I recently discovered Moment, the app that tracks how often you use your phone and also where you go each day.
The idea is that by quantifying something, you can address its imbalance. Moment’s goal, as its website states, is to promote balance in your life.
This is perhaps a healthier way for sceptics or cynics to look at the future of the quantified self.
So what can I measure and change?
Content marketing has been a hot topic in digital for more than a year, but many brands still struggle with the challenge of how to integrate content seamlessly into the ecommerce experience.
One of our recent surveys found that only 38% of in-house marketers have a defined content marketing strategy, despite 76% saying they are producing significantly more content than they were 12 months ago.
To help brands overcome these challenges Econsultancy and EPiServer have published a new report entitled Where Content and Commerce Collide.
It examines how digital content can be combined with ecommerce in order to create more engaging and successful websites.
One of the sections in the report, which is based on interviews with UK content and ecommerce professionals, investigates which types of content are most important for driving conversions.
Big data is a term which has been used widely over the last year or two, but what does it mean?
Well, we asked the question in our recent Measurement and Analytics Report 2014, produced in partnership with Lynchpin.
It’s a term which may trigger thoughts of massive amounts of forbidding, almost unfathomable data, but what do marketers think of it?
Another month has passed, so it’s time for us to round up some of the more noteworthy social campaigns we’ve seen in June.
This time around we’ve got examples from Coors Light, Wilkinson Sword, Porsche, Paddy Power, Burberry and Spec Savers.
And if this isn’t enough for you then check out my round ups from back in April and May…
It’s hard to get one’s head around China. The scale and the speed are vast and fast.
So, I thought I’d round up some companies doing interesting things online in China, just to give a snapshot of marketing in the country.
Full credit where it’s due, these are all taken from Barney Loehnis’ presentation (he’s head of digital in APAC for Ogilvy & Mather) at the Future of Digital Marketing 2014.
Google has announced that it is removing profile photos and the circle count from search results that include G+ authorship.
The stated aim is to create a more consistent look across devices and create a simpler, “less-cluttered” design.
Google’s John Mueller also suggested that the clickthrough rate on the new layout is “similar” to SERPs that included author photos.
This is the part of the announcement that marketers will find most dubious, as the increased visibility and social proof that came with Google authorship was proven to increase CTR.
There’s a lesson to be learnt here for brands both major and not so major…
Don’t give up if you haven’t grabbed an official slice of the World Cup bolo de cenoura. Apparently it doesn’t matter.
There’s plenty of opportunity to nutmeg the larger players and win plenty of reach and audience share with just a little extra creativity and cunning.
According to Unruly, despite official sponsors creating almost twice as many ads, commercials by brands not affiliated with the FIFA tournament have so far attracted 8.9m shares across social media sites.
Videos from official sponsors, who paid between £8m to £120m to have their names associated with the World Cup, have managed 3.6m shares.
Here are some more stats from the study showing the further dominance of the non-sponsors.
This is a call to all restaurants, chain or non-chain: having a mobile optimised site is an absolute must for driving the ravenous hordes through your doors.
Whether it’s a separate mobile-site, a responsively designed site or an adaptive one, if you want to capture the attention of the empty stomach as it wanders the street getting progressively more hungry-angry (hangry) then you have to provide a decent mobile presence.
Other restaurants may not necessarily be better than yours, but will they will beat you in the dinner rush if your website remains in its desktop form.
You don’t need a fully featured work of creative genius, just a simple, functional, easy-to-read, easy-to-navigate site that puts the most vital information to the fore.
Personally I believe the most necessary information or features that a restaurant’s mobile site should provide are as follows:
Obtaining a single customer view has become something of a holy grail for marketers, however its achievement is extremely problematic.
An ever-increasing number of customer touchpoints and data sources make it near impossible for marketers to correlate all this information in one place.
Econsultancy’s new report, The Path to Unified Marketing, examines the difficulties that brands face in obtaining a single view of their customers, as well giving an overview of the state of the industry.
Published in association with Tealium, the report is based on a survey of 313 client-side marketers in Q2 2014. Here’s a summary of four main talking points:
From exclusive competitions, to eye-popping images, to personal interaction to some of the most mouth-watering video content around, Dunkin’ Donuts has been doing phenomenal work since it landed on social five years ago.
The brand’s Vines regularly turn up in ‘best branded Vines round-ups‘, its Twitter account is often held up as a great example of interaction and its Instagram is a dangerous place to be if you have even a tiny amount of room left after lunch.
Not all the channels have been winners for Dunkin’ Donuts however, some of them are looking a little under loved and under developed. Perhaps this is a testament to the brand’s desire to give any new channel a go, and realising that ultimately not all channels are for every brand.
Or is there room for every brand on every channel? It takes research and no small amount of trial and error to develop the right tone of voice and tailor content accordingly.
Let’s begin with Facebook and Twitter, Dunkin’ Donuts first forays into the rocky road of social media back in 2008, before checking out the newer channels.
Are you just throwing money away on your PPC generics, or even questioning the worth?
An emerging trend from the brands that I speak to on a day to day basis, as well as industry leaders, is the questioning of the value of spending money on generic paid search adverts and whether this budget is better reallocated into solely brand terms, or even other marketing channels.
So whilst profusely stating the benefits of this approach as a customer acquisition strategy, I am often shocked when auditing brands’ existing PPC accounts (monthly spend ranging from £5,000 – £150,000).
The overall quality of search campaigns from a range of boutiques, high-street brands and multi-nationals are worringly sub-standard.
It is only then that I begin to understand the scepticism that this digital media tactic can effectively and efficiently drive greater branding awareness and ultimately revenue.
Twitter Cards are a must-have for bloggers as they are a simple way of increasing visibility and clicks.
Most Twitter users will be familiar with the Summary Cards, which give the reader a preview of the content before they click through to your website. The added visual impact is far more persuasive than simply including a link.
Twitter Cards also come with their own analytics platform which shows impressions, clicks, retweets and app downloads, depending on which cards you’re using.
Adding Summary Cards is a simple process for WordPress bloggers, but one which I’ve taken the time to document below.
This guide involves the use of WordPress plugins, the use of which we’ve discussed in previous posts.