It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that we’ll be hosting the Festival of Marketing on 11-12 November.
We’ve already announced a load of amazing speakers, including marketers from the world’s biggest brands plus a few star names with inspirational stories to tell.
But we’re not done yet, and there’s one more secret speaker we’re very excited about so we thought we’d reveal their identity via the medium of a ticket giveaway.
Vine is beautiful. It costs nothing but time, it rewards creativity, trial and error, and patience. Many brands have made great use of Vine, and the medium is magic when its potential is realised.
So we thought we’d see what we could get our audience to create, to promote the Festival of Marketing, where Ian Padgham, Professional Viner, is one of the many speakers at our PUNCH event, just one part of a packed week.
We’re giving away some Festival passes, and some tickets to Marketing Frenzy, the week’s showstopping party at Fabric in London.
So without further ado, here are our first winners. We’ve still got some tickets to give away, so send in your entries and we’ll do another roundup next week.
How would you like to be plastered over the Econsultancy blog and win a Festival of Marketing pass or a ticket to the wrap party?
We’re giving you the chance to make a vine referencing the upcoming Festival of Marketing and win a ticket to the whole festival (worth £495) or the Marketing Frenzy party at Fabric in London.
Read on for the rules and get vining!
If you don’t know about the festival (where’ve you been?) check out the main events and the Fringe and Frenzy on the Festival of Marketing website.
It’s been a long, hard race to the finish, but today @SilverBean have nosed past the post to become our sixth #TheDigitals SuperStar of the week!
Congratulations Silverbean! We’ve seen them sharing some great content over the past few weeks so it’s a well-deserved win. As promised, Silverbean have won a place on our international judging panel for The Digitals.
Together with our other judges, they’ll be helping us decide what campaigns, products and services really deserve recognition for advancing the digital landscape. If you or your client have worked on something that you’re really proud of then don’t keep it to yourself, get your entry in by March 13th to be sure of a crack at fame and glory!
Well done this week to our latest Digital Superstars – Silverbean.
Silverbean is a search marketing and digital agency specialising in SEO & Social Media, PPC, CRO and Affiliate Program Management, and they’ve been rocking the hashtag all week, congratulations guys!
Find out more about this week’s winners on their site: http://www.silverbean.com/
There’s been lots more action around the #TheDigitals hashtag this week, and we’ve welcomed a number of new faces to the top twenty, quite a feat when you remember we now have over 7,000 people battling it out for the chance to be on the judging panel for The Digitals Awards.
Over the past seven days you’ve really upped your game, and we’ve seen some fantastic links to innovative, exciting and just plain useful stuff that’s helping define the digital marketing landscape.
Of course, #TheDigitals leaderboard is all about sharing great content, so here are a few useful links that we saw pop up…
We’ve just finished updating #TheDigitals leaderboard and we’ve found that @Danbarker is STILL topping the charts!
Well done to Dan, who’s managed to keep up a steady flow of content all week, sharing and creating knowledge about the digital landscape, and staying on top of some very tough competition!
There’s been some great action on the board this week – let’s look at some of the new faces and new changes…
It’s been yet another busy week on #TheDigitals leaderboard, with over 6,000 of you tweeting and sharing some amazing content that you think is worthy of an illustrious Digital award. Thanks for all your tweets and contributions, we’re really building up a huge library of outstanding digital content.
The familiar face of @DanBarker is still sitting proudly at the top of the board for a second week, managing to clock up an astounding 210 mentions in the last week! Well done again Dan – influence in action!
So the question is: Who can knock him off the top spot and be our next Digital Superstar?
At ArabNet’s Digital Summit in Beirut last week, Jordanian agency, Prodigi Corp, took home the prize for Best Digital Campaign for its work for radio channel, Beat FM.
The Facebook campaign asked people to share their pictures if they are a celebrity look-alike.
More examples of innovative social media case studies are beginning to come to light in the Middle East, which is exciting for the digital industry in this region.
Sharing case studies and examples of best practice is hugely beneficial for digital as a whole, enabling companies to learn from their peers and better understand best practices and rules of engagement.
With that in mind, here we look at Beat FM’s case study in more detail, as well as some of the other campaigns shortlisted in this category at ArabNet’s summit.
Peugeot Panama has launched a Pinterest-based competition that asks people to complete puzzles by repinning images of its cars.
Last week the brand created several boards depicting different models with pieces missing.
People can search for and find these pieces, pin them on their own boards and share it with Peugeot. The first five people to complete their boards win prizes.
On Tuesday, Google announced Search, plus Your World.
The deep integration of Google+ results into its search results is perhaps the strongest reminder yet of the fact that Google is competing head on with publishers and other companies. Publishers and companies that hope to achieve top rankings in the company’s search results.
We’re living in a multi-platform retail environment and that’s a great thing for marketers, mostly.
On the one hand, there’s a wide variety of ways to interact with people and drive sales. If a potential customer doesn’t respond positively to emails, they may be more willing to connect with your firm on Facebook, for example.
But the downside is that consumers have far higher expectations, particularly of the bigger brands. If you aren’t catering to their platform of choice, you risk frustrating them and devaluing your company.
Here are a few of the main platforms your customers may expect you to be actively using – and how you can meet their expectations.
In his last post on the Econsultancy blog, Tariq Seksek touched upon the importance of competitions, contest and sweepstakes when running a social media campaign in the Middle East.
While some brands may have found success in running such contests, others are of the opinion that competitions equate to buying fans, as the interest of the fans lies in the prize rather than the brand and its offerings.
I remember speaking to Mohamed Parham of Wild Peeta (Dubai’s social media darling brand) about two years ago, who emphasised the brand’s organic growth of its fan and follower counts.
Whatever camp you belong to – growth by competitions or growth by content – it is important to consider the characteristics of the local market including demographics, usage habits and cultural sensitivities.