With Google+ celebrating its third anniversary in June this year, I have noticed a surge in brands getting busy and shifting their marketing attention toward this network.
1.15bn users are only the beginning of many possibilities that Google+ has to offer, especially if Google is planning something big this year.
But have they tapped all the potential in waking up its sleeping community?
Pinterest is used by more than 21% of all American adults. This is up from 15% on the previous year.
This figure comes from the last study by Pew Research, which also states the even more incredible fact that one-third of all women in the USA use Pinterest.
Pinterest drove an unprecedented amount of traffic to retail sites in Q4 2013 achieving a 50% quarter-over-quarter increase in revenue-per-visit (RPV). In fact, Pinterest has overtaken Facebook for UK referral revenue and is expected to do the same in the USA this year.
Also, with the amount of Pinterest Pin it buttons overtaking the amount of Facebook Likes on product pages, retailers are realising that Pinterest is a key way to drive sales.
Let’s take a look at how the top 10 US retailers (in terms of 2013 sales) use Pinterest.
Forgive the first person pronoun in the headline, but television is the most emotive of subjects.
Not for nothing does the Simpsons use the TV set as a cultural trope. Perhaps the emergence of broadband and the creative decline of the Simpsons is more than correlative?
Anyway, I don’t dispute the second screen phenomenon, not one bit. I use my phone whilst watching TV all the time.
What I am disputing, outside of a few important examples, is the extent of consumer demand for contextual second screen experiences. Within this disputation comes the assertion that a lot of second screen use is indeed not contextual (aside from social media use) and cannot therefore be ‘monetised’ as such.
Of course, fans of the second screen may point out that the reason second screen usage isn’t yet contextual is because second screen services and apps are nowhere near maturation yet. There may be improved uses and better content to come.
I’d argue that the same problems that beset social advertising (a place for branding but not sales) will ultimately beset the second screen, driven as it is by the demand for socialising whilst watching the box.
See if you agree with my devil’s advocate’s views.
Clothing retailer Threadless has unveiled a new iPhone app, giving its customers another way to shop and interact with the brand.
Threadless is a community website that specialises in unique designs for t-shirts, hoodies and other items. It is built around social media and allows users to follow their favourite designers, submit their own ideas, and vote for designs that they want the website to sell.
Alongside the standard ecommerce functions, the app includes a voting tool so users can rate new designs and a never-ending feed of original products.
Read on to find out what I thought of the app, or for more information on Threadless read our blog posts looking at how it uses welcome emails and online video…
Asian nations are apparently among the most prolific sharers of online video according to a new report, with Indonesians sharing more video content than any other country.
India came second overall, followed by Greece and Thailand, with the US and UK down in 19th and 43rd respectively.
The data, which comes from video ad network Coull, shows that the most popular video content among Indonesians is related to style and fashion.
With video content proving to be so popular among Southeast Asian countries it’s important for brands in the region to have a relevant strategy in place.
In order to help digital marketers improve their video strategy in the region Econsultancy has just published a new Online Video in South-East Asia Best Practice Guide.
WaterAid has increased its Instagram presence by 12,000 followers in just one week after entering a single Instagram video to the network’s ‘Weekend Hashtag Project’.
WaterAid’s team entered the 15 second Instagram video #WHPfromwhereiwalk featuring a woman in the remote fishing community of Brubeng, Ghana walking to collect unsafe water in Lake Volta.
The unique film offers point-of-view footage that highlights what it’s like for the millions of women around the world who walk miles to collect water each day.
As of writing, since the video was uploaded on Instagram two weeks ago, WaterAid has achieved more than 22,000 followers, gaining roughly a thousand users per day. Before this WaterAid had only 3,800.
Here’s the footage…
As a relative newcomer to the digital marketing world, I’ve decided to write a series of ‘beginner’s guides’ to uncover what is meant by certain terms, trends and technological advances in digital; being both a travel guide and a personal investigation.
Here I’ll be answering the following questions: What are iBeacons? What are their practical applications? Are iBeacons better than similar existing technology?
All this in a tone of voice that has been described as both ‘helpful’ and ‘not too rambling’.
Just a cursory glance around the internet and indeed our own blog, throws up a lot of phrases and acronyms surrounding the term iBeacons (NFC, BLE… iBeacons).
Let’s have a little wade through the jargon. Bear with me, I’ll try and do this as logically as possible.
Samsung has generated a bit of buzz in the tech world this week by announcing a Kanye West and Jay Z concert at SXSW that is only open to owners of its Galaxy devices.
It marks the continuation of Samsung’s association with Jay Z, as back in 2013 Galaxy owners could grab a free copy of the rapper’s new album by downloading an app.
This inspired me to delve further into Samsung’s back catalogue to see what other interesting digital marketing campaigns it had been come up with over the years.
You can also read similar posts focusing on digital campaigns from Coca-Cola, Nike and McDonald’s…
Paid search is a vital part of the marketer’s arsenal, but effective PPC requires time and effort.
Here are my 10 AdWords commandments. What are yours?
As of July 2013, the Google Play store officially reached over 1m apps published and over 50bn downloads.
As of the same date, iTunes achieved 575m registered users and it’s adding 500,000 new accounts every day.
There is no denying the power and ubiquity of Apple’s digital music service, after all it has transformed the way that everyone on the planet consumes music.
iTunes is a deeply flawed experience though. It’s impersonal and slow, with lack of support for different file formats, a stubbornly rigid price model and no browser access.
In an ongoing series I’ve been checking out the competition to see if I can find a digital music platform that can finally trump iTunes.
So far, 7digital and Amazon MP3 have both shown many surprising wins over the Goliath of iTunes. I saved Google Play till later as I expected this to be where the true battle lies.
I was wrong.
Ecommerce is simple. Don’t let anyone trouble you with thoughts on mobile, social or personalisation. The beating heart of ecommerce is the triangulation of data and uniting your best products with your best customers to make the most profit.
I had the pleasure of listening to Mike Baxter, an Econsultancy long-time friend and consultant (author of the Checkout Optimisation guide, amongst other things), talking about data triangulation at a recent breakfast briefing with Ometria.
Mike detailed his deceptively simple philosophy of selling online and I thought it worthwhile to put his thoughts down in full, over a couple of posts. Everything you read in these posts comes out of Mike’s presentation.
I think it’s worthwhile dwelling on this idea of knowing your products and customers ahead of anything else. Ultimately it’s the nub of your site design but also your marketing efforts including media spend.
As marketers start to join up data sources, they need to be wary of jumping the gun, trying to stitch up remarketing, social CRM, personalization, before they’ve truly looked at optimising product mix and display.
Here’s what Mike had to say…
Anyone near the world of content marketing understands the importance of writing. Well-chosen words strung together with care are the heart of any modern SEO strategy.
Current and topical writing in blog posts help businesses become relevant for current and prospective customers.
If you are one of those people, you probably also understand one other hard truth: A lot of the stuff we write doesn’t really get read. People are busy, and it’s hard to pay attention to a whole blog post and certainly a whole book with everything else clamoring for attention.
But what if a reader could read, and totally comprehend, a 300-word post in 30 seconds? Before that truck commercial is over, the whole blog is read.