Q&A: Vivien Underwood on Econsultancy's Digital Certificates
Econsultancy recently launched the UK's first university accredited Digital Certificates, which focus on strengthening digital marketing skills for those looking to begin or develop their careers in this industry.
Academic accreditation is provided by Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and courses currently available include analytics, SEO, and social commerce.
I've been speaking to Vivien Underwood, our Head of Professional Development, about the certificates...
Keeping children safe online
Sometimes, those working in and around social media every day can forget just how much many, if not most, of the population may take the internet for granted.
Especially teens and tweens, who, posting from the safety and security of their own bedrooms, can feel free to say, do and broadcast what they like without worrying too much about the consequences.
Why online projects fail
Problems rarely kill projects. What kills them is failure to recognise and address problems.
A colleague said recently that online projects fail for three main reasons – poor governance, weak communication or problematic technology, and in roughly equal proportions.
I’m not sure I agree about the proportions, but the categories feel useful.
For a start, each has its own distinctive failure modes.
Content strategy trends in the Middle East
Personalisation and localisation of content are considered key trends in the Middle East – but it goes so much further than just language...
Here are some of the key take-outs from the Content Strategy roundtables at Econsultancy's Digital Cream Dubai 2012, which I moderated.
How visible are universities on social networks?
With UK universities allowed to charge up to £9,000 for fees from this autumn, many institutions are likely to have ramped up their marketing in order to engage and attract students.
So how successful have they been in creating a presence on the main social networks?
10 new specialist qualifications for the digital industry
There’s a whiff of triumph in the air: ten new specialist qualifications for the digital industry, each seeking to provide the skills needed to become a confident practitioner in disciplines as diverse as Analytics, SEO, UX, and Social Commerce.
Econsultancy's new Graduate Certificates offer an accredited route to mastering the implementation of a range of core digital skills and offer supported learning on the job.
Created in direct response to client demand (and our own findings in the recent Skills and Structures report), these new qualifications are an important development for us.
MTV’s Facebook app helps US students tap $70b in aid
Today MTV, in partnership with Get Schooled and the College Board,
launched "My College Dollars," a new Facebook app that matches US
students with financial aid opportunities. Once you sign up, you are
targeted with scholarships based on information collected by
Facebook such as your age, gender and state.
For the next 6 weeks, students can also take part in the "My College Dollars Sweepstakes." If they connect to the app and save a scholarship deadline to their calendar, or, as it usually is with socially driven contests, share the app with a friend, they can enter to win. Prizes include tickets to the "2012 MTV Music Awards" or gift cards to cover school supplies. They suggest books and fees, though knowing college students, some of it will go on beer.
So why is this app so important?
Apple wants to reinvent the textbook, but is it destined to fail?
A few hours ago Apple held its much-anticipated education event in New York City, and as expected, announced a new offering that seeks to reinvent the textbook around the iPad.
Seeking to make textbooks more interactive, more durable, more searchable and more easily refreshable, iBooks 2 offers a "new textbook experience for the iPad." And boy is it pretty.
11 of the best social media campaigns of 2011 (and what we can learn from them)
There are so many different metrics we can use to judge the success of a social media campaign: views, sales figures, donations, likes, even mentions, but perhaps the most important is the intangible.
Was it memorable? Did it resonate with the audience? I asked around the office for the team’s favourite social media campaigns of 2011.
Our favourites don’t necessarily represent the campaigns that have had the highest impact, or the biggest budgets spent on them. They were just good, different, or downright odd.
Anyway, here are our favourites. We’d be interested to read yours …
Five videos of five actions clients can take with Google Analytics
There is a lot to communicate in modern marketing and our methods haven't kept up with the times. I often find myself giving trying to solve problems by phone and email; methods which turn out to be unnecessarily time consuming and open to miscommunication
I want to show a different way to communicate analytics actions to a client. I use a tool called Screenr. It is a simple desktop video capture service, like a Flip camera for your desktop.
Using Screenr I find I can very quickly communicate and educate around specific topics. It is perfect for clearly showing clients how to take control of analytics.
I have put together five videos of five actions clients often need to do with their own analytics, to show you how powerful a quick video communication tool can be and provide inspiration for making your own.
