Posts by Clarissa Sajbl

Clarissa is a bilingual Strategic Marketing MA graduate with rounded experience in a number of key marketing disciplines including social media, project management, research and business development. Clarissa is Marketing Graduate at Linkdex. -- More articles and bio from Clarissa Sajbl
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Social Media Automation: The Good And Bad #smxlondon

Social Media

Social media has revolutionsed the way we interact with clients, friends, family and peers but at the same time it can also be very complex and time consuming. This session focused on giving and outline of available tools to automate social media sharing. However, leaving those tasks unattended to a machine can also cause various problems if not social disasters therefore speakers provided the audience with best practices to blend the automation of social media with human oversight.

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Turning Up Your Twitter Tactics #smxlondon

Twitter Evolution

Twitter has fast evolved to become a key element in anyone’s social media strategy. The landscape has changed though and the days of simply pushing out 140 character messages in the hope of generating new traffic to your site are long gone. Nowadays we as digital marketers, have to take various considerations into account i.e tweet time, frequency, re-tweets as well as the authority of those that are re-tweeting. Twitter has launched various new service enhancements such as its expanding Twitter promotion program and as Twitter cards. The session’s focus was on techniques and strategies to truly get the best out of Twitter.

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The Internet As A Distraction And How To Stay On Top Of The Game

NewOne

I think it’s fair to say that the majority of our readers and ourselves are constantly connected to the internet, be that because we are knowledge workers that require deep concentration for daily tasks or because we want to connect with friends online. The fast evolution of new technologies and the growing connected world have generated various debates over the last few years. Recent developments in Sillicon Valley are undermining the internet’s distracting nature – so I’ve decided to find out what all the fuzz is about.

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The Future of Search: Marketing Analytics, Real Life and Links

ionsSearch logo

Last week IonSearch Leeds took place. The 2 day conference featured some of the industry’s top search marketing and social media professionals, presented in an interactive and non-commercial fashion, discussing and showcasing advanced search marketing tips.

We had 2 great and beneficial days of networking and also improving one’s own contact list. Of course, it was not all just work, the organisers of the event also treated their delegates to some great fun after the conference. (more…)

Creating Content For Online Stores (when people don’t really read)

content

Last week I was lucky enough to attend BrightonSEO – and right from session one it became clear that content is a BIG topic for digital marketers in 2013 and the years to come. I’m pretty lucky since my job requires me to attend various search conferences and I have seen that even the exhibitor landscape has slightly changed since Google’s Panda and Penguin updates in 2012 – whereas you’ll now find numerous article writing services promising “services for unique and exclusively written content created to your specification”.

This slight conference exhibitor shift emphasises the surge in demand for content creators. Plenty of blog posts are advising us to think twice before hiring a new addition to our marketing team – we might want to consider hiring a writer rather than a career marketer – I am sure this is old news for you though. What triggered my curiosity though were the findings of a Nielsen study I came across a few weeks ago. (more…)

Sharing Your Story Through Images Has Never Been So Powerful

escher-swans

In the digital marketing space content is currently on everybody’s lips and has become the key to the success of any digital marketer. The challenge faced by the industry is therefore JUST how to create compelling content to genuinely engage their audiences. Nowadays, everyone is a content creator from your neighbour’s 15 year old daughter who tweets every 10 minutes about Justin Bieber to mummy bloggers who passionately share the latest baby products with their peers.

We have seen numerous blog posts on how to create great content inspiring us with content idea suggestions such as running polls, competitions, Slideshare, running guest blog posts, adding video, interviewing a person of authority – the list is endless! I recently came across a tech start-up called ThingLink who have developed a tool that is truly in the position to change how your readers engage with images and pictures. The invention allows you to transform a static image into a truly unique navigational surface allowing readers to explore media rich and relevant content within images – improving the user’s experience and knowledge dramatically. (more…)

Google’s Fight Against Fake Online Reviews

RestaurantReviewInSERPS

I think it’s fair to say that online reviews are hugely influential during your online search process to determine the right solution for yourself. Honestly, think about your own search behaviour – how often has your purchasing decision been influenced by customer reviews? For instance if a friend tells me that a particular restaurant is good I will take his word for it – the same accounts for ‘my’ personalized search results since they also show websites favoured by our peers.

I guess we all agree that fake reviews are becoming a big problem – and are altering the trust of potential customers. Interestingly enough (years and years ago!!) when I was working on my thesis the UK was just about to enforce a law to stop brands using fake reviews in the form of stealth marketing. A major case at that time were teenage bloggers who raved about Lady Gaga on online forums, social media sites etc, however they were actually ‘employed’ by Gaga’s PR agency – meaning that underaged individuals were incentivised and paid. The result? Gaga’s organisation ended up paying a fine. (more…)

PR + SEO When Two Worlds Collide

PR + SEO-WorkingTogether

Until recently SEO and PR were regarded as two separate industries – but the scene has changed and we are now witnessing the coalition of the two. So what has led to this trend? What is it that those 2 professions are each missing – leading to the fact that they are now converging? In this post I would like to give you an understanding of these colliding worlds as well as some early adopter examples and their motivations for adopting this trend – and how that is affecting their overall digital efforts. (more…)

Are You Managing Your Personal And Brand Online Reputation Accordingly?

WhatDoesTheInternetSayAboutYou

The rapid growth and popularity of the internet and social media has made the world a far smaller place. Gone are the days when organisations were able to hide behind their PR teams – nowadays everything is instant and therefore also international. So what challenges does that imply for us?

Reputation used to be closely linked to word-of-mouth – the most powerful form of marketing even in the digital age. Just think of the last time you wanted to try out a new restaurant – you might have asked friends whether they’ve already had the pleasure to dine there in order to help you with your decision making process. Another very common approach (surprise, surprise) is to simply ‘google’ the product or service of your desire to help you make up your mind. This is exactly where my curiosity comes into the game – do you agree with me if I say reputation is a key factor for consumers looking to make a purchasing decision?

The internet displays a vast amounts of information on brands and individuals that reputation simply doesn’t stem from word-of-mouth solely anymore. Further  factors to take into account are: the ease of the online purchase journey, online communication provided and its speed as well as online advertising taking online reputation to a new level. (more…)

How to Genuinely Have an Impact on Influencers

influence-2

Recently there’s been a lot of talk about the SEO and PR industry. The reason? Google’s latest developments – mainly Authorship and its ranking signals. For a change this is not only one for SEOs, this time it also highly impacts other professions such as PRs and journalists.

Frankly put industries that have quite a few similarities as both require high visibility and exposure to increase ROI on their efforts. The foundation of PR is creating compelling content that grasps their target audiences’ attention but in order to grasp their attention any PR has to be armed with the finest relationship building skills with the hope that influential journalists will cover the topic, right?

Journalists on the other hand have to ensure that they are well respected and trusted within the industry to maximise their ROI, therefore visibility and exposure are crucial. So where am I going with this? (more…)

Persuasion Optimization for your Website’s Traffic

persuasion

Search mainly focuses on attracting visitors to your site. Brand managers and digital marketers optimize their sites in order to gain higher rankings in search engines to increase the likelihood of searchers to access the particular sites which as a result leads to higher website traffic. Apart from that though we also ought to think of other forms of optimization. So what happens when visitors land on your page, what other forms of optimization are in place to increase the success of a website?

In this blog post I will look into persuasion optimization, the numerous benefits it brings with it as well as 6 on-site persuasion techniques. Each of your site visitors has a different perception of value therefore I will provide a summary of the 4 most dominant persona types as identified by the Eisenberg brothers.

After having managed to attract visitors to land and access our sites, we want them to stay on it and act upon our call of actions, right? The umbrella term for this is persuasion optimization which focuses on influencing (hence NOT manipulating) and triggering visitors to act in a certain way that are beneficial to you. This could be in the form of feedback, making a purchase, donating, or even downloading a white paper in return for the visitor’s contact details. Once you have planned, designed, and optimized your content for your target audience you’ll see that your site becomes a far more efficient sales tool. (more…)

The Impact Online Gamification Can Have On The Real World

Game-on

Lately I have come across the term ‘gamification’ a lot and so I’ve decided to look into this topic a bit more in-depth. First of all I would like to give you a brief explanation of the term itself, further we’ll be looking into trend predictions for the years to come followed by an outline of brands which have successfully incorporated gamified apps into their overall online business strategy. And last but not least I’ve saved the best until the end: 2 real-world examples of gamified apps and the impact they have had on the local community and their surroundings! (more…)

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