How AI is Transforming the Conference Space

How AI is Transforming the Conference Space

Inspiring Design Trends for 2022

Inspiring Design Trends for 2022

Top 5 Social Trend Predictions for 2022

Top 5 Social Trend Predictions for 2022

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16 Feb
2022

How AI is Transforming the Conference Space

by Jodie | in Digital, Events, Industry, Support | on 16 Feb 2022

Artificial intelligence, and more specifically machine learning, is the ability for computer systems to take tasks that normally require human intelligence. While for many people AI can seem unnecessary for the daily tasks they undertake, there are in fact many ways that it can enhance your conferences and events.

Chatbots

You may have had a negative experience with chatbots in the past, but they are getting more sophisticated rapidly. In the future, they will save you a lot of time in the run-up to your event. Unlike you, who needs sleep and a social life, chatbots can be available 24/7 to provide support for your presenters, vendors, and attendees. Given a small investment of your time to train it on common questions, the chatbot will save you far more time so you can focus on the bigger tasks.

Curated attendee recommendations

Today, as an event organiser you cater to a wide range of interests by creating agendas that appeal to a broad audience. The sessions are generally tied together by a common theme in the keynote and spotlight sessions.

The demand for curated, personalised content however presents a great opportunity for us to improve the overall event attendee experience. Instead of leaving attendees to make their own decisions by going through hundreds of session summaries, we can facilitate meetings by organising schedules and directing attendees towards certain individuals during networking portions of digital events.

Data from virtual events

Switching to online events has given us a vast amount of data to work with and analyse with ease. For example, we can see exactly who attended a particular event and when they arrived/left. We can then use this to inform who is interested in what and feed that into a machine learning application to curate attendee recommendations (or of course manually curate it).

Voice recognition – multiple languages

It’s likely that your event will be attended by multiple nationalities, and to promote inclusivity we can use voice recognition to, in real time, display subtitles in various languages. Apps such as Wordly facilitate this, which attendees can download to their mobile devices to have easy accessibility in the language they choose.

Video recap software

You can also save your attendees the hassle of having to take notes or photographs of slides by using video recap software such as CLIPr. This allows your attendees to have a batch of searchable and indexed content from your event. Machine learning techniques can even help us to identify key topics and highlight sections of relevant content dependant on the attendee viewing it.

Facial recognition

Many of us use facial recognition every day to unlock our phones, but we can leverage this technology to even greater effect in the event space in several ways:

  • We can analyse the traffic flow of people in and out of the event, what stalls they are visiting and the ‘dwell time’ at these stalls.
  • For both logistical and health reasons, we can track occupancy levels in various sectors and monitor social distancing where necessary.
  • Focusing on faces, we can even monitor engagement with a particular event by tracking the emotions that play out on individuals’ faces as they watch, be it boredom, fascination, or agitation.

Of course, in all these cases attendees would need to be made aware of any monitoring happening and consent to its use. But having this data will give you a wealth of information to streamline your event offerings in the future.

In summary...

You don’t need to utilise all these techniques by any means in the future to run a successful event or conference, but as you can see even by adopting one or two into your workflow you can gain real benefits.

If you’d like some assistance implementing machine learning techniques for your event or conference, then watch this space; we are currently developing some exciting offerings of our own. We also have a bespoke matchmaking service to facilitate targeting networking for your attendees. Get in touch to learn more.

01 Feb
2022

Inspiring Design Trends for 2022

by Keely | in Graphic Design, Marketing | on 01 Feb 2022

As we welcome 2022, we say goodbye to 2021 – a year that had the ongoing pandemic, the prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and continuing our best efforts to combat the climate crisis with 77 countries in the world announcing full or partial bans on plastic bags.*

Trends in the design world are more than just random fads, they express a year’s worth of phenomenon, and these events have changed the way businesses in all sectors around the world communicate with their consumers.

So what are these trends? We’ve highlighted 8 below:

 

1. Happiness is key

The past couple of years have certainly made people revaluate their priorities and recognise what is most important, so I feel this had to go first on the list. Mental health is such a huge part of our lives, now more than ever, and it’s come to realise that the ‘bigger is better’ mindset is not always the case. This outlook will inspire a tone of voice that’s happier and more carefree throughout the year, to help bring more comfort and positivity.

 

https://atelier-bingo.fr/ (atelier-bingo)

2. Maximalism

‘Go big or go home’ is what applies to Maximalist design! Say goodbye to that white space and be extravagant with colour and pattern edge to edge of the artboard, having no fear of clashing combinations. This style creates so much energy and freedom, which you could say is like a burst of expression through the restrictions after lockdown.

 

 

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3. Bold backgrounds

Bold and vibrant colours are set to take over from the more muted style of colour that’s been popular over the past couple of years. Bright block colours are certainly a way to make visuals stand out – as long as it’s done right and doesn’t take over the main focus of the page. The aim of these backgrounds isn’t to overwhelm text and icons, but to make the right information stand out, so it’s important to use them in bursts paired with white space or more muted tones.

 

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4. Colourful visuals that are inclusive

Similarly to the bright backgrounds mentioned above, icons and illustrations are heading towards this same style. These visuals portray a message at just a glance, and capture the reader’s attention over any piece of text, with most icons representing the same thing in any language – meaning they’re a great way to get your point across and communicate. Making all visuals inclusive is also a big trend of 2022, displaying the diversity of humanity respects and appreciates what makes everyone different, in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability and sexual orientation.

 

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5. Serif Fonts

Sans-serif fonts are widely used in design as they portray a style that’s more modern and approachable. Last year however, Serif fonts started to come back and it seems are here to stay in 2022. These classic serif fonts can look outdated if they’re not used in the right way, but they are however, traditionally used in books and news articles and are seen to represent trust and reliability – so it’s no wonder they are a popular choice with banking brands. There are now so many different serif typefaces in all different styles and personalities, and paired with a nice sans-serif font they can look really effective – such as how Nationwide have utilised this on their website.

 

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6. Nostalgia – retro is new again

With all the unknowns and unfamiliarity in the world at the moment, people are in need of comfort, enjoyment and maybe a bit of escapism – so what’s better than throwing everything back to the 90s! Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ bought back the nostalgic 80s vibe, capturing the era of loud patterns and neon colours, and similarly the 90s style brings back a sense of familiarity and happiness, with the bright colours and funky shapes. MailChimp have captured this style perfectly on their website, aiding their text with nostalgic and fun visuals – and using a serif font I may add!

 

7. Motion

Motion within branding has been a trend for the last couple of years and continues to be a vital focus for brand creation. Adding movement and animation not only outlines the personality of a brand, whether it’s on social media or on your landing page, it creates much more engaging content, making a brand much more memorable.

 

  

8. Responsive logos

It’s a known thing to designers, that many clients wanted to ‘make the logo bigger’, however bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better – what’s most important is that the logo is always visible. With content being viewed on such a range of devices and responding to many screen sizes, it’s important that the logo adapts to still be identifiable on the largest screen and the smallest screen. Whether it’s using an icon to distinguish the brand – like Kodak have created, or abbreviating the name – like we have done for The Niche Vehicle Network, the brand is still recognised at each state.

 

As mentioned earlier on, the events from previous years have changed the way businesses in all sectors around the world communicate with their consumers, and looking through all these trends and their examples above, we can see a crossover with many companies already within their styles.

We hope this year brings more positivity, and the upcoming design trends look to reflect this with more visual aspects; from more inclusive representations to nostalgic and vibrant bold colours, inspiring well-being and happiness.

 

 

References:

*The 12 Best Things That Have Happened in 2021 So Far — and How We Can Keep Making Progress (globalcitizen.org)

27 Jan
2022

Top 5 Social Trend Predictions for 2022

by Charlie Jones | in Social Media | on 27 Jan 2022

Following on from our last blog – Social Media in 2021, we wanted to have a look at what social trends are predicted for the next 12 months.

Here are our top five social trend predictions for 2022.

TikTok

We may as well start with TikTok, as it seems to be the most common answer when researching social trends for 2022.

As mentioned before, TikTok’s rise in popularity just keeps on growing and doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon. In fact the short-form video platform is setting the trend for other social platforms, forcing them to create new features (such as Instagram Reels) that are similar to TikTok’s own.

What may have started out as a social platform for general entertainment use, is now used by a wide audience, including businesses in a variety of industries.

Plus, with so many editing tools, TikTok is a great way for a business to get creative and experiment in using video as part of their content creation.

Video

Video content for socials has been on the rise over the last couple of years, but with TikTok being so popular, videos are now THE go-to when people are scrolling through platforms.

Whether it be Facebook, Instagram, or any other of the big social media channels, they are all developing their features to include both long form and short form videos.

Creating a video that is 15-60 seconds long, could generate way more engagement than a standalone image.

Your video content doesn’t need to be all bells and whistles or recorded on a super fancy camera either! A simple video recorded on a mobile phone device can actually come across as more ‘personable’ and ‘relatable’ to your audience.

Bite-sized Content

We live in a world where everything has become overcrowded, and that includes our social platforms. With so many connections to different people and organisations, it can be hard to not only grab someone’s attention whilst they’re scrolling, but to keep the attention too!

That’s why bite-sized content is becoming another main focus for social content.

No one seems to have the time to read long blog posts anymore (if you’ve made it this far in the blog, bravo!). Audiences want to know what the information is and they want it there and then.

We’re not saying to cut out the long form content such as news and blogs but making quick and easy to read content is what will grab an audience’s attention on social media.

 

Inclusion & Diversity

Making social content inclusive is a must for 2022.

The social world is full of audiences of different ages, races, gender, religion and so on, and there is no ‘one box fits all’.

As humans, we need to appreciate and respect the diversity of others and do so by creating content that is inclusive.

However, being diverse and inclusive doesn’t mean jumping on a trending hashtag. Inclusion and diversion need to be a part of your business’ ethics and strategy – including your social strategy. Don’t just ‘talk the talk’, show your audience a commitment and the actions your organisation is taking.

Influencing & Collaborating

If a child told you 10years ago they wanted to be a social influencer when they grew up, you’d have probably laughed and thought it was a ‘silly’ job. Roll on 2022 and there are now millions of successful influencers all over social media (probably including that child from 10years ago!).

Influencers have changed the shape of social media and have forced brands and marketing teams to change their ways of promoting.

Most successful influencers have a niche, whether that be fashion, travel, food, or fitness, and the brands/products they share to their socials are seen by vast audiences.

But it isn’t all about the number of followers. It’s important to pick the right candidate for the item/experience being promoted. If a brand decides to collaborate with an influencer, concentrate on their voice and morals rather than how many people follow them.

To Conclude

There is a lot to come for 2022 in the world of social, and these are just some of our predictions for now! We’ll take another review in 6 months time to see just how our predictions played out, and what other trends may be on the horizon for the second half of the year.

If you would like a hand in building a social strategy, and/or would like someone else to take the reins in your social media management, drop us an email! We have supported numerous businesses over the years with their social content, helping them to grow their social presence whilst developing their strategy over time, following the trends of online content.

18 Jan
2022

Social Media in 2021

by Keely | in News, Social Media | on 18 Jan 2022

There are now 4.55 billion people around the world who use social media, with 400 million of those having joined social media platforms within the last 12 months!

Social networks are constantly evolving and growing in popularity with different demographics, so we decided to look at how 2021 played its part in the world of social.

 

Top 5 Most Popular Social Networks (in Millions)

  1. Facebook 2,895
  2. Youtube 2,291
  3. WhatsApp 2,000
  4. Instagram 1,393
  5. FB Messenger 1,300

Facebook takes the top spot in being the world’s most popular social network as of 2021* (but we aren’t completely shocked by that are we!) with the world’s most famous video platform – Youtube, following in at number 2. Facebook, or Meta should we say, also own WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, who likewise appear in the top 5 most popular social networks in the world.

 

Why People Use Social Media

According to data*, the main reason people use social media is to keep in touch with family and friends, but a high percentage of people also admit to using social media just to kill time (the perfect opportunity to grab your audience with social marketing!).

  • Some other reasons included:
  • Reading news stories
  • Finding funny/entertaining content
  • Trending topics
  • Finding Inspo
  • Searching for products to buy
  • Sharing and discussing opinions

Among these main reasons, over 20% of people reported that they use social media to follow celebrities and influencers.

 

Where to Find the Latest News

Social media channels of course!
In a survey* taken in July 2021, respondents were asked how they access news content. A whopping 82% of them said they mainly found out news from online media, including social platforms, with television coming out at 64%.

 

What Major Changes took Place in 2021

Short-form video has pretty much taken over social in the last 12 months, with all the big platforms making changes and updating their apps to follow suit.

Some other big words you may have come across last year, especially in the last 6 months, are ‘metaverse’ ‘NFT’ and ‘Web3’. Not everyone is jumping on board with these yet, but they are certainly something to keep an eye on in 2022 (we’ll talk more about this soon! Watch this space).

E-commerce, through the use of social networks is on the rise! With so many influencers now promoting products, it’s no surprise that platforms are now introducing shoppable features.

So, what have some of the social platforms done to keep up with these up-and-coming trends? And what other major things happened in 2021?

TikTok

If you hadn’t heard of TikTok in 2020 then we are sure you heard of it in 2021. TikTok became a huge hit during 2020 when Covid-19 had everyone cooped up at home, and since then has continued to reign as one of the fastest growing social networks.

Known as the king of short-form video, TikTok has influenced some of the biggest trends across other platforms.

As the network continues to grow, and with the additional long form video and ads feature to help boost content, people predict more and more users will use the video-sharing app to influence consumer purchasing.

Facebook

As mentioned in the Top 5 Most Popular Social Networks, Facebook changed their name in 2021 to ‘Meta’, as they begin their journey into building their own metaverse.

Facebook also seen the success of short-form video across the web, and therefore introduced Facebook Reels.

Although it may be the most popular social platform in the world, Facebook had a data breach in 2021 which leaked millions of user records onto the dark web*.

The breach included phone numbers, names, locations, and email addresses of over 500 million users across 106 countries.

Although Facebook said the data had been scraped in 2019, the leaked data could still prove valuable to cybercriminals*.

Twitter

It was a year of successes and not so successful features for Twitter in 2021. Towards the end of 2020, the platform tried to introduce it’s own short-form video feature called ‘Fleets’, similar to the ‘Stories’ feature on Facebook and Instagram. However, it was unsuccessful and was removed from Twitter in August 2021.

There were some features that did take off on Twitter though:

Spaces – Spaces allows users worldwide to join in with live conversations from creators. The feature concentrates on the use of audio content, which also leads onto Twitter’s other new feature…
Voice Tweets – This could be the feature a lot of people have been waiting for! No more having to worry about character count, you can literally and physically just SAY what you’d like to tweet.

LinkedIn

Likewise to Twitter, LinkedIn didn’t have much success with their ‘Stories’ feature, so was removed from the platform a year after its introduction.

They did however, introduce ‘Boosting’. This allows its users to boost organic posts to try and achieve greater engagement using a chosen budget.

YouTube

Having seen TikTok’s achievement in short-form video, YouTube (pretty much the over-all king of online video), developed their YouTube Shorts – videos that are 15 seconds or less and can be uploaded to YouTube instantly. Will it take over TikTok? We’re not sure, but we’ll soon see throughout 2022!
‘Video Chapters’ has been another development in the platform, helping an audience to skip to certain sections of a video, without having to fast-forward or rewind a whole video to find a certain video clip.
Influencers are a huge part of social media now, promoting products and brands within their content. With this in mind, YouTube have introduced Live Shopping as a part of its e-commerce shopping experiences.

 

To Conclude

Every year, social media gets bigger and bigger, and won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

With a forever changing landscape and multiple up-and-coming trends, platforms are constantly developing to keep up with the times and compete against each other to be the most used platform online.

Now here’s to 2022 on social…

 

 

*Research/data taken from the following sources
 https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
 https://www.statista.com/statistics/715449/social-media-usage-reasons-worldwide/
 https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/
 https://www.thedrum.com/news/2021/12/10/2022-social-media-predictions-tiktok-nfts-commerce-meaningful-engagement
 https://heimdalsecurity.com/blog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-2021-facebook-data-breach/
https://www.businessinsider.com/stolen-data-of-533-million-facebook-users-leaked-online-2021-4?r=US&IR=T
10 Nov
2021

FPC2022 Online Network Platform

by Charlie Jones | in Digital, News | on 10 Nov 2021

The Future Propulsion Conference goes Live with Their New Online Network Platform

When attending a network conference, the main aim is to of course network, but with so many people attending, it can sometimes be a little difficult to reach all the people you want to meet.

Due to this very reason (and because of GDPR rules), we designed an Online Network for FPC2022 purposely built to allow attendees to search and make new connections, from business card exchange to instant messaging.

Each person who registers for the event is then prompted to create their own profile and can select the topics areas they are personally interested in. From here people can then begin to network with other delegates, exhibitors, and speakers who will be attending the physical event in March 2022.

The platform will then also support the physical conference, allowing attendees to continue to network leading up to, during, and after the conference.

Visit FPC2022.

05 Oct
2021

What made the world stop?

by Keely | in Industry, News | on 05 Oct 2021

Many of us will have vowed to cut down on our social media usage at some point since it became a mainstay of our lives. But to have it taken away altogether yesterday for over six hours proved that it had become a vital underpinning of our modern society.

WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook (all owned by the latter) are used by over 3.5 billion people for both personal communication and core business activities – what made these apps all fail and halt everyday life for so many of us?

In an official statement, Facebook cited a faulty configuration change for the outage, but what does this technical jargon actually mean?

 

There are two key aspects to internet routing when dealing with a company as large as Facebook – BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) and DNS (Domain Name System). We can think of BGP like a road map detailing the best way to get to a particular site, with DNS acting as an address system detailing to location (IP address) of each website. While smaller websites do not take charge of their own road map and address system, Facebook have a whole world of connectivity that they maintain themselves. This, as we can see, complicated matters.

All software systems need regular updates to continue running effectively, but when Facebook deployed their latest update yesterday, they effectively told the BGP ‘road map’ to remove all paths to Facebook. This then meant that there was no way to find each website address.

This affected everything that Facebook runs, so WhatsApp, Instagram and even Facebook’s internal servers; employees were locked out of access-controlled offices and had no access to email!

So that of course made it a challenging problem to fix. The people who could diagnose and sort it were both physically and remotely shut out.

While it hasn’t been confirmed, Facebook eventually had to physically travel to and manually reset the servers in California.

Most of us woke up this morning with relief to see our favourite apps fully functional again, but we’re sure that at Facebook everyone is focused on making sure this doesn’t happen again.

 

27 Sep
2021

Why is web accessibility important and how is it carried out?

by Keely | in Digital, Industry | on 27 Sep 2021

Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them.

There are also strong business benefits for accessibility. Accessibility modifications overlap with other best practices such as mobile web design, usability, design for older users, and search engine optimization (SEO). This means that accessible websites have better search results, reduced maintenance costs, and increased audience reach, among other benefits.

So, what can we think about when we build our websites to make them more accessible? We’ve come up with a list here of the things we like to bear in mind; even implementing just one or two into your own site will make a massive difference!

1. Alternative text for images

Images should include equivalent alternative text (alt text) in the markup/code. The alt text should summarise the purpose of an image. The source filename of the image should not be included because generally it is not useful to a visually impaired user.

2. Transcripts for audio

Providing a text transcript makes any audio information accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as showcasing it to search engines and other technologies that can’t otherwise hear.

3. Keyboard input

It must be possible to use all of your site’s major features via a keyboard – including accessing all pages, links, content, and so on.

4. Choose colours carefully

Colour-blindness spans a wide spectrum and affects different people to varying degrees. So, you need to make sure the colours you select on your site contrast well to ensure that everyone can distinguish between various elements on the page.

 

5. Use headers to structure content

Adding different header levels will make your content much easier to understand and improves the flow of the page. This will also help screen readers interpret your pages.

 

6. Underline links

Even though it may look stylish, removing the underline from links makes it difficult for colour-blind users to see them. So, we need to make sure that links are underlined where possible.

 

7. Use relative CSS units

Low-vision users, and a lot of people over 50, increase the browser default font size to make text easier to read. Absolute units such as pixels ignore this user choice. If we use relative units like EM and percentages however, they re-size according to the screen size and/or user’s preferred font size and work on a large range of devices.

 

These are just some of the many ways we can think about making our websites accessible. To learn more check out W3C’s comprehensive guide, or contact us today to see how we can help you to help others.

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21 Apr
2021

AI in Marketing

by Keely | in Industry, Marketing | on 21 Apr 2021
Artificial Intelligence is transforming the world around us every day, with all industries developing new innovations to change the way they work. It has been a massive buzzword over the past few years, and it seems that nowadays we can’t be without it. But how is it changing the marketing industry in particular?

What is Artificial Intelligence?

First, we need to define what we mean by AI; by now everyone’s got their own definition, but IBM provides a comprehensive one:
“artificial intelligence refers to the ability of a computer or machine to mimic the capabilities of the human mind—learning from examples and experience, recognizing objects, understanding and responding to language, making decisions, solving problems—and combining these and other capabilities to perform functions a human might perform, such as greeting a hotel guest or driving a car.”
So, it’s easy to see why some people are terrified of AI ‘taking everyone’s jobs.’ AI does have the capability of automating all manner of tasks conventionally part of many roles, but this does not mean that people will be redundant. In fact, it will allow individual to focus on more intensive activities, while leaving the tedious tasks to an AI system. There is no doubt a lot of these in marketing. AI systems also have the capability of processing an incredible amount of data, producing tangible outputs that marketeers can then use to generate leads. So, what are the specific ways that AI is being used today in marketing?

Advertising

With the right data, AI-powered ad tools can detect patterns at scale in your advertising data, then predict what changes to campaigns will improve performance against a specific KPI. This can all happen in seconds, rather than the hours, days, or weeks it might take a human to analyse, test, and iterate across campaigns. This allows you to increase your return on ad spend and reduce the amount of money you spend on staff time and ineffective ad budget.

Copywriting

AI has the potential to both curate and generate content, then get the right people to see it on the right platforms. At the moment this is limited in range, but in the near future AI could develop initial drafts of content based on certain restraints

Personalised recommendations

Intelligent algorithms can help personalise a user’s website experience – By analysing hundreds of data points including location, demographics, device, interaction with the website, etc., AI can display the best-fitting offers and content
 

Chat bots

Compared with manual customer service, AI chatbots have many advantages, allowing businesses to go beyond the traditional “one- to-one” form of customer service to support to a number of customers at the same time and in different time zones. Of course, AI chatbots don’t need to rest, so they can answer customer queries around the clock and in real time. This makes them both highly efficient and able to provide support outside of office hours, improving customer experience.

It does have to be said though that just because a system uses AI doesn’t mean it’s accurate. AI outputs are only as good as the inputs into the system. If the data it is given is inaccurate, not fit for purpose or too sparse, the system cannot be expected to give good results. Nevertheless, it is an exciting field and worth the hype!
06 Apr
2021

22 years of PDC

by Keely | in Industry | on 06 Apr 2021

Introduction

PDC is a digital agency that has been trading since 1999 & generates revenue by developing bespoke marketing websites & digital platforms. With more than 20 years of experience in the digital world, our passion drives us to build online experiences that have maximum impact and relevance, enabling customers to make real connections with their audience.

We are ‘technology-driven’ and ‘relationship oriented’. We love to build strong ongoing relationships with our customers and their companies.

 

Early days

PDC was founded on 7 April, 1999. In those early days we were focussed on providing web sites and web knowledge to local companies. Some of our early customers, like the Lingerie Company, are still with us 20 years later.

The stimulus of working with lots of interesting companies on a variety of industry sectors was really gratifying, spanning everything from balloon rides to bespoke floor coverings

Training and SEO

Early on, we provided training in Business Development for what is now Birmingham City University, and the Fachhochschule (technical university) Braunschweig Wolfenbüttel in Germany.

In those days Altavista and Yahoo! were the main search engines. Before Google, choice of keywords, good keyword placement and keyword meta-tags were all important. Google gradually grew in popularity and began to dominate the process of search engine optimisation by 2005.

Google introduced the concept of ‘Content is King’, and aimed to give the searching customer what they were looking for. This meant that Google connected the customer with the most valuable web site.

Facebook and other social media were becoming very popular by 2010 and formed part of a strong Internet marketing strategy. At this time, we were training companies in Internet Marketing and Social Media and this led to many fruitful relationships.

A battery of SEO measurement and optimisation tools became available. The MOZ SEO suite started in 2004, Google Analytics started in 2005, Hubspot in 2006 and SEMRush in 2008.

Creating attractive web sites and social media pages for customers, we have been using these tools to provide SEO and content development to small and large (national) companies ever since to achieve very high visitor numbers and remarkable conversion rates.

We have created valuable content around such diverse topics as:

  • Cyber security
  • IT in education
  • Damp proofing and rising damp
  • Hospital, library and business removals
  • Low carbon vehicles 

 

Web Portal Administration Suite

PDC designed a set of bespoke, specialised software products (web portal, members’ area, CRM, e-commerce, document repository, collaborative workspace, document review area, meeting organiser, SEO, etc.) to meet evolving client requirements.

This capability allows us to build long-term relationships with clients by providing a comprehensive suite of front-end and back-end digital solutions.

In 2000 we implemented a web portal and members area for the British Technical Council, now known as The BTC Testing Advisory Group, which serves the motor and petroleum industries. BTC is still a customer with us today.

In 2001 we provided a portal and members area for CEC, the Coordinating European Council, developing performance tests for fuels, lubricants and additives for the automotive and petroleum industries.  This portal serves many companies from Texas to Japan and all over Europe.

We have since developed members areas for many associations and research organisations. Most of our contacts at CEC and BTC are large companies, and we are very comfortable working in this environment.

The size and significance of our customers is important to the reputation of a growing company like PDC. A contact made at CEC led to a project for BP, one of the largest companies in the world. We had to create our design solutions in line with BP’s design guidelines.

 

Technical Network

Then, in 2008, we were asked to take on the CEC Test Monitoring System (TMS). This online system monitors several rig and engine database CEC tests. This makes it easy to capture and analyse real-time reference test data and is key to maintaining test quality.

Members can display, analyse and compare reference test results in graphic format across all key test parameters, making this a powerful tool for monitoring test quality against ISO 17025 and spotting data trends.

 

Research Network

The techniques and facilities that we had developed with CEC and others enabled us to make a bid for the SMMT Foresight Vehicle project. Foresight Vehicle at the time was the UK’s prime knowledge transfer network for the automotive industry, administered by PDC for SMMT

The Foresight Vehicle R&D programme aimed to promote technology and stimulate suppliers to develop market driven enabling technologies for future motor vehicles (cars, taxis, HGV’s, buses and light commercial vans).

PDC then became involved with the Centres of Excellence for Transport Telematics and Low Carbon and Fuel Cell Technologies (Cenex). The latter is still highly productive in this field.

We assist Cenex in organising the UK’s largest Low Carbon Vehicle (LCV) event, providing an ideal platform for UK capabilities to showcase and engage with informers to discuss emerging technologies, industry issues and what the future holds.

PDC was involved with the relevant Knowledge Transfer Networks KTNs, and at one time we were moderating the Low Carbon KTN. Also, we have provided an online platform for many research and technology demonstration projects and also managed the funding and approval process.

 

Design

In the early years we established how to design attractive and effective web sites, getting the visitor to the sales proposition within two clicks, and making it easy for customer then to respond.

Selling commercial vehicles for Lex Group/ RAC was a significant exercise. For Finning CAT we were selling a variety of used heavy equipment like excavators, dozers and backhoes and wheel loaders in four languages, using database lookup tables

In addition to our own excellent design capabilities, we have provided a technical service to design houses, to realise their original designs and layouts as web pages. We have worked with several design houses in London, and as far as Australia. We’ve also worked in Japan and China on low carbon web sites, albeit without leaving Market Bosworth.

Our first printed documents were the Foresight Vehicle Technology Road Maps, from 2004 on. We expanded our design for print capability to include conference volumes for  Low Carbon Vehicles and Future Powertrains, among others. And, in due course, we have designed vehicle liveries and exhibition stands. 

 

SIMPLE

PDC has been engaged with several Universities, most recently Imperial College, Birmingham, Leicester and Derby  Universities. PDC have been researching with the latter two to develop and create a Digital Platform, integrating multiple services into one single solution to become the market leader for small business and project development.

PDC will provide an affordable, superior alternative by automating and ‘modularising’ our bespoke front-end and back-end solutions. This will allow customers to choose and instantly activate digital solutions as required (e.g.: create a marketing website or activate additional services such as SEO, CRM or a document repository, etc.). The internal project name is ‘Project Simple’.

 

e-conferencing

In the lockdown, many of the conferences and exhibitions that PDC usually support could not go ahead onsite. PDC developed a solution for an online event, in a new novel format with themed sessions scheduled across multiple days. This was not just a webinar but a conference with chairperson, speakers and Q&A sessions. Members were invited to make a company capabilities pitch, followed by facilitated networking which helped members make valuable new business contacts.

 

After 22 years, PDC is still technology-driven and people-oriented. We continue to renew and develop our products, and to respond to market opportunities. We have relationships with customers in a spread of industry sectors. Many of our customers are friends, and many of our friends are customers.

 

 

 

25 Mar
2021

Improving engagement with your LinkedIn content

by Keely | in Marketing, Social Media | on 25 Mar 2021

Your LinkedIn feed is probably packed full of insights from companies and people, and it can seem like a mystery as to how some content gets to appear at the top of your feed. Meanwhile your carefully crafted content never seems to get any engagement. While there is no silver bullet to perfect engagement, there are some methods you can use to increase the chances of your content getting seen:

Publish content within LinkedIn

  • The LinkedIn algorithm favours content that keeps users on the platform over content that sends them elsewhere. So, add videos using LinkedIn’s native video uploader rather than YouTube for example and publish articles within LinkedIn rather than linking out to an external blog.

Use captions

  • Most people will be watching videos with volume low or turned off, so it is important that they are able to still understand what is being said.

Publish both posts and articles

  • A post view can just be someone scrolling their feed and not looking at the post, whereas people have to physically click a link to view an article. This is a greater indicator of active engagement.

Track comments

  • Comments, rather than views, are a better indicator of the success of your content as this shows that people are actively engaging with your content rather than scrolling past it.

Utilise text-only posts

  • Text-only posts have been found to outperform every other content format, so it would be useful to prioritise these in your content plan. Also making text-only posts visually appealing – by adding emojis and bullet points, for example – increases engagement

Use hashtags

  • The more you use hashtags on a LinkedIn post, the better it categorises content and highlights relevant posts to each user. This will increase your reach and ensure that your posts are being seen by the right people
  • You can also pin hashtags related to your industry to see the latest updates on your newsfeed. This will allow you to connect and engage with others in the industry.

Encourage early engagement

  • If no one reacts to your posts within the 60 minutes of posting, then the chances are it won’t perform well. Try to get 20 reactions or comments in the first hour of a post’s life by encouraging employees to engage with the content as soon as it is published. You also need to make sure to reply to any comments on your post swiftly, as this engagement all contributes to the velocity of the post overall.

 

The best time to post

A bit of experimentation is always required to find the best engagement time as no one business will have exactly the same client base/demographic. Having said that, we can make an educated guess as to when there may be more traffic:

Working hours

As LinkedIn is a professional network, its users tend to browse their feeds during the prime working hours of 9am to 5pm. So, it’s best to post during these hours especially in the morning, as people are more likely to have time to log on before getting stuck into their daily tasks.

Commuting hours

In the same vein, another potential target is commuting time – 8am-9am and 5pm-6pm. As people are getting ready or winding down many will scroll their LinkedIn feed to stay on top of industry updates.

As you can probably imagine then, there tends to be less engagement with posts on the weekend and evenings. It is also probably better to avoid posting on a Monday too, as people tend to be too busy catching up from the weekend to have time to spare on social media.

Remember that these are only guidelines – depending on your business you may find that your post engagement bucks these trends entirely! But they are a good starting point to go from.