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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

This Week In Digital Marketing 5 – 9 Dec: Facebook’s New Design Change, 21 Types of Social Content to Boost SEO, Google Controls 44% of Online Advertising

December 9, 2011 by

This week in digital marketing Facebook unveils it’s overhaul of user profiles released first in New Zealand. Search Engine Land show us 21 Types of Social Content to help you boost your SEO. Google controls 44% of online advertising, a 10% increase since 2006. Finally, have a look at a cool new gadget from BERG studios coming in 2012.

Facebook’s Latest Design Change – Timeline

Facebook logo

The latest design change from Facebook was released on Wednesday night, initially in New Zealand and continuing to be rolled out across the globe. This change is a complete overhaul of Facebook profiles, allowing users personalisation, privacy options and a more omnivident view of their profile. Developers have had access to the timeline since it was announced a few months ago, but for regular Facebook users this will be the first time they see it.

21 Types Of Social Content to Boost Your SEO

Search Engine Land logo

Social content is a strong SEO strategy but it doesn’t always work. You need to provide valuable content that people in your niche want to read and share with their friends, unfortunately, this is usually not as easy as it sounds. Some examples of successful content that you can replicate are provided in the article, my favourites are: the Controversy, essentially writing a piece that your niche will create controversy, anger and follows and shares will follow. This is essentially trolling your niche, and it is very effective against passionate people. Another popular social content piece are Top X lists, these are effective because people will discuss why #1 didn’t deserve the spot or why Z wasn’t included. Read the article here.

Tips to Get Your Site Ranking Well In Local Search

Hubspot logo

This article from HubSpot provides useful tips and ideas to get your site ranking well in local search results. Local search results usually imply that a place name has been searched for such as ‘Drycleaners in Auckland’. One interesting statistic is that ‘20% of searches are for local information.’ that alone should tell you that local search should be a priority. Some of the better tips for local search include keyword optimising the 5 crucial on-page SEO elements, which are the page title, URL, header tags. If you haven’t got a Google Places page for your business, create one now. Google loves to feature these on the front page of local search results.

Google Now Controls 44 Percent of Global Online Advertising Market

Google logo

Data released by advertising and communications firm ZenithOptimedia, shows that Google now controls 44% of the global online advertising market. A rise of over 10% since 2006, which shows the increasing dominance of the search giant. Facebook had impressive gains with an increase from 0.2% in 2006 to 3.1% in 2010. An estimated 58% of new ad dollars is expected to come from developing economies, such as the BRIC group of countries and parts of Asia.

 

On A Lighter Note…

This cool printer from BERG Studios pairs with an iPhone app to create a customised print out. BERG have teamed up with The Guardian, Google, Nike, Foursquare and ARUP, to provide content for the printer, which will be released in early 2012.

Hello Little Printer, available 2012

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Ben is the Marketing Director at Young & Shand.

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

This Week in Digital Marketing #9: TrendWatching, Keyword Mistakes and LuckyRentals

October 2, 2011 by

In this podcast Ben Young & Duncan Shand of Young & Shand (youngshand.com) sit down to talk the latest digital marketing stories from around the world.

We’ve shortened the format a bit, so this week we’re talking about:

- TrendingWatching
- 6 Common SEO Mistakes
And about one of our recent campaigns for LuckyRentals

And of course our general banter! (more…)

Podcast: Download (41.8MB)

Podcast (audiopodcast): Download (8.2MB)

Podcast (videopodcastsmall): Download (41.8MB)

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Ben is the Marketing Director at Young & Shand.

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

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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