The website features beautiful imagery and content about things to do in Sussex, which is only an hour away from London. Be it culture, seaside, hertiage or countryside, the website offers something for everyone!

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 Click here to visit the LoveSussex.com website

Happy days

This is the pizza dough - I have added some Rosemary and Oregano to the dough for a bit of an extra kick

And now for something completely different:

Since so many people asked for the recipe, here goes: this is my mum’s recipe, which makes me extra proud as it has turned out to be an amazing feast whenever I made it.As you can see from the picture, this is how much pizza this recipe makes, so feel free to adjust

Ingredients:

• 300 g quark (normally located in the soft cheese aisle as 250g packs)
• 12 TBSP milk
• 12 TBSP olive oil (plus extra if dough is too dry while mixing)
• pinch of salt
• 600 g strong flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Procedure:

1. Sift the flour into a bowl or (preferably) mixer; add half the flour, then add half the Quark, milk, baking powder and oil, add the rest (makes it easier to mix then)
2. Mix everything, adding more oil if the dough is still a bit stringy or doesn’t easily form into a ball. It doesn’t matter how much more oil you use, at the end of the day you’ll be using less for the tray or whatever you’ll be using to bake the dough
3. Place the dough into tin foil and into the fridge for at least 20 minutes before reusing it again.

Personal notes:

If you want a bit more of a kick to the dough, just add 2 tbsp of crushed Rosemary and Oregano to the dough, and instead of just olive oil replace the 12 TBSP with 8 TBSP of olive oil and 4 TBSP of infused olive oil (e.g. chilli oil, garlic oil, basil oil, etc).

In my second post on the subject of Brands monitoring and making best use of social networks I will focus on your target audiences, and in particular communities or niche markets that are already active in social media. As a company, brand or destination you might feel that you’re only just starting to dabble in social media, whereas your audience has already a much better understanding and might to take you seriously, but fret not! There is more to social media than just Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr!

What (and who!) do you want to target?

To begin with, let’s have a quick look at the following table:

This chart is really just meant as a guide, but it is one many of my clients have used over the past years. It focuses on the difference between the sharing / syndication strength of the network in relation to the importance (in terms of time and resources) to your brand / destination. The key point here is that there isn’t only Facebook, LinkedIn or twitter – there are a lot more networks out there your audiences might be interacting with.

This graph may look daunting at first, as you might assume you will have a lot of resource to throw at this, but just stand back and think about this… “Social media” is something we have all done in the past! Social media has been part of your marketing for years and years – you are engaging and inspiring people to use your brand or visit your destination and share their experience! As such, social media marketing isn’t only about being on the networks, it is about ensuring your online marketing strategy makes use of these networks to target your audiences by syndicating your message across as many networks (that are useful to your brand / destination / audience) as possible.

whatwasithinking.co.uk

Making use of (and gaining momentum on) a social network

Joining existing networks can be daunting at first - but once you gain momentum it will be a breeze!

If you haven’t already established a presence on a particular network you want to target then don’t be too worried. It is difficult to build a relevant presence on a network and develop the necessary sense of authority and more importantly a good number of followers or readers on the big networks. It could certainly be that you have tried this already and found it difficult to compete or gain followers?

Whatever the reason, you need to be aware that there is a certain degree of work and time (and maybe money) involved to create a presence, share content and interact with your audience. Remember, only when you gain some sort of interest by sharing relevant content and by interacting with your followers in meaningful dialogue will you gain influence. And you will be surprised how many people online are already talking about your brand / destination and would be happy to help out and promote it!

whatwasithinking.co.uk

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Next steps

Going forward, my next articles in this series are going to be talking about gathering followers, making use of collected data and how to respond to consumer / competitor feedback and comments. Stay tuned!

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Why monitor your brand on social networks?

Before we answer this, let’s take back a step and talk about what we are actually talking about. Monitoring your brand is essentially the continuous discovery of conversations related to your brand with the purpose of engaging and supporting not only your brand, but also your (in many cases potential) customers. Typically, this is done in real-time to allow immediate response to particular topics or situations, e.g. when launching a product, quelling rumours or – just as often – providing support or advice.

Already, we have a few reasons listed that might answer the “why”. But let’s take a more real-life example: say for argument’s sake that you are having a launch event of a new product, and you have invited hundreds and hundreds of people from all over the spectrum (press, business partners, customers, just random people off the street interested in the product, etc). All of them want to talk about the product, some of them want to talk to others about things related to it, some of them are just here to mingle and pick conversations or comments up (or leave their own comments).

How many people do you think are happy with your brand and your products?

Many of these conversations may be about your brand or your product, some might be about a similar brand or in fact a similar product to yours, be it superior or inferior doesn’t really matter. What matters is the fact that they are talking about this without you being part of these conversations to learn more or answer questions, they happen with or without you. And to provide a better service, help customers and partners understand more and to prevent potential problems it might be worth keeping an eye out on what people say about your brand or your products.

The same is true for any kind of brand, be it a car manufacturer or a destination, at the end of the day no one is going to buy your car or visit your destination if people aren’t happy about it and leave bad reviews or comments.

whatwasithinking.co.uk

Measuring your brand

Continuing right on from that, we come to the how. We all know that social media is essentially a massive open forum for people to share opinions, news and comments. We now we want to see what is going on and how we can measure it. It is most likely that you need to report on your product’s and brand’s performance with some sort of KPIs, and you will need to benchmark not only the quality of your product but also the consumers’ perception of it, and through it your brand. Social media expands and evolves quickly, and you will need to have something in place to measure and respond to threats and opportunities quickly.

Measuring keywords and networks in great detail will enable you to act much better on what is being said about your brand

NB: I mention product a lot, but you can easily replace the word product with destination and you’ll see the same rings true here.

Typically, social monitoring is performed on a keyword or key phrase basis (SEO anyone?). These keywords and phrases include your brand name, your key product(s), maybe even competitor brands and keywords. Going on from that, you will want to decide on which networks to monitor and let a tool (or people) loose on finding relevant articles, comments and questions. This information needs to be in a form that allows you to drill down right to the network, time and – if necessary – the source to allow you to act upon.

This kind of measuring is crucial to track your brand’s and product’s success over time, it enables you to draw conclusions and plan actions on (in some case real-time) factual data based on your marketing campaigns, and it allows you to draw comparisons between the success of your marketing and the brand and marketing of your competitors. Not only that, it enables you to respond to threats and opportunities in a timely manner.

whatwasithinking.co.uk

How to monitor your brand on social networks

A very important part of monitoring your brand or destination in social networks is to find a structure that works. Here are a few pointers that might help you:

• Focus on key topics for your brand. These topics need to tie in with what your brand is about and what your product is used for – for destinations these topics could range from family holidays over culture seekers to single travellers or backpackers. For a product it could be the types of people using it or the activities associated with it.
• Find out what do people already talk about. This is a question not many destinations / brands ask. People are already talking about something when it comes to your brand / destination, and it may not always be the standard features or sightseeing places, but it could be hidden away gems, interests, problems or work-arounds.
• Establish what is bad about your destination / brand / product? Who is saying what and why?
• Establish what is good about your destination / brand / product? What can you build on?
• Establish what isn’t even mentioned? Do you have a campaign running no one is actually talking about? Are you offering particular promotions / places of interests that no one is actually making use of / visiting or sharing any information about?
• Understand what it is you’re tracking and how to use the tools. I spoke to a client recently who used some very expensive licenses for their social monitoring software, but they weren’t actually using it to their fullest potential or how to tie this in with their own CRM and campaign solutions.
• Analyse your data!
• Make sure you are using correct numbers: plan in which metrics you actually want to track, and how these are being reported and compared.
• Make sure you act! Gathering data is not really useful if no one actually does anything with it.

whatwasithinking.co.uk

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Next steps

Going forward, my next articles in this series are going to be talking more about the How – how to monitor your brand / destination on social networks, what to look out for, how to gather and make use of collected data, and how to respond to consumer / competitor feedback and comments. Stay tuned!

Show Me Wales is a comprehensive tourist guide to Wales including full details of hundreds of attractions, activities, places to eat, towns & villages and places to stay. With plenty of ideas about great places to visit whatever your interests, this app will be an invaluable guide to Wales. The data is fully cached on the phone so you don’t need a signal to use it.

The app allows you to plan a trip to Wales or to find nearby entries when in Wales. The search functionality allows you to:

• Choose an area
• Search near a town
• Search near your current location
• Drop a pin
• Filter the data to highlight specific interests

Each entry describes the attraction with pictures, opening times and full contact details, and if you’re looking for accommodation it even allows you to book!

If that is not enough, you can also add places to your favourites, email places of interest to your friends, and a quick link shows directions from your current location by car or on foot.

Screenshot:

Download the app (its free!)