Posts About ‘Research’

The Sacrifices We Make for Social Media: Real-Life, Sleep and Sex

An average UK adult will spend 2 years and four months on social networking sites over their lifetime. Women will spend a lot more time social networking than men: 60 minutes per day vs. 48. That is a lot. Where do we get the time?

It means we have to make sacrifices, leave other things out. But what sacrifices are we all making to make room for social media? Browsermedia decided to take a look. And came up with some surprising sacrifices: real-life socialising (14%), sleep (10%) and even sex (8%) suffer.

Take a look at the info graphic below for a full view. (more…)

Harlem Shake Bigger than Gangnam Style

gagnam-harlem-2

The popularity of certain virals has always been a mystery to me. How does a video of an inane lone dancer waving his arms about oblivious to the surrounding crowd, followed by said crowd freaking out and going nuts to the sound of a catchy beat, suddenly become one of the most popular phenomena of recent online history?

I’m talking of course about the Harlem Shake.

On the off chance that you haven’t come across this delight of internet memeness feast your eyes on the below. (more…)

Top Alternatives for Google Reader: Desktop, Tablet or All Platform

testament-feeds-2

Yesterday Google announced the upcoming death of Google Reader. A shock went through the Tech World: how are we now going to keep up with all that is written in our industry? It even got as far as petitions being set up.

But before you jump to the petition board: there are enough alternatives. There is Social Media off course, but if you want to stick to RSS there are several options as well. Below I’ve highlighted three types of alternatives: the (mainly) desktop alternative, the all platform alternative and the pure tablet alternative. Each with their own advantages. (more…)

Let’s Go Mobile, but Pay Attention

mobile-world-featured

It was nearly two weeks ago that Marin Software released a whitepaper which got some discussions and pens going. The whitepaper “Mobile Search Advertising Around The Globe” showed us some impressive numbers which were repeated over and over on several blogs and at SES London last week as well.

And with reason.

Since 2006 we have been talking about ‘the year of the mobile’ and that was even before there was such a thing as the iPhone, let alone tablets. Marin’s report shows that talking about mobile is one thing, doing mobile is another. Where in 2006 we thought the phone would be the mobile device to focus on, now it is the tablets that have our full attention. And it is clear: there is money to be made on mobile (as if you didn’t know right). (more…)

A “Click Here” Case Study

click-here-4

This is a guest post by IrishWonder, who has been practicing SEO since 2000, is an independent SEO consultant at irishwonder.com and a CMO for ContentMango.com.

Adobe is known to have been ranking for “click here” for ages and this is a seemingly totally non-commercial phrase that I just didn’t imagine anyone doing anything on purpose to rank for it (it appears I was wrong about that but more about it later).  So I thought it would be a nice keyword for a bit of a case study. (more…)

Facebook Growth Biggest Outside of US and UK: Look at Brazil and India

Outside

Is your focus when it comes to social media set to the right country? It might not be if what you are targeting is the Western ‘civilised’ world.

Where many brands still focus on the US, UK and Western Europe a lot can be said for turning your head to face other directions: East, towards India, towards Central and South America and South East of Europe. We know Facebook is, are you? (more…)

Christmas 2012 Insights: Tablets Most Popular Gift

Remember Christmas? If you’re anything like the most of us it seems like ages ago already. Still, for marketers it was one of the most important times of the year. That’s where the big numbers show up. Experian collects those numbers. And has made them into an infographic. So take a look back at Christmas.

Experian-Christmas

via Experian

Sharing Makes us Feel Good, a Monkey Brain Shows Us

monkey-juice

In the past few years Social Media has often been referred to as being a ‘new’ phenomenon, something we need to adapt to. And in a way that is true, but it wasn’t the ‘social’ part of Social Media we needed to adapt to, but the ‘Media’ part: the fact that everything is shared must faster.

The “Social” principles of Social Media have been there forever. I’ve mentioned Jesus in my presentations before (started with 12 followers) as example of how Word of Mouth has been used throughout history and there are more examples to be found of the ‘social’ principles, sharing, caring and showing what we like and looking at others.

The reason we’ve been seeing the ‘social behaviour’ we are showing on Social Media throughout history is simple: it is in our genes. We are social animals. We want (need) to connect, we want to have what others have and we want to get things from other people.

A new research performed by Duke researchers now shows that ‘giving’, or even better ‘sharing, is most probably something that ‘tickles our brain’. They tested it on monkeys… (more…)

UK Embraces “Mega Monday”, Consumers Shift Habits

mega-monday

On State of Search we have talked about watching trends and making use of the ‘right time’ when it comes to selling online a few times before. James Murray for example highlighted the importance of Halloween when it comes to searches about contact lenses. And Gianluca Fiorelli just yesterday explained how planning a launch of a movie like the Hobbit has a lot to do with the right timing of your marketing efforts.

With the holiday season just around the corner this topic is ‘hot’ again, since retailers are getting ready to get the attention of those who are looking for (last minute) Christmas shopping opportunities. And with Thanksgiving just behind us we can see how having a good strategy can have the right impact.

Thanksgiving has always had ‘Black Friday’ the day after. This is the day on which shoppers go out before the break of dawn to be the first at the shops who are giving big discounts to their products. I remember the first time I was in the US on a black Friday, how busy was that! With the rise of the web we saw another thing emerge: the online version of the Black Friday: Cyber Monday. Something which was again specifically US focussed at first. But it now seems that the UK has been turned around as well: “Mega Monday” is booming. (more…)

Getting Ready for the Christmas Season – Nine Paid Search Tips for 2012

christmas-tree-money-2

This the season for search marketers in retail to not sleep, as click volumes begin to rapidly increase and fluctuate throughout the busy festive online shopping season. To ease some of this stress, we at Marin Software have been analysing data from the 2011 festive season to help search marketers prepare campaigns for key dates and fluctuations.

We’ve been looking at spend, CTR, CPC, impression, revenue and mobile click share trends across Q4 2011 to identify key dates for your 2012 Christmas calendar. Off the back of this I wanted to provide nine practical and actionable tips to prepare campaigns for the festive season. So, here goes: (more…)

Manchester United most visible in Search, Chelsea most Social

chelsea-manu

In a week in which there is a lot of Champions League Football taking place it is always nice to build a bridge between two completely different industries. And that is exactly what Searchmetrics decided to do when they started their research to find out which Premier League team is most visible in Google.co.uk and which team has the most social mentions.

The results are interesting. As you will see further down in this post the ‘League Table’ has a slightly different look than the one which shows the rankings of the ‘real’ Premier League. A few teams however rank well on all tables: Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal do well online, where Arsenal needs to catch up in points in the real Premier League. The best social platform to be visible on seems to be Facebook. (more…)

Page 1 of 512345