As social networking becomes the ‘in’ thing, people are beginning to question where that leaves the use of email. You’ve heard the saying, ‘video killed the radio star,’ so is this a case of history repeating itself? Is email about to fall victim to social networking?

Well, no we don’t think so. From a Ph. point of view, we just don’t buy this theory that “email is dead,” and there are plenty of reasons why:

• People still send hand-written letters
• Nearly all websites that require registration request an email address
• Email notifies you of updates from your social networks
• Email is universal, social networks are not
• Many people have no interest in joining social networks but will use email
• Email is still improving
• Even social networks recognise the importance of email
• More social media use means more email use
• As far as marketing is concerned, email is doing pretty well

Businesses should be merging social aspects with their email programs to not only expand the reach of their offers, but to maintain customer loyalty and ultimately grow their database. So if you’ve been questioning the life expectancy of email, stop now. Keep in mind that about 50% of content is shared through email and social media is a great way to get subscribers.

In case you’re STILL not convinced, here are some final thoughts for you;

• Mobile apps will continue to keep email relevant in the mobile world.
• Google recently released its own social media product, Buzz, which the company decided would fit best with Gmail.
• Microsoft Outlook only recently started integrating social networks into the inbox.
• The social networks themselves are creating email services - Facebook is said to be working on its own...and we know how popular Facebook is.
  

You’re sitting at the kitchen table with your 16-year-old son. “Listen, Jamie,” you say. “I’m tired of the way your room is always a mess. And do you realise, you never help with the chores and you’re always rude and sulking around the house?”

STOP! Hold it there a second! Let’s try rewinding that type and changing the dialogue.

You’re still at the kitchen table but this time you say: “Jamie, I know you have a date on Saturday night. Here are the three things you have to do to persuade me to lend you the car....”

Now tell me: what scenario do you think is more likely to get Jason’s attention? Well, of course Jamie paid more attention the second time around because it wasn’t just another useless lecture.

Now you’re probably thinking good for Jamie but what does his story have to do with website copy?

Let us tell you that Jamie’s reaction illustrates the ‘what’s-in-it-for-me’ factor.  When you’re writing copy, you need to get out of the “here’s what I want tell you” attitude and into the “what does my reader want to hear?” mentality.

What readers want – in addition to the merchandise or service you have to offer – is to be engaged and entertained.

One of the very best ways to avoid boredom is to base your copywriting on a story, just as we just did. Of course, Jamie isn’t really my 16 year old son, but surely you have a story you can use?  With a little thought, stories can illustrate just about any business point you may want to make.

Something we also know about readers is that when it comes to content, people read web pages differently to print. They generally don’t read the pages but scan for certain terms that tell them they’re in the right place. And what are they looking for? Headings, link text, bold text and bulleted lists.

Comply with these demands and dramatically improve your conversion rate…

We bet that the next time you’re give your teenager a lecture, you’ll think of this track… You can harness that kind of power for your own website copy as well.

Twitter is testing an ad platform, which is expected to be released next month. When the product does launch, it will be made clear when sponsors have paid for ads, and the ads themselves will be "relevant and useful, so the user doesn't think of it as an ad."

Twitter recently released a Super Bowl Chart that showed people tweeting throughout the game about the game itself and tweets about specific advertisers.

Following this, it is possible that Twitter's ad platform will tie into this "what people are already talking about" kind of thing, but that would seemingly make it much more difficult for a lesser-known brand to have any kind of advertising success.

At the moment nobody knows exactly how Twitter is going to present its ads yet but the question is - how will they do it in a way that users won't think of it as an ad?

We think it's probably going to involve some real-time engagement on the part of the advertiser, which leads us to wonder how is this different from any other unpaid, branded tweet?

That could be a difficult problem to address, one that we’re sure Twitter won’t have ignored, so if they're planning on launching next month - they must have a pretty good solution.

A new report entitled, "Beyond Trust: Engaging Consumers in the Post-Recession World," has revealed the top performing brands in the U.S. based on "trust" and "recommendation.”

The report explored the relationship between consumers and brands, emphasising the importance of ‘trust’ in these economically challenging times. The fact is: consumers will not spend their hard-earned money on brands they don’t trust.

The most trusted brand in each of the 22 countries was nearly seven times more likely to be purchased from, as consumers were 10 times more likely to have formed a strong bond with these brands.

The results were as followed:

1. Amazon.com - 123
2. FedEx - 122
3. Downy - 120
4. Huggies - 120
5. Tide - 120
6. Tylenol - 120
7. Toyota - 119
8. WebMD - 119
9. Pampers - 118
10. UPS (United Parcel Service) - 118

The scores were calculated by looking at responses to the following questions, "how trustworthy is this brand?" and "would you recommend this brand?" The average score was 100, and anything over 105 is considered good.

How do you think you would score?

It’s been splashed all over the web for weeks now, so we thought you might just be wondering what this buzz about Google Buzz is all about. Well, Buzz is Google’s new product that is being compared to social networks like Twitter and Facebook. It’s integrated with Gmail and other Google products and it has been called Google’s 'missing link' in tying Google together as a social network.

So what does it do?

•    Buzz will show you a thumbnail of a YouTube video and make it easy to play
•    It features a custom photo viewer which lets you flip through enlarged thumbnails of pictures quickly
•    If you share links, it will automatically fetch headlines and photos from the post (similar to Facebook)
•    You can "like," "unlike" and expand comments

Buzz may benefit your business as an organisational tool or as a way to communicate even more with existing contacts. The idea is that when you see what your Gmail contacts are saying, it will not only keep those people fresh in your mind, but it can encourage further communication. And this could possibly lend to better organisation of your communication, which could in turn save you time.

Depending on how many of the possibilities actually happen, Google Buzz could become a central place for that communication. The more services Buzz gets integrated with, the better it could become for organisation.

So now you know, why not take try it out yourself? Google co-founder, Sergey Brin says he wrote an opinion piece, posted it to Google Buzz, and quickly had 50 comments, and edited based on feedback. Easy for a Google co-founder to say! We’d much rather hear your opinions, so tell us. Let us know what you think of Buzz…

Photoshop will able to save a fortune celebrating their 20th birthday today, after all they can just paint artificial smiles on everyone’s faces, place champagne glasses in everyone’s hand and hey – what a great party!

Oh the world of Photoshop… the image editing software, that often gets it spectacularly wrong, is celebrating its 20th birthday this year having been released on February 19, 1990.

Photoshop has been used to make family photo albums, magazine fashion spreads and scene designs for Hollywood movies such as Avatar. It’s even entered popular dialect, myself included when

I’m flipping through a magazine and an image of a model with unnaturally perfect skin appears and I say; ‘Well, it must have been Photoshopped!’

What people enjoy most about Photoshop is when someone has tried to be clever and got it spectacularly wrong! You know what I’m talking about; the floating hands, unnatural body shapes and the obvious addition of random objects. And what better way to celebrate their 20th birthday, than to include a few of my favourite mistakes for you now…

A lot of graphic designers don’t like using buttons to design a website. They believe buttons can look ugly if they are too large, too colourful, or too in your face. What they can’t ignore though is the fact that these kinds of buttons work.

Buttons are also known as a ‘call to action’. We’re calling the customer to take an action. Adding buttons or calls to action on not only your landing page but throughout your website can help increase conversions and conversion rates exponentially.

Launched in 2000, Rightmove.co.uk was the first property website in the UK to introduce paid advertising on properties for sale. They decided to plan a simple experiment using Google Website. Optimiser to test how changing the ‘Contact Agent’ button and removing the ‘Request Details’ link would impact the conversion rate of email leads to Estate Agents.

Using their existing Google Analytics account, Rightmove set up a multivariate test to experiment with different colours and wording for the ‘Contact Agent’ button, resulting in 16 button variations. Website Optimiser ensured that any changes implemented on the site would be based on actual user preference.

They found that by testing changing a single button they drove 33% more leads.

Now who’s saying buttons aren’t important?

There’s a time to be nice and there’s a time to not. This idea of being disagreeable upsets many people, in particular the mediators out there and the people pleasers. Whilst I am inclined to roll my eyes, you may be inclined to use your charm and often you’re right. But sometimes, it’s not a matter of pleasing everyone and who can resist a good debate?

You see, I’m not afraid to be controversial when I’m writing. And you shouldn’t be either. Here’s why:

•    Do you remember learning about the “flight or fight response” at school? A time when something threatens you and your adrenalin starts pumping. Well, reading something that makes you mad is the print equivalent of being challenged by a rhinoceros. But the key difference is – instead of running away, you read more, and you read faster. You become engaged. You care. And that’s exactly the kind of reader every writer wants.

•    Strong opinions will make some people dislike you but it will also make some people LOVE you. As Kasabian said at last nights Brit awards: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.” Nicey-nice writing won’t offend anyone, but it won’t excite anyone either. Did you know that some of the best-selling books on Amazon are the ones that 50% of people hate?

•    When people read strong opinions, it forces them to think – if only to defend their own point of view. Never underestimate the value of getting people to think – especially when they’re thinking about you, your service or business.

•    People who feel strongly will step forward to tell you so. And that’s the best thing of all, because suddenly, you’ve achieved interactivity. That’s the first step in building a relationship with your potential customer.

Now I’m not suggesting you go out and be controversial for the sake of it, just remember that you don’t have to be “safe” all the time. Don’t have an allergic reaction to anything that might be the tiniest bit controversial. Otherwise, your words will be bland and boring, and you’ll send your readers to sleep.

Take a look at our own 'My Nasty,' Simon Cowell for example. A man best known for saying what he thinks even if it is slightly controversial. You've heard the boo's but have you also seen the amount of fans he has? He gets more respect for saying what he thinks rather than saying what he thinks people want to hear.

Writing should be vibrant and lively with strong statements. You have to understand that you will cause some people to disagree and if you disagree with this blog, then good!

Let me introduce you to someone in our office… Siân. When Siân shops, she knows what she shops for. She types into Google... red shoes, high heel, size 5. When your site pops up, she clicks onto your site, ready to buy. Then you go and make the stupendous mistake of landing her into a page about handbags. Confused and disappointed, Siân clicks straight off your site and into your competitors, making a mental note never to visit your company again.

High street retailers, Next, noticed that they had a high exit rate from search pages for boys socks and they found that by testing more specific results, they reduced exit rates by 20% and increased conversions by 7%. Therefore if you had landed Siân into your shoe section you would have at least been on the right track, but if you had landed Siân into a page featuring high-heel red shoes size 5, then you too could reduce your exit rate and increase your conversions too.

Top tips for site search:

1. Check quality of results: Is your site’s search function working well? Ensure visitors are getting relevant results, even when they search on synonyms or misspellings.
2. Make site search visible: Visitors to your site should be able to see, at a glance, where to search. Consider enlarging your search box or making it more prominent.
   
3. Allow customers to sort results: People like to be able to sort through search results. Allow visitors to order what they see by anything from price or popularity to colour, style etc.
4. Lay out search results clearly: Ensure visitors can glance through search results and compare listings easily to decide where to click next.

Have you ever walked past a bus stop advertising a zoomed in image of a large slice of steaming hot pizza? Did the headline say something like, ooey gooey pizza? Did you cringe? Where you tempted to… walk on by?

I know if I read this I’d be more likely to lose my lunch than go out and buy it. This is a popular reaction among the masses!

You probably remember being taught about adjectives in school and in case you’ve forgotten, let me refresh your memory - they cover words such as: pink, hideous, irritating, lovely, muffled, magnificent, scrawny, gorgeous, tart and grumpy. They don’t have to be just one word either – they can be hyphenated, like ooey goey.

Whilst your teachers may have tried to encourage you use more adjectives to “improve” your writing, let me just tell you the 3 main problems with adjectives….

Adjectives are imprecise

Considering adjectives are supposed to improve your writing, they’re actually pretty vague. Take the word magnificent, for example, does it mean imposing, awe-inspiring, noble or grand? Who knows! Many adjectives almost hide your point rather than reveal. People will be shouting – Get to the point! Tell me why I should buy your product!

Adjectives mean different things to different people

The person, who described our slice of pizza as ooey gooey, obviously assumed it was a good thing. But, as you can see, some people (me) think ooey gooey = a disgusting thing. When words are imprecise, you lose control over the meaning the reader takes in – not good for conversions.

Adjectives sound too sales-y

Today’s user, thanks to interruption marketing, sales calls, people on your doorstep, are more cynical than ever before. Your visitor wants solid information from sources they can trust and if your website is filled with adjectives, they’re going to think you sound like you’re pushing sales on them. This will turn readers off. Think about when you read something yourself like, dream holiday in a sunset location, romantic and relaxing, peaceful and tranquil, your perfect getaway –Doesn’t it sound as though the writer is trying too hard? Aren’t you more suspicious than intrigued? It’s the adjectives that cause the problem.