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This Week In Digital Marketing 24-28 Oct: Google Considers Yahoo Bid, How To Devise A Psychology Based SEO Strategy and Marketers Seek To Better Measure Social Success
October 28, 2011 by Sean Lewis
This week in digital marketing Google introduces support for Google Apps accounts in Google+, how to devise a psychology based SEO strategy, marketers seek to better measure social media success and Google are said to be considering a bid for search engine rival, Yahoo.
Google Adds Support For Google Apps Accounts And Releases More Features For +
Google Plus adds support for Google Apps accounts, this means those without @gmail.com accounts can now sign up to the social network. To turn on the ability to join the Apps account administrator must do so through the Google Apps settings. Google have also said that they will be releasing an account merging tool, to allow users with existing Google+ accounts to merge accounts so that they don’t have to use two. Also released today is creative photo editing, Google has provided various preset photo filters and ‘sticker’ type effects to liven up your photos. Mashable notes that the backend is likely that of online photo editing suite ‘Picnik’, which Google acquired last year.
Google Considering Bid For Yahoo
The Wall Street Journal reports from an insider that Google is considering a bid for Yahoo. The source states that Google has yet to put forward a formal proposal. Other companies interested in Yahoo include Microsoft and Alibaba with both companies believed to have put forward proposals. Though if Google were to follow through with their bid, the anti-trust proceedings that followed would likely cease the deal, due to Googles monopolisation of the market. Read the full report at Search Engine Watch here.
How To Devise A Psychology Based SEO Strategy
This article expresses the authors sentiment that SEO should not be ‘tacked on’ at the end of a website build, SEO is not purely a technical aspect of building a website. The author argues that good SEO is the art of understanding what each page on a websites purpose is, and creating the SEO experience from there. SEO is about human behaviour, what specific keywords is the user searching for, what do they expect when they arrive on the page, is you content ‘Likeable’, How will your SEO boost sales. Read the rest of this insightful article here.
Marketers Seek To Better Measure Social Media Success
This study from eMarketer surveyed CMO’s from organisations around the world to see how they were handling social media tracking. 65% of CMO’s have said that they aren’t measuring leads from social media, the 35% that do are tracking in many different ways. There still doesn’t appear to be one stand out statistic that is used to evaluate social success. The number of friends, followers and likes are currently the most popular measure with 69% of marketers utilising this. While sharing, forwarding and retweeting are the second favourite with 39% of marketers measuring this. Read the article in it’s entirety here.
On A Lighter Note…
Google Analytics have released a hilarious ad through YouTube, poking fun at the internet checkout process.
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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 10-14 Oct: What do Facebook Users Expect When They Like Your Page? 3 Tips To Use Social Media For Customer Service And What Is The Most Effective Anchor Text?
October 14, 2011 by Sean Lewis
This week in digital marketing we find out what Facebook users expect when they like your page, 3 tips to use social media for customer service, a Google engineer accidentally makes a public rant about the company and its social media network and what is the most effective type of anchor text to link back to your site with.
What Do Facebook Users Expect From Brands
Data from research agency Exact Target has provided insights into why Facebook users like or don’t like, brand pages. eMarketer has dived into the statistics to see what conclusions can be made, if any. One intriging question was why a consumer would not like a brand page, 54% of respondents said they ‘Don’t want to be bombarded with messages or ads’, close behind this 45% said they don’t want to give companies access to their private information. This last point raises questions about the long standing Facebook privacy issues and shows that consumers still have very little faith in Facebook as a secure site for their information. Interestingly, 23% of users ‘Don’t see the benefit’ of liking a brand page, is this the fault of poor offers from brands or stubborn consumers? Read the rest of the article at eMarketer here.
Google Engineer Accidentally Makes Rant About Google Public
Google senior engineer, Steve Yegge, made the mistake of setting a rant on Google and it’s social media platform public allowing whomever pleases to view the post. He waxes lyrically on about how Google fails to understand platforms and slags Google+ as a failure mere weeks after it has opened to the public, calling it a “pathetic afterthought”. He has since made a public statement on his Google+ page (intentionally this time), apologising to everyone and explaining his actions. Recently, Larry Page announced that 40 million people are now connected to the social network. Though how many people make an account and never go back seems to be very high from my own experiences.
Which Is The Most Effective Type Of Anchor Text?
SEOmoz conducted an experiment on the effectiveness of different types of anchor text recently and have posted the results on their blog. The tests take 3 brand new websites with very similar urls and posts links back to them with varying anchor text. The first example uses the common ‘Click here’, ‘See Here’, ‘This’, the second URL uses the same the same keyword rich anchor text on every link, ‘Orange Mega Sweets’. Finally the third site uses a variation of anchor text with the keywords, ‘Orange Sweets’, ‘Mega Sweets’, ‘Sweets’ etc. Eventually, two of the sites ranked first and second for the term ‘Orange Mega Sweets’, with the ‘Click here’ site falling from first to out of the top 50 results. Read the rest of this great review here.
3 Tips To Use Social Media For Exceptional Customer Service
Social Media is an important tool in engaging with customers whether pleased or displeased with your services. This article provides a few tips to take advantage of your social media presence, allowing you to provide your customers excellent customer service that will leave them blown away! The first tip says to monitor all your accounts, don’t simply make them and think that’s all you have to do, interact with your customers, it isn’t a one way street. Make sure the customers know you’re ‘listening’ and respond in a calm and polite manner. See the other two tips at the HubSpot article here.
12 Reasons Your Business Blog Is Failing
A business blog can be a great way to drive traffic to your site and engage your customers or stakeholders. Positioning yourself as an industry expert and dishing out knowledge is a common way achieve results. This article from HubSpot provides 12 reasons your businesses blog may be failing to get results. A stand out point is the first one they make, simply, you may be talking about yourself too much. A news section is perfect for this kind of information, whereas the blog should be for sharing information that will provide a benefit to the party reading it.
On A Lighter Note…
This is a great kiwi video part of a series in which two young males go for an adventure around New Zealand in a campervan. The aim of the series is to encourage more young adults to hire campervans for road trips.
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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 19-23 September: Google+ Leaves Filed Trial, Nike’s Early Adoption of Social Media and 7 Tips for Optimising Facebook Pages
September 23, 2011 by Sean Lewis
This week in digital marketing Google+ opens to it’s doors, losing the invite-only field trial tag. Mashable has an interesting case study of Nike’s early social media campaigns. The location based social network, Foursquare, hits a milestone 1 billion check-ins and SearchEngineLand provide 7 SEO tips for optimising your Facebook page.
Google+ Opens It’s Doors
Google+ has released a raft of new features to it’s hangouts platform, providing the ability to participate from your Android phone, live broadcast your hangout, share your screen, edit documents and draw pictures! The masters of search have finally added it to Google+, allowing you to find personalised content. In the search results you will see your friends comments and posts if they are relevant to the search, as well as traditional search results from the web. But the big news is that the invite-only field trial is over, Google+ has finally opened it’s doors to the public. It will be interesting to see how many people make the move over in the coming months.
Nike’s Early Adoption Of Social Media
Nike was at the forefront of the Social Media movement, from harnessing the power of YouTube and viral videos to engaging with fans on one of the largest brand communities at the time. Nike was one of the first brands to use a viral video with the Ronaldinho cross bar video, the video took advantage of our desire to share things with our friends. The focused their initial strategies on growing users interested in Football, creating various localised communities for fans. This saw them leap to 23 million consumers across their platforms. After expanding to other sports they have active communties around the world with nearly 50 million consumers. Read about their latest campaigns over at Mashable.
7 Tips For Optimising SEO On Your Facebook Page
This article gives great tips for optimising your businesses Facebook page for search enignes. Optimising your page is an easy way to drive traffic to your page and website. Facebook has a number of features that you can take advantage of, for example a custom tab title on a Facebook page is seen by Google as a <h1> tag, so make sure to use a relevant, keyword rich title. Many Facebook pages have large, keyword rich images on custom tabs. But Google can’t read text within an image, so put your keyword rich text in the About and Info tabs instead. Read the rest of the tips at Search Engine Land here.
Google’s +1 Button Display Ads
Google has introduced +1 buttons for display ads across the web. If a friend has +1’ed the ad, a recommendation will appear next to the button, alongside the users profile picture. This is similar to Facebook, who allow you to ‘Like’ an ad. This move puts more emphasis on social ads that are used to varying degrees by Facebook, Reddit and Steam already. Perhaps the most important aspect of Google’s new social ads is the impact on SEM, friends are more likely to see the ad because recommendations figure high in Google’s search algorithms. As expected, advertisers can opt out of the program, as can consumers and publishers.
4 Mistakes Marketers Make With QR Codes
QR codes are a trendy way to market your product and get interaction in your campaigns. But as with any new tech, mistakes can be made. HubSpot acknoledges this and has highlighted 4 mistakes marketers can make in their use. QR stands for Quick Response, it seems therefore seems prudent to place QR codes in places where people are likely to go to the effort of scanning it. An example made is having your Facebook picture as a QR code, this isn’t efficient, instead of simply clicking a hyperlink the user must take out their smartphone, load up the app and take a picture. Direct the user to custom landing page, rather than your homepage, so that they receive relevant information about your product or campaign.
Foursquare Hits A Milestone
Location based social network, Foursquare, has hit a milestone of 1 billion check-ins across the globe. The news is astounding for the two and a half year old network, which currently reports to have 10 million users. We have yet to see Foursquare catch on in New Zealand, so it’s unlikely marketers here will need to incorporate it into their campaigns. Though it could still be useful for businesses doing their own marketing, with it’s self-service advertising platform.
On A Lighter Note…
The late American writer, Kurt Vonnegut, presents a short lecture on the ‘Shapes of Stories’. His presentation is fantastic, with a simple graph to depict the basic plots of stories, this video is well worth a watch.
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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
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