Jon Samsel

What is your Social Media Rank? Why does it matter?

(This blog post is a reprint of a PDF published on ubmelectronics.com)

PRESS RELEASE - 2nd November 2011 – London. element14, Premier Farnell’s collaborative online community for electronics design engineers, has been ranked number one in the Heardable “Online Brand Benchmark Report: 30 Leading Brands in the Electronics Industry”.

Newark, Premier Farnell’s business operation in the United States, Canada and Mexico, came second in the report, which is published by Heardable, a real-time contextual brand analytics platform. Both brands came out top in social media and website performance, with the top five Best Practices highlighted as:

• Strong social media presence, participation, followers and advocates
• Search engine optimized websites
• Usable websites (easy to engage, share, interact, contact and transact)
• Regular monitoring and optimisation using web analytics software and testing tools
• Optimizing websites for mobile smartphone browsing

The report also highlights that element14 is ranked in the top one per cent of all brands analysed by Heardable worldwide, is number one out of 9,059 competitors in the NAICS, Engineering Services category and third of 3,188 brands based in the UK.

DOWNLOAD 159 PAGE PDF REPORT

“We have put a lot of effort into ensuring we have the right online approach to being able to provide a comprehensive and fast service for the engineers of today. We understand that engineers work at a very fast pace to stay ahead in the electronics industry and we want to provide them with the right tools and products to get the job done,” said Kevin Yapp, Chief Marketing Officer at Premier Farnell. “This is truly a great accolade for all online operations of Premier Farnell, as this report has a clear scoring methodology, documenting dozens of online marketing best practices, and further, providing ranking analysis on how each organisation is performing against its industry peers and I would like to thank all our teams who have contributed towards achieving this position in the industry.”

John Sharp, director of Heardable, Inc, said in the report: “element14 has obviously put in a lot of effort into website optimisation and social media marketing over the past year, and that effort is now being rewarded. You need to get a lot of things right to win the top spot in a competitive sector like electronics. The element14 brand management team deserves high marks.”

element14 is the trusted source for end-to-end engineering solutions. Bringing together fast delivery of the latest products, services and solutions, all connected to an innovative engineering community where members can access peers and experts, a wide range of independent technical information and helpful tools.

About element14

Launched in June 2009, element14 is the first, innovative information portal and eCommunity specifically built for electronic design engineers. It provides product data, design tools and technology information, whilst incorporating Web 2.0 functionality to facilitate communication, interaction, collaboration and information sharing between colleagues around the world. Users can consult experts, discover trends, post blogs, articles and comments in this world-wide forum.

Since its launch element14 has surpassed all of the targets set, has garnered overwhelmingly positive feedback from customers and suppliers alike, and is now attracting more than 24,000 visitors a week with new user profiles created each day.

element14 is an innovative offering from Premier Farnell plc (LSE:pfl), FTSE 250, a leader in multi-channel distribution and specialty services for electronic design engineers throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific. It has a stocked range of 450,000+ products, and access to 4,000,000 more items from 3,500 top manufacturers. The company has group sales of £990.8m and over 4,100 employees globally.

For more information visit: www.element14.com.

About Premier Farnell

Premier Farnell plc is leading the way in the high service, multi-channel provision of essential products, information, software and technology solutions to electronic design engineers, maintenance and repair engineers and purchasing professionals globally. Its differentiated proposition includes 29 local language transactional websites, and the critically important element14 ecommunity for design engineers - an industry first (www.element14.com). With sales last year of £990.8m and underlying profits of £93.3m the Group distributes its comprehensive portfolio of products and services throughout Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, supported by a global supply chain of over 3,500 suppliers and an inventory profile developed to anticipate and meet its customers’ needs. Recently awarded Platinum status by the Business in the Community Corporate Responsibility Index the business takes its CSR commitments very seriously.

While global in scope, Premier Farnell recognises the individual needs of each market and has continued to internationalise its model accordingly, trading locally under different brand names. Its primary electronics businesses trade as Farnell in Europe, Newark in the US, Canada and Mexico and Farnell Newark in Brazil. Across Asia Pacific the business trades as element14.

Worldwide electronics marketer, SupplyFrame Media, has named Heardable one of 10 killer new tools to power up your marketing efforts.

According to SupplyFrame, “Many tools on our list offer you instant benefits and help increase the ROI of your social media programs. Augment activities on Twitter, Facebook, your corporate blog or your industry communities with these no or low-cost tools.”

Go Heardable.com!

A music video medley of Heardable images that make you wanna rock it don’t stop it!

Heardable client, Raul E. New York, opens its new store and introduces its new brand to shoppers.

Raul E New York is an upscale retail clothing company that only offers the finest and most exquisite products and services to its customers. Specializing in women’s apparel, the company sells some of the most beautiful dresses in the industry.

Charles Bombardier’s Browzad.com is a social contest company that allows people to win free prizes just by doing what they do everyday — browsing the Internet.

The catch is that people need to first register on Browzad and install their contest app into their web browser (similar to how StumbleUpon works). Every time a consumer opens their web browser, a banner ad appears at the top of the user’s home page. With one click, the banner disappears and only appears again when the web browser is closed and reopened. Browzad members accumulate points each time they browse the web — points that can be used to bid on prizes. Prizes vary from sports tickets to gift cards — even iPads.

The Browzad service is based in Montreal, Canada and is already popular there. They are now branching out into the US market. Browzad’s objective is to become world leader in online contests.

Browzad recently secured a promotional deal with Dick Clark Productions for the American Music Awards (win 2 free tickets to the star-studded Hollywood event) and they are about to launch new a contest where members can win a new car.

Browzad is donating 10% of their ad revenues to their charities & non-profit partners. Each Browzad member gets to select the charity they’d like to be associated with. But a charity cannot benefit if they are not signed up! Click here to register your charity or non-profit. Of course, there is never any charge to the non-profit organization or to the consumer. This is an advertising supported company.

Businesses can promote their services and products on Browzad by becoming an advertiser or white labeling the Browzad contest platform. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, advertisers can use Browzad’s contest & rewards platform to generate awareness, gather new Facebook Likes, and boost sales. Advertisers also gain access to statistics and benchmarking tools offered by Browzad so they can see first-hand how many new prospects are engaging with their brand online.

BROWZAD.COM

Marketing inquires: Kevin Alber, Advertising and Promotional Executive - kevin@browzad.com

80 Queen street, Suite 103, Montreal, Quebec H3C 2N5 CANADA

http://www.browzad.com

What can you say about a fifty-six-year-old man who died? That he was bounteous and brilliant? That he loved technology, design, the Beatles, and us?

Okay, I’ve twisted the words of Oliver Barrett IV from the film, Love Story, into a quick ode to Steve Jobs, but it’s the first sentence that popped into my mind when I heard Steve had passed.

It’s hard to believe one of the great ones has gone over to the other side.

To me, Steve Jobs was like that uncle who lived in another state — don’t really know him very well but he’s part of the family. We think of him, indirectly and sometimes directly, by carrying little pieces of him around with us in our pockets — be it our iPhone, iPod, or the like. Yes, they are merely devices but it’s these gadgets that have transformed our ability to communicate as humans. Steve helped give technology a soul.

In the mid-1990’s I worked as a consultant for Apple. I can still remember standing in front of the Cupertino campus in awe. Dana DePuy Morgan, who managed the Apple Media Program at the time, hired me to write and produce “The Killer Content Workbook,” one of the first interactive PDF guides ever created using Adobe Acrobat — a project that incorporated text, images, audio, video, interactive forms and hyperlinks — all of which were considered leading-edge interactivity for that time.

I actually had bartering this first job with Apple in exchange for two PowerBook 5300 laptops. Sweet! I did more work for Apple after that. I can recall the first check I ever received from Apple for work delivered. I just sort of stared at it for a few minutes, thinking to myself — I work for Apple!

In an odd way, the death of Steve Jobs is inspirational to me. Re-watch his commencement address at Stanford University and tell me Steve wasn’t amazingly prophetic, humble, reflective, yet entirely motivating to a new generation. We should be so lucky to be honored for our life’s achievements the way the world is honoring Mr. Jobs.

It’s truly sad that Steve Jobs is gone from this earth, but he hasn’t really gone anywhere.

Steve Jobs is now ubiquitous.

Here’s to one of the crazy ones.

Heardable.com just published a list of the Top 100 Most Liked Brands on Facebook. The majority of brands with a high number of Facebook likes were musical artists, followed by companies/product brands, actors, sports teams and television shows. The only politician who made the list was Barak Obama.

The huge number of daily mentions of Facebook is impressive — 15,429 mentions per day! How about the daily growth rates for FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Manchester United, Christiano Ronaldo, Britney Spears, Red Hot Chili Peppers, McDonalds, Walmart, Burberry, Chelsea FC, History Channel and The Beatles — which are all over 3.0%?

Take a look at the list for yourself.

Successful online brands are publishers. They use video to reach more customers, improve their search engine results and transform website shoppers into buyers.

On May 10, 2011, Heardable’s CEO, Jon Samsel, was asked to speak at the Jamba Juice Digital Marketing Summit in Emeryville, California. The juice jam was organized by Jim Holbrook, CEO of of Neighbor Agency and Conn Fishburn, Founder and CEO, F3 Ideas. Guest speakers included reps from Google, Manatt, Twitter, Facebook and Heardable!

Here is a brief summary of Jon’s presentation, Web Analytics Unraveled, along with the full PowerPoint deck via SlideShare.

Summary

Before you can create a killer dashboard to monitor and measure your online marketing effectiveness, companies like yours need to first do some prep work:

1) Outline your objectives and goals (if you don’t know where you’re going, any path will take you there)

2) Choose the right measurement framework

3) Establish your KPI’s (metrics directly tied to your business objectives)

4) Create an implementation roadmap (which KPI’s you should monitor first)

5) Select the tools that will power your dashboard (a mix of free, paid, and internally created reports)

Okay, I’m sick of hearing all the reasons why there are no videos posted to your website. I almost believed you when you said they were too expense to produce. And you nearly conned me when you claimed your staff lacked the talent needed to produce ‘videos of the highest caliber that met your corporate standards.’ Yes, your unfortunate tale about your inability to grasp the technical steps required to convent your camcorder videos to MPEG so you could upload them to social networks practically brought tears to me eyes.

But now there are more no more excuses thanks to Google/YouTube’s Search Story tool. All you need is to go to the Google/YouTube tool page, type in a few sentences that speak to the basic story you want to tell, then click the finish button and viola — you have your very own, custom video posted to YouTube.

The video not only tells your basic story — but does so by using search as the visual metaphor for how people create stories during each search they have on Google.

Pretty crafty. Google lets you create a video, in minutes and for free, and they get new content for YouTube at no cost to them — complete with free product placement advertising for Google in nearly every shot! Not a bad deal for all parties.

The finished product can be embedded into other websites (like the one I’ve included in this blog post), or published on third party sites such as Facebook.

So what are you waiting for, Mr. I Can’t Produce Video For My Company Cause It’s Too Darn Difficult? Try it for yourself after watching this video that I created for my company, Heardable.com.