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Evernote mobile app: prime note taking for business (but OneNote looks better)

by Yannis |April 18th, 2012

Note taking is a very basic, if not unglamorous function of smartphones, yet one that can be of extreme importance to anyone who is using their phones for business purposes. Note taking mobile apps come in all sorts of sizes and specs, from the most basic that just allow the creation of humble text notes, to the most lavish featuring attachments, filing, sharing, text formatting, to-do lists, cloud syncing and integration with other apps.

Evernote has been a popular desktop/cloud-based note taking application for a few years now. The mobile application arrived recently and is available on multiple operating systems and devices. The application’s long list of useful features has ensured it repeatedly tops the note taking app charts.

Note taking feature fest

  • Note creation: Evernote’s note creation comes with some great features that push note taking beyond merely typing a few words on a screen: you can take and add photos, record and add audio files, create lists and task lists, insert links, add tags, format text and add locations.

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Posted in B2B|Design|Interface|Mobile
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5 reasons why your next corporate website should feature illustration and 5 reasons why it might not

by Yannis |February 8th, 2012

So you are creating your new corporate website.

Your web agency is beavering away on the designs, you have instructed various departments to submit their content, you have hired a copywriter to polish the copy, you are about to sign the new hosting contracts, the CMS training is in the calendar and you have even started planning for mobile optimisation. Life feels pretty good, until you get to the part where you have to source images to fill those large, grey placeholders in the wireframes.

If you are fortunate, your organisation produces über-sexy products like medical equipment, Audi car parts, or bicycles whose magnificent design is already captured and sitting in the corporate image library. But, if you are like a large number of corporations then your offering is either intangible, like services or software, or not handsome enough to front your marketing and sales. Your web agency probably suggested a conceptual photo shoot, but in the end that felt like one production headache too many. So you fall back to the safe cradle of stock photography and you wheel in the attractive people on their laptops and mobiles, the business gatherings in elegant surroundings and the smiley, racially balanced operators. And since most of your competitors, suppliers, partners and customers do the same, you sink your brand to the bottomless depths of obscurity.

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Posted in B2B|Communications|Corporate Communications|Creative|Websites
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Is feature porn killing usability in enterprise software?

by Yannis |July 20th, 2011

Nowadays, everything comes with features: my toothbrush comes with an added tongue scratcher, my morning cereal is fortified with all sorts of stuff and even my air freshener sports a motion detector. Enterprise software is no different; it might not come with added vitamins, but it’s certainly oozing features out of every USB socket.

Lately, we have been working with a number of organisations whose main offering comes with a screen interface:  contact centre solutions, BI software, risk management tools, etc. A common problem many people recognise but most fail to do anything about, is that bad usability can make using all this stuff a daunting task.

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Posted in Analytics|B2B|Corporate Communications|Creative|Design|Financial Services|Interface|Optimisation|Skyron|Technology|UX
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Triggers that can get humanisation on the corporate agenda

by Yannis |May 17th, 2011

Most of the our new business in the past 3 months falls under the corporate/internal communications umbrella. The briefs that have come out of these wins have a common underlying requirement that is worth discussing as it follows a recent shift in how corporations communicate. The requirement is to humanise the organisation. In the grand scheme of things there is nothing notable here; consumer brands jumped on the humanisation bandwagon a few years back with blogs, Facebook and Twitter. However, in the corporate world humanisation is a topic that has just started to creep up in the marketing and internal comms wish lists.

In other aspects of life, accepting you have a problem is half way towards the solution, but that first step can be the hardest one to take. The need for humanisation is not one that comes naturally  to a corporation through a slow evolutionary process and for that reason what triggers such change makes an interesting topic.

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Posted in B2B|Communications|Corporate Communications|Humanisation|Insights|Intranets/Extranets|Skyron|Social Media
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Pay with a Tweet: the instant marketing currency

by Yannis |May 11th, 2011

First was the big green button. More than 10 years ago charities and charitable sponsors started using it and soon it was everywhere. The text read: “Click here and we will donate 1p for each click”. Nowadays, a Tweet does just as well. It’s simple, instant and rewarding both for the service/product provider and the audience.

Here is an example from Twittercounter

And here are some other examples of how Pay with a Tweet is being used: http://www.paywithatweet.com/cases.html

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Posted in B2B|Content|Content Marketing|Content Strategy|Customer Service|ecommerce|Skyron|Social Media
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Looking for inspiration for your B2B interactive demo? Learnings from Microsoft’s PC Scout

by Yannis |March 26th, 2011

In the world of B2B communications a well executed interactive demo can be a powerful marketing tool. A number of our clients depend on demos to turn leads into customers (and sometimes to generate leads). But a good demo can be pricey as it requires a strategy, complicated production that can include video, audio, animation and copywriting, as well as a tactical plan and execution to put it in front of the relevant audiences.

So when we come across a demo with a bit of investment behind it we scrutinise it and then apply any gained insights to the work we do for our clients. Yesterday, I played with the PC Scout demo/microsite from Microsoft, which I found very interesting.

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Posted in B2B|Case Studies|Corporate Communications|Creative|Demos & Presentations|Lead Generation|Sales|Skyron
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Goodbye LinkedIn Answers

by Yannis |March 24th, 2011

For the past 30 days, I have been subscribing to the “Marketing and Sales” RSS feed from LinkedIn’s Answers section. Until the end of February I had been a casual visitor, occasionally dipping in and out to see what’s been discussed. Then I decided to add the RSS feed to Google Reader hoping to first, get a better understanding of the nature of the discussions and the contributors and second, to assess the relevance of this whole affair to Skyron and to our clients.

30 days and 1,140 RSS updates later I am unsubscribing for five reasons:

  • Too much repetition: I can’t take any more questions like “How do I use LinkedIn?”
  • Little insight: More often than not, Answers is used by lazy people who can’t be asked to make a simple Google search to find the information they need
  • Little relevance: There are plenty of new business opportunities but the majority would benefit consultants, freelancers and small suppliers of marketing services, none of which is directly relevant to Skyron or the majority of our clients
  • Tsunami of posts: The relentless posting suffocated my other feeds, resulting in me reading only a fraction of my daily intake
  • Groups are better: Group discussions are more focused and the participants behave more like a community, creating more valuable content

I actually did manage to introduce a London agency I know well to an American company looking for specialists of a certain kind, but this pretty much sums up all the excitement for the month.

If you are a marketing, or comms director at a large B2B organisation you are better off joining a relevant LinkedIn Group (or setting one up!) than shooting blind in LinkedIn Answers.

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Posted in B2B|LinkedIn|Marketing|RSS|Skyron|Social Media|Thought Leadership
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Corporate sales presentations: CXOs love the iPad and put a spanner in the works

by Yannis |March 13th, 2011

When it comes to sales presentations this is the story so far: whether in media and publishing, professional services, or technology, our clients have been facing similar frustrations: long stacks of slides, uninspiring content, unclear messages and lack of impact. We have been responding to such frustrations by planning, writing, designing and building sales presentations in PowerPoint, or Flash that grab the audience by the lapel and give them something to think about.

In the past 6 months the iPad has entered the board room and is becoming the gadget of choice for CXOs. The knock-on effect is that our clients, partially responding to pressure from above, have been making noise about adding iPads to their sales presentation kit, which of course raises the question of how on earth do you get sales presentations to play on iPads. If you are a one man/woman outfit and want to switch your presentation hardware to iPads, you can get yourself the Keynote iPad app for £5.99 and you are sorted. At an enterprise level though the situation is complicated and unfortunately at the moment there is no simple solution.

It is worth reviewing afresh the main presentation creation tools,  what they are best suited for, and their iPad compatibility.

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Posted in B2B|Corporate Communications|Financial Services|Insights|Lead Generation|Media & Publishing|Professional Services|Sales|Skyron
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Cerillion launch new blog

by Yannis |February 18th, 2011

Skyron have been working with Cerillion since 2008 on a number of online communications initiatives the latest of which is the Cerillion blog. In 2010, Skyron also redesigned the user interface for the Cerillion main contact centre software – the new interface has helped boost interest in the Cerillion solution suite.

The Cerillion Blog provides a regular feed of company news, industry insight and informed opinion, all delivered by a team of recognised experts from across the company. Cerillion provides convergent CRM & Billing, Interconnect, Mediation and Provisioning solutions to fixed, mobile, IP and convergent telecom operators worldwide.

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Posted in B2B|Content Strategy|Corporate Communications|Customer Service|New Launches|Skyron|Social Media|Thought Leadership
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The next big thing in B2B Marketing? Kissing your “me time” goodbye

by Yannis |February 11th, 2011

Last week I watched a TED talk about us all turning into cyborgs with self-enhancing, always-on digital devices attached to our heads and hands.

Such transformation is already happening to those who lead connected personal lives; staying in touch on Facebook and Twitter has turned into a 24/7 practice detached from time or space. Now, B2B marketing is spilling out of the 9-5 office routine and consuming whatever is left of “me time”.

For a number of our clients the split between work and play is disappearing and there is little they can do about it, if they are to continue to add value to their organisation. It was bad enough when the recession shrunk marketing teams and increased workload for everyone who kept their jobs. Now, the goalposts are moving again; B2B companies are switching on their social side and (for the moment at least) the marketing function is picking up the tab. Blogging at 9pm, Tweeting at 11pm and back on answering emails at 6am is becoming a frequent affair. Emails I send (as I do occasionally) in the wee hours of the morning used to arrive at switched off PCs and laptops; these days many get responded to within minutes. As B2B organisations turn themselves inside out and use real people to front their communications, instead of corporate brochures or PR teams, the pressure to keep up with industry news, produce clever stuff to share and manage communities of clients, prospects, partners, suppliers and recruits is building up.

What is there to do?

  • Pass it on to the next generation. For young, generation Y go-getters these new business demands won’t be much of a problem. For them, always-on connectivity is not an option, but the only way to be. Personal network management skills and know-how can be transferred to a business network and the technology required is not a hindrance but an invisible facilitator. Generation Y has begun to enter the workforce and is ready to put its natural, always-on networking capabilities to work.
  • Take it on and exploit the opportunity to also push your personal brand. If the content you broadcast, the connections you make and the community management you do are signed with your name, alongside your organisation’s of course, then your personal brand will benefit as well.
  • Be patient. As organisations turn from information silos to more personal and social creatures, ownership of all relevant activity will stop being the exclusive responsibility of the marketing team; instead it is likely to be shared amongst a number of other business functions as well, such as customer service, sales, HR or IT.
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Posted in B2B|Skyron|Social Media
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