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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.
This Week In Digital Marketing 27 June – 1 July: Introducing Google Plus, Executive’s Realise The benefits Of A Social Strategy and LinkedIn’s Ad improvements
July 7, 2011 by Sean Lewis
This week Google launches it’s most daring venture into social media yet, with Google Plus. The platform has created a buzz around the internet with it’s ‘invite only’ launch creating a feeling of exclusivity, causing people all over the internet to bombard forums and blogs with Google Plus invite requests. We look at a new Facebook game that aims to increase employment and brand recognition for Marriott Hotels. We discover, there’s a greater incentive to advertise with LinkedIn as they roll out their new advertising features.
Introducing Google Plus
Google has launched their attack on Facebook with the new Google Plus project, currently in “limited field trial”. The launch comes with a lot of media pessimism on how successful Google Plus will prove to be, but for good reason, Google hasn’t had the best track record with it’s Social Media Projects. From the videos I’ve seen, this will be different. Google Plus has taken everything Facebook did OK and perfected it. From U.I. design to privacy tools, grouping of friends to chat. Google has done it better. The features of Google Plus are simple solutions designed to replicate real life interactions between family, friends and colleagues.
Marriott Hotels Develop Facebook Game for Recruitment
A recent survey of executives in medium to large enterprises, called the Jive Social Business Index, shows business leaders are aware of the benefits that social media can provide. One question asked to executives: “Will social media fundamentally change how business gets done?” resulted in 73% of participants agreeing with the statement. As a result of implementing a Social Business strategy: 62% of executives cite the potential to achieve “better customer loyalty and service levels” and 57% anticipate “increased revenue or sales”. The results indicate social media is becoming increasingly important to marketing strategy among businesses that want to improve consumer engagement and loyalty.
New LinkedIn Ads leverage Recommendations and Follows
LinkedIn’s new ad formats have been released to a small portion of members that include member activities, Facebook style. The new features include recruitment ads display you who could refer you, from your network, to the position. This helps employers get more leads for the positions they advertise. The second new format is LinkedIn ads, which shows how many people have recommended or followed the company. Adding credibility to the advertisers listing. The new ad formats bring challenges for LinkedIn around user privacy, and they’ve attempted to address the issue by allowing users to opt-out of appearing in Ads.
78% of Executives Say Having a Social Strategy Is Critical to Future Success
Joining a growing trend of Gamification, Marriott Hotels have created their own Facebook game. Their goal is to create brand awareness and fill about 50,000 positions in Marriott chains around the world. The game gives prospective employees the chance to manage a hotel restaurant kitchen. This includes hiring and training staff, buying equipment and ingredients and serving guests – all within a budget. Gamification is becoming increasingly popular with marketers, it allows them to engage consumers using the elements of games that make them fun.
7 tips to increasing facebook fans
This useful article from HubSpot, gives 7 practical tips to on how to increase your Facebook fans. Creating a custom user interface for Facebook, creating exclusive Facebook deals for fans and offering consumers a reason to become a fan are effective ways to increase your of fan base. Competitions are a great way to entice people to ‘Like’ your page, they generates buzz and give customers the chance to get something for free. Simply for clicking a button!
The iPad now accounts for 1% of global traffic
The iPad pumped life into the tablet market and just over a year after it’s release, now accounts for 1% global traffic and 2.1% of US traffic, according to NetMarketShare. An impressive feat for the relatively new product, given that Linux, the operating system, accounts for only 0.7% of global traffic.
On A Lighter Note
A very strange story involving a seagull and a GoPro video camera is emerging on the web. Understandably, the calls of “FAAAKE!!” from cyber detectives on YouTube have been superfluous, but according to the GoPro’s owner, the footage is 100% real. Well, if it is fake, the GoPro team have done an amazing job – but I’ll let you be the judge…
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Sean Lewis
Sean is a Digital Account Executive at Young & Shand.
Phone: +64 9 282 4680 Mobile: 021 029 35410 Email: sean.lewis@youngshand.com
This Week in Digital Marketing: Older Facebook Users ‘Liking’ Brands, Book Your Movie Tickets Through Facebook and Google Voice Search
June 18, 2011 by Joanne North
This week social media management software HootSuite launched some great new updates, giving you improved account scheduling control, and protection tools that help to prevent misfired updates. Statistics report that ‘Liking’ brands is beginning to catch on with older Facebook users, a movie company looks to take movie bookings through Facebook and are you preparing your business for social search? On a lighter note, Google’s new Voice Search feature might actually bring much more in the way of entertainment than use…
HootSuite Launches New Social Media Scheduling and Profile Protection Tools
HootSuite is great for social media management, especially when you need to manage multiple profiles. This week HootSuite introduced a few new publishing and security tools. These include improved social media scheduling, which enables you to schedule updates using drag and drop functionality with a calendar view. Another great feature is the addition of ’limited profiles’, which the enables the user to draft an update but prevents the update from going live without it being approved (handy for preventing inappropriate updates being made to the wrong account). If you are interested in giving HootSuite a go, then you can download it here.
Older Facebook Users Catching On to ‘Liking’ Brands
While took older web users a few years to get into social networking, now it appears that they’re getting into the social media habit of liking and connecting with brands online. The increasing engagement among older users suggests that it’s users of all ages whom are interested in connecting with brand pages (as opposed to it just appealing to younger people). Since April 2011, nearly half of over 55′s have been connecting with brands on Facebook, with 59% of adult Facebook having “liked” a brand as of April, up from 47% the previous September.
Odeon Takes Movie Bookings Through Facebook
UK cinema chain Odeon is developing a Facebook store that lets visitors purchase tickets without having to leave Facebook. Odeon already has an extensive Facebook presence, enabling users to watch trailers, win prizes, find cinemas and film times through its Facebook page. In addition, Odeon was also the first UK cinema chain to launch a ‘check-in deal’, offering customers free popcorn when they ‘checked in’ to the cinema. Facebook commerce is very quickly expanding into all areas, pretty soon the question will be what won’t we be able to do on Facebook?
3 Ways to Prepare Your Business for Social Search
Is your business ready for social search? Google is continually changing its search algorithm, and it has recently suggested that social search is only going to become more important, stating that they have ‘only touched on 1% of what they are capable of with social search’. Bigger focus on social search will mean that if you want to earn higher rankings on Google, you not only need to be creating high-quality content, you also need to be actively encouraging its sharing on the social networks. This article explains what you need to know, and do to prepare for social search.
10 Quick Fixes for Killer Landing Pages
Your company’s web site has a huge impact on the first impression your brand makes on a potential customer, so it’s important to maximise the likelihood that that impression is a good one. HubSpot has 10 quick fixes you can easily apply to your web site’s landing page to help with this. While the fixes are more directed towards landing pages that ask for lead information, many of them are universally applicable. One technique that we like to use is using a headline that lays out your offer up front.
Taking the Customer from Check In to Check Out Line
This neat piece from the NY times discusses two issues relating to “checking in”. The first is the implementation of checking in for online stores, i.e. checking in when you visit a web site. Web IM platform company Meebo will soon be implementing a feature that allows visitors to Meebo enabled sites to “check in” and receive VIP status and rewards – just as you would checking in to a physical store. The second issue is around converting check in’s to sales, which is becoming of increasing importance as checking in for checking in’s sake loses its sparkle. One issue marketers should explore to address this is the migration of offline loyalty systems to offline-online integrated loyalty systems.
On A Lighter Note
Google has launched a fun new feature, Google Voice Search.You can watch a video demonstration below, in which the feature performs rather well. However, you might find the results far more entertaining when you test it out for yourself here (perhaps it’s just not quite up to speed with the Kiwi accent).
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Joanne North
Joanne is the Digital Marketing Assistant at Young & Shand.
Mobile: 021 174 77 16 Email: joanne.north@youngshand.com
This Week in Digital Marketing 6 – 10 June: Google +1, Intel’s Museum of Me and Why You Need a Digital Experience Strategy
June 10, 2011 by Joanne North
This week we’re focusing in on Google’s new +1 button: What you need to know, and what you need to do about it. If you are in the social sharing game already then we absolutely recommend it, but even if you aren’t it does bring certain advantages over its Facebook and Twitter counterparts that make it worth considering. A couple of interesting digital campaigns also made it into this week’s round up, Intel’s Museum of Me and Orange’s ‘Tweet to movie voiceover’ converter. Both demonstrate very creative uses of digital media to stimulate consumer engagement.
Digital Coupons the Rise
Statistics from eMarketer report that the use of digital coupons is on the rise and forecast that this year nearly half of all online consumers will redeem a digital coupon. Many of these coupons will come from daily deal sites such as Groupon and Grab One, and market research company Morpace reported that 32.5% of [US] internet users have downloaded coupons from Groupon alone. In addition, a few interesting stats on the demographics of the ‘digital coupon consumer’ revealed that they have higher incomes on average, and that consumer who get their coupons from daily deal sites such as Groupon tend to be younger (in the 18 – 34 age bracket) than other digital consumer groups.
All about Google’s +1
The +1 button is similar to the Facebook and Twitter share buttons, except for the fact that its designed by (and for) Google. This means that instead of sending your “share” or “like” to your respective social media profiles, the number of people who have +1′d your site will show up next to you in the search results. Although Google has said that the number of +1s will not affect search rankings, it will affect how many people click through to your site from the search engine results. Adding the +1 button to your site makes it easier for users to +1 you, which in turn shows up in Google. This is why +1 is something you might want to consider adding to your web site. Setting up the +1 button is relatively easy. Google has created a tool that lets you create your +1 button from a number of sizes and styles, and then generates a code for you that you can cut and paste onto your site. Need more information? Check out this post from Google that includes a video demonstration of how the +1 button works.
Intel’s Museum of Me
Intel has launched a creative little project called the ‘Museum of Me‘ in a bid to show off the power of its Core i5 processers. The ‘Museum of Me’ connects to your Facebook account and builds a museum exhibition of you and your online activity. Once you go to to the site, and grant it access to your Facebook profile, you’ll be taken on a video tour of a museum exhibition that’s all about you – taking you through a collection of your photos, videos, links and posts. While this is pretty cool, it’s also good to know that the ‘Museum of Me’ only pulls data from what you’ve made public on your Facebook profile.
What are the ‘Quick Wins’ in SEO?
With any search engine optimisation (SEO) project there are always a few things you can do that are both quick to implement and give results. Econsultancy recently asked a number of its contributors what easy SEO techniques companies can implement to improve their search rankings. Suggestions include the use of online video, Google Places, making use of social signals and optimising for research queries.
Why Brands Need a Digital Experience Strategy To Stay Competitive
In the digital age companies are increasingly turning to the customer experience as a way to differentiate their brand from the next. This shift is being driven by the proliferation of wired mobile devices, giving consumers an increasing number of opportunities to interact with companies. However, problems arise when digital channels are used inconsistently, creating disjointed customer experiences. Thus, companies entering the digital space an overarching digital customer experience strategy to guide the development of digital channels. This is to ensure that all digital channels are kept in sync in terms of both how they look and how they behave. Need advice on where to begin? Have a read of this article (or feel free to talk to us).
Apple Unveils iOS5 Updates and New Features
The Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2011 had Steve Jobs reveal some very interesting features for its iOS family of devices with iOS5. Although Apple has its own page that covers the new and upcoming features, some of the ones we are really interested in are: wireless syncing to iTunes, better Twitter integration and a notifications centre that’ll keep you up to date with all goings on. Mobile marketers in particular are excited, as many of the new features mean increasing independence of the iPhone/iPad from the PC (and that’s short for ‘personal computer’).
On A Lighter Note
This is perhaps one of the most creative uses of Twitter we’ve seen. This neat programme by European telco ‘Orange’ converts your tweets into movie voiceover’s when you use the hash tag #thissummer. Watch the video below for a demonstration.
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Joanne North
Joanne is the Digital Marketing Assistant at Young & Shand.
Mobile: 021 174 77 16 Email: joanne.north@youngshand.com
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