Online Business Adviser

The Forum For Online Business Success

I really wanted to call this first post the Adventures of Bollocks in Twitterland, but I thought better of it for SEO purposes…

I’m really excited this week to write the first in a series of posts that will see me work with a live site in an effort to drive visitors and ultimately help with sales. The client has given me permission to use their site as an example of how to use different techniques and be completely transparent about what we are doing.

Each post I plan to outline what tasks we will undertake during the week ahead. Thoughts, comments, feedback and alternatives are more than welcome. I hope along the way, this becomes very much a crowd sourced overhaul through your feedback.

So, by way of introduction, Bollocks.com.au is a T-Shirt company here in Australia that has been operating for about 12 months. Run by an English lad and his son, their designs are aimed at those things in our world that are considered, quite simply, bollocks. For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s very much English slang for nonsense and rubbish, but can also be defined as an exclamation of annoyance or disbelief. You can check out the site here – www.bollocks.com.au

Currently they have two designs that take aim at Research Whaling and Scientology, but plan on many more. To date however, they have sold few T-Shirts, so we are implementing a number of methods in an attempt to revive their business.

So first of all, what are the key challenges facing the site? When you look at the topics that the initial two designs cover, they are very much opinion based shirts. Scientology is a very divisive subject, with people in both camps very stuck in their beliefs, and tends to these days only get an airing when involving Tom Cruise is involved, so it tends to be a more tactical design. Whaling also faces the challenge of being a seasonal topic. Certainly here in Australia, we are about to enter whaling season, so there is an opportunity to really target a great number of people.

The limited number of designs is also a challenge. Some of the more generic looks will be coming soon and the audience will be wider. There is also the fact that this is a very English brand, which is fine here in Australia with such an expat population, but perhaps limited in other parts of the world.

Week 1 – Let’s Get Social

So our first step is getting Bollocks social. Currently, they have three social interaction points – a Facebook page, a MySpace page  and a blog that sits within the main site.  All three have fallen by the wayside recently in terms of fresh content, so we are implementing a couple of measures here, remembering how social media should be used – as a means of conversation, not to put the hard sell on.

Given the nature of the brand, these sites plus Twitter seem the right mix as a starting point.

1. Updating the blog on the site on a more regular basis is the priority. Starting this week, we will begin adding fresh content to the blog on a frequent basis, which will make the site more attractive to search engines. We will also post the content to a number of social bookmarking sites to create links and traffic
2. From here, we will implement a feed from the blog into the Facebook page, so that it may also populate with more content.
3. The Facebook page needs to act as a hub for sharing content will now begin being updated with more videos and news stories that relate to the brand
4. The MySpace page will also be freshened up and updated on a more frequent basis

Now – Twitter. We have already set up @Bollocks_com_au on Twitter and have begun tweeting. The key here is attracting a very targeted following, and obviously the way to do that is being selective in who we follow. So how are we finding people to follow?

1. We have run searches on the terms Bollocks, Whaling and Scientology. This has brought up people who have either mentioned these words in their posts recently, or have user names that reflect the brand. From reading Tweets it is very easy to identify hard core anti whaling and anti scientologists who may be interested hearing what Bollocks has to say – remember, it’s not about selling the shirts, it’s about engaging with peopel and building the brand.
2. We have also run a search under the Find People function to identify similar users. Once we start following both of these groups, followers of Bollocks will being to flow.
3. We will also follow other fashion brands to see how they are using Twitter

We will run these kind of searches twice a day for the first week, which should pick up quite a number of people.

One final point in getting social will be jumping onto Blip.fm. The owners of the site are avid music fans and Blip.fm gives them a fantastic platform to share some of their tastes and build common interests with their audience, which we can link to their Twitter updates.

So, to sum up our actions for this week:

• Revive the blog on the site, and post content to social bookmarking sites
• Add the feed to Facebook page
• Upload new content to both Facebook and MySpace pages
• Search on key terms and usernames in Twitter for Bollocks, Whaling and Scientology and begin following
• Create a Blip.fm DJ profile and link to Twitter

I’m looking forward to the results of these action points. Being realistic though, we need to expect that their will be some spike in traffic but not neccesarily sales just yet.

Any feedback and alternatives are more than welcome, just post your comment below.

Tags: Blogging, Bollocks, Facebook, MySpace, Site Poject, Social Bookmarking, Social Media, Traffic Driving, Twitter

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 5:22 am and is filed under Client Case Studies, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.