We quite often see infographics surrounding social media & new / emerging trends. But it's rare you see one on natural search. The infographic below was recently shared with me and I feel it does a good job at visualising search, the various components that make up a search strategy & most importantly simplifying it. It's particularly good for summarising key issues in SEO to non-search specialists. I hope you find it as interesting as I did. * Image source www.datadial.net…
Frustrated that your content isn't getting the reach? You've done the hard work, developed some great content but it's just not happening in the results stakes?

1. Objectives and purpose

What is the point of the content and what do you want it to achieve? Define this clearly, are you using it the right way? This can be complex with multiple objectives or it can be as simple as getting readers to visit a web page with a request form on it. Either way, know what you're aiming for and the related KPI's and objectives you're going to use to prove impact.

2. Relevant communications

Do the research to ensure relevance and customer centricity when talking about or sharing the content. Use any existing customer personas to guide editorial, also delve in to some basic keyword research within search engines and social - why is this good? It's the language that you're market is…
I'm just passing on a mini-insight I found out today from Quora. I was wondering how to find the most popular groups on Linked In. The answer is obvious, but I didn't think of it... Simply select "Groups" from the search drop down and then search without any query in the box. The number of members is given under the listing. It seems there are nearly 900,000 groups on LinkedIn - that's quite a few. The popularity of some these groups is amazing, many of them are jobs related, which is no surprise, but I was interested to see that the Emarketing Association was the third most popular - this was one of the earliest groups created around our topic:

Finding the most popular LinkedIn groups within a category or industry

This is most relevant if you work…

How popular is Bing and how do its SEO ranking factors differ from Google?

We are only 4 months into 2011, but I don't think Microsoft and specifically the Bing team could have asked for a better start to the year! Conversations about the search engine only seem to be heading in one direction, the same direction as the number of people using their service - up. In a previous post this year I discussed how searches on Bing were increasing, well this trend has not changed. In recent posts on Mashable, bloggers are showing how, if current trends continue, Bing could well overtake Google in the US.

Summary of the current Bing trends

Bing accounted for 30% of all searches in the US during March 2011 In September 2010, Bing accounted 24% of searches If the same trend continues it would mean by…
New research suggests 38.5% more email subscribers view emails than suggested by open rates An interesting new study on Email open rates has just been released by European Open Source/paid Email Provider Agnitas. It's well-known in Email marketing circles that open rates are measured through the number of subscribers who download tracking pixel images. So, if images are blocked, or the subscriber reads the email on their mobile, then open-rates are under-reported. Some ESPs take this into account within their tracking. The methodology is summarised by this graphic. In the survey, twelve individual newsletters with a total of 17.5 million sent emails were assessed over the period from November 2010 until February 2011. The methodology involved reviewing the number of clicks which were received across all emails regardless of whether they were recorded as opened and then extrapolating open rates from this. This graphic shows that 28% of clicks were received from emails…

Our interview with Richard Dennys, Marketing Director of Qype on how marketing drives growth at Qype

Founded in 2006, Qype is Europe’s largest site for user-generated reviews and recommendations of places, events and experiences. Qype has 18 million unique users per month and over 2.2 million user-generated reviews covering business categories in more than 166,000 cities with locations worldwide. Qype allows users to search for and read reviews about a restaurant, shop, service or experience and, with the Qype App, which has been downloaded over 1 million times, users can read and add reviews on their phone and use the application as a personal sat-nav to find places nearby. Available in seven different languages, Qype is a pan-European local review site able to offer its international users a multi-lingual platform. We talked to Richard Dennys, marketing director of…
Though the big networks continue to grow, including Facebook, LinkedIn and Tumblr, this data from Ignite indicates a maturing (to some extent) of the social media space with some big 'web 2.0' businesses in decline. What does this mean? Only time will tell, and though Facebook is the default choice for most I think it's both natural and encouraging that platforms find a niche, after all isn't that the nature of things? Let us know what you think... …

According to content curation experts Curata, 48% of marketers are using content curation as a part of their marketing strategy. Are you?

As advocates of content marketing, we enjoyed this brief, but intriguing report on the adoption of content curation, it certainly adds fuel to the fire that content marketing must be taken seriously by marketers, and we're seeing more companies doing it according to HiveFire, the company behind Curata. In case you're not 100% sure what content curation is, our definition is that Content curation is the process of finding, organising and sharing content online. It's important that content curation and content origination are both part of a content marketing strategy - it has to be a mix. So this blog post is content curation! The key benefit of content curation…

With more than 30 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook each month, have you ever wondered how to optimise engagement on your brand's Facebook Page and get more people to come back? When's the best time to post, how often and are there variances by industry?

I am currently working on a social media campaign for a client that will use Buddy Media to manage a Facebook page as a part of the project, having taken a look into Buddy Media (my first experience of using it) I came across this interesting white paper and thought that it was worth sharing and summarising for you. Caveat first:  The data Buddy media used is across 200 large brands, this data will change (effectiveness will alter if everyone does…

How popular is Quora? Latest statistics on Quora growth

As fans of the principle behind the online Q&A concept, we really like Quora so thought we'd share this infographic from Kissmetrics. We're not  as wrapped up as some with the Quora concept though - you can see our previous see our previous review explaining options for using Quora for marketing. Given how spoilt we are with the mega numbers on Facebook or You Tube,  you're not going to be blown away, but Quora is showing strong growth (50% over last year) and has a committed user base. Most interesting is Kissmetrics have mapped how different users interact with it - this is useful from a broader social media context when you consider previous related models like Forrester's Social Technographics Ladder. [caption id="attachment_4876" align="aligncenter" width="576" caption="Quora Statisitics"][/caption]…