing and web agencies; some businesses I am sure did not survive.

The PR aimed to make sure that CTI’s clients and the market in general knew that not only had the agency survived, it was still doing well and able to offer its services to the level required. Indeed, the message was that it did not lose a single client even though such calamities usually lead to a curtailment of trading – a testament to CTI and one that I am sure enhanced its reputation.

Well, in these hard economic days a lack of visibility can be seen much the same way as a disaster affecting an enterprise.

Rumours abound in these days of cuts. So not having a clear message that is conveyed to the market effectively could be incredibly harmful to a business, if there is any doubt about the strength of your company.

Two North West organisations that are affected by the government cuts have done just that recently, setting out their positions and how they aim to go forward in key local business press – it is a wise move and one that I am sure will be helpful.

PR is not all about leads. Crisis PR is not all about natural and man-made tribulations such as fires. It can be as much about quashing doubt and fear and hearsay.

If you leave a void in communications, it can be filled with uncontrolled word of mouth messages very quickly. There is something you can do about it though.

I think this recession is getting tedious, very tedious indeed.

We have had two years of battening down the hatches and the “sunlit uplands” should be beckoning us forward.

The news of cuts – the media battle over this issue is a subject “entire of itself” and can be covered later – keeps our breadths held.

So what do you do?

Do you not spend anything other than on the business basics? Do you spend marketing budget and compete for the business that is out there?

I know that some companies are networking and marketing like crazy to get through and indeed prosper, others are withdrawing.

There are undoubtedly businesses that are succeeding. I know an independent traditional printer that is very busy and that is a sector where you might expect a company to fail in pressured times – not a bit of it.

It is succeeding through having a clear, targeted marketing strategy and through offering good service – nothing fancy you might say.

(I am making no value judgement on these that feel economic pain and those that don’t at all).

So back to my question and answer.

I think there is no choice as to whether you do marketing; there is a choice to how you do it.

This is a time for added awareness of your business, services or products, of building reputation. And more so about building trust than ever before – if companies are going to spend precious budgets, they will want to know that it is going to pay off and that means they will want to know you as well as what you offer.

“You would say that anyway” in terms of marketing and PR. Well yes, but if getting new business is as important as those other business essentials it would be hard to disagree.

The sharper amongst you will notice the quotes from Winston Churchill, John Donne and Mandy Rice-Davies (although the oft and misquoted version on this last one).

Matt Hackett, a stalwart at the north’s largest digital, marketing and creative recruitment Orchard gives an insight into the state of the recruitment market.

Is it time to jump back in?

If you want to know, listen to Matt’s view – click here

The issue of who owns social media and how it is best applied is still being grappled with by larger enterprises.  So the SAScon debate on social media on this issues was particularly interesting.

The panel was:

Will McInnes of Nixon McInnes

Phil Jones of Brother UK

Neil Hardy of Co-Operative Travel

Ivan Croxford of BT

And Malcom Coles

I will start with a Phil Jones quote: “Social media is B2me.”

Will McInnes followed with “sustained conversation is expected with social media.”

Quite simple pronouncements, yet many big enterprises get it wrong, perhaps it is years of pushing through messages through mass media channels and not having to interact as much on a one to one basis in their marketing:  Sainsbury’s being one possible example of how difficult larger businesses fail to grasp this.

Maybe smaller concerns are more geared at establishing a one-to-one relationship.

On the question of who owns social media and how it should be applied, well, there was a multitude of answers.

I was surprised, not that I should have I suppose, that customer services was a strong candidate for ownership (as Ivan Croxford pointed out at BT customer services had embrassed social media).

My vested interests said PR.  It could be marketing as well.   But it really depends on the application.

Neil Hardy looks on Twitter as a helpline for instance.  The conclusion surely is that it it is a versatile instrument and will be used as best fits purpose?

Phil Jones again: “Social media should be integrated, should engage and lead to “marriage.”  I agree.

Malcolm Coles: “Social media helps engagement with customers that do not use current channels.”   In this alone is must be seen as essential.

What came out of the debate was a recognition – as you would expect – that social media has to be applied and that its exact role is still developing.

I will leave the last word to Malcolm Coles about the need to experiment to find out social media can be best applied: “Getting it wrong is not a disaster.”

About two years ago I published a small piece commenting on the Manchester Evening News noting a drop of several hundred thousand Facebook members.

Well, as thought the demise of Facebook or even a small drop in its popularity did not last.  It now stands at 463 million worldwide users, up from 200 million at the start of 2009.  What’s more visitors spend 261.6 minutes (per a month) compared to 178.3 minutes just a year ago.

Some more Facebook statistics to amuse and hold you in awe click here.

At the same time Bebo looks as though it will be sold or shutdown by owners AOL who paid $850 million for the site in 2008.

Figures from marketing firm comScore show the dramatic shift – Bebo’s monthly users in the UK fell by 60% from February 2009 to February 2010 to 3.8 million, while Facebook’s grew 24% over the same period to 28.1 million. MySpace fell 50% to 3.5 million.

Eden Zoller an analyst at Ovum said: “The original motive to buy Bebo made sense at the time.  In 2008 it was up and coming, growing well and had targeted and attractive demographic.  Facebook  wasn’t the huge animal it is today either.”

Lack of investment, lack of leadership, lack of innovation are cited in The Independent as some of the main reasons why Bebo has been overtaken by Facebook, which “took risks and was very focused.” (Ray Valdes VP at Gartner)

Friends Reunited suffered a similar fate to Bebo, being sold in 2009 at a fraction of the £125 million ITV paid for it in 2005.

It seems as though constant innovation and drive in social media platforms is key to their slippery hold on social networking domination.  It makes communications all the more interesting – very little stands still.

David Edmundson-Bird is a well-known figure in the NW digital world, and probably far, far beyond.

David is the programme director for Manchester Metropolitan University’s Msc in Digital Marketing Communications.

I caught up with David at SAScon to lean more – click here to hear the interview.

Quite recently I interviewed Lewis Webster of Little Orchard about video online.

I was in no doubt after talking to Lewis about what video can deliver and what its potential is – the SEO power & potential of video is something in itself, let alone just the content.

So the first SAScon speaker, Bruce Daisley from YouTube should have pulled few surprises.  But he still impressed….

Video is one third of all web traffic – Cisco

Bruce again quoting Cisco, saying it would be 90% by 2013

Every minute 24 hours worth of video is uploaded onto YouTube

And a few more points of interest….

More people are referred to YouTube than come straight to it

Twitter & 3G is pushing video

YouTube is concentrating on delivering live content such as recent U2 & Alicia Keys gigs, and is aiming to facilitate ordinary users doing the same, albeit perhaps on a smaller scale.

Bruce ended by a little name checking of great viral video: Ok Go’s fantastic video – parodied by The Simpsons, so it must be good and the Evian baby commercial.

The viral potential of both far outstripped expectations: it made Ok Go, leading to sponsorship and big increases in record sales when I believe they were pretty insignificant at their record label; the Evian brass only expected 2 million views, they got 58 million.  Wow quite a return on both.

This brings me neatly on to my selling opportunity: if you are a digital agency that is looking at video, then continue reading….

Vision + Media is heavily sponsoring experienced TV professionals to undertake placements in digital agencies.

The cost is a paltry £30 a day to the agency, everything else sponsored by Vision + Media.

So you can learn about video – could be editing and production techniques as much as camera elements – and use highly skilled professionals to work on live projects from the word go.

If you are interested click here for more, but hurry you only have until this Friday to register (you can use your placement at anytime afterwards).

Wednesday was the inaugural get together of SAScon – a social media and SEO conference.

I should say the online search conference for highlighting the strength and ability and energy of the northern digital scene.

When conceived there must have been a few worries – even if not admitted now – about how much support it would receive. The organisers needn’t have worried.

As you can see from the above image it was a  packed house: some 160 attendees with speakers from across the UK and Europe came to the Bridgewater Hall in the centre of Manchester.

There were essentially two streams of seminars / panel talks: the more technical SEO and social media.  I stuck with my prime interest in social media.

I will discuss in future posts the points of some of the talks I attended.  But for now I want to make a couple of points about why I attended:

First, besides continuing my social media education, there was ample opportunity to network.

However, more impotantly in many respects – and I suspect for many attendees – it was a chance to make a statement about the strength and potential of the online community in the North West to deliver: you don’t have to go to London to have access to top digital suppliers.

By attending, digital and non-digital, be it PR or marketing, those that lent their support by simply taking out a day from busy schedules to come along made that exact statement.

Simon Wharton of search marketing agency PushON talks about search and SEO – click here to listen.

The image: Richard Gregory commented in previous post where Simon’s swearing came in on the last post, well, I hope you are satisfied.

SAScon is about to have its inaugural conference launch on 28th April at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester.

The aim is to bring talented and knowledgeable SEO and search marketing experts, from Europe and the US, in one place to deliver informative and practical advice to marketing, PR and fellow digital professionals.

It is an exciting opportunity, especially as it is in Manchester and will promote the city as a centre of digital talent.

I spoke to Simon Wharton of search marketing agency PushON, and a driving force in organising the event, on why this is a must attend and what attendees will get out of the day.

Simon Wharton explains more, click here to hear the interview. (Is that alliteration?)