This week’s top six infographics
Once again we round up six of the best infographics we’ve seen in the past week.
The topics include social media demographics, creative employment, Google+, and when to post on Facebook…
Five examples of local PPC best practice
Local search is becoming increasingly important as consumers look to find information about the products and services near to them.
For example, 81% of UK smartphone internet users have looked for local information with their devices, and these people are just as likely to purchase in your store as online.
There’s an extremely valuable amount of traffic available for local queries, so if you are a local business it becomes extremely important to deliver your messaging to these searchers.
Google has focused heavily on improving its local search results experience, and queries that trigger a local results page have increased in number, so that the location no longer needs to be part of the search query.
Google integrates data from Google+ to its map listings, so the easiest way to make sure your business is appearing on a map search is to ensure your Google+ business page is set up and using the correct address.
Here are five examples of PPC ads using location to enhance listings and (hopefully) increase CTR…
Five important PPC trends
The PPC (pay per click) landscape is continually changing as Google introduces new features, and advertisers become more savvy with regards to the customer information that they’re tracking, and more accomplished at processing and extracting insights from that wealth of data.
Here are five key areas that I am predicting will have an increasing amount of impact on our PPC activities in the year ahead.
Woolworths’ brand value soars, while the Australian gap between consumers and local retailers remains an issue
Woolworths has been named the top retail brand in Australia for the second year running, beating out supermarket competitor Coles by almost a billion dollars.
Interbrand’s 2013 Best Retail Brands report, which ranks the top retail brands around the world by value, placed Woolworths brand value at $4.57 billion, an increase of 9% on the year prior.
How video can improve ecommerce results
Videos are a powerful way to showcase products on an ecommerce website, and savvy online retailers are discovering ways to get the best return on their investment in video.
For example, videos can help improve SEO campaign results, and user-generated videos can help boost conversion rates.
Almost every type of website you visit these days features video prominently, since website visitors and shoppers have a growing appetite for video.
It’s more engaging for website visitors, and tells a brand or product story in a more immersive way than text and images do.
Australian consumers are fickle brand fans on social media
Over 80% of Australian online users have connected with at least one brand on social media, with 29% even connecting with 10 or more brands.
But 44% have also dumped a brand on social media because they were spammed or bored with content, according to a new white paper.
The Always On report from Latitude Insights looks at how Australians are using social media in an attempt to better understand how brands connect and influence consumers online.
Coca-Cola: the ‘s’ in social media doesn’t stand for ‘sales’
Coca-Cola, one of the most iconic consumer brands in the world, is not surprisingly one of the most popular and active brands on social media. In fact, with more than 62m ‘likes’ on Facebook, it’s the most popular brand on the world’s largest social network.
But in looking at the online chatter that takes place on social networks, Coca-Cola has come to a startling conclusion: there’s essentially no impact on sales.
How Cadbury uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+
Cadbury appears to be readymade for social marketing as it is a historic brand with products that people love.
However it hasn’t simply rested on its laurels and expected the ‘likes’ to come rolling in.
In the past year we’ve reported on Cadbury’s use of Facebook and Google+ for product launches, as well as its shift away from traditional media thanks to its success in social media.
Therefore I thought it would be interesting take a closer look at how the brand uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+.
This post is the latest in a series that has already examined the social strategies of several other major consumer brands, including ASOS, Tesco, McDonald’s and Red Bull.
Second screen and why you should pay attention in 2013
Watching TV whilst browsing the internet has been around for as long as I have been using the internet.
It used to be because we needed something to do whilst waiting for slow dial-up connections to download content, but nowadays multi-tasking via a ‘second screen’ or ‘dual screen’ is part of our everyday routine.
The great firewall of China
I can’t take too much credit for this latest blog post. It’s actually mainly down to my Channel Digital colleague Peter Graves and relates to his experiences with the internet during a recent trip to China.
I think it’s an interesting topic given the growth of the internet in China and the controversy that exists around the great firewall, the level of collaboration between Google and the general online landscape in that part of the world.
In particular, Pete was able to gain a hands on view of the actual internet browsing experience within China and how this compares with what we’ve become used to in the UK and indeed the majority of the “west”.
I’ll let Pete take up the story from here.
Explain like I’m five: How Community works
You probably haven’t heard of Explain Like I’m Five. Only about 250,000 people have.
‘ELI5’ is a subreddit, a stream on the content behemoth Reddit. And it’s an amazing example of community in action, one that’s been taken to a new level by the people running Reddit recently, with a small move that should be front of mind for any brand attempting to build a community.
How Arena Flowers used Twitter to deal with a customer service catastrophe
Fans of funny Twitter feeds will probably be aware of Arena Flowers’ comedy account, and I highly recommend that you start following it if you’re not already.
The florist adopted its rather offbeat strategy in 2011 after achieving limited success with a more traditional approach to social marketing, however it was forced to abandon the comic tweets recently following a disaster with its Valentine’s Day deliveries.
A series of problems with the supply chain meant that a number of orders didn’t arrive on time, so the customer service team turned to Twitter to help deal with the flood of queries and complaints.
The crisis has since subsided and the comedy tweets are back up and running, so I spoke to Arena Flowers’ managing director Will Wynne about how the company used Twitter to help deal with the situation…