A look at the life and thoughts of a young scottish entrepreneur, or realistically.... the yammerings of a 20 30 something t-shirt printer from Scotland!
Self Employment, Comics, Small Businesses, Networking, Crime Fighting, Motorbikes, T-shirt Printing and so much more....
I was at the latest Blabit Networking meeting in Linlithgow and the discussion rolled around to businesses and blogging. One of the women present was a Herbalist and she was talking about ways to market her business, we chatted about various things but blogging seemed to be something that would really suit her business. We discussed the advantages of a business having a blog and it got me thinking on how businesses including myself could use blogging to their advantage.
If you think about your favourite website..... what makes it your favourite? For me it's regularly updated content. New articles, products and so on. So that should be the aim for your business. A blog gives you an easy oppertunity to do this.
For example the Herbalist could post quarterly blogs about seasonal pick me ups, advice etc., for my business i should be highlighting products, new products and special offers.
Blog aren't hard to work either, you don't need any special skills to run one. Sites like Blogger are very straight forward to use. If you want to add to it and expand the blog by adding gadgets, links, polls, ads and so on then you can but it's not manditory.
A blog would give you something to connect to your customers and give a more personal insight into you and your business. Blogs don't need to be super lengthy, 200 words to give people some thing to quickly read, add extra bonuses by finding links to other sites that maybe of inerest or back up what your saying. Can you post a picture to help make it look interesting? These all help and are easy to do. On Blogger it's just like editing a Word document.
Please reccomend blogs you know for us to check out.
Comparative advertising is an advertisement in which a particular product, or service, specifically mentions a competitor by name for the express purpose of showing why the competitor is inferior to the product naming it.This should not be confused with parody advertisements, where a fictional product is being advertised for the purpose of poking fun at the particular advertisement, nor should it be confused with the use of a coined brand name for the purpose of comparing the product without actually naming an actual competitor. ("Wikipedia tastes better and is less filling than theEncyclopedia Galactica.")" - article link
The first, and only time, i have visited America was in 1996, i was 16. I remember sitting in a friends basement watching tv and the adverts coming on. I was surprised at the advertising, with everyone telling me that this form of advertising was perfectly normal over there. I had never seen advertisers being so blatant as to say "we're better than blah". We sat telling our American friends that they just don't do that in the UK and we think that it's better advertising.
Then about 10 years on and it starts on our advertising and I'm shocked! well maybe that's an exaggeration but i can't believe that we finally caught up with the US to advertise with the same techniques.
Doing a little research i have found that this kind of advertising is regulated in the UK by the ECJ (European Court of Justice), where in recent years when any disputes have risen they have decided who's in the right. One article i read described a dispute between to supermarket giant's in the UK, one of which weren't happy at the way the other was using the information they had about them, but according to what I've read so long as the adverts conform to directive 84/450 which in brief states that so long as the advert is:
not misleading;does not create confusion;
does not discredit or denigrate the third party trademarks;
does not take unfair advantage of the reputation of a trademark; and
does not present goods or services as imitations or replicas of goods or services bearing a protected trademark or trade name.
This whole form of advertising is meant to keep the customer informed, everywhere these days it's all about price comparisons. The customer is wanting the cheapest price and in the current economic climate i think it's only fair everyone watches their penny's but i really don't agree with these adverts.
Every time an advert comes on tv now for one of the supermarket giants and it has price comparisons it gets me really angry. I feel it is the lowest form of advertising, it's like high school "we're better than you" groups.
I know businesses try to keep up with what their competitors are doing and they evaluated it as to how this compares to what they are doing but to then go out and say we're better than them because we're cheaper, means nothing. Walk around your large local supermarket you know the 2 I'll mean and look at the prices for products "we're cheaper than B by 1p"! Well wow! is this what it is reduced to we're cheaper because we can knock a penny of the price. A supermarket can win an award by having the cheapest products because they knock 1p off their prices to ensure the ones they can't give you a decent discount on they can still be cheaper. So when they say we have 10,000 product cheaper than B it's only because we've knocked 1p of about 75% of them.
I'm wailing on supermarkets as they are most prominent on tv doing it just now but banks are just as bad, if i hear Howard signing once more about comparisons I'll shoot myself!! I like the adverts used just now by 2 specific companies for the same reason, they show you something that is worthwhile using about their company.
For example: Morrison's main adverts just now are showing that their butchers are in house, they are highly trained and the meat freshly prepared for you. Their butcher will help you pick the right piece of meat for what you're wanting to cook because they are highly trained and friendly. All just for you.
The Royal Bank of Scotland's adverts just now are telling you how they have branches open on a Saturday. Why? because if your to busy during the week you can do it on your day of, they're there for you when you need it.
These 2 companies are showing that they have something, that may not necessarily be unique to them, but it's certainly something that people will look at and think Hey that could be helpful, my bank or supermarket doesn't do that.
The other thing that i don't like about comparative advertising is that your competitor can use your trademark in their advertising. This just should not be allowed the reason something is trademarked is to stop other from using it.
This just all seems like below the belt advertising, what happened to being creative when doing advertising, this is just lazy advertising.
My favourite response to comparative advertising is Windows reply to Mac advert that PC's were old, slow, uncreative and almost useless. But Windows came back with a great set of adverts showing a creative, unique and varied group of people that use a PC for work and play, no mention of their competitors, just taking their turn to respond to the claim that PC's can't do much of anything.
In my mind this is creative advertising, as this advert would have worked well on it's own and now some time on from those adverts it does work well as a stand alone advert and not a response to a claim made by a competitor.
I feel that it is up to businesses to show that it's creative advertising that is going to get people further, showing customers them broader scope of benefits that they'll get from using your business, not just a saving on price because using a business should be more than that. The whole experience should be something to shout about.
Here are the websites that i used for research into this:
Here's some tips and sites that are realy useful for any of you lovely folks that may want some more info. if you have a look at these sites and feel you need a bit more help then there are now several places offering courses on how to use social media for marketing, Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce for one, but be sure to note that they probably use these resources as the basis for what they wil be talking about.
Twitters own business site "Dry, boring feeds rarely draw many people. Successful Twitter business accounts, though, can take many forms. They may be personal and chatty or they might even have mostly automated information. But no matter the style, the key is to post messages that your followers will find compelling."- http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/
Advertising online is something that I'm quite passionate about! I really enjoy designing an advert or a spot for my company to sit in! I'm well up for linking websites with other business's to help share the love! But what really grinds my gears is these Internet directories that will try to snare you into ridiculously priced advertising spots to be the best posted, highlighted or whatever else they wish you to do.
But what i have found is that there are a few places out there that are totally worth the cost with out signing your business into some bizarre contract that leeches money from you on a slow and painful basis. The only real down side to them is that they have a rating system that puts you in the ranking order based on who is best rated.
So here's the appeal... anyone that would be willing to say that you have dealt with us, whether it be an enquiry or used our service, but I'm looking to get some rankings put on the the sites for us without me cheating and using my googlemail and yahoo mail accounts to lie! Coz I would like this to be realistic! Even if it's just coz you met me at a networking meeting and thought i was polite! that would be great!
And in return we'll do the same for you, if you have a business we'll rate you and put you on our links page. If you have a bebo we'll give you some love! and if we get enough ratings we'll even offer everyone that's done it money off their next order but only if we hit 50 ratings! Good news is to be tops we only got to beat 2 reviews but we still gotta have goals! :D
So come on don't waste any more time reading this click the link below and get rating.
Twitters own business site