My first steps into Digital Marketing

I am learning a new skill beginning this week. I say a new skill but what I really mean is that I am putting some academic learning to something that I have been doing for some time.

My wife is setting up a creative business, making Artisan jewellery, and I have been helping her where I can. One of the fun things is that I have been able to apply my skills as a photographer to the endeavour – taking pictures of the finished pieces, and creating “sneak peek teaser” images of the jeweller in progress. I have been setting up a website for her, which is an extension of my abilities, and I freely admit that it is still a work in process.

What I am now embarking on is an online course into Digital Marketing. It was a course that I found quite by accident while browsing the BBC webpages. It is setup by FutureLearn and is run by the University of Southampton in the UK. It is run alongside their MSC programmes and I am hopeful that I will gain extra insight into marketing as some of their MSc students are also enrolled on this course.

I am no stranger to continuous learning, having constantly updated my skills since graduating from university. This, however, is the first time that I have taken an online course with people from all over the world – there is even another student based in Tokyo!

It was fun last night logging in for the first few sessions, little more than an introduction to the course and the lectures. But it did paint a picture of the structure that the course will take, and it gave me some ideas as to where we would be going during our time together.

In my daily life, and with my interactions with customers, I always aim to paint them a picture, to tell them a story showing where we will be heading together. Now it seems that Digital Marketing uses the same principle – it “creates a digital story”.

So I think that I am going to enjoy this course – a skill for marketing appears to be something that I have been developing for some time!

Switching brand allegiances

I am writing this while sitting in a Starbucks, and those of you who know my pre-Japan view of Starbucks will find this surprising. Was I meeting somebody there, or had I been dragged there? No, I came on my own accord.

My first experience of Starbucks was 18 years ago in Seattle. I was there at the end of my year studying at the University of Waterloo in Canada. My girlfriend, now my wife (yeah), and I went on a camping tour of the west coast of Canada and the US. At the time I was not a coffee lover, that relationship would not start for another two years when I was living in Germany. So the experience generally left me untouched.

Over the years I have dabbled with Starbucks but generally I have preferred smaller, more independent coffee establishments. Starbucks has seemed to cold and impersonal. It has also been embroiled in a tax avoidance scandal in Europe, and so it made me question whether its expansion was either justified (as it may not be competing on a level tax playing field), or good for the societies that it operated in. At this point I must point out that Starbucks were not alone in this practise, but more on this later.

So you could say that I have been quite negative towards Starbucks over the years. So obviously in fact that when I said that I was going to a Starbucks my 11 year old son said “but you don’t like Starbucks”.

If there are any Starbucks lawyers reading this post then I hope that they have read down this far as moving to Japan has forced me to re-evaluate my troubled relationship with Starbucks. In fact, in the short time that I have lived here, Starbucks has become my go-to coffee establishment. What is the reason for this change? Cigarette smoke.

In Europe and North America smoking is not allowed inside public places, but in Japan I have discovered that finding non-smoking food and drink establishments is very difficult. Starbucks is non-smoking, and I have heard it said that people thought they would fail because of this. They did not, however, change their policy. They decided to take on the doubters, stick to their principle, and for that I applaud them.

My hope is that Starbucks stance will start the social shift needed to force other establishments to follow suit and make for a more pleasant environment.

Below I list some articles I have found on the tax avoidance scandal that hit Europe. It shows that it was not just Starbucks involved. I have also included a tax commitment from Starbucks website:

Starbucks tax avoidance 2012

Large companies avoid tax – 2013

Starbucks pays tax – 2015

Starbucks tax commitment

Bad Marketing

I am new to blogging and my anticipation levels always rises when I’m just finishing off a post. I hit “Publish” then wait. How many people are going to read it? I don’t think these feelings are unique to me, all bloggers must feel this especially in the early days. Right now, with only a handful of posts behind me I need to attract readers, nobody is lining up with their heart racing, waiting for my next instalment.

So what conclusions should I draw when my post has been out for two weeks and has been viewed 9 times? There are a number of negative ones I could consider, but I started this blog with a positive mindset and I wanted to find my voice so I won’t go down that route. If I am not getting many views yet then it means that people are not finding my posts – I am not marketing them very well.

The post I am referring to is Painting a Picture. I thought I was being clever with the title, but now I think that it is terrible. It may seem intriguing, something that would be okay if I had many followers but I don’t. All that clever title did was to prevent potential readers from knowing what the post is about. Also, when I re-read the post I see that I did not write it correctly – I missed the main point of the article.

So I have written another post about the same topic, but gave it a better title and slanted the topic differently. It has only been posted for 2 days and already it has had 18 views. Now, it could be that I have attracted more readers to my blog during the last two weeks, or it could be that I marketed the article better. This article is called Finding Strength in Weakness.

So, if you have the time, please can you have a look at both of the articles and then tell me what you think. Thank you.