Category Archives: Planning

How to Write A Functional Specification

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The functional specification or spec describes in detail how a website operates from the point of view of the user. They may touch on technical issues but only where it helps enforce the site’s functionality. They range in size, with functional specs for complex sites running to 100 pages or more.

Remember, though, that although the functional spec will naturally touch on technical elements, it is not a technical document. It should be written clearly for an audience who are not necessarily technical in background. Avoid technical language or acronyms, and if you must use them include a non-technical definition.

The exact content of a functional specification will vary from job to job but they all share some common sections. Continue reading →

4 Free Web Analysis Tools

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There are numerous occasions where you may need to analyse various aspects of a website and there are numerous paid tools that you can use for the purpose. But there’s nothing better than using a free tool for something! So I’ve listed those 4 that I’ve used most frequently and included a brief description of what I use them for. If you know of any more please feel free to share by adding a comment below. Continue reading →

Make Your KPIs SMART

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At the outset of planning any digital project you should consider what outcomes or results indicate success. The most common way of doing this is to select a set of KPIs (key performance indicators). By monitoring your KPIs you can see if you are on track to meet your goals or way off mark.

When establishing your KPIs you should always make them SMART. That is…

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Achievable
  • Relevant
  • Time-based

I’ll go through each of these in more detail and provide examples below.

Specific

At the top level KPIs should be particular to the business or organisation. If you work in-house this will be relatively simple but if you are an agency you need to work with your client to ensure the indicators are business specific.

An example of a specific KPI for an online retailer might be to increase sales, whilst for a charity website it could be to increase the number of registrants to a sponsored fun run. On the other hand, the PR department of a travel agent might have spent a lot of time and effort to produce news articles for their website but their downloads might not necessarily be specific to the business and wouldn’t constitute a KPI.

Measurable

KPIs must be measurable otherwise you won’t be able to determine if your activity is being successful or not. Although qualitative data such as satisfaction scores can be used, objective, quantitative measures are best. They are difficult to argue with whereas qualitative indicators are open to interpretation.

For example, you may define the reduction of the homepage’s bounce rate to 30% or less as a KPI. This is a clear cut, definite statistic that can be found from your analytics software. Whereas, asking users how pleasing they find a web page design can lead to misleading results; what does pleasing mean? Aesthetic design? Content? Usability? It could be all or any of them.

Achievable

It is unlikely that your new site design will increase traffic tenfold in the first three months, or that a new iPhone app will increase sales by 75% so don’t be tempted use such improbable results as KPIs. Instead choose indicators that are genuinely achievable.

Clients or senior management often expect digital tools to be a wonder solutions that will provide massive returns, but by keeping your success criteria realistic you will be able show a true reflection of performance and also manage the client’s or stakeholder’s expectations.

Relevant

Your digital activity will usually form part of a wider communications plan that may include multiple online and offline channels which are intended to add to the success of the organisation. It is important, therefore, that any KPIs mirror this plan.

For example, if your company (or client) was running a campaign to raise awareness of their new brand of catfood, your digital KPIs might be to achieve 200 or more downloads of information sheets per month. The number of job applications received through the website, though, would be irrelevant.

Time-based

KPIs should be measured over a pre-defined period. This could be for a certain number of months or for the duration of a particular activity. An example might be to receive 1,000 enquiry form submissions for the first quarter of the financial year. Or to achieve 300 downloads of a weight-loss app during a summer slimming campaign.

To summarise

Setting KPIs allows you to manage the progress of a digital campaign or activity. They help identify areas that aren’t gaining the expected results or, conversely, those that are seeing greater than expected interest.

By keeping those KPIs SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-based) you make sure that they are pertinent to the business and it’s current communication strategy, that they refer to activities that are possible within a specific time frame and that there is no ambiguity in how they report progress to project stakeholders.

Measuring The Results Of A Social Media Campaign

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Over my last few posts I’ve explained how to plan and run a social media campaign. In this post I will cover the final stage of the campaign – measuring the results. As an agency you will be expected to provide your client with a return on their investment, and if you are running the campaign in-house you will be expected to show similar results to senior management.

results against KPIs

You will have determined the KPIs in the campaign planning stage. Now each month you should measure your results against those KPIs to ascertain how successfully the campaign is in reaching the set targets. For example, a KPI might be to increase the traffic to a website by 10% in 6 months. Monitor the traffic to a website, calculate the percentage increase (or decrease) and report back to the client.

monthly metrics

As well as providing clients with results that match their KPIs you should also provide the following statistics where possible on a monthly basis:

  • Number of fans, followers, subscribers etc.
  • Number of video or content views
  • Volume of user comments posted to a blog, profile or posted content
  • Retweets or peer-sharing statistics for related content and posts
  • Comment or retweet resonation (number of user comments multiplied by how many followers or friends each user has)
  • Company website traffic statistics (where you have has access)

These statistics can usually be found in the dashboards of the social media channels you are using. Alternatively freely available tools such as Hootsuite can provide you with them.

ROI

The direct ROI will usually be measured by the client rather than their agency since it will involve them comparing things such as revenue gained from social media channels against revenue from other channels. Generally they will not want to share this type of information.

conclusion

Measuring the results of a campaign not only shows whether it is a success or not but can also indicate which specific channels are more effective. With this information you can either abandon less successful activity or change it. Likewise if a particular social network is producing outstanding results you can ramp up your activity in it.

Recruitment Of Social Media Followers

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My last post explained how, as an agency, you can set up social media channels for your client. This post refers to the recruitment of fans and followers for those channels.

By now you will have a campaign strategy, you know where your target audience can be found online and you’ve activated channels to reach them. Now you want to get people following your client. There will be plenty of potential followers but you should begin by seeking out the most high-quality ones.These can be defined as thought leaders within the client’s sector who are active in social media channels and have a sizeable following already.

I’ve categorised them into four groups:

  • key bloggers
  • Twitter influencers
  • Facebook Group moderators
  • website and forum owners

I’ll explain how to find them, contact them and give advice on recruiting them below. Continue reading →

Setting Up And Using Social Media Channels

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Expanding on my last post which concerned the development of a coherent strategy for social media campaigns, this post will address the setting up and use of social media channels.

It is not my intention to discuss technical issues, instead I will explain how the channels can be used tactically as part of the overall strategy. It is written from the view of a specialist digital or PR agency who will be providing social media marketing services for their client. Continue reading →

Creating A Social Media Strategy

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My last post covered the effective planning of a social media campaign. This next phase of the campaign sees the results of the research being used to inform a social media strategy.

Without a strategy untargeted messages will be posted in channels where the intended audience might not be active. It ensures that there is a common tone of voice used across all the social networks pertinent to the campaign, and that any content posted is relevant. Finally, it determines the results that will measure whether the campaign has been a success or not.

The key stages of strategy development are: monitoring, theme development, channel selection, content planning, setting KPIs and defining the engagement policy. These stages are described below.

Continue reading →

Planning A Social Media Campaign

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Social media continues to sweep through the marketing departments of businesses large and small. Eager marketers are commissioning digital and PR agencies to build Facebook apps, Twitter pages and blogs, and then populating them with a seemingly random range of comments and promotional messages that so often fail to have the impact expected.

If you are developing a social media campaign for your client it is crucial that it is well planned before a single status message, tweet or video is uploaded. This ensures that the stakeholders’ expectations are managed and that the scope of the project doesn’t creep beyond its original scale and budget.

The campaign planning stages are described below. Continue reading →

Using Web Widgets For Brand Building

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Also known as a badge, app or gadget, a web widget is a small standalone application that is typically created in DHTML, JavaScript or Flash and installed on a webpage by a site owner. Although the widget displays on the page, it resides on its developer’s web server, being referenced when the page loads.

Examples of simple widgets are stock tickers, clocks and calendars. But widgets can be far more complex, using the various rich media functions of JavaScript and Flash to perform as mini applications in their own right.

In social media, people use widgets to enhance their personal pages and add them to blogs, profiles and community pages.

Because the functionality and design are completely controlled by their owners, widgets can be branded and contain embedded links that click through to specific web pages. And being free of charge, easily installed by pasting a few lines of code into a page, and lightweight, widgets offer an opportunity for brands to create something that can be shared.

Branded widgets should reflect the business that built them. The Expedia widget, for example, acts as a search tool that will take users to holiday and hotel offers on the main Expedia website. The Apple widget displays product reviews and downloads.

By developing a useful, engaging widget you create a mechanism for your audience to promote your business at a relatively low cost. Potentially a widget could spread virally across the web, being passed from user to user, and the more websites your widget is on the more people are seeing your brand without ever visiting your own site.

An Introduction To Digital Planning

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What is digital planning? Well it depends on who you speak to, there isn’t a standard answer. Different agencies approach digital planning in different ways and their planners would describe their roles in dissimilar terms as this presentation from Heather LeFevre demonstrates.

Below I’ve listed what I think are the 9 core aspects of digital planning, but first let’s set the scene by looking at traditional advertising account planning. You’ll notice that digital planning sometimes compares to traditional planning but is often quite different. Continue reading →