<b>I am Director of Innovation at Econsultancy, an entrepreneur and a long-term internet fiend.</b>
I started my career in magazine publishing, moved to London as the dotcom boom kicked off, worked in a (non-digital) agency for a year, lucked into a job as a technology journalist, and then in 2003 joined Econsultancy as editor (CEO Ashley Friedlein's first hire, back when we were a bona fide startup).
When I joined I knew the basics, but I wanted to gain practical knowledge about how e-commerce and digital marketing actually works. I have since learned a great deal about the internet industry.
Brand squatting on Pinterest affects 90% of the world’s top brands
Just five of the world’s top 50 brands have claimed their profiles on Pinterest, the latest social platform to claim the hearts and minds of the digerati.
I looked through Interbrand’s list of 100 brands, stopping at the halfway mark, to see whether social media marketers were adopting Pinterest in their droves. On the face of things, they’re not.
Of the 45 brands yet to create official Pinterest accounts - assuming that they do - only one is still available. The rest have been claimed by individuals with a bona fide claim to the username, or have been bagged by brand squatters.
Made.com: a case study of customer service hell?
Almost two years ago we wrote about Made.com, which had just launched after receiving £2.5m of backing from the likes of Brent Hoberman.
Made.com is a bit like Naked Wines for the furniture, in that it bypasses retailers, connecting consumers directly with wholesalers in order to supply “beautiful furniture without the high street markup”. It’s an innovative idea that we liked, and we said it had an excellent chance of success.
However, there’s a problem. I’m one of the people at Econsultancy who receives comment notifications for our blog, and that Made.com post regularly attracts unhappy customers who complain about poor service, faulty products, cancelled orders, the courier company, and – most commonly – the lack of a telephone number on its website. It's been bugging me.
10 slideshows to help you create killer presentations in 2012
Most of the digital professionals I know need to create at least one slideshow a year, whether for an internal meeting, a client briefing or a conference talk.
All too often I see slideshows that contain great content and ideas, but sometimes the slides are cluttered and confusing, or worse, boring.
Thankfully help is at hand, to enable you to create wonderful slides in 2012.
The 21 most horrific social media facepalms of 2011
2011 has been an interesting year for social media. It started out with various small uprisings in North Africa, with social platforms an apparent catalyst for the full-on revolutions that followed thereafter.
We’ve also seen lots of great social campaigns this year, and many brands are now using the likes of Twitter and Facebook to provide great service to their customers.
However, we also inevitably witnessed a number of foot in mouth incidents, and I thought it would be a good idea to compile them for your viewing pleasure.
I’ve sorted them into four categories: brands, agencies, people and platforms. Pull up a cushion…
Revealed: the Econsultancy Innovation Awards 2012 shortlist
Econsultancy’s annual Innovation Awards shines a light on the finest creative thinking across the digital industry. This year more than 450 companies entered the awards, so we’ve been rather busy this past month or so.
After some intense reading we have shortlisted around 150 companies, across 19 categories. There were some very close calls, so commiserations if you didn’t make it through this year. The standard has been higher than ever.
Congratulations to all those who have been shortlisted. We know that innovation is a team game, so if you’ve played a part in any of these projects then you deserve a pat on the back. Or a pub lunch. It’s a Friday, after all.
Are you measuring the right social media metrics?
Earlier this week a post on the average clickthrough rates for popular Facebook brand pages reminded me of an article I wrote nearly three years ago, which was all about how to measure social media.
At the time I believed that social media sat somewhere between offline and online, as far as measurement was concerned. Yes, you can measure the hard numbers, but what about the softer metrics? Doesn’t there need to be a little room for interpretation?
Well, I still believe all of that. The key to measuring social media is to track all of the usual ‘hard’ metrics, but it’s also to step back and correlate performance against the major business KPIs. That’s pretty much the key to measuring everything. If it an engagement tactic or marketing campaign doesn't move the needle in terms of sales, satisfaction, loyalty or profit then ultimately what's the point of doing it?
How to trend on Twitter: the SapientNitro case study
Earlier today web agency SapientNitro showed the world how easy it is to trend on Twitter.
The company’s method is flawless, and proves how easy it is to generate lots of noise about a brand.
The horror: Google now encrypts up to 33% of search referral data
A few weeks ago Google started to encrypt search data for logged in users. This essentially means that website owners will see no keyword data for visitors referred from Google.
We didn’t think too much of it at the time, given that just 0.68% of our visits were affected in the period immediately after this initiative came into play.
However, it seems that things have significantly worsened in November, at least for Econsultancy.
20 ways to encourage innovation in your organisation
Innovation is close to our hearts here at Econsultancy. It can be difficult to kickstart new projects and to implement change, but dare to dream and amazing things can happen.
Like many companies we’re not short of good ideas, it’s just that executing them can sometimes be a challenge.
For us this is largely linked to resources and prioritisation, rather than our organisational culture. Other firms have the resources, but lack the gumption to try new things out.
So what can you do to foster a culture of innovation within your company? Last week I asked our Twitter followers to suggest some ideas, and here’s what they recommended…
How to optimise headlines using the 65 character rule
I’m currently developing some wireframes as we pave the way for a revamp of this blog later this year. There are lots of things to think about. One of those things is typography. Closely related to that is optimal headline length.
I always try to write headlines that fit on one line, though I don’t always succeed. Nevertheless, short headlines beat longer ones for lots of reasons. As such I’d like to introduce the 65 character rule. Actually it’s 65 or less, to be precise.
Here’s why...
