Blog
A design and usability blog - news, opinion and tips from the coal face of user centred design.
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FTSE 100 companies ignore Twitter at your peril »
09 March 2010
Whatever you may understand, or care, about social media micro blogging service Twitter, some of your customers and your clients are undoubtedly tuned in.
Twitter's influence on customer services is difficult to measure but what is clear is that it is having an impact and more enlightened business are beginning to use Twitter as another channel to engage with their customers.
Research from Virgin Business (@vmbusiness) suggests that FTSE 100 companies are not the quickest to respond to the opportunities that social media offers business.
Here's the story from Management Today and IT Pro.
And here's an anecdote of our own...
This week we've been organising some of our sites and services hosted on an older server that we wanted to decommission. Calls and messages to the small ISP had proved unsuccessful So one of our developers tweeted about the quality of service. To his surprise he received an almost instant response from the ISP in question.
Twitter was listening.
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Free seminar session for you and your team »
08 March 2010
Round up your colleagues for a one hour insight session on how digital is creating the new business paradigm.
One of the concerns regularly flagged up by our clients is how to keep up with what's happening in the wider world of digital media and how to apply it to their business.
Scan the horizon
With developments taking place at constant break neck speed, it's a full time job to keep on top of new applications, new methods, technology and, in particular, the changing habits of customers. Add to this the fact that enthusiasm and know within client teams is usually inconsistent, and you see how this concern can easily escalate.
Upgrade your digital know-how
To help bridge the knowledge gap an share latest developments form the nexus of digital media and business strategy in the wider world, we are offering free group sessions to organisations that want to:
- understand how digital is forcing fundamental changes in business practice
- see how other organisations are grasping new opportunities
- gain an overview of the new tools available
- learn simple ways to get closer to customers, staff and stakeholders
Start a conversation
These sessions are intended to provide an overview of the latest trends. They should help to bring everyone up to bring everyone in your team to the same level of understanding. But above all, it should start a conversation inside your organisation that leads to new opportunities for success.
We are offering these sessions to existing and former clients first and are happy to travel to you if you are within the M25 area. For new enquiries or to book a session further afield please contact us to discuss.
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Wordtracker article - The long tail of Keyword research... »
05 March 2010
Mark Nunney writes for Wordtracker on exploiting keyword groups to reach the long tail of search marketing.
The long tail of keyword research (and why single keywords are for losers)
Wordtracker is a London based business that compile a database of 330 million search terms and provide online tools that help business owners and marketers identify keywords and phrases that they can use in optimising their website content for search success.
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New faces »
05 March 2010
There's a lot of 'new' going at Hoop. New strategy, new website and new services. Now meet the new faces.
Mark Dunckley
Mark's your man for all things social media. He's leading our social research and content marketing services and, as a natural entrepreneur, cannot help but see things differently. For different, read fresh.
Follow Mark on Twitter
Francesca Cook
The newest member of our design team. Outrageously accomplished for one so young - with a D&AD award and experience in many London agencies under her belt in her first professional year.
Kate Hazell
Kate handles incoming traffic, supply chain, production and finance. A genuine all rounder with so many talents we've hardly seen anything yet! Check out her illustration skills too.
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Unlearning - the only way to learn »
03 March 2010
What if most of what you know now is no longer appropriate for the future? Time to pick up some new skills for the digital workplace.
Russell Ackoff, long term scourge of established corporate thinking, maveric teacher and highly influential management guru, maintained that everything taught at business school is irrelevant. He was still banging this drum up to his death, aged 90, in October 2009.
In this inspiring interview for Peter Day's World of Business programme on BBC Radio 4, Ackoff asserts that nearly everything we need to learn in business, we learn on the job. This is not the case for Medical School graduates who, as he points out, leave college work-ready, having already had some on the job training.
It does explain though, why business school graduates take years to reach positions of responsibility, rather than going in at the top.
The lesson here is simple. If what we need to know in order run things we learn by doing, then what we need now is to learn new skills relevant for our times. The work we do here at Hoop brings us into close contact with many for whom learning the skills required in the digital era is painful and unfamiliar.
But to be useful in business in a networked, collaborative world, people already in work, particularly those in management, must un-learn most of what they picked up since starting out, and develop new skills, new tools and new ways of collaborating.
The old saying tells us old dogs find it hard to learn new tricks. But learn them they must. Otherwise, they will have no legitimacy in positions of leadership.
The tools are certainly available, so too is the evidence that these new tools actually work. In most cases, the thing holding back progress is fear and self preservation. Neither of which can exist if any new learning is to take place.
So we try to help people unlearn in a safe and constructive way and pick up new skills free from fear. It's only by doing this that they ensure their own relevance and value in the future.
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Recession proof »
24 February 2010
If anything is evidence that the jobs market is tough perhaps it's that many of the websites that we monitor through Google Analytics show careers or jobs, and any variation of, as the most searched keywords that bring people to a site.
Careers at Company, jobs at Company, Company careers UK, Comapny jobs London. The search terms tell a story and the increased use in the last year of these search terms is an illustration of what it's like in the jobs market.
Not the usual outcome of reviewing site analytics but an interesting social comment none-the-less.