Specialists in digital marketing, web applications and web design.
“The first major update since 2007″ Well, that’s what Google say, so it’s an indication of how important this could be for digital marketers. It was 2007 when Google launched Universal Search, how time flies. 2012 sees the launch of a new upgrade called Knowledge Graph. In this alert we’ve summarised what ... | Read more →
Generating ideas of content types to engage We’ve had this graphic on a Post-It note in our office for months; it’s a natural follow-on from our inbound marketing funnel infographic. We created it to help your own brainstorming on content ideas to engage customers and encourage sharing. Though we’re fans of Eloqua’s ... | Read more →
Are you taking apps seriously in your marketing? The big mobile manufacturer and software brands, like Apple, Google and Samsung, are adding more and more functionality to mobile phones. From games, to shopping, travel, social and even health. We also know that the by 2014 we’re expecting more surf time to ... | Read more →
Thinking like Sun Tzu to improve your strategic position This is the second part to last week’s interpretation of how Sun Tzu’s Art of War can be applied to digital marketing - thanks for the comments and shares on the first part! Here I’ll cover three ways in which applying Sun Tzu’s Art of ... | Read more →
What can an ancient text do to help your digital marketing? This is a question that Dave and I were discussing recently, and we decided the answer was “quite a lot actually” and that a fun and (hopefully!) interesting post might be useful. In this post, I’ll summarise broadly what I took ... | Read more →
Ideas for making Google Adwords ads more effective I’ve found when managing Pay Per Click (PPC), that it’s a channel, much like SEO, in that it attracts intelligent people to manage accounts and it can quickly become extremely complex. Alternatively, it’s easy to experiment in an No doubt you will have seen ... | Read more →
Using the LinkedIn Skills feature for career development or identifying influencers This is a relatively new feature in LinkedIn that pulls data from its now enormous user-base to create both an interesting and useful tool. In this post, I’ll first take a look at how the size and growth of different digital marketing ... | Read more →
Early studies reveal a mixed message Value: ★★★ Recommended link: Simply Measured Timeline engagement data Dave has recently covered 9 recommendations for the new Facebook Timeline pages for brands. These switched over on the 30 March 2012. The question is, has this new platform helped or hindered marketers? Some light is shed on this ... | Read more →
Google Targets Low Quality Sites Again Source : Google Inside Search Blog Importance : ★★★★ Our Commentary Google has started the rollout of a small algorithm update targeting poor quality websites. It’s been dubbed Penguin by SearchEngineLand. The techniques Google are targeting as part of this update are not new and Google has been combating them for ... | Read more →
The 4 most important tools for LinkedIn & your business LinkedIn is the most important social networks for B2B marketers who are taking online marketing seriously, particularly in the UK and US. LinkedIn now has an array of tools to help bridge the gap between the network and your own website, ... | Read more →
KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid A now established process within some of the world’s mega brands, social listening is now a highly competitive market in itself. With so many experts and software options it can be difficult to decide what option is best for you. While social listening creates many opportunities I believe it ... | Read more →
While researching for a presentation I was delivered for a client, I found these two videos from the Google Inside Search website which really made me sit back and realise how much the web, technology, marketing, and human interaction with technology has evolved, even in my relatively short career its has drastically ... | Read more →
Google Shares 5 Common SEO Mistakes This video was recently published on the Google Webmaster Tools blog. It’s a great insight for small businesses or those new to SEO about some of the common strategic mistakes made by website owners. The video concludes with 6 tips which I find most useful since ... | Read more →
Infographic showing the growth of Slideshare Here’s an interesting infographic from Slideshare, reminding us of their reach to professionals, and those marketing to professionals. Are you using Slideshare? Some of the active B2B marketers put it to really good use as an external hub for their content: See Eloqua, and the less creative Dell. 7 ... | Read more →
Are you dormant, testing, co-ordinating, optimizing or empowering? On Smart Insights, Paul Fennemore recently recommended his social media adoption framework which was popular, so I thought I’d alert you to a new approach to review social media maturity. Forrester have released a report that offers a social maturity model to help illustrate the ... | Read more →
A tutorial on reviewing consumer search behaviour in the 2nd Largest Search Engine in the World As you’ll know, YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google in many countries. It’s the number one ranked entertainment site and 3rd most visited in the UK by Hitwise. Given this and since popular videos ... | Read more →
Social Media is still a new and scary world to many people and companies. Its a relatively new tool to the marketing world which is, without doubt, changing the way we work and live. For small businesses, in particular, social media can be a daunting place. This crib-sheet from FlowTown is designed to help small ... | Read more →
Creativity paves the way to commercial success Let’s face it, in the grand scheme of things, people don’t care about brands that much, they care about themselves. As individuals busy in our own worlds, we care about what we want, need, worry about or want to solve. It stands to reason then, ... | Read more →
Not Provided search queries will affect how your report on your search engine marketing Source : Google Inside Search Blog Importance : ★★★★ Our Commentary A recent announcment on the Google Inside Search blog post confirmed Google’s plans to roll out encrypted search across local Google services (.co.uk, .fr, .de etc). You may recall this ... | Read more →
Are free press release websites worth using? The question of whether to use free press release websites is a common one amongst many hands-on marketers trying to get a benefit for SEO and PR… Quickly followed by how many of these should we use and is it worth paying? To help answer ... | Read more →
Tap into the potential of niche social media communities Social media marketing still represents a key opportunity for most of us, despite the hype that’s only been intensifying since 2009. You might feel you’ve missed the boat, that you should be doing more. Depending on your progress, your market and your competitors, ... | Read more →
It’s not all about you, you, you Marketing offers, hooks, lead generation or calls-to-action, whatever language you use, are fundamentally not about you. Although there is a LOT of discussion of page layout and call-to-action testing, for me this is the biggest block to get over. What I’ve observed in many ... | Read more →
4 Social Hub Examples As the number of social networks increases, brands have started to look at ways in which they can bring all their social networks into their brand owned websites. Contrast this with the more common situation where the only reference to social media on the main site are ... | Read more →
A review of the main web crowdsourcing services for marketing, design and development These service sound scarier than than the title suggests. I’m sure many consultants, agencies and companies are using services such as oDesk and 99Designs already. But I thought these were worth grouping and sharing for those not in ... | Read more →
A new infographic to help you create content people want to share Content marketing facts from the infographic 26% + of B2B marketing budgets are invested in content 79% of marketers use article publication as a tactic 52% use video 62% of companies outsource their content marketing Brand awareness and customer acquisition are the two main ... | Read more →
Inbound, content or social marketing - here's the blueprint We're asked a lot about the basics, the framework or the blueprint for content, inbound or social media marketing. Well - here's our answer in the form of an infographic. I wrote a lot more detail about this here on the Smart ... | Read more →
A short guide to help review if and how you use Pinterest Prompted by interest in my first post on the marketing opportunities for Pinterest a couple of weeks ago, I thought a more considered ideas post might be useful. So I’ve summarised the key points that I feel are relevant ... | Read more →
Social media’s rising star refers more traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined According to aggregated data from Shareaholic, Pinterest has had meteoric growth, accounting for only 0.17% of referral traffic in July last year, whereas today it’s 3.6% of referral traffic. Similar to Twitter, not great considering its comparative age. Of course, ... | Read more →
7 techniques to drive website interactions that generate leads and how to measure them We find that there’s lots of discussion online about how to reach and convert audiences, but not so much about encouraging the softer interactions. We reference this as “Act” within the RACE framework, it’s about encouraging interactions ... | Read more →
If you’re thinking of hiring an SEO or are an SEO – this is a must browse Earlier in January, you may have seen a useful piece of research completed by SEOmoz that looked into the costs and service structure of SEO agencies. I’ve included that below, but the main reason for ... | Read more →
Interesting online media trends for 2011 & 2012 Value/Importance: ★★★★ Recommended link: eFrontier Our commentary A fantastic report from eFrontier, looking back over 2011 and with an interesting outlook on 2012. The report covers, in great detail, the spending patterns globally and across multiple platforms (Google vs Facebook for example) for their client base. ... | Read more →
An infographic emphasising the future skills gap for “data scientists” I blogged recently and mentioned the importance of new skills being brought into your marketing team, and especially people with computer and mathematical science qualifications being of increasing importance. I noticed this infographic and thought it was useful for their emphasis of the importance of ... | Read more →
Our round-up of the best advice on how marketers should respond to the Google Search plus Your World integration Most are dubbing the latest changes to Google’s search engine as some of the largest since its launch. The integration of Google+ with the the new Search plus Your World certainly has ... | Read more →
8 practical techniques you can apply today to increase your online audience There’s much talk and some great examples, around how to best use social media to grow your reach online. But, how do you tackle boosting the audience you reach in a planned, structured way. We’ve picked what we feel ... | Read more →
Here's a simple infographic that we've created with Smart Insights to demonstrate how we see the often mentioned 'inbound effect' that relates to earning permission prior to sale. We reckon content is marketing's last real stand to do just that. | Read more →
A 5 step process using 90-day time-boxes to help implement your plans The start of a new year always brings a period of reflection and forward planning. New strategies are created and exciting initiatives are launched. It’s often the case though, that plans and strategies end up in drawers, little changes and ... | Read more →
Our framework for owning marketing success Thanks for your comments and shares for our new Marketing Growth Wheel, it was good to see that many found this useful. We’ll be going into more depth on how to apply this in our guides and templates for members in future. By way of an ... | Read more →
5 ideas to start your brand revolution in 2012 We’re still in the midst of 2012 predictions, they’re everywhere at the moment, mostly describing what’s already out there. I’m not a futurologist, and if I am honest, I prefer to plan for the less predictable since that’s what usually happens. One trend ... | Read more →
Update relevant to Facebook advertisers Value/Importance: ★★★ Recommended link: ReadWriteWeb reporting – describing change on 10th January Our commentary on this update This is a relatively minor change within Facebook unless you’re actively advertising since it will affect your reach and costs. The main difference is that sponsored stories are now featured in each ... | Read more →
A roundup of what the experts say photo from UTC.edu It’s the end of the first week January and most of the influential bloggers / “experts” have published their predictions for what will change in the world of SEO in 2012. Rather than add to the noise and because most of the authors are ... | Read more →
New infographic showing the top 12 countries worldwide We all know the importance of Facebook to our own lives and in our country, but what about international usage? We found there were some surprises in this data that Michele Caivano, the creator of this infographic, alerted us to. Did you realise the ... | Read more →
Facebook accounts for 52% of sharing on the web New AddThis report for social sharing during 2011 AddThis, the social share bar tool used by more than 11m websites and 1.2Bn users, with their owners Clearspring, have followed the popularity of their 2010 report with a new 2011 update – see the ... | Read more →
Infographics to give you ideas for managing the new marketing Infographics seem to be a popular way to learn and share statistics and marketing approaches. We’ve been selective in sharing 1 or 2 infographics a month during 2011, focusing on those with a clear learning about the impact of a new ... | Read more →
A WordPress plugin that shows how everyone can manage their content calendar Last week I wrote about a new spreadsheet which we have created to help marketers manage their content marketing. While the spreadsheet allows you to plan and manage different types of content within a team, operational tools are useful ... | Read more →
5 DIY options for identifying duplicate content to improve SEO SEOs talk a lot about why duplicate content matters and what to do about it, marketers don’t tend to. I think an understanding of duplicate content is important to all marketers who manage SEO so they can ask the right questions of ... | Read more →
And what to do about it Social media is not a standalone skill-set, nor is it even a vocation in its own right. It’s a mindset, a set of specific tools and most importantly, it’s a process weaved into content and social media marketing. Our post showing the scope of Social ... | Read more →
User features get serious enhancement Value/Importance: ★★★★★ Recommended link: Twitter video Our commentary on the New Twitter Twitter has unveiled a major redesign today which will be rolling out slowly. There are four key elements to the changes: New homepage timeline Better way to see anything related to you Interface for easily finding context for hashtags New user ... | Read more →
What should go into your editorial calendar for blogging + Twitter + Facebook + Google+ + LinkedIn? In today’s digital marketing environment, where demands on businesses to publish engaging content have never been higher, managing the process can be challenging, to say the least. In our 7 Steps Guide to content marketing, ... | Read more →
4 Things to consider when writing page titles In our recent post giving 21 simple SEO ideas we said how important titles are. Here we go into a bit more depth to show how non SEO specialists writing web copy can improve SEO through refining their page titles within the SERPs. Titles are ... | Read more →
Slideshare: a part of the hub-and-spoke approach I think many readers will be familiar with Slideshare, a business-to-business (mostly) presentation sharing website which enables organisations to upload their PowerPoint presentations (or Mac Keynote) and Word documents and share them with the world. It’s an excellent way to showcase your thought leadership ... | Read more →
Manchester United show the way I posted last week about Facebook and their (I feel) vastly over-stating of the value of Facebook as a part of the marketing mix. Now, this week I read that Manchester United are building their own, not-so-small social network for an estimated 350m supporters and a total ... | Read more →
An Inbound Marketing infographic to help you build your business case! By no means a new term to most marketers, it was called Permission Marketing by Seth Godin many years ago and more recently it has been known as Inbound Marketing / Content Marketing thanks to Hub Spot & the hugely successful Inbound ... | Read more →
Facebook is the fundamental ingredient, says Facebook I read this interesting article earlier this week on Ad Age, Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer) speaking at the Association of National Advertisers in Phoenix last week. Sandberg had a few key messages to share which I’ve summarised here: Make marketing (and business) “social by ... | Read more →
Use content and data to connect with customers With companies like Silverpop, Genius and Office Autopilot, it’s become much easier to develop a serious semi-automated approach to email marketing – and one that can dove-tail with a much wider content marketing or social strategy without draining all of your time. We ... | Read more →
We’ve posted before about the importance of persona’s and understanding the consumer properly, your consumer, well enough over getting lost in tactics and techniques first. This info-graphic again re-enforces how it’s this – not “social media”, “content marketing” or “SEO” that has to come first. Ask the right questions and ... | Read more →
Comscore data highlights consumer mobile behaviour More than 72 million Americans accessed social networking sites or blogs via their mobile devices in August, 37% up year-on-year from the same time last year, according to data via comScore. Here are 5 quick observations we can pull out of their data: Nearly one-third of all ... | Read more →
Covering Basic SEO, Social and Mobile SEO Value: ★★★★ Source: Internet Advertising Bureau Guide for Retailers Our commentary: Running online retail sites presents a whole raft of specific complexities for businesses, whether its systems, process or marketing related . While only focusing on the marketing (specifically SEO, PPC & Social aspects of running a ... | Read more →
If we agree that engaging with brands in social media is a good thing, then how can we do it better? With participation in social media being a key area to in building brand reputation, Weber Shandwick offer their nine tips to build brand sociability. Anything that you would add? Related Posts: Brand-building with ... | Read more →
Our 7 key questions to ask yourself and your team Naturally, all site owners want to increase conversion, but it’s really tough to do this in practice. Yes, there are some great examples of using testing to improve conversion, like those we see on Marketing Experiments, WhichTestWon or the $300 million button. To achieve ... | Read more →
New way of reviewing keyword and landing page relevance Value/Importance: ★★★★ Recommended link: Source – Official Google Announcement Our commentary Yet another algorithm update from Google, this time relating to Pay Per Click. The new updates are to help Google set a better Quality Score based on keyword relevance & landing page relevance. Just as a reminder, ... | Read more →
5 contrarian Steve Jobs quotes all marketers can learn from “Why join the navy when you can be a pirate?” - is one of many great quotes from Steve Jobs and one that sets the scene for my post. For me Steve Jobs is/was/always will be a marketing genius. His untimely death ... | Read more →
Facebook announcements at Advertising Week, 02/10/2011 There were a couple of new features trailed for Facebook this week that this alert covers. They’re in the “coming real soon” category and the only info that others are reporting on is this post on the Official Facebook Studio site. Details are a bit ... | Read more →
7 must-check questions for your acquisition strategy All site owners are looking to reach more prospects, existing customers and raise awareness about their products through a website or other online presence. So, there is plenty of advice on how to increase site traffic through the 6 main online communications channels. Although you ... | Read more →
3 tools to find out the most popular and relevant topics Before we look at tools for finding the best hashtags for twitter growth, I thought it best to explain what a hashtag is (I still often get asked this when talking to clients): A hash tag is simply a way for ... | Read more →
There are countless blogs & online resources that exist now but sometimes its great to disconnect from the world wide web & read a book! There are three books I would personally recommend to anyone new to marketing online & for those in need of inspiration... Search Engine Optimization: An Hour ... | Read more →
Facebook features heavily – but Twitter a surprise? Value/Importance: ★★★ Recommended tool: Add This Services Important if you value sharing in different global markets We thought it would be useful to share this free tool available from Add This, the company behind one of the webs most popular sharing bar. Remember that companies such ... | Read more →
How are you measuring the success of social media? This question remains contentious to say the least. This infographic shares some insight into just how the “R” in ROI can be interpreted. We hope it helps! We also have a post from earlier in year on the goals and challenges of social ... | Read more →
Using the Geckoboard Business Dashboard for marketing Value rating: ★★★★ Recommended link: http://www.geckoboard.com/ Update – see Geckofuel Since we published the post we have had some feedback that Geckoboard looks useful, but doesn’t support social follower counts. Well it does, but by this separate additional (free) service Geockofuel. Geckoboard supports any custom data feeds ... | Read more →
Where social media marketing misses the content opportunity I’ve been thinking about the key elements of ongoing inbound marketing activities – with the goal of driving sustainable interactions beyond one campaign. Our agency, First 10, played a part in a small and successful campaign this week to help promote a local, Leeds ... | Read more →
The anatomy of a fan A genuinely useful infographic from Moontoast (they create e-commerce software for Facebook pages). This graphic reminds us on the how to market to those different levels of engaged users – all fans are not the same! Related Posts: Digital marketing strategy topic: social media Digital marketing tactic: Facebook Digital marketing technique: Facebook ... | Read more →
Advice on processes for managing crisis communications online We’ve recently seen two different formats of helpful guidance on social media governance. First, here are the recommendations from the SMI11 conference where Neil Chapman and Chris Reed share their insight into the ways BP and Eurostar, among other companies, have learned from social media ... | Read more →
A new in-depth guide from Distilled Value/Importance: ★★★★ Recommended link: http://www.distilled.net/linkbait-guide/ Our commentary We think this is one of one of the most useful free guides and workbooks for marketers published this year. Particularly relevant to SEO and E-PR it’s an in-depth guide from Distilled, complete with a workbook for running brainstorm sessions specifically for ... | Read more →
Is crowdsourcing a solution to your content problems? We’ve posted before about the importance of engaging with users, about earning the permission to market and the importance of social objects for user engagement and amplification. By engagement, I’m referring specifically here to engaging people with content to fuel sharing and search ... | Read more →
Creating a balance between sales optimisation and marketing When did you last run a campaign that sought to engage a market, to really engage and inspire potential customers rather than focusing on selling to those already in buying mode? We were discussing this several months ago and talked to Imran Farooq, another ... | Read more →
This is a great question to ask since it’s easy to get lost in the accumulation of Likes and Follows. I’m not sure of how actionable this info-graphic is though it useful to ask the question. A few observations: 10% less of the youngest demographic in Facebook Facebook perceived to be the place ... | Read more →
How do you really approach your marketing planning? After my recent post on marketing with the human factor, I’ve been thinking that most marketing today is still very product or category orientated – based entirely on what the business has to say or sell… typically it’s very features orientated and competitor ... | Read more →
A phrase often used in marketing & business meetings alike - "The Consumer". While I think it's great that businesses are starting out by thinking about "the consumer" I find it really interesting how they are often grouped into this one term. The truth is that no one consumer is ... | Read more →
Yahoo now using Bing search results in UK and Europe Importance: ★★★ (Given the dominance of Google) Recommended link: Summary of countries affected Our commentary The Yahoo & Bing alliance is old news from this time last year, but it is only recently that the affects of the alliance has started to make its ... | Read more →
The third report from the Pivot Conference and Brian Solis Pivot have surveyed 230 brand managers and marketing professionals, this is their third report from that research. The report of course is helping promote something, an event that is pitched as providing tactical methods to effectively market to the evolving social ... | Read more →
Be mindful of the content marketing trap A lot of my recent posts, and indeed a lot of what I read at the moment, are focussed around content creation and content marketing. I for one have been promoting it as the last bastion of marketing, an area where you can really ... | Read more →
Some of the best in digital marketing offer their social media advice We’re always cautious of rule-books – but when Eloqua team up with JESS3, Steve Rubel, David Armano and Scott Monty (amongst others) then it’s certainly worth stopping to read. This ProBook is an evolution of the PlayBook that was ... | Read more →
An interesting infographic reminding that consumers that typically engage with brands, albeit few of them, will not only buy more from that brand but also recommend to others – so how can you be more interesting and engaging and also remember to remain that way? Related Posts: | Read more →
Hitwise data reveals the importance of Facebook marketing for online retailers In a recent post Robin Goad of Hitwise reminds that “Facebook is the second most visited website in the UK after Google and is now the second biggest source of traffic to other websites as well. 1 in every 6 ... | Read more →
A genuine framework to operationalise your inbound (or content) marketing We’re big fans of the marketing that Eloqua do, much of it with designers JESS3, they do inbound/content marketing so well – it’s gold standard stuff in terms of best practise. Check out their Revenue Blog, Revenue SlideShare and their Revenue Stream. ... | Read more →
How do you act on the different SEO ranking factors? Did you see the recent guide to SEO ranking factors from Search Engine Land? It prompted me to think of search slightly differently & highlighted 3 areas that business often get wrong. Checkout the graphic below and overlay your own thoughts, ... | Read more →
As one of the best online campaigns in recent years (in my humble opinion) its great to see the Old Spice Man return even from just an entertainment point of view. Why it is such a good campaign Considering the inbound marketing process the Old Spice campaign pretty much ticks all the right boxes. ... | Read more →