[caption id="attachment_7731" align="alignright" width="360" caption="Slideshare: a part of the hub-and-spoke approach"][/caption]
I think many readers will be familiar with Slideshare, a business-to-business (mostly) presentation sharing website which enables organisations to upload their PowerPoint presentations (or Mac Keynote) and Word documents and share them with the world. It’s an excellent way to showcase your thought leadership ideas as part of a content marketing strategy.
As an example, you may have seen Dave Chaffey's Slideshare, its power is shown because some presentations like this one on trends for 2012 will reach several times more people through Slideshare's platform than the embeds on Smart Insights.
This happens because Slideshare facilitates sharing within it's platform and through the social networks.
Elqoua and Hubspot are both great examples of leveraging Slideshare to its best potential, they leverage the paid service to turn Slideshare into a well branded…
4 steps to getting more from LinkedIn by LinkedIn expert Jan Vermeiren
November 7th update
When I originally did this interview with Jan in August, he mentioned that he was working on an updated version of his "How to really use LinkedIn". This update is just published, so this note to alert you that you that you can - download Second edition - How to Really Use Linked In. It's worth taking a look since it has over 200 pages of detailed practical advice which can help marketers use LinkedIn both for themselves personally and their company. It's also free - charity donation encouraged, so kudos to Jan.
Linked In Interview
I first heard Jan speak about how businesses can get more from LinkedIn in this podcast which is definitely worth a listen. I was interested in his practical tips on how businesses can use LinkedIn, so I thought it…
Implications of the new Google update focussing on Fresh Content
Value/Importance: [rating=5]
Source: Official Google Blog
Our Commentary
This latest update from Google is aimed at promoting fresh content (where relevant). The example they use on their blog I think summarises the update perfectly:
If I search for [olympics], I probably want information about next summer’s upcoming Olympics, not the 1900 Summer Olympics (the only time my favorite sport, cricket, was played). Google Search uses a freshness algorithm, designed to give you the most up-to-date results, so even when I just type [olympics] without specifying 2012, I still find what I’m looking for.
Google has been working on indexing content as fast as possible since its release of the Caffeine update last year. The update has serious ramifications on search results, as mentioned on the Google Blog it will affect 35%…
Manchester United show the way
I posted last week about Facebook and their (I feel) vastly over-stating of the value of Facebook as a part of the marketing mix.
Now, this week I read that Manchester United are building their own, not-so-small social network for an estimated 350m supporters and a total estimated global audience of 660m!
A perfect strategy for Man U since they're already mega publishers of content - through the print magazine and MUTV content and of course their website. The traffic to their site will be huge given their global appeal, the advantages of being a global brand of course, yet fascinating how they're now appending the 'social' to the already existing 'media', the cart following the horse, as it should be. Can you imagine them successfully limiting their reach and interactions just to Facebook? Not…
I was recently listening to an interesting talk by Dave Wieneke where he looked at the way brands need to change how they engage with consumers. One of the nuggets he shared, looked at the relative importance of company Facebook page visits against their main website visits. So I dug into the original data - 2011 research from Webtrends and Adgregate (PDF) and it tells a very interesting story I thought was worth summarising.
For many companies now, particularly those with non-transactional sites, visitor figures are in decline, while their Facebook visitors are growing.
I thought I would share this here, since it prompts important questions of how serious companies are about creating a strategy to engage their audiences through Facebook and whether they are allocating the right level of resources between website management and Facebook, either too much or too little.
It also…
Presented to eDialog Europe Aspire conference, November 2011
In this presentation I took a look at what I see as six of the email marketing techniques that will matter most in 2012.
In each area I looked at the key questions to ask to review strategies to improve. Plus I also looked at stats of adoption of mobile and social and lots of creative examples of how companies are responding to these challenges, particularly for mobile marketing.
1 Engagement
2 Mobile Email
3 Email contact strategies
4 Channel integration
5 Social-email marketing
6 Email marketing optimisation
Email marketing tactics 2012
View more presentations from Dave Chaffey
I also recommend taking a look at the other keynote from Dave Wieneke on the future of email marketing and messaging.…
21 practical ideas to improve your search rankings
Although everyone is looking, there are no silver bullets for SEO. For me, successful SEO is about consistently applying some well-known approaches. It's not rocket science, but it is hard graft using a range of techniques which different people in a company and their agencies need to work on together. I've written a lot in the past about "best practices" and on Smart Insights we have summarised the basics of SEO and also the latest SEO ranking factors with which many online marketers are aware of.
On their own, the ranking factors aren't so useful, context is needed to illustrate how they can be applied in practice through being creative, so I thought it would be interesting and different to create a series of posts looking at simple SEO approaches with examples. They're relevant for all companies from small to large, but…
Value: [rating=4]
Recommended link: Google GoMo site
We’ve seen a lot of interest in our posts on mobile marketing options and mobile adoption stats this year, so thought it would be useful to flag this new site to you.
If you’re reviewing your mobile strategy, this is worth reviewing, but be warned, the site is bizarrely designed as “a Flash horror show” so is light on in-depth technical information and marketing ideas.
However, there are useful features which you may find helpful. We think these are the most useful ones:
Test your current site feature
10 mobile best practices
Suppliers - not comprehensive
…
Google Product Listing Ads are now live in UK, Germany and France
Value/Importance: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Google Announcement & Key Questions Answered
Our commentary
The ability to display your products through the Google Merchant center is something most online retailers are now utilising. Google has recently launched the ability through the merchant center & Adwords for you to display your products as part of sponsored search on a Search Results Page. This means if people search for keywords related to your product you can have your product search result displayed on the right as shown in this live search from today:
It will display your product images, price, product name & your website URL. See an example on the right. The new ad-formats take up a large portion of the sponsored area and really standout on a results page! Google's initial description of the new…
For more than 35 years, journalists have been kicking around numbers of “impressions/advertisements” a person is exposed to in one day … “1,500,” “2,000,” and “up to 3,000.”
Ad “impression” level indicates each individual receiving approximately 3000 advertising “impressions” daily. This was certainly a compendium of all marketing/advertising channels – TV commercials, billboards, ad-serving, banner ads, newspaper and magazine ads, email – personal and marketing - to name a few.
Picture this: The infamous Times Square “Naked Cowboy” is an impression in this sea. He sells something. One moment here for you here means hundreds of impressions. Overload! Cereal Island in the grocery store!
This study was prior to major online adoption by most channels; no big social forces were in play (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, cable top box bursts, pre/post roll ads on videos, etc.). So what is that daily impression volume now? It is vast; it is staggering. Too staggering to…
