Posts About ‘strategy’

Which Retailers are Leveraging the Marketing Potential of Pinterest?

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Over the last 12 months or so Pinterest has graduated from the school of ‘emerging social networks’ to become part of the canon of ‘established social platforms’. As such it’s no longer a platform purely for early adopter brands but a serious consideration for most major retailers.

Despite this evolution from niche to mainstream Pinterest is still in its infancy. Experian Hitwise data shows that UK Internet visits to Pinterest tripled between March 2012 and March 2013 with the website receiving in excess of 16 million visits a month. With the growth of Pinterest showing little signs of abating, this is a network worth investing in. But which retail brands are currently making the most of the growing marketing potential of Pinterest?  (more…)

Questions to Ask Before Taking your Business Social

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It’s Monday. Chances are there are currently many businesses holding their weekly meetings to decide what they will be doing this week. Chances also are that some managers had a nice weekend with meeting friends and maybe even some birthday parties. The talks on those parties used to be mostly politics, but these days the discussions differ a lot. For example Social Media is discussed on almost every gathering. The good, the bad and the ugly of Social is being discussed.

I am willing to bet my entire fortune on it that somewhere on a birthday party some manager, some CEO or somebody else with a decision making role overheard or was part in a conversation about how Social Media is used in business. That person will have heard from his conversation partners what a great business tool it is for them and how their Facebook page reached ‘a 100 likes’ within a short amount of time. When that same manager turned his head at the birthday party he would see a group of kids all looking at their phones. Updating their Facebook status, playing a game or ‘apping’ their friends. In the back of his mind he will have thought: we need to do something with that.

This Monday morning that manager will have headed into the office, into the weekly staff meetings and will have said: “We need to do something with Facebook as well, where is our Facebook Page?”. And then the treadmill starts. A Facebook Page will be set up. Content will be created and will be posted. There will be employees begging their friends for likes and after a few weeks or months they start to wonder why Facebook didn’t work for them as ‘promised’. The manager by that time will have forgotten all about it and the marketing team will need to start looking for solutions.

Because they haven’t thought about it first. Because they lacked a strategy and just chose a channel. (more…)

Where’s the Form Going?

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Have you ever thought about what happens to that lovely ‘contact us’ form you carefully placed on a website? You know, the one that you use for claiming a ‘conversion’ in analytics. I’d urge you to periodically review what’s happening to it, and become your clients’ best friend. (more…)

The Mobile Web vs. Mobile App Choice: Which is better for you?

Mobile Web or Mobile App?

Last week I had the great opportunity to speak at SMX Munich with a presentation called “The Mobile Search Universe“, giving an overview of the different alternatives to create a Mobile presence and how to optimize it to improve its visibility.

One of the most important aspects that I covered during the presentation -and that I want to share in this post specifically, due to its importance- is the Mobile Web vs. Mobile App decision that many businesses are making at the moment. (more…)

“Big data is going to replace the majority of marketers”

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Big Data, it is a term of which many marketers still don’t know how to act on it. Maybe because they don’t understand it or maybe because it is ‘too big’ for them. But they will need to understand and get a grip on it to not fall behind and in the end get lost entirely.

Earlier today I spoke to Bryan Eisenberg when he was on his way to his keynote presentation about big data at the PPC Hero conference. Bryan, on his birthday actually, made an interesting point which he will also be making in his keynote speech: we might be heading into a direction in which marketers are (partly) being replaced by automation.

Let’s elaborate a bit on that. The idea is based on several different elements which Bryan and his brother Jeffrey describe in a new whitepaper which can be gotten from the website http://www.usethedata.com. It is about understanding big data, or as Rod A. Smith, an IBM technical fellow and VP for emerging Internet technologies says in the whitepaper:

“Big Data is really about new uses and new insights, not so much the data itself,”

(more…)

5 Ways Small Businesses Can Maintain a Social Media Presence and Ignore Scaremongering

Australian business fail social media - news.com.au

I’ve been offline for the last week, driving around the wilds of Tasmania in a camper-van with no phone or internet access. It’s certainly refreshing, and my brain feels like it’s seeing the internet in a revitalised way again. Despite spending more time with wallabies than people in the last week, I still didn’t entirely get away from the all encompassing world that is the internet!

Driving along, I heard a news report on the radio, discussed Australia’s SMEs’ failure to get involved with social media, with only a quarter of small businesses using the medium according to a recent survey. More details can be found on the News.com.au website.

AUSTRALIAN businesses are failing to keep pace with social media with less than a quarter embracing online opportunities, research reveals.

(more…)

Future-proofing your Link Building Strategies

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Ever since Google announced the first iteration of the penguin update, future-proofing their SEO output has been a major focus for lots of agencies. Lots of us have seen signs of agencies frantically removing links (both high and low quality) and changing their approach in order to hide from ‘the penguin’.

In addition to the changes that Google has made so far, it’s fundamentally important for SEOs to be thinking ahead of the curve, in order to protect the work they’re doing for their clients and also their business.

The following tips are focused on what I believe Google will be doing in the not so distant future in order to improve the quality of their results and prevent websites from ranking through manipulating their algorithm. (more…)

Why Should I Choose You?

Best Business Decision

No matter what business you are in, this is the one question you should ask yourself everyday. If your sales are up or down; if your rankings are up or down. Big brand or small mom and pop shop. You should always be striving to be able to answer that question with more than just “because we are the best.” Best is subjective and in this world of low barriers to entry, you need a good answer to that question.

Not sure how to answer that question? It’s not just about being what the Harvard Business Review calls category creators (you must pay to view, sorry guys), the people that create an entire new business idea. It can be a number of things that we’ll review in a minute, but the point is that you need this not only for your business as a whole, you need it for many parts of your business. A good unique selling proposition (USP) is beneficial for: (more…)

I act on impulse and I go with my instincts – Applying Ramsay logic to SEO

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I like most Mondays after football sat watching Channel 4′s Gordon Ramsays Kitchen Nightmares. For those that don’t watch this – particularly the US version its well worth a watch if not to revel in some US loving for the evening. Its not often I watch these programmes and can relate back to SEO but for some reason last nights episode seem to relate back to SEO – particularly in the light of recent changes to SEO.

What I am referring to is the barrage of Google updates which SEO’s have had to deal with over the course of the last 12 to 24 months. In that time, SEO has changed immeasurably – some would say for the worse, but when one surveys the SEO is approached certainly at an agency level, one can only say these changes have been for the positive. There’s no doubting snake oil still exists – and one would certainly be foolish to think that bad SEO doesn’t exist but in terms of a more mature approach to marketing things are certainly better than they have ever been – If only Google would work out accountability doesn’t just apply to channels which provide Google with revenue. (more…)

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

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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…)

How Tools Are Developing

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The world of tools is changing. Rapidly. But where is it going to? It is a tough question to answer, if not impossible. Just take a look at tools a few years ago and tools now, some are completely different.

And if you listen to those presenting in our Tools Week, the tools themselves also realise things are changing. Matt Roberts from Linkdex for example said his tool is now compared to different tools than a few years ago. And if you look at Majestic SEO there is much more to it than ‘just data’. Where it’s going is difficult to determine, but maybe the past can help us get a better understanding of how tools are developing. And it will help us choose what tools fit our needs best.

Earlier this week I asked several experts if an SEO would be any good without tools. I also asked them another question:

“What do you think is the major area in how tools have developed in the past years?”

 

Marcus Tandler, Yousaf Sekander, Alex Moss, Disa Johnson, Debra Mastaler, Dennis Goedegebuure and Julie Joyce shared their answers with me. (more…)

How to Create a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

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This is a guest post by Scott Mclay, who has been around the digital industry for the last 9 years and has worked for both agencies and freelance.

Content marketing has been one of the fastest rising SEO disciplines over the last year, with search interest reaching its all-time highest point in January (2013). One of the main challenges our industry faces is knowing what it takes to create a successful campaign.

A successful campaign does not have to cost you an arm and a leg, some successful campaigns revolve around a few small changes to a product description or adding an image for comedy value (everyone has seen something like this)  in such a way that it looks like a user error or a ticked off employee set out for revenge. (more…)

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