Natasha Judd | Digital Marketing & Social Media Management

NCT Babychange iPhone application review

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Natasha

Before I had a baby, I used to be able to get ready and leave the house in less than five minutes.

The first time I ventured out to the local shopping centre with our newborn, however, it took me over an hour and a half to prepare. Not only did I have to get the baby dressed and fed, I also had to pack the changing bag with spare clothes, nappies and baby wipes, set up the pram and anticipate the bus schedules. And then, just as I was heading out the door, I realised that, should I need to change our baby’s nappy while we were out, I had no idea where to go.

Presumably there was a baby changing room somewhere in town – but it wasn’t something I had really paid much attention to before I had a child of my own. So, aware that I was going to miss the next bus, I turned to Google and searched for a website which would list the changing facilities in or around the shopping centre. I couldn’t find one. But now, four months on, I’ve found an app.

Babychange screenshot Developed by Axon Publishing for the NCT parenting charity, the Babychange application allows UK mums and dads to find their nearest baby changing facility. It draws on your phone’s GPS function to position you on a Google map, with green and amber pins showing the facilities in your area.

When I first opened the application yesterday morning, there were only two or three pins nearby. These marked venues such as Nando’s or Debenhams: the sort of chain stores where every branch has a changing room. As a mother of a four month-old, I already knew about those facilities – and many more besides. The strength of this app is that it allows parents like me to submit these additional venues ourselves.

So, when baby and I were out and about yesterday, I added in a couple more – at a local cinema and play café – entering in their addresses, a hygiene rating and indicating whether or not I’d use them again. These were then added to the map as amber (‘requiring confirmation’) pins.

It’s not a perfect system. My mobile internet is notoriously slow, and there doesn’t seem to be any indication from the app that it’s processing data. As such, over the course of twenty minutes, I managed to add the same venue three times. There isn’t any way for me to remove the extra entries, but the developers say that if two other people click on the incorrect data button then it’ll disappear. I’m not sure how many other people in my area are using the app, but my guess is that those extra pins will be hanging around for a while yet.

There’s also no way to add a comment to your submission. This meant that I wasn’t able to let other parents know that to use the changing room at the cinema, for example, they’d need to have a movie ticket.

Despite its flaws, this is a free application which will only become more valuable as more people use it to submit and rate the facilities in their local area. I’d encourage all new parents in the UK to give it a try. I may never again be able to leave the house in five minutes, but having the information about changing rooms on my phone means one less worry as I head out the door – and that can only be a good thing.

Download from iTunes
Price: free
Released: 7 April 2011 (Version 1.0.1)

First published on iPhoneAppCafe.com. Happy to answer comments there or here.

Posted in The App Reviews | Tagged charity, iPhone | 3 Comments

M&S Foursquare Promotion

Posted on April 18, 2011 by Natasha

Saturday the 16th of April, or to use the American date format 04/16, was Foursquare Day. I only discovered this because of another promotion. Over the weekend of 16-17 April, UK retailer, M&S, were promising to donate £1 to Breakthrough Breast Cancer for every Foursquare user who checked into one of their stores. According to their site, there was also a £5 off voucher for the first 25,000 people to check in.

So there I was, bright and early on Saturday morning, needing to buy some brown rice for the new baby weaning project. I could’ve gone to Sainsbury’s or Tesco Express, but the breast cancer promotion meant that I wanted to check in at M&S sometime that day and I figured I might as well do my grocery shopping at the same time.

I’ve tried to use my mobile inside the Merton High Street M&S before, but there’s been no signal – which would’ve made checking in on Foursquare fairly difficult. So, before I went in to the actual store, I located the venue on Foursquare, added a comment as you can see here, took a photo of the sign on the side of the building to prove where I was, and virtually checked in.

At this point, a security guard came up to me and asked why I was taking photos of the store. This is apparently not allowed. This is kind of a shame in the world of social media, but I figured I better play by the rules and when I got home, I looked up how to delete the photo from my history and thus from the store’s page on Foursquare.

Anyway, having checked in, I got a notification that I’d just earned the Foursquare Day badge. Not what I was there for, but nice nonetheless and something to share with the three million or so other users who checked in somewhere that day (according to this tweet). I still haven’t heard anything about my £5 voucher, either via Foursquare or by email – and when I read the promotional copy again, I’m not sure whether I was supposed to spend £30 on clothing on the day I checked in to receive the discount. I’m not particularly bothered about this, though I guess other people checking in may have been, so it’d be good to hear if anyone else has actually received a voucher code.

I just hope that my check-in did earn Breakthrough Breast Cancer a £1 donation from M&S – because that’s an interesting corporate use of social media for a great cause. There are clear benefits here to b0th the charity and the business, and as location-based services such as Foursquare become more popular, I can only wonder if it’s a fundraising model that will be increasingly used in the future.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged charity, foursquare, iPhone, local, merton, social media | Leave a comment

Red velvet cupcakes for Japan

Posted on April 17, 2011 by Natasha

Red velvet cupcakes for Japan Later this afternoon, we’re heading out to St Mary’s Church in Wimbledon for the Japan Tsunami Appeal Fundraising Fair. I’ve made these red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting to donate to the home-baking stall.

It’s my first bake-sale since becoming a mum – in fact it’s probably my first bake sale since high school – and I’m a little nervous…

I hadn’t used a piping bag before, and it was very much a case of learning as I went along. Preparing to ice the first batch cupcakes was a bit of a disaster as I tried to hold the bag open with one hand and spoon in the cream cheese frosting with the other. While the second batch cooked, I looked around my kitchen for a solution and settled on folding the edge of the piping bag over the edge of a pint glass to keep it open as I spooned the frosting in. Much easier to fill that way!

As you can see from the picture, my piping still needs work. On a couple of occasions, I missed the edge of the cupcake altogether (those ones have been reserved for my husband). Also, the icing wasn’t as white as I hoped it would be. Is some creaminess inevitable when the recipe includes butter?

While I’m asking questions, dear readers, what do you use to transfer the cupcake mix into the cases? It’s inevitable that our baby begins to cry as soon as I start spooning mine in. Then my concentration dips for a second, and suddenly I have dribbles down the sides which burn as they cook. Today, I tried using a soup ladle, which was quicker than a tablespoon, but probably less accurate.

Despite the wonky frosting and the occasional side burn, these cupcakes really do taste pretty good. When you bite into them, you get a great Hummingbird-style red and white effect – and I hope they’ll be okay on the stall. If you’re in the area, come by St Mary’s Church from 3-5pm and pick one up. Or don’t pick one up, but still come along. There’s also raffles and live music, sushi and face painting, and all proceeds go to the British Red Cross Japan Fundraising Appeal.

Posted in The Cupcake Conversation | Tagged cake days, cupcakes, local, merton | 4 Comments

Where would I be without the internet? #2

Posted on April 16, 2011 by Natasha

DVD Last weekend, my husband called me after work and asked if I wanted him to pick up a DVD on the way home. We’re not members of a DVD store. We used to be members of Sofa Cinema, but cancelled that after some obscure movie that we had on our list but obviously didn’t really want to watch sat on our mantlepiece for a couple of months. Anyway, I was in the mood for a movie, so I told him to go ahead.

Half an hour later, my husband arrived home without a DVD. He’d tried to sign up for membership at a local store, but was denied as he didn’t have proof of his address. I guess it’s understandable from the video store’s point of view, but it’s unlikely we’ll go back there now. After all, we don’t have to provide proof of a physical address to hire films from the internet.

Surprisingly though, hiring a film from the internet wasn’t without problems. We chose Film4 on Demand as our virtual store. They were promoting The Social Network and that seemed kind of appropriate for our first online hire. We still had to register for the site and click on an emailed link verify our account. Before we downloaded the film, I had to run a diagnostic test to check whether or not it’d play on our system – and then, because we were using a Mac, I had to install Silverlight. All this took about an hour. It would’ve been quicker to walk back to the video store with an electricity bill showing our postal address. The key thing here is that I was willing to persist with the internet.

Last month, after seeing the musical, Hairspray, at Wimbledon Theatre, I wanted to pick up a copy of the film version on DVD. I dropped into our local HMV store but they didn’t have it. I went home and ordered it online. We live in a world where book and music stores are closing, and though I find that sad, I’m also guilty of being a lot less patient with bricks and mortar. They don’t get a second chance.

Our downloaded movie, running on Silverlight on the Mac, crashed when we tried to pause it. To make it work, we had to load it again and play it from the start.

And yet, the internet still seems easier to me – and perhaps to a lot of people from my generation.

Even when it’s not.

DVD image courtesy of www.freepixels.com.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged downloads, entertainment, online life | 1 Comment

QR codes and real estate signs

Posted on April 15, 2011 by Natasha

QR code for www.natashajudd.com I’ve always thought that QR codes, those black and white squares of lines and dots that have started appearing on marketing leaflets and billboards, were a bit of a gimmick. In fact, until earlier this week, I didn’t even have a QR reader on my phone.

However, over the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed the codes starting to appear on the For Sale and To Let signs put up by local real estate agent, Eddison White. Now that’s a good idea, I thought. If I was in the market for a new home, it’d be great to be able to use my phone to scan the sign outside a place that caught my eye and be redirected to a webpage that had pictures of the inside, the price, contact details for an estate agent, and so on. I had to try this out.

Firstly, I needed a QR reader – an application for my iPhone that would let me read the codes. After heading to the AppStore and doing a bit of research, I went for a free app called Qrafter which seemed to work for most reviewers. Yesterday evening, on my way home from a run around the neighbourhood, I decided to try it out.

The first sign I spotted was fixed to the second story of a terraced house. I raised my phone to scan it, but without the ability to zoom, the code only took up a small fraction of my camera window. Nothing happened. Feeling slightly let down, I walked around the block till I found another sign. This one was a bit lower, so I held my camera up above my head and walked towards the sign. Again nothing. I was getting a bit self-conscious by this stage, wondering if the neighbours were watching through the windows. It was also getting dark and the message on my QR reader said Avoid glare and shadows. I decided to call it a night, and try again in the morning.

It’s worth bearing in mind that I’m a pretty engaged ‘customer’ at this point. I want this to work. I’ve already invested the time in downloading the application. I’m still keen to give it another go. It’s possible that others might have lost interest by now.

Real estate sign with QR code Anyway, this morning, it was bright and, if not sunny, at least clear. I walked up to a couple of signs, stood on my tiptoes, trying to get my phone as close as possible and hold it as still as possible. Nothing. I was about to give up, when I found it: a sign that was close enough to the ground for my phone to scan.

So I scanned it.

And it brought up a link to the mobile version of the Eddison White website. The link didn’t direct me to the individual property details I had hoped for, but to a webpage where, should I have been so inclined, I could have searched through their database until I found the property I was standing in front of.

Reflecting on this now with my traditional marketer hat on, I can see that it may be unrealistically expensive to generate and print a unique QR code for every sign. However, from a digital point of view, I couldn’t help be disappointed. I could remember the name of the real estate agent. I could’ve just as easily gone home, guessed or Googled their website address, and then searched the property database from the much faster internet connection on my home PC.

I didn’t get the result I wanted with QR today – and perhaps my initial expectations were too high – but at least my eyes have been opened to the possibilities of the technology. Until QR readers are a default application for every phone or hand-held device, I still think these square black and white codes are quite gimmicky. But if they can be used in a way that engages a customer enough to bother downloading the tools to read them, and then, once scanned, deliver value over and above what’s available elsewhere, then I can see that, for some businesses, they may have a place in the marketing mix.

If anyone’s got any examples of organisations successfully using QR codes or if you want to share your own experience with the technology, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged iPhone, local, merton, online marketing, qr codes | 3 Comments

Greenpeace vs. Facebook

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Natasha

On Beth Kanter’s blog this week, there’s a sneak peek into new Idealware research on how not-for-profits are using their Facebook fan pages. For those working in the charity sector – and perhaps for anyone familiar with Facebook – these initial results won’t be that surprising. Charities, it seems, are finding Facebook fanpages useful for increasing event attendance, driving traffic to their websites and encouraging online action (such as signing petitions), but having less success with using their Facebook presence to attract donations or volunteers.

Kyle Andrei from Idealware writes:

…more than 65% said that they’d had some success with moving people to take some form of action for a cause, like signing petitions or other advocacy actions. Online petitions and other political or advocacy actions are easy to do, demand little time, and are easily spread through Facebook and other social media.

A good recent example comes from Greenpeace. Greenpeace seem to just get online campaigning. Back in the middle of the last decade, they launched the Green My Apple campaign, drawing in Apple’s own loyal fan base to pressure the organisation into upping the green credentials of their products.

This year, for Earth Day, they’re asking Facebook to ‘unfriend coal’ and instead use clean energy sources. The campaign’s been run on Facebook itself. There’s a fanpage with a slick 30 second video introducing the campaign’s key message, and a welcome screen in a number of different languages. There’s a date target of April 22. There are regular campaign updates and fans are encouraged to add their comments.

I took the screenshot below this morning (14 April 2011). At that time, this post had 81,007 comments.

What’s Greenpeace doing right here?

There are presumably thousands of IT companies who are not using clean energy. They’ve picked the one with 600 million users. These are people who use Facebook, which means, whether or not they’re interested in the deeper issues of climate change, they’re on the platform already. These are people who get how Facebook works, who can leave comments or upload photos and who are spreading the word virally amongst their friends.

Greenpeace recently asked fans to help them set the world record attempt for the most comments on a single post – and achieved the goal within 24 hours. After all, it doesn’t take a lot of effort for a fan to leave a comment. It’s going to take far less time than volunteering for the cause. It’s doesn’t require the financial commitment of making a donation. And it’s exciting as well, to be part of a global movement like this, to say that your comment was one of over 80,000.

For those fans who are interested in learning more about the cause, there’s also a non-Facebook microsite. Interestingly, the blog post there, Greenpeace supporters set world record for most Facebook comments, has – as of when I’m writing this – no comments. Again this is proof that, in many cases, it’s better to take your organisation to your fans rather than asking your fans to come to your organisation.

With just over a week to go before Earth Day, it will be interesting to see how this campaign develops, and whether there will be any official response from Facebook. For now, it’s an interesting case study on how Facebook fanpages can motivate supporters to take the low-level actions highlighted in the Idealware research.

I’ve liked it.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged campaigning, charity, facebook, fanpages | 4 Comments

The Sun Microsystems Blogging Principles

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Natasha

So far, I’ve only read the preface to Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams’ Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. However, there’s already something on page xii that made me want to pause and post here.

The authors are talking the blogging principles that Jonathan Schwartz introduced for Sun Microsystems employee blogs in 2004:

Don’t do anything stupid.
Write about something you know about.
Make it interesting.

While the Sun website today seems to have a longer list of blogging principles, these three, in my experience, seem to be good general guiding principles, not just for employee blogs, but for blogs in general.

Don’t do anything stupid

When you’re blogging you’re essentially having a conversation. The other conversation participants – your readers and commenters – may be people you know, people you get to know or people who’ll always remain amongst the anonymous visitors figure in your Google Analytics statistics. The important thing is that they’re people. Remember that, and you won’t go far wrong.

What counts as ‘doing something stupid’ is fairly subjective, and bloggers will need to decide for themselves where they draw the line. It might be as simple as deciding not to post publicly anything that you wouldn’t want your parents or a future employer to see. Of course, mistakes are made. However, if you acknowledge them and try to deal with the consequences in a way that takes into account that there are actual people involved, then it seems that in most cases the harm can be minimised.

Write about something you know about

I’m not this one’s 100% essential. Anyone who’s read the Julie/Julia project blog (or seen the film starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams) will know that you can build up a huge blog following as you learn to do something. In many cases, such as my recent cupcake icing post, your readers will be keen to share their experiences and help you out.

The better advice may be, ‘don’t pretend you’re an expert if you’re not’. In a job interview, for example, it’s often easy to tell when someone’s bluffing or has hyped up their skill-set on their CV. Fake it on your organisation’s blog, and you may end up being similarly caught out.

Make it interesting

As a blogger, you’re already interesting. Again, it’s because you’re a person. You’re unique. Let that uniqueness shine through in your posts, and it’ll help make them interesting. It may be that you take a great picture, or that you’re good at making people laugh. Use those factors to make your blog stand out.

Also, make sure you’re having a conversation that’s relevant. What are people talking about at the moment? Do you have anything to add? I realise that, by writing a post inspired by a book that was first published in 2006, I’m not following my own advice here. However, from my experience, if you can provide the content that people are searching for right now, you’ll not only increase your website traffic, you’ll also be creating something of real value to your readers.

So: don’t do anything that you think is stupid, write about something you’re interested in and don’t fake it, and be different and topical. Three(ish) blog principles inspired by Sun Microsystems.

I should probably go and read the rest of Wikinomics before I post any more, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on other essential principles for bloggers. Feel free to leave me a comment below.

Computer keyboard image courtesy of www.freepixels.com.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged blogging, social media | Leave a comment

Rediscovering StumbleUpon

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Natasha

Despite my total lack of coordination in real life, I haven’t stumbled on the web for a while. It’s just one of those things on the internet where, for a month or two, I’ll be spending all my spare time clicking on the stumble button, discovering new sites and leaving reviews. Then – as has happened this time – I’ll get distracted by some other web tool, and my StumbleUpon account will remain inactive for almost a year.

However, on Thursday last week, my 5 essential iPhone applications for pregnancy article was published on iPhoneAppCafe.com. Being the social media geek that I am, I kept returning to the page during the day to see how many tweets and Facebook shares it had received. While those social media numbers went up little-by-little, I was amazed to see that the article very quickly had 57 views via StumbleUpon.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the tool, StumbleUpon is a people-driven website discovery engine. As users browse the web, they like or dislike and categorise the websites they visit. Then, when you click the ‘Stumble!’ button on the site or on your installed browser toolbar, you’re taken to a random website which matches your interests.

For me, the excitement of StumbleUpon is that you don’t know what you’re going to get. Of course, this means that a lot of time you get things you’re not interested in. But sometimes you stumble upon a useful blog post or a funny video or a great website that you wouldn’t have found any other way.

StumbleUpon can also drive a significant amount of traffic to a website – particularly if the site is ‘liked’ by a number of well-established Stumblers. While it’s not great etiquette to create an account just to promote your own content, if you take the time to establish a profile and a significant list of favourite sites, the odd bit of self-promotion shouldn’t do too much damage.

Alternatively, businesses can set up a paid discovery campaign, paying from US$0.05 per visitor, to add themselves to the randomly-generated site list. This seems to be a way of guaranteeing your site will be seen by like-minded Stumblers, without having to invest the time in building a StumbleUpon reputation.

Either way, of course, it’s important to have useful content on the page you’re directing Stumblers to. That ‘dislike’ button is just next to the ‘like’ one and it’s just as easy to use, and people’s negative reviews will be available for everyone to see.

For more information about using StumbleUpon to promote your website or blog, check out this article by Viktoria Michaelis. As always, if you’ve got any questions or want to share your experience of using StumbleUpon, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged online marketing, search, stumbleupon | Leave a comment

Where would I be without the internet? #1

Posted on April 9, 2011 by Natasha

Where would I be without the internet? This global computer network has certainly changed things within my lifetime, and become my first port of call for everything from watching television to downloading books, buying groceries to managing my finances.

However, for me, the best thing about the internet has always been how it’s allowed me to connect and communicate with people. There are two examples from this week that I wanted to share.

Baby shower photo

Tis the year of babies round these parts, and I’m off to a baby shower for one of my friends later this morning. On Thursday, the organiser sent an email asking me to bring a picture of myself as a baby for one of the games. Problem: while I have hundreds of digital photos of my own daughter already, all baby photos of me are half a world away in New Zealand.

But then I was talking to Mum and Dad on Skype yesterday, and realised I could ask them to hold a page from one of their photo albums up to the screen. A screenshot, a bit of cropping and a colour print out later, I have one slightly blurry child-of-the-80s photo to take to the party.

Icing advice

Second attempt at vanilla cupcakes, with pink and blue icing for a baby shower. Last Saturday, I tried to make Hummingbird-style vanilla cupcakes and my icing dripped off the sides. I posted the picture of my cupcake fail here on my blog and on the Hummingbird Facebook page, and received some excellent tips from Jess, Caitlin, Lindsay, other Hummingbird fans and someone from the bakery itself. As a result of this crowd-sourced advice, I’ve this week invested in a ‘super-dooper-icing set’, and switched to using Jess’ recommended Women’s Weekly frosting recipe.

You can see in the photo the cupcakes that I’ll be taking along to the baby shower today.

Okay, they’re still not particularly even. The icing that was supposed to be blue is closer to green and Hummingbird’s probably not going to employ me as a baker or decorator any time soon. However they’re a huge improvement on last week’s attempt, so thanks to everyone who helped out. Please stick around. I’m going to try out a new recipe every couple of weeks and post the results here, and I’m sure I’ll have more questions as I try to move beyond the vanilla.

For now though, it’s time to pack up my baby and cupcake-filled tupperware, and head on out. Have a great weekend everyone.

Posted in The Cupcake Conversation, The Online Conversation | Tagged cupcakes, skype | 2 Comments

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When everyone's twittering, how do you get yourself heard?

Where should you be spending your time on Facebook?

Don’t do anything stupid

Write about something you know about

Make it interesting

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