News

  • TBI Communications at ALPSP 2018

    TBI Communications has regularly attended the ALPSP annual conferences for the past ten years. The Conference has always offered a wide-ranging program, expert speakers and provides a friendly forum for everyone in the scholarly publishing community to share information and knowledge, learn about new initiatives and engage in open discussions on the challenges and opportunities in the industry.

    This year’s ALPSP conference had several sessions that stood out for us, one of which was the address by the keynote speaker Prof. Chris Jackson from Imperial College London. Prof. Jackson’s address titled ‘Adventures in Publishing’, gave a refreshing author perspective on several different topics and challenges in the industry. He had a strong message for the attending publishers and societies – which we thought he summarised nicely on this one slide.

    In particular his point about ‘building brand loyalty, and using it to attract and retain authors’, certainly resonated with us. Many societies and publishers we have worked with recently have recognised the importance of developing author loyalty programs to build brand recognition. The starting point for our work with them is understanding author behaviours, assessing the various challenges they face throughout their career stage – whether that’s securing funding, time management, or making their research discoverable. From this research, we develop messaging recommendations, a detailed plan of marketing activities and content assets to support our author campaigns.

    One of the other stand-out sessions for us was the ‘Tackling harassment and the roots of gender bias’ plenary session. The talks and Q&A really engaged people. If you would like to find out more about publisher initiatives in educating their staff – in order to manage effectively this sensitive topic, you can listen to this session here. A big shout out to ALPSP for organising this as a plenary session, and recognising its importance.

    In between the opening and closing sessions, we enjoyed the fun traditional quiz night, plenty of opportunities to socialise with our clients and colleagues in the industry, but certainly, the highlight for us was celebrating the success of one of our clients – Code Ocean winning this year’s ALPSP award for Innovation in Publishing! It was another great conference and we certainly look forward to the next one.

     

     

  • Shout out for our client Code Ocean

    We take pride in working with some of the most prestigious publishers, societies and technology companies within the academic publishing sector.
    Working alongside very smart people on very interesting projects and making a difference in the world of research, knowledge and scholarly communication is all extremely gratifying! When our clients receive recognition for their amazing work we really want to shout out and share our excitement – so we were absolutely delighted when Code Ocean received their well-deserved ALPSP award for Innovation in Publishing last month!


    “Code Ocean stood out as a shining example of a robust, well-executed, transformational solution to a real challenge for researchers, allowing them to build on the work of others more efficiently and therefore help to accelerate research” – said David Sommer, the chair of the judging panel and we couldn’t agree more.

    The winners of this prestigious award must demonstrate excellence in terms of originality and innovation, significance and value to the community, utility and long-term viability and Code Ocean truly achieved it all! We hope that we will continue supporting them on their mission to accelerate research and continue making a difference in the world of academic publishing and we are very proud to work closely with their amazing team.

    Here is a shout out too for the projects we’ve been involved in during recent months with our various partners:

    Digital Marketing Campaign Planning, Implementation and Reporting
    > Managing Google Display Network campaigns, optimization, and reporting
    > Researching media and social media channels for online advertising opportunities, placing ads, reporting on conversion
    > Targeted multi-channel campaigns to drive awareness and convert to readership/newsletter subscribers (email, social)

    Thought-leadership and publicity
    > Ghostwriting for a CMO in Marketing Tech Outlook
    > Press releases/content placement in industry news channels

    Market Research
    > Awareness and perceptions of Higher Education Course Materials Delivery Models
    > Brand perceptions of top scientific journals among researchers and librarians
    > Research programme to explore the market need for a potential new ‘gold-standard’ reference product in a highly targeted subject area.
    > Led the first membership research programme for an international membership organisation, exploring the relevance and visibility of the organisation to groups around the world

    General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
    > Advised several clients on best practices to ensure legacy customer and prospect data were assessed ahead of the General Data Protection Regulation coming into force, and helping establish GDPR-compliant workflows.

    If you would like to find out how we can help you accelerate your organisation’s growth don’t hesitate to contact us, we would be delighted to share our insights.

     

     

  • SEMrush – marketing toolkit for digital marketing professionals

    Here at TBI, it’s important for us to keep up with the latest technology developments in order to advise clients on tools that may help them achieve their goals. That’s why we were very excited to trial SEMrush recently, incorporating it in our day to day SEO and marketing activities!

    What is SEMrush? What does it do?

    SEMrush, simply, is an analysis tool, dubbed “all-in-one marketing toolkit for digital marketing professionals”.
    Keyword research, competitive audits, keyword tracking, social monitoring, and local listing monitoring are just a few of the features available.

    Keyword research to inform strategy

    Keyword research is extremely important in optimising your website pages to rank higher in both organic and paid search. Being able to see which keywords are driving to a specific domain, as well as the keywords that their competitors are ranking for, is invaluable to our clients, and with this data we’re able to assist in developing a truly competitive strategy.

    Social media insights

    As we manage social media accounts on behalf of our clients with SEMrush we can easily track the total engagement numbers, our best performing tweets, and any accounts that have mentioned us to boost our social media strategy. Again, data informs strategy and through the insights we are able to retrieve using the tool, we can advise on iterative improvements that deliver higher returns.

    Streamlined reporting

    We really appreciated the reporting features of SEMrush. The reports are fully customisable and use a simple builder tool to quickly make professional and data-rich reports in minutes.

    Contact us here to find out more about the digital marketing projects we’ve recently undertaken.

     

     

  • BrightonSEO

    “Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside. Oh, I do like to be beside the sea.” So sang our Marketing Manager, Amy Card, as she travelled to one of the largest bi-annual search marketing conferences in Europe last month – BrightonSEO.

    BrightonSEO is a one-day event that brings together experts in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, search engine optimisation (SEO), and digital marketing strategy with a strong focus on social media channels.

    Sarah Bradley, Head of Student Engagement and Communications at Oxford Student Union, spoke early in the day on her experiences of engaging “millennials” on social media. (Slides available here:https://www.slideshare.net/SarahMBradley1/getting-students-attention-on-social-media).
    Sarah has conducted several experiments over recent years, notably staging a week-long student takeover of the University of Nottingham social media channels. Her takeaways? Students are often labelled and pigeonholed – do make the effort to understand their circumstances and engage with their interests and the return on your time investment will be enormous.

    Another talk of note came from Stacey MacNaught, (slides:https://www.slideshare.net/staceycav/securing-your-links-before-producing-your-content-stacey-macnaught-brightonseo-september-2018) who shared her positive experiences in validating ideas for resource-intensive content pieces (such as market research) before investing in production. Pitching an idea to a journalist at the earliest possible moment enables testing of the potential reception to a piece, offers an opportunity to iron out potential pitfalls and can secure coverage in principle before you commit any resources to creation.

    From a search marketing perspective, a keynote from marketing, tech and start-up industry leader, Rand Fishkin, echoed the sentiments heard throughout the day with two difficult truths for marketers:

    1. It’s never been harder to earn organic traffic from the web’s major players.
    2. It’s never been more important to mark your website (and email list) the centre of your campaigns.

    Businesses must now actively include SEO and website performance as a priority in their digital marketing mix. At TBI Communications we are trialling various technology solutions that streamline website keyword auditing and tracking backlinks, just two pieces of an increasingly complex puzzle our clients are facing in an effort to keep their site in front of their customers. Events such as BrightonSEO enable us to advise clients on best practice and suggest new strategies that maintain their competitive edge.

    Contact us here if you would like to get a better understanding of how we can help you increase your organisation’s SEO performance.

     

     

  • Technology for Marketing at Olympia

    TBI Communications’ Marketing Manager, Amy Card, and Marketing Assistant, Rowan Banham recently attended the Technology for Marketing trade show held at Olympia London. The show is aimed at business leaders looking for large-scale marketing solutions for their enterprise.

    A busy program of seminars throughout the day offered many insights into the latest trends in customer engagement, advertising technology and content marketing strategy.
    Danielle Woolley, Head of Customer Success at Adestra, confirmed our understanding based on results delivered for clients that, though there is a tendency to favour the latest new technologies, email continues to deliver the highest return on investment when compared with other marketing channels. Dani stressed the importance of keeping the focus on the customer when building an email marketing strategy; in order to add enough value to make them want to engage, email marketers need to understand where the customer is in the life cycle and personalise the message accordingly.

    A large proportion of seminars at the event focussed on marketing innovation and content marketing strategies. David Coombs, Head of Strategy and Planning at Cheil, presented some eye-opening findings about changes to the SEO landscape as more consumers adopt voice search through AI such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. Using these AI devices in a more conversational, human way has changed the way consumers search, adapting keywords to fit the conversational tone of voice search. Marketers will therefore have to adapt their content strategy to be discoverable using this new search method, and will have to develop strategies to optimise their searchability.

    Rowan and Amy also took the time to speak with numerous vendors in order to stay up to date on the variety of solutions available to our clients. At TBI Communications we regularly offer strategic consultancy and work to help our clients understand what may be the best software solution for their particular needs. Please contact us to find out more.
    Live tweets from the event can be found at:
    https://twitter.com/hashtag/tfm18?vertical=default&src=hash

     

     

  • TBI are attending Frankfurt Book Fair 2018

    We’re looking forward to catching up with our friends and colleagues at Frankfurt Book Fair in a couple of weeks time. Contact Lynne Miller to book a meeting about our services and discuss how we can help you meet your business needs.

  • TBI will be attending the ALPSP 2018 conference

    We are very excited to be attending this year’s ALPSP conference and awards ceremony in Windsor! As always, the program looks set to deliver very interesting discussions and we are really looking forward to catching up with our partners in the industry. Contact Lynne Miller or Eli Markovska to book a meeting about our services and discuss how we can help you meet your business needs.

  • Approaches to member engagement: it’s a two-way street

    An engaged membership is essential in securing a society’s position in the future, but how do you develop an effective engagement strategy?

    Based on a recent presentation at the Society Street Conference last month, Lynne Miller talks about the importance of developing an emotional connection with your members, to drive engagement.

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  • TBI attending the ALPSP Seminar ‘The Power of Partnership and Collaboration in the Publishing Industry’

    Eli Markovska, Senior Manager Client Services, UK and Europe, is attending the ALPSP seminar ‘The Power of Partnership and Collaboration in the Publishing Industry’ on Thursday 12th July 2018, and will be happy to discuss how we can work together to reach your goals. Contact Eli at eli.markovska@tbicommunications.com.

  • GDPR – what next for publishers?

    TBI’s Anne Stone has recently published a guest post on the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s blog, the Scholarly Kitchen: GDPR Day Is Here – What Happens Next?

    Read the article for free to discover the ongoing impact of GDPR on the scholarly publishing landscape.