Following our recent acquisitions, we’re very proud to announce our updated and extended social media services!

We’ve expanded our training workshops to include:

Introduction to Social Media – designed for decision makers who need to understand how social fits into their business and how to begin to create a SMART strategy to do so.

I’m on LinkedIn, But… – understand how to take your LinkedIn profile to the next level as a powerful networking tool.

Twitter 101 – learn to make best use of this powerful communication tool for your business.

Better Blogging – covering both technical how-to (using Wordpress) and best practice content creation.

Facebook for Business – designed to enable you to utilise the world’s largest social network for real business benefit.

We’ve also launched 2 new services:

The Online Social Impact Audit provides a reference point to identify areas of improvement and forms the starting point for any social media campaign or strategy development.

Maximise the number of people who hear about and interact with your event, product or brand launch with our Social Media Event Amplification.

Our Social Media Management page has been updated to reflect changes to our offerings also.

We’re offering an Introduction to Social Media breakfast session for only £25+VAT.

Come and join us on the 26th October at 8am (for an 8:30 start) for some breakfast and an overview from our Social Media Strategist, Luke on:

• Why social networking matters to your brand
• An overview of the key sites
• Some future trends to look out for

Call Steve on 01202 888192 to reserve your place.

If you’d like more information on any of our social media services, please call Luke in the office.

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Dorset based strategic branding and digital agency, RT Media, has completed the acquisition of two Bournemouth based companies – social media training and consultancy business, SocialTech, and creative agency, Ozone Creative Solutions.

Ross Thornley. founder of RT Media, explains: “We recently carried out a strategic review within the business with a view to increasing resources, skills and generating growth. Both SocialTech (http://www.socialtech.biz/) and Ozone complement our existing capabilities and will further enhance our offering, expanding our branding expertise into all online communications and leading to a wider solution for our international, national and regional clients.”

Ross Thornley with Tony Ridgway and Luke Williams

Founded in 2008, SocialTech has built a reputation as a leader of social media training and consultancy. Its clients include Channel 4, E.ON, Condé Nast and Dorset Chamber of Commerce & Industry (DCCI).

Luke Williams, Director and founder of SocialTech, comments: “I’ve always held the team at RT Media and the outstanding quality of their design work in the highest regard. When the opportunity to merge our businesses became available it was an obvious fit, in terms of culture and approach, and as a logical extension of their brand communication to offer an extended range of services.”

As a total creative resource, Ozone Creative Solutions brings expertise from its impressive folio of advertising, direct mail, sales literature, Point of Sale, interactive CD and online design work to RT Media. Its ‘straight talking’ and ‘clear creative thinking’ approach is also a natural fit for RT Media, as Tony Ridgway founder of Ozone, comments:

“Our view has always been to get the job done, and get it done well. The team at RT Media has a similar approach; they like to get under the skin of a client’s and challenge them to really know what is actually required to achieve the objectives. We have already started collaborating on several campaigns and new business wins, which has shown us just how much potential we have, working together.”

Steve Mills, Business Development Manager at Nutrichef said “As a long standing customer of RT we were asked to be one of the test clients they worked with pre-merger to support the re-launch of our new web site. Adding the social media knowledge from SocialTech to the branding expertise of RT worked very well, dramatically extending our reach online.”

Ross adds: “This is a coming of age for RT Media. Integrating the three very like-minded, skilled and professional teams has given us a very strong platform for growth. It is a new era, both for us and for our clients, who will most certainly benefit from having this level of resource for their campaigns.”

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After a long history of Social Media attempts, and their more recent, albeit low radar, endeavours in the form of Google Wave and Google Buzz, has Google finally put forward a contender in the seemingly unattainable competition with Social networking giant, Facebook?

The ‘invitation-only’ launch of Google+ has been widely hyped as the most promising competitor to Facebook for some time. In some ways it seems to have ‘borrowed’ a lot of the key aspects and features of Facebook’s functionality, however, it is hitting out at Facebook’s weaknesses too.

With an estimated 500 million plus users, privacy is an area on which Facebook has been criticised in the past, and Google are grabbing this opportunity to differentiate themselves with both hands. Although this alone will not be enough to sway the dedicated Facebook fans, reviews from the chosen few that were invited to try it, shows that Google+ has potential to, compete with at least, Facebook.

Another of the key differences that could push Google+ is the depth of integration available. At the moment, Google+ is linked to all other aspects of Google; accounts and Gmail for example. This integration will undoubtedly allow users to go about their daily online business without leaving the site, meaning a much longer contact time with the user, attractive to both Google+ and marketers.

Comparisons with Facebook

Opportunities for brands

The main opportunity for brands on the new Google+ network, aside from wanting to be added to people’s circles, the equivalent of being ‘liked’ on Facebook or ‘followed’ on Twitter, is the ‘Sparks’ application. A user will list their likes and interests, and Google feeds them relevant information/products. The priority for brands will be to appear at the tops of these lists, whether this is through SEO linked to Google searches or interest optimization. This could give the opportunity for a new optimization market to develop, giving marketers another channel to consider.

Although business and ‘non-human’ pages are not currently part of Google+ being tested in the trial, it is something that they are looking to provide. Jeff Huber, Google VP of Local and Commerce, has indicated that Google+, at some point in the near future will include the option for business profile page. Here is his comment:
‘And pre-emptively answering a question — yes, we will have (smb) business profile pages on Google+. I can’t announce a launch date yet, but we want to make them *great*, and we’re coding as fast as we can.’
It is surprising that Google+ has not been more prepared for the wave of brands wanting to create profiles, as happened with Facebook and Twitter. Brands want to go where their customers are, and by not trailing the promised specialized business profiles, Google+ may have missed a trick.

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Company founder and Creative Director, Ross Thornley talks about building a successful – and balanced – creative business, and his predictions for the future.

This month, RT Media celebrates a decade of creative campaigns, branding and web marketing for a client base spanning international, national and regional clients of all shapes and sizes.

Company founder and Creative Director, Ross Thornley, attributes the company’s success to a clear vision, a clear definition of success, a focussed drive to achieve it, and good timing – launching a creative agency at the start of the new media revolution.

Ross explains: “When I started the company I was 21, I worked from a bedroom armed with an Apple Mac, support from my family and a desire to prove myself.  Ten years on, RT Media has grown organically to a 10 strong team with all the skills required to fully service 21^st century campaigns.  All this has happened against perhaps the biggest ever change for marketeers; the advent of broadband into our homes.”

(more…)

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It’s everywhere, inescapable. In every news outlet, in every country of the world (sometimes as a front page story), Facebook privacy settings are changing once again. That fact in itself is practically a landmark in the importance of social networking sites, but that’s a different blog post.

So you may be thinking, as I’m sure quite a lot of Facebook’s almost 500 million registered users are, what exactly is going on?

Not so long ago Facebook changed their privacy settings to allow users granular access to their privacy settings, to control exactly who can see what, when, where and in what context. Personally I thought this was a marvelous idea, and the first thing I did was set everything to private. Job done, straightforward and spelled out for you there in black and white.

Unfortunately this spelled trouble for people who found the level of control to be overwhelming and confusing, and after a few privacy gaffes (including a few choice comments from Mark Zuckerberg himself) and millions of users threatening to delete or abandon their accounts, Facebook have caved to the pressure and are rolling out a simpler, one click approach to privacy controls. But what exactly does this mean?

(more…)

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Ross loves twittering. You can see that he is in “Twitter” mood when his eyes light up and he has a smile on his face like a child on Christmas day. And everybody knows, he is going to enchant the world and his faithful followers with some wisdom about his passion-  branding -  or just something interesting that happened in his life. Personally, I already feel over challenged keeping my private Facebook account up to date and I don’t even want to talk about my LinkedIn profile. However.  (you could see it coming, this “however”…) As responsible for e-marketing I have become a bit of an evangelist for social as well as business networks as a fantastic marketing tool. “Viral Marketing” is the magic word, which means nothing more than “word-of-mouth”. Basically, let others do your marketing for you. Spread the word, pass it on to your followers who pass it on to theirs who pass it on to theirs… and before you know, your audience has gone from 20 to 8000. No costs involved. How much better can it get?

What does this have to do with email marketing? An e-newsletter can be the ideal place to drive people to your networks and to get the ball rolling. You add a little icon to your newsletter (can be Twitter, can be Facebook or LinkedIn or all of them – whichever suits your business best) and place it strategically so that people can easily find and click on it. If only 5 people click on your profile and decide to follow you (I keep to the Twitter example) and each of them have 20 followers themselves – imagine how easily you’ve enhanced your potential target audience. Or why not create a group, start a discussion and kick it off in your newsletter? The options are endless…

Whenever we start a new email marketing strategy for a new client we strongly recommend to set up a company (not your private!) profile on at least the most commonly known networks and to promote them in the actual newsletter. It doesn’t hurt but does increase your chances of being heard and builds a deeper more engaging relationship with your audience. And if you are like me a bit scared of regular updates, here’s a nice tip: http://ping.fm/ Sign up for free, send your update to them – and it gets automatically published on all networks you have registered with them.

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