As the news broke that Facebook would be parting with a truly massive $16bn to acquire messaging service WhatsApp, the internet (as is its wont) was awash with opinion.
Would this devalue Facebook? The market certainly seemed to agree, with almost 5% being shaved off the FB price after hours. So, is this a crazed land-grab that will spell the end of Facebook, WhatsApp, or both?
Or a very smart decision?
GoPro is the fifth biggest brand on YouTube according to The Touchstorm Video Index and as only 2% of the top 5,000 YouTube channels are from brands, this is a considerable achievement.
With 1.7m subscribers to GoPro’s YouTube channel, how does this California-based digital camera manufacturer keep its audience entertained and engaged, on a social video platform notoriously difficult for brands to achieve success on?
If your answer is “because GoPro makes the kind of exhilarating, extreme sports videos that make you lose control of your bodily functions while sat at your desk” you’ll be half right.
Here I’ll be taking a look at GoPro’s YouTube strategy, using the best practice tips I laid out in my article from last year: YouTube strategy for brands.
It can sometimes get a bit murky in the digital marketing world, with slander, extortion and Google penalties all potential weapons for practitioners of negative SEO.
This article aims to look at the current state of negative SEO, its place in the industry, how search engines are reacting/might react and significantly, ways to proactively detect negative SEO.
Twitter usage is high among businesses small and large, but did you know that the analytics now available from the platform has some great features that could help inform and drive your marketing planning for this channel?
In this post I’ll explain six different ways in which you can make use of these simple tools to improve social campaign planning.
Twitter Analytics is made up of a few different dashboards, each with a specific use:
Converse operates the third most popular branded page on Facebook, with 39.6m fans and 76,000 people talking about the brand.
This is according to Socialbakers’ Top 100 brands on social media. However, Converse doesn’t seem to chart on any of the other social media platforms.
Converse is a progressive brand with a long history of cool associations through sport, music, comic books and video games. Being purchased by Nike, an expert brand when it comes to social media, over a decade ago should have helped strengthen its social media strategy.
However Converse seems to be lacking in certain areas. Let’s take a look at the Converse Facebook page, followed by Google+, Instagram, Vine, Twitter and Pinterest.
UK based publisher DK has seen huge growth across all of its social channels thanks to its partnership with LEGO.
LEGO is of course one of the most beloved brands on the planet. This month has seen it completely dominate the marketing world with The LEGO Movie, a triumph of content marketing, and its current success is certainly due to its many licences and partnerships.
What success can your brand or company expect to achieve by aligning with the Danish toy company responsible for producing the largest population (albeit plastic) on Earth?
DK has revealed its before & after social media numbers from its campaign with LEGO from September 2013.
It’s no secret that in spite of the boom in mobile web traffic, conversion rates from smartphones remain far lower than on desktop.
This is largely due to the fact that people use mobiles for research and searching for product ideas, before making a purchase on their laptop or PC.
The low conversion rates are mirrored by high abandonment rates, with new data from remarketing firm Cloud.IQ showing that during January the abandonment rate for smartphone users on ecommerce sites was 84%, compared to 72% on tablet and 68% on desktop.
The question is, what can be done to reduce basket abandonment on mobile? In truth a large proportion will continue to drop out simply because they use mobile for product research, however there are still ways of shortening the purchase journey on mobile so shoppers are nudged towards a conversion rather than dropping out.
To give some inspiration for mobile designers, I’ve rounded up some of my favourite UX features from various mobile checkouts that might help to limit user frustration and abandonment rates.
Enjoy!
The cool thing about search is the way it just keeps changing and growing, meaning website owners and marketers are constantly needing to adapt and exploit new opportunities to maximise their search presence.
Here are five noteworthy directions in which search is evolving that I think digital marketers need to be aware of.
Consumer electronics shoppers usually spend a lot of time researching products before they eventually make a decision, which typically involves looking at upwards of 14 sources of information.
This includes searching for advice from consumer publications such as Which, comparison sites and customer reviews.
Organic and paid search is therefore an extremely important tactic for gaining brand exposure during the purchase journey.
There is a mix of competition within this sector as manufacturers, specialist suppliers, ecommerce brands and multichannel retailers attempt to improve market share.
A new report examining which brands achieve the highest visibility for consumer electronics has found that Amazon.co.uk comes top for both organic and paid search, which probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise.
TV advertising budgets are slowly moving online. Even so, online video advertising represents about 3% of TV budgets.
In 10 years the figures will look different. Perhaps 25% or 30%. Or perhaps TV will change significantly.
Recent developments in online video advertising include richer formats, such as interactive ecommerce catalogues, games, dynamic location-based ads, social integration.
With change occurring in the market, it feels like a good time to re-assess online video advertising. Aside from recommending our formidable Online Video Best Practice Guide, I thought I’d write some rules for online video ads of the future.
Major tip of the hat here, as these ideas are partly taken from Pierre Chappaz, Founder and CEO of Ebuzzing, and a talk he gave at December 2013’s Le Web.
So Twitter has just rolled out its latest look, and if we are to believe the latest pictures of yet more testing, it could be ‘goodbye, Twitter feed’ and more ‘hello, timeline’…
Could it be that the unmistakeable look of Twitter is to become a thing of the past?
I began writing an ‘amusing’ article last night, it was to combine my twin passions for music and search marketing. It was to be entitled ’20 band or artist names that are impossible to Google’.
I figured this would be ripe for hilarity and also an interesting look into what new bands and artists need to consider when trying to market themselves online.
After all we live in a ‘digital first’ world where bands like Chvrches specifically spell their name wrong so they can be searched more easily and Owen Pallet dropped his Final Fantasy pseudonym in order to drive more traffic to his site instead of the computer game franchise.
I was wrong.