Sage Blog

Our first guest blogger of 2012 is Jonathan Hirst, Partner at networking and security specialist ITogether . Jonathan talks about the most important resolution for small business owners in 2012

We’ve all made the traditional New Years’ Resolutions pledging to get fit (always sign up to this!), drink less alcohol (I’ve never signed up to this!) and to travel more. According to research conducted by Oxfam at the start of last year 34 million Brits set out to make New Years’ Resolutions this year, and if past trends continue we’ll all  fail to keep them in under a month!

One of the biggest issues facing SME’s every year is the rising threats to their businesses of poor IT security. While many are set to repeat last years’ resolutions to improve their health, SME owners have to set network security at the top of the priority list and it’s not a resolution you can afford to ignore.  Here’s why.

ITogether recently commissioned research that showed that more than half (59%) of employees use their own personal mobile devices such as Android phones and iPads for work, with 61 per cent connecting them to their employers IT systems.

During the last few years we’ve seen a rapid increase in the number of people using social media, and it is now a fixture of our everyday work and personal lives.  Today, social networks connect people to the world around them and employees expect to be able to access their personal online accounts in the workplace.   What is alarming is that, despite this, few companies have established formal processes for handling social networking tools in the workplace leading to an increased risk in cyber attacks and security breaches.

Why not use the New Year to kick start a prioritisation of your businesses IT security? Embrace the consumerisation of technology and use it as a business enabler for your staff. I have devised some top tips below to increase network security, taken from the research findings:

1)      Don’t rattle the cage – Only block access to offensive or illegal content. One in four employers continue to block personal online accounts and social networking sites such as twitter and facebook – this is difficult to control and potentially leaves your staff disgruntled and demotivated.

2)      You won’t beat them, so join them – 91% of respondents reported using social media at work whether agreed by their employer or not. Consider sites like facebook, twitter and blogs as a means of building bridges with employees, but do this in a controlled way.

3)      Be street wise about security – The research found that 40% of employers actively encourage use of personal accounts and social networking sites in the workplace, without ensuring that their network is secure. Put a policy in place and get some simple network monitoring tools in place too that will help you to enforce the policy.

4)      Say goodbye to miscommunication – Having a security policy is useless if it is not socialised and enforced across your organisation. Be open with your staff and use social media to spread the word of what is and what isn’t OK? Create a group on Facebook or LinkedIn that is private to your staff where you can share news.

5)      Grab the bull by the horns – Smart use of devices and online media can vastly benefit your business. Harnessing the enthusiasm your employees show in this space could unlock hidden potential and get them working more effectively!

Jonathan Hirst, Partner at networking and security specialist ITogether

Here’s a tough nut to crack for all you social media aficionados, how many tweets are considered ‘too many’? Most twitter users will have followed (and probably subsequently unfollowed) users who have crossed the line from a reasonable numbers of tweets, to spamming your stream.

If you run a Twitter feed, you have to work hard to build a loyal follower base and ideally you don’t want to start losing followers purely because of the volume of tweets you post. From a strictly mathematical stance your ideal volume of tweets could be worked out something like this:

According to recent research, on average every twitter account has 126 followers*. The majority of Twitter users either have a 1:1 following to follower ratio, or worse. If you assume that each of the accounts they follow tweets once per day then you can assume that their stream will receive a minimum of 126 tweets per day.

* http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/29/twitter-users-average-api-traffic

Using this method to prevent your tweet volumes appearing spammy, I would advocate aiming to avoid having two of your tweets appear in the most recent display on Twitter when a user logs on. i.e.:

I’ve created a diagram here to show how that mathematical principle would work:

Personally speaking, I think that this kind of approach is a bit too formulaic. We’re talking about human social interaction, not engineering! After all, the reason we all use twitter is to follow people who say or discuss interesting things. I’m not going to stop following them just because they throw out a couple of extra messages a day.

It’s when a Twitter user is no longer producing interesting content that I would start to consider my options. Overall I would suggest that good content planning is more conducive to retaining followers than concerning yourself too much about a ‘golden’ number of tweets to deliver.

Try to think about your end user’s experience, review your twitter profile and read your stream. Are you adding value to your users by providing them with important content, or are you just retweeting other news sources? More often than not, you will find followers will decide to take their content from the horse’s mouth if you aren’t adding value to it.

My advice would be add your insight and comment to stories you share, that way you aren’t just aggregating other people’s content, you are creating your own.

Which after all is kind of the point!

Alex Walker, Sage Accountants’ Team @alexatsage

QR Codes are something of an enigma, you may not have even noticed that they exist yet, but they are starting to become more and more prevalent in the print media spaces across the country.

Random garbles or brave new world?

To many they are random garbles of black and white, small boxes of nonsense adding another layer of complexity to an already challenging visual marketing space. To some they are gateways, portals to a brave new world of targeted content allowing you to effortlessly engage with specific adverts.

A QR Code is a new way of taking a potential customer from Above-The-Line, to Below-The-Line. In simple parlance, it allows someone with a smartphone to scan a type of barcode which takes them to a website URL of your choice. The QR Code can be on a poster, direct mailer, newspaper, magazine or even a TV advertisement (possible since the advent of pausing live TV).

QR codes and consumer behaviour

As marketing developments go, it sounds pretty small fry, after all URLs have been around for a while and any marketer worth their salt will have known how to set up tracking URLs for hyperlinks.

What has changed though is consumer behaviour, where previously on a smartphone you had to manually enter URLs, now you can use your camera to capture the data and send you straight into a web browser.

This ‘convenience factor’ has been central to the success of QR Codes, certainly in the B2C arena. Another contributing factor has been the creativity with which QR Codes are being applied, for instance:

• Chocolate Café QR Code: http://www.how-do.co.uk/node/10773
• Korean Virtual Tesco: http://youtu.be/nJVoYsBym88
• Mystery Gift: http://www.thebiggerexperience.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/QR3.jpg

The QR code key to success

The key to the success of using QR Codes is to ensure that you provide your user with an engaging destination, after all thy have taken the effort to go beyond the face of your campaign, so you need to ensure they feel suitably rewarded for their efforts.

In return you will record data so rich it is astonishing, are your users more likely to engage on the high street, or around the corner? On the 12:15 to Euston, or the 13:20? Do they prefer page 5 or page 7 and whether they preferred the mailer in pink or blue?

The measurement possibilities for this mechanism are very powerful, especially when you consider that in a lot of instances it would be very difficult (or even impossible) to measure engagement with these campaigns, you would either be relying on someone to quote a campaign code and for that to be properly recorded or for someone to use a campaign specific phone number.

At Sage we’re currently testing the possibilities for using this technology in the B2B arena, to see how and where we can use it to enrich our customers experiences and also to give us rich data feedback from our campaigns.

Keep your eyes open, you never know where you might see a QR Code waiting to be scanned!

Alex Walker, Sage Accountants’ Team

So firstly, why blog? Why not advertise your practice in the local Yellow Pages or Newspaper?

My answer to this is simple, think about the last time you needed to know something, not specifically a business query, but anything.

What did you do? Where did you go to find information?

I’d be amazed if more than five percent of you didn’t think ‘I Googled it’. Research is showing that our behaviour is changing; we are now much more inclined to trust internet search engine results ahead of paid-for directory listings, and we trust higher ranking websites ahead of those below them. This change is going to be reflected in the behaviours of your target audience, so you must consider search engines as integral to developing your business.

So the next question has to be, how do I rank higher on search engines?

Websites are regularly indexed by mathematical algorithms which calculate their ranking position, the precise indexing algorithm is kept top-secret but it considers factors such as Keyword Density, Meta Content, Age of Content, Inbound Links and Richness of Content.

High ranking websites will be rich in relevant keywords for the given search string, well built, updated regularly, referenced regularly and contains a healthy mixture of images, text and videos. These attributes are also typical of blogs, and so they can be invaluable to improving your website’s performance on search engines.

So, now you understand that having a blog can add value, we come to the crucial part, content. A lot of people are concerned about creating content; they assume that because they are not journalists or writers, that no-one will be interested in what they have to say. I argue to the contrary, regardless of whether you are a secretary, accountant or bookkeeper, what you are is an expert in your professional field and someone whose experience and insight has value to your peers.

Thought leadership

In Sage we refer to this as ‘Thought Leadership’, being seen by your industry as a reliable source of relevant information. Writing a blog isn’t easy, far from it. Your content needs to be accurate, relevant, engaging and most importantly original. Once you get into the habit of writing though, it becomes a lot less challenging and you will actually find that there are lots of topics out there for you to discuss.

What are the latest developments from HMRC, has using software helped your practice become more efficient, how will VAT changes impact upon your clients, how has working with your practice helped resolve problems for a client. There are a handful of topics ripe for blogging, which you can have on me!

Ideally I’d recommend keeping your blogs fairly short, something like 300 words is about right, and should only take you around half an hour to write. When you start, don’t overstretch yourself, try to write a blog once a fortnight, perhaps while you’re having a sandwich over your keyboard. Don’t expect instant results, but keep writing anyhow, the more relevant content you create, the better. The key part is that if you persevere, you will get results.

If you use other social media like Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin, then share your content there as well. Every click and inbound link will add to your blog’s authority and help to improve search engine performance.

Once you’re feeling confident in your blogging, you could even guest blog on Sage’s blog, we’re always interested in hosting content, which by linking back to your site will add to its authority. Just let us know if you fancy giving it a go!

Alex Walker, Sage Accountants’ Team @alexatsage

That’s right, ‘Memetic Marketing’. You heard it here first!

Part of my responsibility at Sage is to research potential new marketing opportunities and to assess their potential for our Accountants’ team. So of course, when I first encountered the phrase, my interest was piqued.

Memetic Marketing

Memetic Marketing sounds like something from a Mad Men episode; something which would have rolled out of an Ad agency in the 60’s and subsequently have slipped behind the cupboard to gather dust.

Yet this is a new piece of terminology, the retro vibe struck something of a chord and challenged me to dig a little deeper. My understanding of Memes came from reading ‘The Selfish Gene’ by Richard Dawkins, a great read, whatever your religious bent, where he describes the dissemination of ideas across a culture through mimicry in word, writing or action. A very succinct way to describe how early human cultures spread ideas and technology.

Then, after the passing of a considerable period of time and probably more than a few memes came the internet.

Internet Memes

On paper it is the world’s largest repository of information, an archive of indescribable vastness which hosts an immeasurable volume of data and content. In a way it is one of man’s greatest creations, a library of every achievement, scientific discovery and historical precedent since the dawn of mankind.

Yet for anyone who has spent any time perusing the internet, it is remarkable how the development of internet memes has impacted our culture and behaviours online. There are countless examples of internet memes which have flourished and are now virtually unavoidable on social media networks.

Run a google image search on ‘all your base’ and you’ll get a flavour of what I mean, it doesn’t take a lot for an internet meme to become something of a behemoth!

For those that aren’t familiar, here’s an example I knocked up of another popular internet meme, lolcats:

Upon further reading I came to understand that Memetic Marketing is a new definition for the adoption of internet memes, through viral and guerrilla marketing techniques to drive awareness of a brand.

Viral campaigns?

Personally I’m quite sceptical of this as an approach, for any marketer that has tried to run a viral campaign, you know that getting the initial momentum for the campaign is a virtually unassailable mountain to climb. Once you achieve that inertia, the campaign will roll along quite nicely of its own accord, but I would image that less than one in a hundred attempts to launch a Viral ever achieve anything more than lip service.

There have been some very notable successes, in particular Cadbury made a massive impact with their Gorilla youtube campaign, a short clip of a silverback gorilla drumming to ‘In the Air Tonight’ by Phil Collins.

Another fantastic example was the ‘Will It Blend’ clips, produced for a very low budget by blending company Blendtec. Originally they produced short clips to show the power of their blender by crushing ice and other difficult foodstuffs

In summary, I love internet memes, they enrich my online experience, but I don’t plan on trying to actively include them in our marketing plans just yet! I’m interested to know what other marketers think about the potential of using memes to promote your brand? I think as with any channel it has to be appropriate to your product, so I wouldn’t expect any Sage branded ROFLCOPTERs anytime soon, but for the right brand they could prove a real success.

Alex Walker, Sage Accountants’ Team @alexatsage

What is an infographic? Well put simply, it is a visual representation of information or data, which translates the information into simple images and dialogue.

One of the better know examples is the London Underground Map, which takes a network of train lines and stations of potentially overwhelming complexity and using simple colour coding makes it simple, navigable and beautiful.

We decided to try our hand at infographics because as we’re sure you know, the world of accountancy, finance and taxation can be complex. And we feel that there are better ways to present this data than just through tables! The beauty of infographics is that they also allow you to provide a narrative to the data, whilst representing the numbers in a manner that is more easily digested.

We chose to produce an Accountant’s Overview of Social Media as we know from our recent Roadshows and Virtual Conference that it is a topic which is prompting a lot of debate in the industry.  I hope you find it useful and if you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it!

So without further ado, here is Sage Accountants’ Division’s first infographic:

Alex Walker, Sage Accountants’ Team

Paul Donno

Sorry – competition now closed – We’re giving away three free tickets to the ICAEW’s Business Benefits of Social Media (in association with Sage). To win leave a comment on this blog post by Thursday 30th June and we’ll randomly chose the winners. Don’t forget to include your email address!

It revolutionised our leisure time, now social media is redefining the way we do business too. Or is it? I work in marketing and over the past 3 years social media has become a widely used communication channel; every campaign that I work on now has a ‘social media’ element.  I happily admit that I live in a ‘communication’ bubble due to my role, so was left wondering if the rest of the world is switched onto using social media for business…or is it just us?

It seems that the answer from accountants is “yes, we are interested”. So interested in fact that ICAEW approached us about partnering with them to create a social media event for accountants, as they felt there was a need for accountants to get more information on this subject and how they can use it to market their practice. Obviously we agree!

So is it useful to my business?

Like all marketing tools, getting it right takes time and energy. A well-defined social media plan will help you achieve further growth. And as accountants are finding out, the benefits of an effective strategy can be many and varied, offering cost-effective ways to market your practice and services.

Ok, sounds good, but give me an example…

This is where I hand over to Accountant, Paul Donno, who has been one of those accountants keen to embrace the trend which is now providing him great results. His Suffolk-based practice, Paul Donno & Co Ltd, serves more than 300 small to medium-sized clients and has had a formal social media strategy in place since 2010.

For us it’s about branding and marketing, about putting a human face to our business and broadcasting our messages to a wider audience.

It gives clients a snapshot of who we are and how we operate and can work well as a recruiting tool. It is straightforward to negotiate, extremely cost-effective – in most instances it will only cost you the time it takes to update your account – and it’s fast too.

We use it in a variety of ways, most notably to tell people about things like training courses. The results speak for themselves. We’ve just had bookings for two days of ACT! training as a direct consequence of our Twitter advertising.

Our followers are growing every day, so much so we’ve taken on an external agency to manage our account for us. Now we’re looking to identify further channels and ways of reaching our clients and market.”

Paul’s Tips For Social Media Success

Be consistent

If you are going to have a social media presence, you must be prepared to maintain it. There’s no point starting something you can’t finish!

We’ve issued three iPhones to staff on the condition that they use them to tweet every day, that way we know there will always be a steady flow of information.

Decide on tone and content

Think carefully about the image you want to project – and the language you need to use to do this.

In relation to content for our corporate Twitter account, my brief is actually fairly wide. At this stage, I’m as interested in the idea of creating a solid social media presence as the content. I trust my team to produce tweets and content that is appropriate – in the same way I’d trust them to attend a networking event and behave in a way that was respectful.

Think engagement

For me, social media is a great way of engaging with people – and showing them the human side of your business. With that in mind, content has to be engaging – interesting enough to keep their attention and relevant enough to keep them coming back for more.

Who will manage things moving forward?

Many practices, including ours, consider taking on an external agency to manage and implement their social media strategy. They can help monitor your output, take care of day to day maintenance and also measure your success.

Joined up thinking

It’s worth thinking about how you are going to let people know you have a social media presence and where they can find you.

Linking different platforms – websites, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages– is relatively straightforward and can help direct traffic. We have recently added a live Twitter feed to our web page to ensure clients can see what we’re saying, and what our thoughts are, across a range of platforms.

Look ahead

Technology is constantly transforming the way we communicate and we are always looking for the next ‘big thing’. YouTube is going to be massive for us. We’re looking in to using it at the moment because it’s great for putting short, sharp messages across in an accessible way.

Follow Paul Donno @pauldonno

Follow Sage UK @sageuk

To register or find out more go to ICAEW Business Benefits of Social Media in association with Sage or follow  #icaewsm on Twitter

Sheryl Thomposon, Sage Accountants’ Team and Paul Donno, Paul Donno & Co Ltd

I had the pleasure of talking on the subject of Social Media at the SageWorld event thought I would summarise my talk for anyone who wasn’t able to attend.

Getting started in social media

Shall we start with a definition? Social Media: Social = sharing. Media = content. It is not so daunting after all.

Let me back up and ask one quick question. Do you have a business plan, a marketing strategy, content, website, web analytics and pay per click? Great then you are ready for social media.

Free guide to social media

It works because we want to share

Social media works because technology enables us to meet a basic human desire to create and share our creations be they words via blogs, images via Flickr and videos via YouTube etc

It is built on reputation, that of an individual, a company or a brand. The gap between what/who you say you are and what others say about you is critical – social media will amplify this difference.

Social media will force businesses to up their game as it exposes their failings (or indeed promotes their competitors advantages).

Why take part?

The social media multiplier effect can make you seem bigger than you are (as a business), cleverer than you are (post lots of other peoples quotes) or demonstrate a number of attributes you wish to portray (agile, caring etc). If you cannot outspend your competitors in marketing money you can out manoeuvre them in the world of social media.

It can provide amazing insights

Social media feedback is really honest, really, really honest. Be prepared that customers will not hold back and that can feel a little bit personal when the business is you and you are the business. However these conversations are taking place anyway – it is better to know what is being said about you because you can act on this.

You can start slow and then become more active

Eavesdrop: Listening in is a great place to start. You may not be big enough to register in peoples social media conversations but your industry will be. Let ‘social media eavesdrop’ be part of your research and development plans. Remember the honesty? Track your competitors and see what they are pants at and exploit that.

Get active – once you have listened in start to expand your social media profiles. Optimise your profiles ensuring your website links are on them and complete all the areas. Increase your ‘findability’.

Join relevant groups. Post answers to questions in those groups. Then start asking the questions. Then start creating the groups. One step at a time. This is the way you become regarded as an expert in your chosen area. This is how your business is associated with your expertise. This is what creates your brand.

Fools rush in where brands fear to tread

Don’t panic. You can just listen in, you do not have to take part. Listening in can give you access to some fantastic useable insights. If you do take part do it slowly but commit to it.

Content is king – as you expand your involvement then you’ll need a plan for developing and distributing content. Write a trade press article and edit it down to a web page, then edit that down to a blog post, an email and a tweet. Same content, same tone but multiple uses.

Stop, look left, look right and then cross

So my advice is to listen, consider, plan and then act. Social media is going to be here for a long time.

Pete Wilson, Digital Strategy Manager

Download our free guide to social media for small businesses.

I had the pleasure of presenting at the StartUp show at Olympia yesterday talking about how to use social media to jump start relationships with your customers.

The blog you are reading is one of the ways that Sage is using this evolving area and combined with our twitter, facebook and youtube activity we were invited to share our thoughts to the people thinking of setting up a business in 2010.

Despite being the Digital Strategy Manager at Sage and having worked in digital for over 10 years now I still try to start my presentation planning using pen and paper. I find it slows down my brain and as a result makes me think a lot harder about what I am saying. The moment my fingers hit the keyboard I know that without that pre-planning I’ll waffle – and I think anyone who has given up time to listen to me deserves better than waffle.

Many years ago an old sales director of mine taught me a lesson. He took a sales presentation I was due to make and ripped it to pieces – each slide was trying to make multiple points, was full of text and required a lot of effort from the receiver to understand. He re-wrote it and killed 70% of the words and made sure every slide made one point and one point only. If someone who picked up the presentation could not tell what the slide meant without my explanation I had not been clear enough. Like all good lessons it hurt a little at the time but I am a better presenter for it.

Anyway the talk was very well attended, seem to be pitched at the right level and generated some great questions. The best question for me was “how do you deal with complaints and competitors moaning at you online?” At Sage we have a secret weapon (she’s called Cath) who listens out for issues and problems and then either talks directly to the person involved or directs it to the relevant part of the business. I explained that every business will have these issues – these conversations will take place – but it’s how you seek to address them that defines your commitment to your customers. We also discussed how labour intensive this area is and that its not something you can just dip in and out of – that point seemed generate a lot of head nodding.

What was most interesting for me was to see how start up businesses already have social media at the heart of their marketing planning. It’s something that a lot of very well established businesses have not even thought about. it makes me feel very positive about the future for social media.

Pete Wilson, Digital Strategy Manager