Process has always been one of the most important factors of projects for SMP and its account management team, led by Account Director Liz Hemes.

The new software enables the agency to manage projects from anywhere on the planet with an internet connection. It also adds sophistication to the level of data the team can view, whilst being simple and flexible with scheduling.

The improvements offered through Traffic Live are vast, and include updated to its existing scheduling, planning, file storage and calendar syncing.

Ian Hughes said “The move to Traffic Live coincides with an increase in clients and staff numbers, providing us with the very latest in project management software to manage our workflow. And the ability to access the system from anywhere made this the right choice for the next phase of the agency.

We had employed the original Traffic Sohnar for the past 4 years, but the web had moved on and so had we. We checked out the competition, and chose Traffic Live based on its redesign, service improvements and specification.

Due to the complex nature of web projects, a detailed overview monitoring all the elements with total flexibility gave this system the edge”.

traffic-live

Interestingly, Adele’s album 21 the bigger ever selling album is a single year with 3.8m sales. In excess of 1.0m albums and 5.7m singles were downloaded  in the last  week of 2011 alone – the biggest week ever for digital  sales of both  formats as consumers flocked to redeem music vouchers  received as  Christmas gifts.

A fourth successive record year for singles and growing consumer confidence in digital albums could not offset a further decline in overall UK music sales, new Official Charts Company figures released today by the BPI confirmed.

Combined sales of digital and physical albums fell overall by 5.6% to 113.2m in 2011.

Digital album sales rose 26.6% to 26.6m, while sales of albums on CD declined 12.6% year on-year to 86.2m in total. The CD remains the favoured format for UK album buyers in 2011, accounting for 76.1% of total sales compared to a 23.5% market share for digital and 0.3% for vinyl.

Consumer appetite for digital album downloads has continued to grow, however, with 15 albums selling more than 100,000 digital copies in 2011.

Sales of vinyl LPs rose by well over a third (43.7%) during 2011 to 337,000, their highest tally since 2005.

The UK singles market went from strength to strength in 2011, with sales smashing all-time records for the fourth straight year in succession. Total singles sales increased 10.0% overall to 177.9m in 2011, with the vast majority (99.3%) sold as digital tracks and bundles.

1.1m CD singles were sold in 2011, representing just 0.6% of the total and all of the top 20 best-selling singles of 2011 sold more than 500,000  copies a piece.

Geoff Taylor, BPI Chief Executive, said, “It has been another record year for digital
singles, but the most encouraging news of the year is the strong backing consumers are
giving to the digital album format. British music fans understand that the album remains the richest way to connect with an artist’s work. Digital developments grab the headlines, but the CD remains hugely popular with consumers, accounting for three-quarters of album sales.

Physical ownership is important to many fans and the CD will be a key element of the
market for years to come.

“British artists continue to produce incredible music that resonates at home and around the world. But while other countries take positive steps to protect their creative sector, our Government is taking too long to act on piracy, while weakening copyright to the benefit of US tech giants.

The UK has already fallen behind Germany as a music market. Unless decisive action is taken in 2012, investment in music could fall again – a creative crunch that will destroy jobs and mean the next Adele may not get her chance to shine on the world stage.”

Customer loyalty is something that many businesses take for granted. Working in many different sectors, the SMP team always have an eye on our clients rewarding their customers for their devotion to the brand, product or service.

Word of mouth is one of the most powerful tools your marketing strategy can adopt, and it all comes down to your happy and successful customers championing the service they receive. If you get it right, your pipeline of customers gets larger, your online visibility increases and your sales go through the roof.

Many businesses fall in to the trap of spending all of their efforts in marketing to new customers, whilst forgetting the actual people who drive the business. And this is usually the element of the business that requires the most work.

How can you increase loyalty in your business from current customers? Firstly it doesn’t have to be expensive, but it does require some thought.

A marketing strategy that focuses on loyalty will provide a natural focus on better service, helping to increase satisfaction and remind all teams from the IT department through to the sales department that a plan is in place.

A buy in from all company employees involved in your loyalty campaign is crucial, and you’ll find everyone will up there game, especially if a form of motivation is in place.

It is very easy for companies to launch services without full training being given to staff meaning that the overall effect is watered down and filters out.

You can adopt print based or email newsletters that are personalised to your client base, that keep them informed about your business and potential opportunities for them to save, attend events or even simply share your content.

Content is a great way of enticing new customers to your brand, especially through Social Media networks such as LinkedIn and Twitter. It enables you to reuse quality content in bite size chunks, and provide good value and visibility to both your business and the customer.

Sometimes a simple get together and a coffee goes along way, but in a time of austerity companies are looking to stay in the office more. This surely offers those that get in front of clients, to seek feedback and build the relationships an even bigger chance of success? I certainly think so.

Furthermore, always try to gain your customers opinion of your service. How it can be improved, what they would like for the future and what would make them refer you to their suppliers and customers. This adds even more confidence in your business, but only if the customers actually see a response to their business needs.

Talking to various clients, suppliers and creative’s over the past few months, everybody is saying the same thing. Birmingham is no longer the second city, even though it’s the second largest city in Britain by a country mile.

So it begs the question. How could a city like Birmingham lose its way and why up North?

The title of ‘second city’ is an unofficial one, and that’s not really the point. In 2007 the BBC commissioned a nationwide poll to find out which people thought was the second city.
The results revealed that there was a different perception of the two cities by younger and older people.

The survey outlined that 48% of people thought the second city was Manchester, with Birmingham getting 40%. If you look at 16-24 yr olds a whopping 60% went for Manchester.

So where did it all go wrong, and why have we let it happen?

The Government

Nick Clegg in an interview with the Birmingham Post before the Lib Dem Conference said “I very much want the voice of Birmingham, the voice of our great cities, to be heard at the very heart of Government. It’s something I’ve told all my cabinet colleagues in Government that from now on they’ve got to make themselves available to our city leaders in a way that has never happened in the past”.

Ok so it looks like there really is an issue in Westminster. And let’s face it we know what that is, London’s fat cats get first dibs.

The BBC

Birmingham has been abandoned by the BBC as a creative hub, and is considering further reductions throughout the city. Manchester’s MediaCity was announced by the BBC’s Director-General Mark Thompson as a route that would provide thousands of jobs and the corporation was keen to invest licence fee income across the UK.

The truth is Birmingham has been left with no television studio, reduced radio and very little TV production within the city.

Michael Bradley, in a letter to the Birmingham Post explains “It’s scandalous that the amount we must pay in the Midlands (£145.50 annually) is the same as that paid by the citizens of Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff and London, because we receive so much less in return.”

What a great point, we’re excluded and it is time that our MP’s stood up more for the city, put their personal profiles to one side and be seen to do something about it.

The City of Culture bid

In July 2010 Birmingham lost out to Londonderry on the ‘City of Culture’ bid. This was a massive loss to the region, and would have increased tourism and offered the chance to host events such as the Brit music awards and the Turner art prize.

Our bid (and let’s face it should have been a walk in the park) was presented focusing on Birmingham’s heritage, its ethnic diversity, music and dance. But it proved not to be enough, against a list that didn’t contain any big city rivals?

If you didn’t see the city of culture website on the day before the decision, there was a blog on Norwich from Stephen Fry, a blog on behalf of Derry from the Hollywood actor Liam Neeson. Sheffield was being sold in by a local writer. And blogging on behalf of the Birmingham bid? Not a soul.

Education

Birmingham has almost the lowest skills base in the country. More than two in ten of the city’s residents have low skills, compared to just over one in ten nationally.

Lord Digby Jones said in May 2011 that Birmingham was also in “grave danger” of losing the second city title if universities, transport, skills bases and civic leadership were compared to Manchester.

“Birmingham has never had the leg-up that northern cities have had. Government has always thought Birmingham could look after itself.”

Summary

Birmingham needs to do more to defend, fight and shout about what it stands for and where it’s heading.

Culture, diversity, heritage and pride all count for nothing if no promotion of this city just allows it all to pass like a ship in the night. The BBC and the politicians may not stand up for us, so we’ll have to do it ourselves. Our future depends on it.

Written by Ian Hughes, Managing Director of LHM
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One of the things I look for is how the media and marketers use these types of events, and I was so disappointed by the way the media, advertisers, PR professionals, social media experts and marketers used her death to raise their own profile and profits.

Let’s have a look at some of the culprits:

1.Microsoft
Microsoft’s Twitter account run by Microsoft UK PR was first to capitalise on the singers death. The first tweet advertising that we ‘remember by downloading’ sent on the Sunday was one of many met with fury by fans.

Responses to the above tweet to the account called @tweetbox360 were Shaney Hudson who suggested: “Vile leeches- seriously?” And Stuart Houghton tweeted: “Stay classy Microsoft PR jackals.”

The tweet was then taken down, and replaced with an afterthought several hours later. Oh dear.

2. Amazon
Many online retailers including Spotify, Apple and Amazon all leapt to post what looked like obituaries throughout their online music stores to remember Amy. All of the links, banners and advertisements didn’t link to her official website or MySpace, Q magazine, Mojo or NME fan pages. You guessed it, they linked directly to their in-house Amy Winehouse E-commerce store.

3. PR
If you’ve not seen the blog submitted to the Huffington Post written by Scottish PR expert Tricia Fox, the loss of Amy was turned in to a business lesson. If you’ve not seen this yet, then do check it out, it was a real shocker and a seriously bad decision.

This tasteless blog caused uproar on the Huffington Post site and on Twitter. The post to date received 124 Comments, 611 Facebook shares, 1,123 Tweets, 77 emails and 26 Google +1s and that was on the Huffington Post site alone.

Tricia recently said in The Drum that she tried to take the post down from the internet newspaper, but surely we know by now that once it’s out there, there’s no turning back?

Fox said “In retrospect I wouldn’t have posted it. I didn’t know about ‘linkbaiting’ until Sunday night… The Huffington Post tell bloggers to make posts topical – they’re the ones benefiting.  I searched but there is no way to take it down.”

What have we learned?
Amy told us that love is a losing game, but sometimes profit is one too. The backlash worldwide to these campaigns tell us there is a big difference between profiting from someone’s death, and attempting to profit from her death.

Having worked with the Public Sector for the past few years throughout the UK, I’ve come across my fair share of IT projects where clients have simply been duped in to purchasing expensive contracts, services and licensed products that they would never use and in some case didn’t know even existed.

Of course, fraud can happen in any business sector. But with IT there are so many ‘trained’ experts in the field of IT it is somewhat surprising to keep stumbling on horror projects that have gone so wrong with the same names appearing.

It comes as no surprise that the Coalition has launched a new strategy to cut the £2.4bn problem in public sector procurement via ‘The Taskforce on Fraud, Error and Debt’. Set up in late 2010 the taskforce research, detect and share intelligence and even assess the risks of projects before they are authorised. And with zero tolerance on those found to be guilty.

This provides a much better opportunity for companies who are trustworthy, offer a solid service and maybe who have never had the opportunity before to enter the public sector arena with confidence.

This first report of the Taskforce can be found here:
Eliminating Public Sector Fraud: The Cabinet Office Counter Fraud Taskforce Interim Report

Top tips to protect you and your company from IT fraud:

Always credit check and reference your suppliers list
You never know when you might need this information, and can help you decide in who you trust and can deliver on time and on budget.

Do your research
Visit the premises, meet people and interview the team working on your project throughout each phase. You’ll get a feel for the right people to be working on your project with your team. The relationship will be strengthened by this process too.

Create the brief
Many clients don’t write the initial brief due to technical ability. Hire a project manager familiar with the software/technology and services you require. They will be able to spot issues before they happen and understand what you’re being sold at pitch stage.

This doesn’t have to be an expensive added extra to the project, you can use this third party for phases of the project. E.g. strategy, design, build and launch.

Ian Hughes is Managing Director of LHM Media and Marketing Director of The Social Media Partnership. Follow him on Twitter or LinkedIn

The aim of the project was to demonstrate online tools and how we can motivate ourselves and each other through using social.  The workshops were delivered throughout Birmingham in Sparkbrook, Alum Rock, Chemsley Wood and Sparkhill.

As ever we encountered a wide range of young people along the way from different backgrounds, from the engaged to the hard to reach. Discussing Birmingham with young people provides a fantastic insight in to how they view the second city. However most of it is negative feedback. Young people feel they don’t have a voice, and have been impacted by huge cuts throughout youth services in the region.

Front-line youth services in Birmingham are to be slashed as a result of cuts to the youth service budget of £3m this year and a further £1m over the next 3 years leaving a budget of just £1.8m.

The cuts include:

1.    All 34 satellite youth clubs and youth projects will be closed
2.     At least 5 large projects or centres will close.
3.     Over 150 part time workers will lose their jobs. This is 50 full time equivalent posts.
4.     Between 16-33% full time staff will be made redundant
5.     Of 60 projects in total, only 17 will remain open

Birmingham: negative feedback

Crime - People feel more exposed to crime than ever before from a rising gang culture
Youth Centres - Many are closing down giving young people nowhere to go due to cuts
Sporting facilities - Not balanced across areas of Birmingham
Education - Feel disconnected from teachers due to background and style
Racism - On the increase again, due to integration across communities not working

The young people we worked with throughout the Social Breakfast user groups talked positively about the entertainment and retail centres that Birmingham offers, including the Bullring and Star City.

One thing is clear. Young people have to find the inspiration from somewhere to gain experience, choose a path, and have the will to work hard in such an unstable business environment. It’s evident the days of drifting in to 6th form without a career goal is a dangerous one. People need to gain as much experience as possible before being work ready, and knowing your potential and what you want to achieve at a younger age will bring more success.

Sky News have released details of young people’s wage expectations which have been deemed unrealistic by Andrew Cave of Community Programmes RBS.

Young people expect their first starting salary after finishing education as £16,600, rising to £35,400 by their mid-20s and £61,700 by 35.  Unfortunately this just isn’t the case. The typical 18-21-year-old earns just £8,595, climbing to £18,705 in their 20s and £24,333 by the time they are in their 30s.

Working with the Social Breakfast team we are dedicated to supporting the young people of the Midlands in their search for a better career, whatever that may be.

Young Ambitious and Brummy

The question to ask is are you happy for your business contacts on LinkedIn to view your content on Twitter? And are your followers on LinkedIn also your Facebook friends anyway? You’ll probably find that you’re connected to very few people on Twitter that you follow on LinkedIn. So this begs the question, are you ultimately providing a spam feed to the people you connect with the most?

Your community of followers, likers, subscribers, friends and business contacts all require a mix of professional but also personal approach to how you engage with them. If you’re a twitter addict and linking your posts to LinkedIn, you could be creating a very negative effect on your reputation.

Relevant and informative posts, great content and careful engagement will always provide a more positive route for your communication whether business and pleasure.

Syncing done right enables you to do more with less time, but it is still something to be used sparingly across networks where possible. Just because the technology is there, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to use. Twitter is the pub… LinkedIn the business lunch and Facebook when you invite them back to your house. Great food for thought.

The app is here to stay, but what is questionable is its marketing reach for brands. With over 50 app stores and over 400,000 apps in the top three stores it is hard to be found in the masses of apps out there. If you are MSN or Angry Birds, you’re much more likely to feature in the App store charts, but for small businesses we think there is a much smarter option… The mobile ‘web’ over the mobile ‘app’.

The mobile web cuts out brands having to wait for approval from Apple to get there products and services online, it has a far greater reach (Apple only have a 2.1% market reach in the UK) and a mobile site that has been optimised for search offers so much more in traffic and accessibility than the App store could.

HTML5 offers mobile developers the opportunity to create all of the technology and functionality that App developers create, and best of all having a mobile site allows you to benefit from links, and makes it easier for mobile users to share URLs of product pages. Surely sharing is the way forward for brands and Social Media?

Everytime we view another App that goes live, without any effort supporting the other 97.9% of active web enabled mobile users we are always disappointed for the client. It might be time for brands to rethink their budget and strategy as mobile commerce will be a major web trend for 2011.

Suppliers of a leading content management system (CMS) have awarded their Web Excellence Award to The Social Media Partnership and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) for its new website.

The result was announced at Sitekit’s recent annual user conference and awards ceremony on the Isle of Skye.

The Web Excellence Award recognised the most creative web project implemented using Sitekit CMS. Creativity was measured in terms of visual design, interactivity or business model. The site won the trophy for its content and design, which reflect the vision and values of the Trust and the level of innovation promised by the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham.

James Bentley, UHB’s Web and Content Development Manager said: “We’re thrilled to have won this award ahead of hundreds of entrants and a shortlist of six. It really is testament to the hard work of the Web Team at UHB, and of the Social Media Partnership (SMP) who we worked with on the project.

“It’s important to remember though that launching the new website is just the first step in a long process of improvement. We need to keep building on this initial achievement to ensure the site continues to grow with the demands of our patients, visitors, GPs, staff and other users.

Web Content Assistant Daniel Lightfoot added: “I’m really pleased that we won the award. I enjoyed working on the project with SMP, and I’m glad our efforts have been recognised.”