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Pinterest overtakes Facebook for UK referral revenue

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr drove an unprecedented amount of traffic to retail sites in Q4 2013 with revenue-per-visit (RPV) increasing across all social channels.

However, Pinterest is taking swift advantage of Facebook’s slowing growth by achieving a 50% quarter-over-quarter increase in RPV. 

That’s not to say that Facebook didn’t end 2013 in a big way. In fact it broke multiple records as per usual.

These findings come from Adobe’s recently released social intelligence report for Q4 2013. The report reveals an otherwise massive end of year for Facebook with click-through-rate (CTR) up 365% year-over-year and 41% quarter-over-quarter.

This follows another recent report from Kenshoo revealing that Facebook ads drove a 60% increase in sales revenue in the same quarter.

However, as stated at the top of the page, things are certainly not all rosy for Facebook, with other social media networks asserting their positions and overtaking Facebook in key areas.

Let’s take a closer look at the report.

New BBC interactive guides: responsive, dynamic and accessible web design

iWonder is the evocative name for the BBC’s new interactive guides. The name conjures childlike enquiry (I wonder!), ‘90s crisps (Golden Wonder) and fits nicely with the Beeb’s and Apple’s use of the stunted ‘iProductname’ format.

The guides are the BBC’s new content format, described as ‘sit forward’, allowing the user to learn by doing.

They organise video and audio, infographics, text and activities into stories.

I’ve been having a play with the guides and given some brief thoughts below. Do go and check them out, they’re a powerful tool for schoolchildren or older autodidacts.

Can Communities make me return to Google+?

When Google+ Communities was launched back in December 2012, it was at a time I was trying to be active on the network.

What better way of showing my support for a network we’re frequently being reminded not to neglect than by jumping on this new feature?

So I quickly and enthusiastically signed up to a handful of the raft of communities that were created that first week and even started my own. But, my participation in said communities lasted for about as long as my enthusiasm for Google+ itself, which is to say: not very long. 

In this post I am going to explore Google+ Communities from a fresh perspective, especially now that the feature has had just over a year to mature.

Is the feature enough to make me start using Plus again? And would I start recommending businesses invest their time there again?

The internet of things: five new products changing the market now

I am subtitling this post, ‘products become services, services become transparent’.

Econsultancy researcher Andrew Warren-Payne sent me a list of internet of things developments, products that have emerged over the past year and are now available.

He knows I’m interested in internet enabled things as I’ve written a few posts before about what to expect and about why everyone is so fascinated by the IoT.

I’ve tried to keep the discussion rooted to what marketers need to know about IoT. It’s easy to get carried away talking about fridges that know when you’ve run out of milk but realistically there’s no demand for that. It won’t be happening any time soon.

But what will be happening is the gradual transition from one-off purchases where the customer is never to be seen again. This will transition to services, where a customer’s purchase ‘talks’ to the store or manufacturer and a relationship is established throughout the product lifecycle.

Whether it be refills, repairs or upgrades, the seller can keep in touch to potentially make you a more loyal and valuable customer.

Additionally, customers will be able to demand accuracy and transparency from many service providers, as internet enabled devices afford greater data analysis, or life-logging. Cost-saving could be a major benefit, for consumers and suppliers.

So what are these emerging products Andrew has spotted?

Facebook top for social referral traffic, Pinterest comes second: report

In recent months there have been several reports that Facebook is a dying network that can’t stem the flood of teens leaving it for instant messaging apps.

However last week we published data which showed that Facebook is still hugely popular among all demographics, particularly on mobile, and now a separate report shows that Facebook is still easily the most important social network for referral traffic.

The data from Shareaholic examines the breakdown of overall referral traffic for more than 200,000 websites in Q4 2013.

Facebook easily comes out on top with an average of 13.8% of overall referral traffic, followed by Pinterest on 4.3%.

Twitter was third for social referrals with 1.1% in Q4, while Google+ came last with just 0.05%.

Google

12 inspiring marketing campaigns from Google

Google helps us all market our services. That statement can start a healthy debate amongst many in the media, but I think I’ll stick with it.

Of course, Google has to market itself, too.

Even the biggest and most successful companies must market themselves in some channels. Apple, for example, may shun social media, but it’s all over the television and out-of-home and has a distinctive presence on many high streets.

So, I thought I’d round up some examples of Google’s marketing that have stuck in my mind and continue to leave me mindful of Google’s all-conquering innovation.

Hope you enjoy!

Four points of Pinterest in ecommerce‏

The pinboard-style website is on the rise, aspiring to become the visual search engine of the internet.

With the novel arrival of the newest batch of pins that this social media channel has recently created for today’s modern digital consumers, will it be taking retailers by storm, or just bring a drizzle of rain into the world of ecommerce?

CPM is dead: a guide to viewability in online advertising

We are all exposed to display and video advertising and we all have a view on its efficacy.

In this post I’m going to take a beginner’s look at measurement in display and video advertising and ask if advertisers are finally getting a good (read ‘transparent’) deal.

How is improved measurement across display advertising changing the nature of the web? Will it start to feel lighter on ads as advertisers demand their ads are not just served but viewed by a human being?

What are the standards for viewability and if the networks are adopting them, is this the death of the impression?

Nine simple tips to help your business gain more Twitter followers

Nobody wants to tweet in a vacuum. We all want to know that someone out there is listening and enjoying what we have to say.

Admittedly that isn’t the best business case for increasing your amount of Twitter followers, but it is one of a number of reasons for wanting to attract more people to your feed.

A more pressing reason is that more followers means more exposure and better brand awareness, which in turn can lead to increased sales and revenue.

So to help you to boost your follower count I’ve come up with nine relatively simple tips that will help make you more popular on Twitter.

No single one of these tips will work as a golden bullet for your Twitter strategy – it’s not as easy as that unfortunately.

Instead you need to work at creating an interesting Twitter feed so people will want to follow and interact with you. That’s an ongoing process that takes time and effort, but these tips will at least give you a helping hand in the right direction.

If that doesn’t sounds like your kind of thing, you can always just go and buy a load of fake followers from a dodgy website somewhere, though that won’t really help your business.

Social media monetisation is a major concern among Asian marketers: new report

For the second year running, Econsultancy has published a freely available trends briefing about digital trends in South-East Asia, based on the Digital Cream Singapore event for senior client-side digital marketers held in November last year.

Digital Cream Singapore 2013 brought together more than 120 B2B and B2C in-house marketers from around the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) region and beyond to discuss best practice and common challenges in digital marketing, and learn from each other.

Delegates discussed a wide range of topics, ranging from managing and making sense of audience and customer data, increasing personalisation and loyalty, to using video marketing and cross-channel marketing.

Facebook ads drive 60% increase in sales revenue

Q4 2013 saw a spike in quarter-on-quarter impressions and click-through rates on paid Facebook ads.

This comes at a difficult time for brands on Facebook. News feed changes on Facebook have forced posts from free-to-run ‘pages’ further down Facebook users’ news feeds. 

Brands and companies are now being encouraged to concentrate on paid ads for their Facebook marketing strategies and forget the free channel of running a Facebook page.

The latest report from Kenshoo seems to bolster the logic in this possible change in direction for Facebook into a more ad driven marketing landscape, rather than a content driven one.

Here are some more stats from the research.

Customer experience and mobile seen as most exciting business opportunities in 2014

Customer experience, mobile and content marketing are among the three most important business opportunities in 2014, according to a new report from Econsultancy and Adobe.

One-fifth (20%) of client-side respondents said that the customer experience was the most exciting opportunity for their organisation, making it the most popular answer. Among agency respondents mobile came out on top (21%) for the same question.

Ultimately a good customer experience can only be achieved if all other outward-facing business functions are working together in a harmonious fashion, so all of the other areas covered as in the report are themselves key building blocks for a great customer experience.

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