Latest Content Marketing and Strategy content from Econsultancy

How to identify and fix Google Panda in 2012

2012-02-10T09:38:22+00:00

Panda basics

Panda is about dealing with bad content, not bad links. Bad content comes in different flavours: duplicate, weak, thin and template
Panda acts like a domain wide penalty: your whole site is affected and your good stuff is dragged down by your bad stuff
Web crawler accessibility issues affect how search engines see, and therefore assess, your content.
Often, badly designed Information Architectures compound the problems with already week content

Large sites that have many pages, templated content and lots of sub-categories are the most at risk. If you haven’t been monitoring and fixing your accessibility issues, as highlighted in Google Webmaster Tools, you are at risk.

Panda examples

All of these examples are from the UK, mostly from the employment and gift sectors

Classic Panda

We use Searchmetric's SEO visibility score to find out just when sites got hit, or recovered from Panda,

There are three dates that stick out in the UK data:

Early April was the big UK introduction of Panda.
There is a smaller inflection in July.
There is a bigger inflection in October.

Proof that doing nothing will not help you:

You can see in this graph that they are trying to fix their Panda issues but haven’t yet bitten the bullet and made the leap they need to:

I know these guys well. They have no idea this data exists or anything about panda, but they have done OK.

One might argue that they are OK because they couldn’t care less about SEO and have a product that people like:

It would be easy to attribute this to Panda, but this looks more like developer or general website issues:

One of my favourites from the Employment industry, which clearly shows winners and losers:

I love the green line. Did they even know they had benefited from Google Panda? Did they think they had done something to deserve the new traffic?

Was it all Champagne, cocaine and cash bonuses and then three months later, the next panda update smacks them?

With Panda thinning out sites in a vertical, it creates a false sense of success for the winners, as they themselves may be next in line for the chopping block...

The blue line benefits from the first Panda update and then it looks like they get hit by Panda a few months later, but I don’t think that’s Panda, I think that’s development gone wrong.

Panda smacks and recovery are one day to the next, not across a number of weeks.

The other effect of Panda: the big brands got bigger

Given this graph, where would you go to look for examples of sites that are being rewarded by Google Panda?

Find the websites that benefitted from Panda and look at their content, as that is now the new minimum level of content quality in your industry.

Panda recovery

This data is for Prezzybox, who we worked with. Panda recovery is possible, but a lot of unplanned, un-budgeted blood, sweat, tears and money went into that dip and recovering the traffic.

The SEO visibility metric is a proprietary metric, but I asked Steve Overton from Searchmetrics if he could give us some more insight into it and he has explained the algorithm behind it:

Observations from fighting Panda

Panda is confusing if you are not on top of your data and industry news. There were so many updates it becomes easy to blame everything bad on Panda.

Conversely there are sites which benefitted from Panda but did not attribute it.

When we started exploring how to fix Panda, we moved quite conservatively. Now we suggest that people take strong, decisive action in resolving issues.

Google Panda doesn’t fix itself, you have to fix it. It will take time, money and effort. It also requires a change in how you see your online business.

You can make this whole process a lot easier on your business if you put a person in charge of content, and give them a budget and developer time.

The advice is quite simple, concentrated around a few key areas. The implementation is where companies fall down. Fixing Panda is not complex, but it does require a lot of work.

How to fix Panda

Duplicate content

Give someone the responsibility to hunt down duplicate content. Use Google Webmaster tools or SEOmoz tools or Xenu or an IIS crawl (or whatever people suggest in the blog comments).

It’s not tough to do, it just requires some concentrated effort

Solve duplicate content issues with rel=canonical. Here are seven short videos of Google’s Matt Cutts talking about different aspects of implementing rel=canonical.

Thin content

If you have a section that is just thin templated content, it is hurting the good contents’ ability to rank. Be strong and cut the crap or add to your content to improve it.

Cutting the crap

404 a bad section or area and after the pages have dropped out of the index, 301 them somewhere good so you don’t lose any incoming link juice.

This is potentially the biggest win.

SEOmoz has a good guide to 301s, including links to references for 301s under Apache and IIS.

Making your content great

There is no getting around the fact that time and effort is needed here. Someone in your organisation needs the time and responsibility to sit down and create great content or manage the creation process via third party writers.

I believe that great content requires both qualitative and quantitative research and a knowledgably person to knit it together to suit both users and search engines.

Here is my guide on taking mediocre content and making it great content and an overview from our work on Panda on how Google might interpret content quality signals.

Templated content

Write content, hire interns or find people in cheaper parts of the world. Many companies are unnecessarily precious about their content and ultimately this ends up hurting more than helping them.

Elance, Odesk and Copify all work for building out content. (Remember, you now have a person responsible for content quality who will oversee this).

Accessibility issues

Run an IIS crawl to find your accessibility issues (IIS is easier to use than you think).

Here is an example list of errors from an IIS crawl. This becomes your plan of attack for clearing up accessibility issues:

You will end up with a list of issues and the urls where those issues are occurring, to be able to go and fix them.

Three key takeaways

The world is not as it once was.

Crap websites trying to masquerade as decent websites are being hunted down and sunk below the quality line.

Google owes you nothing.

Tactics to just barely raise your quality enough to recover your rankings are unlikely to pay dividends. You may well find yourself a loser again the next time the quality bar is raised.

Google is judging you.

Google is going to continue to raise the quality bar with future updates. When your competitors improve their websites, you will be weakest and in line for the chop at the next quality update.

I hope this post helps you decide to build great content today, so you dont have to deal with the fallout from bad content tomorrow.

(Image credit: tanakawho via Flickr)

Q&A: XYDO CEO Eric Roach on email automation

2012-02-09T18:12:00+00:00

What led you to create this B2B email product?

We started off as a news-based social network and we'd create a daily email of the ten articles you should focus on. People loved it, especially reporters. We happened to be talking to a business and asked if this type of email would be useful and they said it was exactly what they were looking for.

So we created an email that embedded ten pieces of content that would be of interest to their users. Seven times the open rates. Bingo, we found something really powerful. But that was a small business.

We've tried this with 25 companies so far and it's worked across the board. We look for content that speaks to the interest of the user instead of spamming them with content they're not interested in.

How do you find the content?

We take keywords, twitter handles, hashtags or whatever the client wants to access and search for them across 300,000 feeds and three million users whose walls we watch. We look for social endorsing by liking, sharing, etc. and score the content and the system categorises the content by subject.

Why aren't most businesses doing this themselves?

Most businesses have a good idea what their customer base is but are not learning how to speak to them. When we ask them about their customers, they respond by giving base demographics. When we say no, what are they interested in, they'll be like they're interested in this and this and this.

There seems like a drastic need in this space. Telling the story is important but hard so they flounder. We decided to solve that problem.

So far we've seen five to eight times the click through rates than for emails the businesses we're working with have sent in the past. The emails are fully integrated with everything possible in social and 10 - 15% of all click throughs are shares. So businesses are essentially expanding their base as users are sharing.

The big question is always ROI. How are you measuring this?

We give as much analytics as we can: clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, type of devices, etc. On average 40% of click throughs are coming from devices, and the iPhone is used the most. As we produce content, we provide details of the type of content customers are clicking on. Through that a business can find their voice. These are the things their customers are interested in so that can tailor their promotion based on that.

We also retarget so we have the ability to target the user and do lead scoring, and provide sales teams with analytics. It's all about continued learning.

The same goes for our own development. With our product design, there is a direct connect between what we learn from the customers and the product. Before we even wrote the code for the new dashboard, we went to the customers and got feedback first.

What's next for you?

Social marketing. Our process is that we determine the content types a business wants and it produces a stream. From that stream, you identify pieces of content that you like to send to your customers.

Things go into email now but soon they may go into Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest. It will all be managed by one console.

What do you think the future of email marketing is?

I believe in the theory of unmarketing. When you stop screaming and start talking to customers about what they are interested in, that is marketing.

Apple Customers are defenders of the brand as they are giving so much value. Marketing needs to go this way. And to be done for all the right reasons. You only have to look in your own inbox, it's full of garbage. When you get something of value, it shocks you and that company will stand out.

The real return of investment is when you are looked at as a thought leader. That belief will benefit you years down the road.

Social media for the healthcare industry: examples from MENA

2012-02-08T08:34:00+00:00

The most challenging part of implementing a successful social media campaign is pulling in the relevant audience. Like in any other website, social media is driven by content.

It is common to find Twitter accounts without followers and Facebook pages without fans. You have to provide value to get value. Below are a few pointers on how to effectively do so.

Provide useful medical information

The internet is filled with medical advice from quacks. Consumers of such information can end up complicating their conditions further. Healthcare institutions can help bridge this gap by providing those in need with proper information and advice through social media.

You can provide simple solutions to common ailments and later follow up to determine the level of success. For complicated medical conditions, you can simply refer them to specialists in that field even though they do not belong to your organization.

This helps build trust and validates your noble intentions. You should never indulge in self promotion in the social media space. Users find it repulsive.

Social media enables you to have a one on one conversation with those seeking information. This builds your reputation and positions your institution as the go to source of reliable healthcare information.

This is the most effective way of marketing your products and services at almost no cost.

Social media can also bo effectively used to raise awareness about healthcare issues and be used to promote a health lifestyle.

For example, GE Healthcare's Get Fit social media competition on Twitter aimed to raise awarenss about cancer prevention and healthy living. The campaign elicited a strong response from the Middle East, with residents in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the UAE actively taking part to endorse a healthy lifestyle.

The GE global campaign took place as competition between different continents, where Twitter users simply tweeted what they were doing to to strive for a healthier lifestyle, with each tweet including a country-specific Get Fit hash tag.

The Get Fit website showed a map showing which continent generated the most 'healthy tweets'. The winning country in that continent (as determined by open vote) received a $20,000 donation to the Red Cross or Red Crescent society operating in that country.

Listen

Whether you like it or not, your clients are on social media and are talking about you. You can either choose to engage them or ignore them at your peril.

To successfully engage them, you first need to listen to what is being said about your organization and others in the industry.

This does not have to take too much time as there are apps that help you do this without too much of a hustle. There are many tools and specialists that can help you to track and analyze what is being said on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.

Listening allows you to fashion your communication with your audience according to their needs. Most healthcare providers make the mistake of throwing information at people yet they are unaware of their needs.

Initiate conversation

Instead of waiting for your audience to initiate conversation it is most often prudent to do so yourself. Although your audience may have ideas and suggestions on how to improve your products and services they may not voice them unless prompted.

You can leverage the power of social media to get feedback on any new products, payment procedures, doctor reviews and any other issues.

During large scale disasters that require emergency medical response, a hospital can use social media to give the public updates on the status of the crisis. You can give hotlines for the public to call in case they are stranded, survival tips, number of casualties and any other relevant information.

You can also help people find their loved ones who may have been admitted at your facility. A pharmaceutical company can share information on new drugs to fight epidemics and tips on avoiding infection.

This will grow your influence among members of the online community as more people seek out and share the information you provide.

A good example of a healthcare brand actively engaging in conversation on social networks is skincare services company, Kaya Skin Clinic. The skin speclalist actively replies to queries on Facebook, resolving issues and there-by building strong relationships with customers.

Take action

The most important thing on social media is reputation. You should guard it at all costs. Be truthful always. If an issue is raised, make sure that you respond to it and act accordingly. Failure to keep your word can damage the reputation of any healthcare institution irreparably.

Check your social media accounts regularly for any requests or comments that may need immediate response. Hiring a dedicated resource to do so can be a good idea.

Involve employees

To make your foray into social media successful you have to involve all the employees. Make it a team sport and they will gladly contribute to the growth of your influence in the social media space.

At the end of the day, employees are people who relate with others on social media. By recruiting them as evangelists you can increase the likelihood of success in your social media campaign.

Econsultancy's next Social Media Marketing training course takes place in Dubai on 22nd February 2012.This one-day workshop looks at the effect of social media and web 2.0 on marketing communications and public relations and provides valuable hands-on techniques and tools to understand and harness the opportunities of User Generated Content. Book your place now.

Image credit: GE Healthcare's Get Fit campaign website, Kaya Skin Clinic on Facebook

How brands lost the Super Bowl race for the second screen

2012-02-07T20:16:00+00:00

Monday’s industry blogs have been suggesting that brands should be praised for not ‘drinking the social media cool-aid.’ Hashtags represent a waste of time said Drew Olandoff from The Next Web; “…there’s absolutely no way I’m going to ask millions of people to use a hashtag. There’s just no context to be had there and nothing to be gained”

But what the commentators are missing is that a successful social media strategy does not begin and end with Facebook and Twitter. Rather it manifests itself most effectively when embedded in the behaviour that the brand exhibits. When used effectively as part of a well integrated plan it’s about being useful or entertaining. They need to create a compelling reason why people absolutely have to right now this minute reach over their chicken wings and beers and reach for their second screen to call up or act on that ad they’ve just seen.

According to research done by the Altimeter Group, although most ads promoted an online destination of some sort- only 16% of them promoted a call to action in what could be described as a social media space and a third had no online call to action whatsoever.

The real point here is not whether or not the TV spots drove people online –it’s about what value proposition did or didn’t await them there. Most of the TV ads that featured any online call to action at all simply encouraged people to go to the corporate website, but what would be in it for the viewers if they did? There’s been plenty of debate over who had the best or worst ad, but the point is why go out and splash $3.5 million on your 30 second spot without using social media to amplify its effect?

One of the best examples of a wasted opportunity came in the form of Budweiser commercial from Anomaly – an agency usually vaunted for its clever thinking. The ad featured a mashup of the Cult’s 1985 rock classic She Sells Sanctuary with Flo Rida’s track Good Feeling. Unfortunately the agency failed to score as there was no meaningful integration with an online strategy. Of the hundreds of millions watching, you can bet a fair few would’ve head to Google to locate the song, feet still tapping. Yet what they would have found was digital tumbleweed.

Apart from a few Cult fanzine sites, several weeks old, that announced that the ad was going to be aired, there appeared to be no strategy for using the creative assets to their full potential. What came as a big surprise was there was no corporate presence against any of the relevant searches from Budweiser – no ‘official version’ of the song or even a teaser announcing its forthcoming release. There was no iTunes link and not so much as a mention of the remixer who’s thought to combine these two tracks. They could have created something that had further reach and would drive consumers back to their own online space. As of today, they still haven't capitalised on that.

As a contrast, look at Sony’s Bravia TV launch in 2005. Their campaign went beyond their colourful ‘bouncing balls’ commercial. It featured a fully integrated microsite which had the Jose Gonzalez track freely available for download as well as a host of other goodies such as a screensaver and behind-the-scenes footage of the ad’s filming. So effective was this approach that it generated a vast amount of online buzz and huge volume of inbound links to the site which contributed to them ranking number 1 in Google for the term “advert”. The only shame is that they didn’t keep the microsite live or even better create it on a subdomain of the main Sony site, so only the wayback machine can show us a hint of what they did.

Above all, what this lack of integration shows is that there’s still a divide between Madison Avenue and Mountain View. Both agencies and advertisers were too cautious to try and mix things up, or more likely too stuck in their old planning models. This is bizarre because despite the fact that the event itself broke a new record for the number of tweets per second, very few brands actually capitalized on the second screen opportunity that presented itself better than Eli Manning’s pass to his wide receiver in the fourth quarter.

Perhaps like the New England Patriots’ quarterback, Tom Brady, the brand managers and CMOs will come to rue missed opportunities to get the most from this uniquely old fashioned spend-fest. In hindsight we can all see ways things can be improved and as the old adage goes it’s certainly easier to critique than create, but surely it wouldn’t have taken much to link a well designed digital experience to the TV spots?

Econsultancy’s JUMP (Joined Up Marketing Perspectives) conference launches in New York on May 23, 2012. If you want to learn how to create more integrated campaigns and build connected brands, come join us at JUMP. We might even buy you a Budweiser...

FUNNEL 2012

2012-02-07T17:40:07+00:00

JUMP 2012 London

2012-02-07T15:59:14+00:00

JUMP, now in its third year, is a one-day conference for senior marketers looking to join up on and offline data, technologies, campaigns, agencies and creative. If the last decade was all about figuring out digital, the next is about integrating it, dissolving it into the mix and finding new hybrid strategies that combine on and offline.

JUMP brings together over 1500 digital and offline and marketers who are not just learning to speak the same language, they are their sharing data, insight, strategies and successes.

JUMP is a fast-moving, content-rich symposium packed with exciting new insight from top marketers across every industry wanting to learn about how to join up online and offline.

Photos from JUMP

JUMP is all about more effective marketing across channels...

Using search marketing to improve TV campaign effectiveness
Doubling catalogue sales using insights from web analytics
Driving call centre improvements with web metrics
Generating media coverage via online buzz (and vice versa)
Optimising marketing budgets with the right mix
Leveraging customer insight from all channels
Driving up ROI

See what happened at JUMP

The Digital Ocean: how to market to fishers and swimmers

2012-02-06T13:01:00+00:00

So, fellow marketers, we are all likely beyond the trial and error phase of digital and realize that an intelligent, synchronized and aligned plan is needed to maximize our digital investment.

Start with your prime objective: for example in the B2C world it may be the collection of marketable contacts (via coupon/offer) or for B2B it may be lead generation with a primary call-to-action of a signup for an online trial.

Next, how are you going to connect with the targeted audience? This is where the digital ocean analogy is helpful. The ocean represents all the possible online channels and locations (e.g. search, websites, blogs, social communities, ads, articles, email, text ...) where your audience could be reached.

Now consider whether you are only trying to reach targets who are actively looking for a product/service/offer like yours (fishers), or those who are not actively looking but may respond to a discussion, or an ad, or blog related to their interest (swimmers), or both.

Take a look at the graphic below:

If your audience is fishing, what are some of the digital mechanisms and places they would go to identify, research and evaluate. What is the likely journey they would take to select your product/service/offer?

You need to create the appropriate fishing bait comprising content, search results and outbound campaigns to attain consideration. Your content and tactics will be oriented towards that fishing model as you can see from the (B2B) example.

The tactics used to attract swimmers can be very different, and are more educational rather than promotional in nature. Social media plays a bigger role here, as that is where your target audience 'hangs out' and engages with people/content related to their interest.

Creating or engaging in conversations is an obvious tactic, adding value and opinion without overly promoting. Advertising on social and industry sites is effective, as pinpoint profiling and targeting is usually possible.

Search keywords that you should orient towards can also differ whether your targets are fishing or swimming.

Fishers tend to use more action/competitive oriented search terms aimed at a product or service type (e.g. cheapest airline ticket to London, best performing mutual fund), whereas swimmers are usually more interested in education and discovery related to their topic of interest (e.g. mortgage industry best practices, diabetes discussion groups).

As a next step to work on this concept yourself, try printing and filling in the graphic above which is a worksheet (this one for B2B models) to help you identify locations and search terms based on audience intent.

Once you have these locations and likely search terms identified for SEO planning, determine the 'customer journey' from discovery through education through engagement through selection of your product/service/offer.

In some cases that journey might be short, even immediate (e.g. B2C coupon signup), but for B2Bs that journey may have several steps requiring a combination of fishing and swimming tactics and content made available along that path towards selection.

Bottom line, don't create content or invest in inbound or outbound tactics that are not aligned with both the intention and location of your target audience.

Budweiser Super Bowl ad: something new or just another flash mob?

2012-02-03T22:44:00+00:00

"I'm not concerned that it will be labelled as another flash mob. That's not why we made it and that's not what it is. It's not the theme that makes it relatable and relevant. It's the fact that it is so touching and it's a great story."

As flash mobs are mainly considered the thing of the past, why this approach? According to Seaton, Budweiser are big fans of hockey and part of its marketing strategy is to help provide more excitement and give more guys the opportunity to experience the game. The team behind the ad asked themselves how they could go and honour those guys who dedicate their lives to recreational hockey and give them an experience they'll never forget. This is the result:

Ameer Khan was one of the players on the ice.

Some guy shows up to watch one of our regular League games and later calls our team rep to say they would like to do a documentary about beer league hockey and if we would be interested in playing an exhibition game. So we show up at Port Credit Arena still not sure what's going on. The producer says just play and enjoy the game.

After the 1st period we notice the Budweiser Zamboni. Then by the 2nd period there are mascots, play by play announcers and 500 screaming fans wearing our jerseys. The noise was insane, couldn’t even hear the ref's whistle.

Rhys Howell, who saw the video as it made its rounds yesterday, said: "When I first saw the Budweiser video I was choked up because I instantly thought about how awesome those guys must have felt. How awesome would I have felt if I was on that rink when it happened? I guess that's what Budweiser want me to think and they want me to love Budweiser for changing my life if only for a moment."

"One of the powers of this spot is that everyone dreams about playing in front of fans," comments Seaton. “So this has legs around the world. We've left it to the consumer and it is travelling quite well. We will drive traffic to see it during the Super Bowl and then put out new content, including a four minute behind the scene piece, every two or three days. The campaign will be supported through Facebook, Twitter and traditional digital marketing."

Though there is growing attention around this video (which is at nearly half a million views in less than two days), not everyone is convinced of this approach. Leigh Caldwell of Inon states:

If they'd done it eight years ago it would have been original, heart-warming and surprising. We'd have watched it over and over on that new "YouTube" thing and emailed it to our friends on AIM. In 2012, it's trite, obvious and more likely to lead to a bunch of quickly-edited parodies on YouTube than to any genuine affection. Anyone who doesn't already love hockey isn't going to be swept up in a magical storm of teary manly joy by this fluff.

Howell isn't convinced he will change his mind about the brand but believes by sharing the video, "some people could be converted to the Bud side and really that's all that was required of me."

For Khan, being a part of this moment will become a central part of his own story. "Budweiser has made an emotional connection with me that will last a lifetime. Everyone on twitter is saying it brought them to tears and cheers. From now on every Budweiser I have will have a story."

This is exactly what Seaton and the Budweiser team were hoping for. "I would love if every person who watched it would feel the same way. We created a bond with those guys on the ice. Hopefully, their story has created the bond with the consumer. If that's what they take away, it's a positive view of the brand. And that's all that we wanted."

Budweiser has never seen the type of media and consumer interest as they’ve had so far through this video. Internally this is already being touted as best practice for them and they credit the story, rather than the delivery.

The big question is did it work for you? Do you think marketers need to focus more on the story in their campaigns? Or was this execution better left for the 2009 marketing vaults?

How visible are universities on social networks?

2012-01-31T11:17:23+00:00

16 -24 year olds are heavy users of social networks, so you’d expect universities to have been ‘socially active’ by generating and posting interesting, engaging content (articles, images, video and audio) on their own websites, and then sharing it on social networks.

As the deadline for most university applications was the middle of January, we thought now would be a good time to analyse this type of university social visibility.

So we had a go at this using the weekly data that we collate in our social analytics database, examining the leading 20 Russell Group universities.

First off, to give you an idea of the overall volume of activity, our data estimates that taken altogether there are roughly 207,900 links every week related to content on the websites of the Russell Group universities posted on Twitter, Facebook (likes, comments and shares), Linkedin, Google+ and social bookmarking sites StumbleUpon and Delicious.

Here we’re talking about links to the universities’ own web pages which are Tweeted, liked, shared etc by users of the social sites we looked at (this average figure is based on the activity over an eight week period leading up to mid-January).

Taking a closer look at Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ we found that over the last three years, Facebook has been by far the most important in terms of generating links for the university sites we analysed, representing around 80% of all links.

Take a look at the full breakdown underneath (obviously as a relatively new site you would expect far fewer links on Google+. But bearing in mind Google’s recent Search Plus Your World announcement, this is likely to grow in importance now).

Facebook: 80.25%.
Twitter: 19.28%.
LinkedIn: 0.11%.
Google+: 0.35%.

Next, the list underneath shows how our data ranks the universities’ sites in terms of social visibility.

The visibility score we use here is based on the total number of links a web domain has scored on the six social sites, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Delicious and StumbleUpon, while accounting for different weightings we give to links on individual social sites.

Social visibility of Russell Group universities

University of Cambridge. Visibility score: 462,823.
University of Oxford: 442,758.
London School of Economics: 286,859.
Newcastle Uinversity: 186,184.
University College London: 176,202.
University of Warwick: 169,462.
University of Manchester: 143,186.
University of Edinburgh: 131,053.
Queens University Belfast: 118,137.
University of Glasgow: 72,211.
University of Bristol: 70,656.
University of Nottingham: 64,381.
University of Leeds: 63,802.
Imperial College London: 47,321.
Cardiff University: 46,053.
University of Southampton: 44,106.
King’s College London: 31,762.
University of Liverpool: 20,444.
University of Birmingham: 15,873.
University of Sheffield: 9,912.

What types of content are heavily shared?

Well not surprisingly news page stories about new research studies and initiatives are quite common. While heavily shared links included software simulations, web cam images, jokes and podcasts.

Most universities are very active with numerous social network accounts serving different departments and groups.

Obviously much of the content is targeted at the current university population rather than prospective students, but it can provide some interesting insights to those wanting to know a little more about life at a particular institution.

State of Digital Marketing in Australia

2012-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

The State of Digital Marketing in Australia report, published by Econsultancy in association with Marketing Magazine, looks in detail at the current level of spending across different traditional and online marketing channels across Australia.

More than 500 companies participated in this research, which also looks at how companies are measuring marketing effectiveness, examines the barriers to digital marketing and e-commerce in the region, as well as assessing the existing levels of industry skills and knowledge.

The 50-page report includes sections on:

Marketing budgets
Use of marketing channels
Use of marketing technology
Barriers to digital marketing
Barriers to e-commerce
Measuring marketing effectiveness
Industry skills, knowledge and support benchmarking

There are six key findings apparent from this research:

Marketers are shifting their focus towards digital
Established disciplines are being complemented by emerging channels
Barriers to increasing digital activity go beyond the financial
There is a digital skills knowledge gap
Senior managers are failing to lead from the top
Consumer online behaviour is widely underestimated and misinterpreted

Executive summary and highlights
Introduction by Marketing Magazine
About
1. Econsultancy
2. Marketing Magazine
Methodology and sample
1. Methodology
2. Respondent profiles
Findings
1. Budgets
2. Use of marketing channels
3. Outsourcing digital activity
4. Use of technology
5. Measuring marketing effectiveness
6. Return on investment
7. Barriers to digital marketing
  1. Issues affecting digital marketing and e-commerce
  2. Local barriers to increasing digital revenue streams
8. Knowledge, skills and support
Appendix

Download a copy of the report to learn more.

A free sample is available for those who want more detail about what is in the report.