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PureBlue to take part in EC research on Social Media

Well it’s been quite a start to the week for PureBlue and we are pleased to announce that we have been selected to take part in a high profile piece of research for the European Commission on the benefits and challenges of social media.

The research, being headed up by the social media giant “Dachis Group” (www.dachisgroup.com) starts this week and aims at exploring the benefits and challenges of social networking sites and social media for organisations, in both private and public sectors, for engaging customers, stakeholders and employees, for improving business performance and for promoting e-democracy.

As part of this research, they are asking leading practitioners in this area to join us in a stakeholder community for a short period of time to explore these topics through online discussion, one of whom is none other than PureBlue!

The online community not only constitutes a networking hub for all those involved and facilitate inspiring exchange of ideas, but will also gives us a unique opportunity to have our voice heard in front of the European Commission and influence the policy making that the Commission may undertake on the basis of the insights created.

Results of this research will inform:

- The final report with findings from your discussion in the online community presented during the EU’s Digital Agenda for Europe (@DigitalAgendaEU)

- A further questionnaire to add to Commission’s understanding of needs, challenges and success stories recounted by you

- Policy initiatives to facilitate the uptake and use of social technologies by European organisations.

Pretty exciting stuff we hope you agree. The research is actually already underway so fingers crossed we will be able to get our voice heard and provide some interesting insight.

Do you have any experience with social media you want us to share? If you have any thoughts or points you would like us to voice please pop through and email to sales@pureblue.co.uk or tweet us @purebluetweets and we will get it on the agenda.

How to add a simple product to Magento

Below is a step by step guide on how to add a basic simple product to the Magento administration area.

Simple products can be defined as those without any selectable attributes, be it colour or size for example.

It’s not an exhaustive list, but it covers the basic on adding a new product.

You need to follow the steps below:

Stage 1 – Product Description

Enter the manage products section of the site and select “Add Product” to the top right of the screen.

For the attribute set, select Default for a normal product, or an alternative if your Web Developer has set up specific attributes for you.

Select “Simple product” in the product type

Product Name – Enter the full product name. For a simple product, there will be no way to customize the product in any way. If you have several similar products. you need to differentiate their product names: “Large boxes”, “Medium boxes” etc. If you sell the same product in different packages, you may want to include the quantity in the product name, e.g. “Large boxes, 10-pack”.

Description – Enter the long product description that is used in the detailed inner section of the product page.

Short Description – Enter the short product description that is used on the catalogue page in list view, where a number of product are on display.

SKU – In the SKU field enter the unique product ID for this item. This may be listed in your EPOS is you are integrating with an outlet.

Weight – The Weight field is mandatory and used for shipping if you select the “Ship by weight” option. If you are using this option you will need to weigh the item and enter the details. If you are not using this shipping method and don’t know the weight for this product, just enter 1.

Supplier- This attribute is a drop-down selector of brands. If your required brand does not appear you need to go into attribute management in the Catalogue menu, pull up the Manufacturer attribute and add values to the list so the drop-down will be populated.

Status – Set the Status field to Enabled to ensure that the product is visible on the site. If a product runs out of stock, it will be assigned an Out-of-stock status until stock has been replenished. Use the Disabled status before introducing a new product, or after you’ve phased it out.

URL key – The URL key will be used in links to this product, if you’re not happy with just the product name you can define further details here. You may wish to think about terms you use for SEO.

Visibility – The Visibility setting determines whether a visitor can find this product by browsing the catalog, by searching for the product, or both.

Once these have been assigned, you then need to click on “Save And Continue Edit”.

Note that the product is not visible in the catalog until it has been assigned to at least one website and category.

Stage 2- The Prices tab

Firstly and most importantly Enter your ordinary selling price for the product excluding VAT in the price field.

You may also enter your cost for purchasing the product. (optional)

If the item is subject to VAT assign the correct Tax Class as a taxable good.If not, select none.
Use the Tier Price list to specify volume discounts.

You may wish to use the Special Price setting for specific campaigns. The Special Price is insensitive to volume and is used within the dates set by Special Price From Date and Special Price To Date. (The Promotions tab in the Admin tool provides additional, more advanced price management options that you may wish to talk to your developer about)

Meta information tab – Enter Meta Information you may wish to associate with the product for SEO purposes.

The Page Title is by default set to the name of the product.You may again alter this for SEO purposes if you wish

Stage 3 – the Images tab

First press “Browse” to locate and select each of the image files for the product in question.

Press Upload Files to upload the selected files to the Magento server. Select which image to use in each situation (Thumbnail, Small image, Base image).

Give each image a label, which will also be used as the Alt text for the image, which you may again wish to customise to alter it’s SEO results.

Stage 4 – Inventory tab

Enter stock information – if Magneto is handling your stock you will need to add the stock level here.

Stage 5 – Catalougue – The Website Categories tab

Select in what categories you want this product to be visible. Note that you must assign the product to one or more categories in each website before it appears in the catalog for that website.

Select in what categories the product will appear by simply clicking the appropriate boxes. Note that the settings on the Websites tab also affects the appearance of the product in each website.

Click on “Save And Continue Edit”. The product should now be visible in the stores and catalogues you have selected.

There are plenty of other tabs here that can be selected should you so wish, including related products and up-sells, where you can define additional options for individual products, however this should cover the basics on how to get a simple product up and live on your site.

Our top 10 tips for Twitter

So it’s a Saturday night, and as I sit on my sofa watching a rather fabulous rendition of a Kate Bush number by the rather oddly named Bo on “The voice” I think it’s time for another blog. I have been keeping up with the tweets on the show, so I’m going to use that as my inspiration for today’s post.

Twitter is always top of my friends and clients list of things people think they should be doing but potentially are not. For whatever reason a number of business owners and chums have been reticent to get involved or are only just getting started, so I thought today I would bestow my top ten tips for using twitter, and using it effectively.

1. Get Following!

First things first, when you create your profile, make sure you find all you friends and follow them. Next, go through your client list – seek out their twitter feeds and get following them too. These people already know you and are the most likely to follow you back and be your brand advocates on Twitter. Beyond that, you then need to find more folk to follow. Looking though your friends and clients profiles to see who they follow is a great place to start. But be careful about who you follow – think about who you will find interesting and might want to converse with – and who could be good for your business.

2. Download the app on your phone

Twitter is a instant medium. Where as people will wait a day for a phone message, users expect replies much quicker digitally. Research has shown users expect a wait of up to 6 hours for a email. On Twitter the expected wait time is massively reduced, with users expecting replies within the hour. If you don’t have the capability to reply quickly whilst on the go you may miss a potential lead as users will look elsewhere for answers.

3. Don’t use auto follow systems to get followers

A lot of new users are obsessed with getting their follower numbers up, and you can understand why. The more followers you have the more people hear what you have to say, right? Well yes and no. The problem is you need to earn these follows. You need followers who are actually interested in what you have to say. There are a number of programs out there that promise you 1000′s of followers, however you need to ask yourself do these followers actually have any value. Overwhelmingly the accounts that are added are either little used or twitter spam. Yes it will boost your ego to have a larger number of followers, but the likelihood of these people even reading one of your tweets, let alone actually having a conversation with you is slim. You are much better off to concentrate the same time and effort talking to 1 person who might actually be interested in what you have to say, than spending time and money getting 1000 followers who really don’t care about what you have to say. It’s that time old case of quality over quantity.

4. Remember to listen!

It’s called social media for a reason, it should be a two way conversation. Many new twitter users sign up largely as they feel they should at least be giving lip service to this twitter thing. They then simply tweet out messages about their business, without actually engaging and discussing anything. In the real world we have all experienced “one way” conversations with people who only want to talk about themselves. They aren’t much fun are they? The same is true on line. If you do not engage and converse with people on twitter, then why would they want to listen to what you have to say?

5. Use hashtags

Hashtags are the system used to mark topics or categories of conversation on Twitter. They give you the opportunity to tell the user what the primary topic of of your tweet is. For example, when I tweet about this blog I will add the #socialmedia hash tag. This tweet will then be search-able on the search term social media, and appear in the hashag timeline.

6. Keep and eye on ‘trending’ topics

Trending topics are the things that are currently being talked about most on twitter. These give a great insight into what people are interested in and want to talk about – a nice way to start a conversation! Have a look at what people are talking about and throw in your two pence, remembering to add that all important hashtag. Don’t be afraid to tweet directly to people you don’t know – this is half the point of social media. It’s your window to engage with the world about whatever you may want to.

7. Think about the brand values of the account you are tweeting from

Your twitter feed for you business may have a different set of brand values to your personal account.Whilst people will always want to have a little more insight into the personal side of you and your profile, there may well be other elements that are best left off the business feed. For example I make sure my curse filled rants about my beloved Queens Park Rangers football club are kept off the PureBlue twitter feed. It’s not appropriate, and more importantly nor is it relevant to my followers on this feed.

8.Be interesting

Avoid the common temptation to tweet about the mundane. Do you really think your followers want to know you just ate a cheese sandwich? Unless you are a member of the Cheese sandwich appreciation society who regularly tweets on the #ilovesandwiches hashtag to your army of sandwich fan followers I would suggest this isn’t relevant or interesting content.

9. Don’t over promote yourself

OK – when a business is on twitter we all know why they are there, to get business, but you don’t need to ram it down your followers throats. Don’t be afraid to talk about what you do, but make sure there is a balance of interesting content not just specifically aimed at flogging your wares.

10. Keep at it and enjoy it!

Twitter success won’t come overnight – like building any other relationships, social media followers take time to nurture and grow. Keep Tweeting and most of all enjoy it and it will show though on your account!

and one extra for luck

Don’t forget to follow me at www.twitter.com/purebluetweets

Viddy steady go…

So it seems there is another new kid on the block looking to steal a march on the social media market. As if we could go a week without a new one hey?

This time the kid in question is named Viddy – you have probably seen them popping up on your Facebook timeline with various tempting videos your chums have been watching, such as “Man is mauled by a great white “. The ones you really want to watch, but were not quite sure you could handle having posted in your own timeline, less folk judge you as a result. Nor, I am guessing, could you handle yet another addition to the list of the things you need to remember to press on your mobile phone when capturing one of life’s special little moments.

So what is it, and should you get involved? We have put together a quick rundown of the app and it’s features so you are in a position to make an informed choice.

In essence Viddy is a fairly simple mash up of you tube and Instagram. Put simply it allows you to take videos, pop on a few “kooky” effects, then send it out to the world to share though your network of followers, then post to twitter, Tumbler, YouTube and Facebook direct from the ap. So nothing really new there, and fans of Instagram will now doubt be looking at the new ap with a furrowed brow thinking “seriously – you have just taken the Instagram filters and shoved them on some 15 second limited videos to share?” And yes – that is pretty much what they have done…

The interface the ap uses is actually pretty cool and one of the slickest pieces of visual design I have seen in an ap. However whilst it’s pleasing to view, it does fall down a little on usability. Adding music to you clip was clunky and I’m not sure where the answer lies to the issues with use of music without permissions.

Sharing the videos themselves is an easy process and once configured you can share to all the major networks quickly and easily just by posting your vid and selecting the correct option. Elsewhere on the site the interface it a little trickier. Icons are small and it is not immediately obvious what they do on first use, until you have clicked on them. However it’s not terrible.

So who’s using it and should you be interested? It is becoming more and more popular, however users should be warned the content is not always vetted as closely as content from YouTube. At present browsing random feeds for content is not for the feint harted. You should prepare yourself for the onslaught of sexual deviance that may well come your way if you aren’t very selective. At the end of the day, porn is still porn, even it it does have a “retro” filter on it! But I digress. The site is growing in popularity, and no doubt we will be hearing it has the statutory 11 billion users next week, but that doesn’t answer the question should you be one of them.

My problem with viddy is I don’t really see anything new or unique here. They have essentially taken the option to share video that was popularized by YouTube, and popped filters on it, which to be honest are not very impressive. If you want a video editing application there are many more comprehensive options out there, and if you are looking for fun video content this certainly doesn’t beat the wealth of sharing sites already out there.

My verdict. This is one best left for now – unless they make some considerable improvements – and they somehow find a way of a cat farting and hiccuping at the same time being more funny than it already was on YouTube.

Official – Google kills panda with a penguin

Well that was probably one of the oddest blog titles I have written in a while, however don’t fret, I am not in fact suggesting that our friendly internet search giant has engaged in some odd form of endangered species “Royal Rumble”, which was unexpectedly won by a particularly vengeful penguin, though that would be quite an exclusive for our blog.

Zoo-Tang Clan ain't nothin' to what?

However although everything I have written in my title is reasonably accurate, I’m afraid the whole truth is rather more mundane – but non the less all important for all of us folk with websites looking to market our wares on Google.

You may or may not know that Google’s last update to their algorithm (this is the code they use to determine search results) was called Panda. Panda focused on getting rid of poor content sites from it’s search results – in particular people who had just created specific landing pages for search terms, without backing this up with content on these pages, or relevant content elsewhere on the site. It was pretty devastating for some firms who had been using older SEO (search engine optimization) techniques on their sites, however those that were being regularly updated with quality content generally fared quite well (like our SEO clients..!).

The Latest Penguin update continues this drive towards quality content. It’s defined and the “Page layout” algorithm, and penalizes sites with too many ads above the fold (in that main content area on a website when you first open it). It is a push towards getting more content to display on peoples websites – again something we implement as a matter of course for our clients, but I will stop blowing our trumpet here.

Basically is good news for all those folks doing ethical SEO, producing content, laying out site properly and basically keeping things genuinely interesting and not producing spam just to get to the top of the rankings. Luckily we are singing off the same hymn sheet, as we know the push towards quality content isn’t going to stop any time soon so you had best get on board. Right – I’m off for a spot of bear baiting for the weekend. Have fun y’all.