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10 sketchy text formatting tips for Twitter and Facebook

Ever wanted to use bold or italics in a tweet? Or a strikethrough, in a Facebook update? Or to use a special character of some kind? Well here’s your chance… 

It’s Friday, so I thought I’d cobble together a throwaway post based around the different text styles you can use on Twitter. Click on an image to go to the appropriate text rendering tool. 

Apologies if this leads to a spate of nonsensical, illegible tweets. 

Unicode… so much to answer for.

How to create automatically send emails with AdWords spend

Welcome back to our Intro to AdWords scripts series where we’re training you to automate your account management using scripts.

If you missed our first post in the series, check out How to use AdWords scripts, the future of paid search.

This article is for the enthusiastic reporters. We’ll teach you how to calculate the cost of your campaigns over the last week and automate an email with the details. 

Five simple ideas for free content curation on Twitter

Please ignore the header image. Curation is not thieving.

There are many companies that don’t have enough resources to employ a dedicated social media man. It’s also the case that many digital marketing execs take care of social media but don’t necessarily have experience with Twitter.

The most important part of managing a Twitter account is having tools in place to make things easier. Chiefly, HootSuite for Econsultancy, but it could be any of their competitors, to keep track of brand mentions, relevant hashtags and to schedule tweets effectively.

Alongside tools, content creation and curation is important. If you’re not doing this, what will you tweet about.

Again, a lot of companies don’t have the resources for copious content creation. That’s where curation comes in.

I’m by no means a social media guru (a relief?) but I think these ideas for what to whack in a tweet, when you’re busy but desire engagement, can be heeded by many. They are all free, so you’ve no excuses.

Our head of social Matt Owen wrote a comprehensive post on why engagement outside of your website is hard to measure but is worthwhile. 

I’ve only given you five simple ideas. The idea is that these will get you thinking about what else you can curate. As always, let me know your thoughts. Oh, and give us a tweet.

Navigating the murky world of black hat and white hat SEO

I’ve been making a point in my journey as a writer for Econsultancy to investigate the many and varied terms in digital that I don’t understand.

As I am a relative newcomer to the digital marketing world, this is like a trial-by-fire. 

In my first few weeks, terms like CRM, CRO, iBeacons, retargeting and PPC all felt like an alien language. 

None more so than the phrases ‘black hat’ and ‘white hat’ in relation to search engine optimisation (SEO).

In this article I’ll be investigating what is meant by each of these terms by asking: What are the basic principles of each ‘hat’? What is considered best practice? and what should be avoided?

“Boy, have we got a vacation for you”

Twitter Cards: in the right place at the right time to create a new kind of web

What’s the difference between a tweet and a blog post? What about a collection of tweets and a website?

You may start with a description of 140 characters, but while this famous limit still applies, it’s hardly the point anymore.

Twitter Cards (RIP ‘tweets’), are best thought of as ‘action+caption’ and may quickly become the smallest meaningful and shareable unit of the web.

Britain flooded, but did advertisers ride the wave to success?

With spring having well and truly sprung and temperatures reaching a balmy 20 degrees this weekend, it’s hard to remember that this winter it rained for almost three solid months.

But we were quickly reminded during our annual review of travel search data, when we spotted a huge leap in CPC and impression figures over January and February 2014. 

It’s not unusual to see an uplift in impressions and CPCs at the start of the year as the British public looks to escape the freezing winter but such a significant leap was certainly worth a second look.

vans on instagram

How Vans uses social media: Instagram, Vine, Google+ and Twitter

My choices for highlighting brands which are acing social media right now – Converse, Marvel Comics, GoPro – may give you a small insight into my youth.

A youth spent skateboarding, reading comic books and performing dangerous stunts on camera. Only I didn’t really skateboard, I just hung out with friends who did. I didn’t really perform any dangerous stunts either. We just stayed up all night watching Jackass. I did read plenty of comic books though.

Perhaps this is why I follow so many brands like this on social media. They’re something to remind me of who I really am, or at least who I like to think I was when I was growing up. 

On the face of it, purchasing a pair of low-slung jeans and wearing a back-pack doesn’t necessarily mean any more than buying into a culture, but I make these choices because they go some way to define a part of me.

Vans does an excellent job in tapping into its own cultural heritage and providing a social experience that is in turns aspirational, inspirational and nostalgic. In a mututally beneficial exchange, the brand defines the community and the community defines the brand.

Here we’ll be taking a look at the best of Vans’ social media channels.

Content marketing for YouTube made easy

Up until now, it’s been a mystery as to how brands can truly make a success of marketing on YouTube.

Largely it’s been a case of trial and error. Of the top 5,000 YouTube channels, only 2% are owned by brands. 

This is incredibly frustrating if your company is committed to content marketing and wishes to exploit the many benefits of online video, but are then presented with the stark fact that if you’re not a teenager showing off their latest shopping haul or Rihanna then you might as well give up.

Common sense largely prevails though. The brands that do succeed on YouTube – GoPro, Marvel or Disney all have a strong similarity. They create content that is entertaining, engaging, unique to the channel and informative.

Timeless qualities that will always ensure a channel’s success no matter how much a search algorithm changes.

A few month’s ago I looked at YouTube strategy for brands and it’s made pretty clear that all of a YouTube creator’s positive efforts will help increase a channel’s ‘velocity’. This rather nebulous term is what YouTube is hungry for. Velocity is achieved through sharing, engagement and ultimately subscribers.

This week YouTube has revealed its Creator Playbook for Brands. It’s a massive 100 page tome with a highly detailed seven step approach to content marketing. 

Here I’ll be highlighting the explicit set of guidelines YouTube has provided to help brands create successful content.

Western brands selling to a China that’s increasingly open

The Chinese market is massive and whilst American and European brands are actively pursuing it, Chinese companies are also actively courting this interest.

In this post, I’ll give some examples of brands that have moved into China, selling directly online. I’ll also detail moves from Chinese companies such as Alibaba, which is encouraging US retailers to sell into the country, as well as Chinese brands partnering with US brands with both parties benefitting.

To start with some context, Ernst & Young estimate that by 2030, China’s ‘middle’ will number 1bn and represent two thirds of the world’s middle.

And despite this burgeoning demand in China, home-grown brands are lacking. As China’s twelfth five-year plan comes to end (one of its tenets is aimed at encouraging national brands, not just designers), there are an increasing number of international partner brands in China, and some Western businesses have been bought, too.

Nine of the best social campaigns from March 2014

Another month has passed, so it’s time to look back and reflect on some of the interesting social campaigns that we saw during March.

This time around the list includes Cancer Research’s #nomakeupselfie campaign, a competition to win World Cup tickets, a few viral videos, and several campaigns that reward users with personalised videos.

And if you’re still clamouring for more social campaigns, check out our round ups from the first few months of 2014 and the whole of 2012.

Cancer Research UK on how its social team reacted to #nomakeupselfie

The #nomakeupselfie campaign has helped to raise more than £8m for Cancer Research UK. This money will fund 10 clinical trials, an astonishing achievement.

Many articles have commented on just why the campaign was so successful, from its mobile nature to the emotional triggers pulled by shared photographs.

What hasn’t been covered is just how Cancer Research UK dealt with such a large amount of social action. How does the team to react and capitalise on what some may think amounts to a black swan event?

I spoke to Aaron Eccles, senior social media manager at Cancer Research UK and asked him about the campaign. Here’s what I learned.

The challenge of blending content with data: discussion and infographic

How to use content effectively at each stage of the funnel, from awareness to lead generation, lead management to sales and retention?

I moderated a discussion at Econsultancy’s Digital Cream event yesterday about B2B content marketing and this was among the many things we talked about.

Of course, one of the discussion points was how to ensure content is good, ergo in the right format and length most appropriate for the customer’s location in the funnel, as well as best suited to your specific product and sector.

Creating good content may also entail curating content held internally, making sure that it is repurposed in ways that suit the customer, perhaps dialling down some of the technical fervour within your organisation to make things easily ‘digestible’.

But aside from these myriad discussions about content formats (what it takes to be a good writer/editor/producer, who should create the content and how often) there was a bigger beast to slay.

That beast is a mess of data that may be inaccurate. A consensus that the buying journey often affords a company only ‘one shot at a customer’ was clear for many of the people I talked to. Having good data and a good contact strategy is key.

In this post I thought I’d continue the spirit of Digital Cream and spark discussion of combining content with customer data. I’ve also shared an infographic from Experian Data Quality, discussing data quality more generally, and the impact it has on businesses.

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