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Young & Shand is a Digital Marketing Agency based in Auckland, New Zealand. Founded by Ben Young & Duncan Shand we create and deliver remarkable marketing campaigns. With a word of mouth focus, we digitally leverage your marketing strategy to deliver customer engagement and business growth. Everything starts with a story so read ours.


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This Week In Digital Marketing 23-27 Jan: Social Media Giants Team Up Against Google, Paid Search Ads Bring In-Store Results and 9 Ways To Reduce Email Unsubscribes

January 26, 2012 by

This week in digital marketing Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other unnamed social media engineers came together to produce a bookmarklet protesting Google’s ‘Search Plus Your World’ algorithm change, Paid Search Ads Bring In-Store Results In Two Year Study, HubSpot provide 9 Ways To Reduce Email Unsubscribes and Reddit Hits 100,000 Concurrent Users without the use of a SEO or Marketing Plan.

Facebook, Twitter And Others Team Up To Release Anti-Google Bookmarklet

Search Engine Land logo

In an aggressive move to turn public opinion against Google’s new ‘Search Plus Your World’ algorithm change, Facebook, Twitter and other social media engineers teamed up to produce a browser add-on that changes the Google’s SERPs to include results from other social networks. The bookmarklet, named ‘Don’t Be Evil”, is Facebook and Twitters response to Googles corporate code of conduct that states they must focus on doing what’s best for the user, rather than what is best for the company. The ‘Search Plus Your World’ change is a blatant push towards increased engagement with Google+, and it will be interesting to see if Google look to incorporate other soical networks at some stage. Read the article here or try the bookmarklet for yourself.

Paid Search Ads Bring Big In-store Results For Retailers

Search Engine Watch logo

In a two year study conducted by Revtrax, a marketing analytics platform, results have shown that for every $1 of e-commerce revenue generated from the ads, retailers could expect another $6 of instore revenue. The study analyzed consumer purchases from a paid search ad. Consumers were presented with an advertisement that, when clicked, led to a printable or mobile landing page displaying a coupon with a unique barcode and online coupon code. Each unique barcode was tracked back to the search activity that drove the conversion. You can read the article in full here or the study here.

9 Ways To Reduce Email Unsubscribes

Hubspot logo

HubSpot has a number of tips to keep unsubscribes low, here’s 3 of my favourites. Segment your list into similar groups and send emails to subscribers which the email pertains to, people will likely unsubscribe when bombarded with information that doesn’t relate to them. Offer your subscribers alternatives to email. Not everyone enjoys emails filling up their inbox, so offer an RSS feed, link to your blog or your social networking sites, let them choose how to recieve information. Make sure your emails load quickly, people don’t have time to sit and wait for a large email to load, they’ll simply delete yours and move on, or worse they’ll get sick of waiting and unsubscribe. You can read the rest of their tips on their blog here.

Reddit Hits 100,000 Concurrent Users, Without An SEO Or Marketing Plan

Mashable logo

Increasingly popular social bookmarking site, Reddit, has topped 100,000 concurrent users. This comes a couple of weeks after achieving 2 billion pageviews from 35 million users in a month. What is interesting to note is this quote from Masahable: “Reddit’s growth is especially remarkable given the site’s lack of reliance on SEO, Facebook and Twitter. In a blog post celebrating its 2 billion pageviews, the site claimed it “doesn’t know anything” about SEO”. The site credits all it’s growth to word of mouth stemming from their passionate community.

On A Lighter Note…

Here’s a look at another of Google’s milestones, YouTube now has one hour of video uploaded every second. You can check out other stats at the specially made site, onehourpersecond.com.

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Ben is the Marketing Director at Young & Shand.

Phone: 09 308 6214   Email: ben.young@youngshand.com

Digital Marketer Interviews: Esther Goh of Idealog

January 25, 2012 by

Welcome to Digital Interviews – where we talk to people we admire about what’s hot in the world of digital marketing.

Esther Goh is the web editor at Idealog, the magazine and website for New Zealand creative business, ideas and innovation and is one of the largest circulating business titles in the country. Esther was previously a news editor at nzherald.co.nz, and has contributed to a range of print and online publications, including the Western Leader, Whakatane Beacon, Verve, Cafe Philosophy, slynkey.com, varsity.co.nz, and nzgirl.co.nz, basically mean she’s seen and written about it all and has some incredible insights into the world of digital media.

What digital changes this year have you really loved?

Tools to help navigate the overwhelming amount of content on social networks. Think the likes of Summify and Flipboard – curation upon curation. You can’t read everything that’s shared (nor would you want to) but that FOMO (fear of missing out) can be soothed with some technical help.

What new tools do you think won’t catch on?

Anything overly complex. Don’t try to do everything; keep it simple and do one thing well. If you can’t sum up your core proposition in one or two sentences, don’t expect us to pore over it trying to understand it. We want to know what you do and why it’s going to make our lives exponentially better. And if it doesn’t make my life easier… well, I don’t need any more distractions.

What’s the biggest challenge for people (both consumers and agencies) to embrace digital marketing?

Creating a cohesive strategy across platforms. Not jumping on every new thing – yes, keeping up with new tools and constant change, but not deviating from the overarching goal.

For consumers, it’s about compelling, genuine and relevant campaigns. There’s so much noise that it’s easy to ignore marketing messages in an age of increasing personalisation.

What’s your favorite digital campaign at the moment and why do you think it’s a success?

The Stay the Night, Steal the Art campaign is great, in which Australia’s Art Series Hotels challenged people to find and steal a Banksy painting doing the rounds of its branches. @stealbanksy tweeted hints, updates and failed attempts, and the full story/videos of the first successful heist are showcased on the hotel’s website. It’s fresh and dynamic and really plays into that subversive Banksy philosophy.

I also enjoyed Air NZ’s recent take on Cluedo – it was sticky, well-executed and a nice example of gamification. Everyone knows the classic whodunnit board game, and turns out it translated well into the digital realm.

Like what you read? Follow Esther on Twitter.

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Marian is a Digital Account Manager at Young & Shand.

Mobile: 022 063 3996   Email: marian.schembari@youngshand.com

This Week In Digital Marketing 16-20 Jan: 7 Mistakes On Your Business Blog, Gamification Livens Your Commute & Web Giants Fight SOPA

January 19, 2012 by

This week in digital marketing Mashable makes a few predictions of whats to come for Community Managers in 2012, HubSpot review 7 common mistakes that businesses make on their blog, 3 ways to overcome the dull commute with Gamification and web giants band together to fight SOPA & PIPA.

Community Management Predictions In 2012

Mashable logo

In this article from Mashable, some predictions are made on the relatively new ‘Community Manager’ role in companies with an online presence. With many new niche community networks popping up and gaining popularity like Pinterest, Instagram and Stamped, brands can gain a following and interact with their customers. Mashable predicts it will become more common for brands that are relevant to a niche network to have a presence. They also predict there will be more user generated content for brands, due to having tools that make it easier to create content. Read the rest of their predictions here.

7 Common Mistakes Your Business’ Blog May Be Making

Hubspot logo

Are you making common mistakes with your businesses blog? HubSpot have seen how easy it is to get wrong and have produced an article outlining 7 commonly made mistakes and easy solutions to remedy them. The first mistake was not having the blog integrated with the company website, this is the worst in my opinion (as an SEO). You lose a huge amount of keywords, views and most importantly, if someone were to link to your blog your business’ website, you wouldn’t gain the link. Publishing to much information pertaining to your own business is also a mistake. Your readers will get bored quickly and see your blog as simply an advertisement, try and write more educational or thought provoking content, relevant to your industry. See the rest of the tips here.

3 Ways To Overcome The Commuter Blues With Gamification

The Gamification.co blog has presented three ways to get over the commuter blues with these gamified apps and programs. The first implementation is a smartphone app called ‘Waze’ which incorporates crowdsourcing, location-based, and gamification and has become the top navigation app in Israel. Game mechanics encourage drivers to head down roads that don;t have traffic and road conditions and to report their findings back to the app. Other drivers can consult the app to see the most efficient route of travel. Another use of gamification is in new Ford vehicles which provides a visual representation of how efficient you’re driving the car, encouraging you to save gas. Sensors around the car send data (rain, traffic and fuel levels) to the program which processes it and calculates fuel efficiency and exports it into a graph. Read the full article here.

Wikipedia to Join Web Giants – Taking Action Against SOPA & PIPA

Facebook logo

Wikipedia is joining Mozilla, Imgur, Greenpeace, Reddit, WordPress and thousands of other sites in ‘blacking out’ their site on January 18th in protest of two anti-piracy bills, SOPA & PIPA, under consideration by the U.S. congress. Google have also taken action by placing a message urging users to contact congress on their homepage, directing them to this landing page. You can read more about why this bill is bad for the internet here.

On A Lighter Note…

This creative video was produced by the Google’s Maps team to promote exploring the city with their product.

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Sean is a Digital Account Executive at Young & Shand.

Mobile: 021 029 35410   Email: sean.lewis@youngshand.com

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