Just a final note for 2011 to wish all our customers, staff and friends a very merry Christmas.
We are going to be making some big changes to our business in 2012, which I am very excited about. Indeed, in much the same way as my kids will be waking up at 3am on Sunday morning, I will be waking up at 3am on the first day back at work next year!
However, I will leave you all guessing as to what we have in store. Have a great Christmas everyone, and see you in 2012.
My colleague Nat Bertram’s blog post about changes to Google News’ interface has been republished by PaidContent, and is making waves in the Twittersphere.
Nat contends that Google News is attempting to reposition itself as a “web portal” for news. To someone of my age, that sounds remarkably like AOL all over again.
Attempting to divine Google’s intentions from their actions is an activity no less esoteric than reading the entrails of sacrificial animals. But I think Nat is on to something here – and even if he’s not correct, he has certainly got people talking!
This is a great example of Adfero’s brightest and best committing themselves to thought leadership in our sector.
Congratulations to our American sister company Brafton, which has generated a lot of online buzz with their infographic on how content works in SEO.
It's a really nice illustration of the many ways bespoke content can be leveraged to benefit your website, your brand and your business, and how they all fit together.
In the immortal words of Kelly Rowland – Brafton, tonight you put it DOWN!
Here's a little preview - click on the link above for the full infographic.
Since the last Million Makers blog post it has been all systems go getting our first event up and running and, after what seems like hundreds of meetings and lots of work, our first Sunday Cinema Club is taking place on Sunday October 9th.
The popcorn is bought, a technical check has been completed, the posters and leaflets are scattered around Leeds, and the film has been selected (Reservoir Dogs, which was chosen by our colleagues in the Leeds office) all that remains is to see how many people will turn up!
As we are all pretty nervous about how the event will go, the recent Million Makers networking event was perfectly timed. We were able to meet the other teams taking part in Yorkshire and hear all about their progress with their own money-making schemes.
We were reassured that, despite coming to the competition late, we're at a similar stage to many other teams and we managed to take advantage of the event by handing out our leaflets to the other attendees.
The event also gave us the opportunity to hear about the good work The Prince's Trust does from two young men who have been on the receiving end of help in recent years. Hearing their moving stories has definitely inspired us to try and raise as much money as possible.
If anyone would like to find out more about the Sunday Cinema Club event please 'like' us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/
Twitter: @CinemaSunday
And if you're in Leeds don't forget to pop along (with all your friends) and support us!
Carla Dobson, Desk Head
For my sins, I was listening to Radio One this weekend. The jingle for their news bulletins stood out to me: "Listen, watch, share".
Initially, it was the word "watch" that made me start – for the obvious reason. I would very much like to be able to see some of the fantastically-named people who work for Radio One's news.
But then I thought about "share" as well, and it occurred to me that the influence of social media has reached even further than I had previously imagined. The need to "share" has infiltrated even those media – broadcast media – most alien to the social ethic.
Behind the radio news bulletin, there is now a whole online hinterland for listeners to interact with.
A spectre is haunting every kind of content. The spectre of social media.
Please indulge me while I stretch Marx even further.
The challenge every content provider faces today is how to "socialise" their content. This is not even just an online thing any more – it's gone beyond that into old media as well.
The winners today and tomorrow will be...wait for it...those who prove themselves to be social-est.
I must recommend anyone who reads the Adfero blog to also read our other company blogs – which are on the whole much more interesting and illuminating than this one!
They are much more focused on online marketing and the issues, threats and opportunities surrounding it and are written by some of the smartest people within Adfero.
There are – of course – hundreds of blogs out there churning out posts about SEO, social media and content marketing.
But there are not many which I would call indispensible, and I think it's fair to say that the original thought, research and angles that go into the NewsReach blog, the DirectNews blog and the ContentPlus blog put them on that list.
I'd also recommend the Square Digital blog for the inside story on what's going on with our own public-facing websites, AboutProperty, TotallyLiving, TotallyMotor, MyFinances, TravelBite and Politics.co.uk.
Finally, it's not quite ready yet but very soon we will be launching a new website for Content Plus – and what I've seen of it so far looks great. I'll let you know when it's finished.
I don't know – you go away for a week, and people start sticking pictures all over your blog...
Anyway, this would be "Adfero company forums - one week on" but for my enormously welcome holiday from which I am now returned.
Thanks to everyone who took part in the company forum sessions in the last week of August. My fellow board members and department heads are now digesting the notes that were compiled from the four meetings and plans for future action on the points identified will follow shortly.
I'd particularly like to thank Nat Bertram, Jacey Evans and Nathan Coyne for their hard work as facilitators at the sessions themselves – but I'm also very grateful to everyone who gave their input, good or bad.
While some of the criticisms brought up in the forum meetings made for uncomfortable reading, it was reassuring to find that most of the areas for improvement brought to light were ones that we in senior management had already singled out as in need of action ourselves. That kind of agreement should mean that getting them sorted can proceed rapidly.
Thanks also to those delegates who filled in the survey. Almost all of the feedback was positive. The challenge now is to keep up the momentum we have achieved!
