How to use Facebook for a friendly B2C 'webinar' alternatives

Facebook is 'the' social media platform for communicating with consumers in 2012 and  looks set to continue well into the future. Many brands have moved away from microsites and instead have invested heavily in a page presence on Facebook. There are so many options available - Facebook's opengraph technology offering has not yet fully hit the mainstream.

Facebook webinars

One technology option I've seen in recent months and adopted for my own businesses is the use of Facebook events as a form of webinar- it impressed me so I thought I'd share it. Here are two examples of the Facebook webinar; one for my own business, Musicademy, and the other for Vets Now, which I described in a previous post showing the awesome ways they encourage interaction on their pages.  …

Why it pays to review your subject line length and purpose

What we think influences what we say, and what we say influences what we think. Now what has that got to do with subject lines? Well, it starts with our certainty that we pretty much know what works and what doesn't. You see similar advice in many places: don't use all capitals, keep it short...that sort of thing.

It's dangerous to rely on intuition and experience all the time

Repeating subject line mantras doesn't always make them right. The fact is, our intuition and experience are not always accurate guides to what works best. And if you think otherwise, Which Test Won will quickly dispel any illusions. Consider, for example, Tumbleweed Tiny House Company... when it tested a normal subject line against the all-capitals version, the latter got more opens - not what you'd expect at all. All caps works for Overstock, too. And keep…

 A call-to-action at the wrong time in the wrong place?

How do you feel when a pushy shop assistant approaches you the minute you enter a shop? When an email consisting of nothing but a hard-sell call-to-action lands in your customer's inbox, this probably makes them feel the same way.

“Register Now”

I recently received an email to promote an industry event out of the blue: The “Register Now” link took me to a landing page that contained little information besides ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘where’. On the basis of this scant information I had a choice - register or leave the page. As I had never heard of the brand or event, I left.

Give email recipients compelling timely reasons to respond

Using "Learn More" instead of "Register Now" might have encouraged me to spend some time checking out the company, perhaps ending in a conversion after all. A landing page featuring in-depth information,…

Emotional branding means customers stay loyal for the long haul!

Every marketer knows that branding is incredibly important – it enables customers familiar with your brand to distinguish it amongst a sea of competitors.  The success of all these brands is about much more than the logo, it's about forming an emotional connection with their customers. Image credit: Top 100 brands in 2011 according to Interbrand With this much emotion involved in decision making, it’s easy to see how creating an emotional bond with customers makes a direct contribution to building profitability. Emotional branding clearly differentiates companies from their competitors and helps to create deep intrinsic relationships between brands and consumers. Relationships with an emotional dimension are more likely to resist the temptation to defect than comparatively superficial price or convenience-based ones. Only an insight-based, personalized marketing approach can form a strong enough bond with a brand,…

Using nofollow tags to support SEO

Nofollow tags are important in SEO, but I find many marketers I speak to haven't heard of the approach. That's understandable since you would only expect SEO specialists to be aware of them. However, I think they are a useful concept to understand as a "hands-on" marketer, since they will effect conversations you have about buying media or understanding the way links in social media work.

Nofollow tags explained

A nofollow tag is a basic piece of HTML. Appended to a hyperlink, it allows webmasters to control whether search engines follow a link or not. For example, the following URL on a page of another site allows search engines to visit Smart Insights’ website and credit the website with the link; each link is scored by the search engines, supporting SEO: <a href="http://www.smartinsights.com/" title="Smart Insights">Visit Smart Insights</a> Here's the same hyperlink,…

A new infographic to help you create content people want to share

Content marketing facts from the infographic

26% + of B2B marketing budgets are invested in content 79% of marketers use article publication as a tactic 52% use video 62% of companies outsource their content marketing Brand awareness and customer acquisition are the two main goals of content marketing Blueglass Interactive's new infographic combines tips on the type of content that works and features examples from brands who are making it work. …

Three paths to digital marketing optimisation

Today, many companies are working on conversion improvement, but without an overall strategy which joins the different approaches together as part of an overall conversion strategy. The tools available in our toolbox break down into three, often used individually, but increasingly used together: Classic site analytics - Uses web analytics tools, site feedback tools and analysis of behaviour to find problems and suggest fixes A/B and MV Testing - AB and multivariate testing which test multiple experiences including both pages and paths to see which is best Personalisation - Providing relevant recommendations through targeting rules or algorithms (overlaps with email sequences) I see these three approaches as paths on the journey to site optimisation often intersect and are complementary.   Each can facilitate the more effective use of the others. But while these three paths to optimization should be complementary, they are mostly deployed in a siloed manner that…

Examples showing how building your network in Google+ gives you more visibility in the search results

This post highlights part of the importance of Google+ for SEO purposes. It does so by contrasting 2 screengrabs of Google search results pages, illustrating how H&M have managed to use Google+ to radically affect results for their network of followers, or circlers if you prefer.

About the Images

Both images are from Google.com, where the feature which makes this important to SEO, 'Search Plus Your World' have rolled out more fully than in other countries. The first image shows search results for 'David Beckham' when not logged into Google+ The second image shows search results for 'David Beckham' when logged in. The important thing to note here is that H&M's business page is circled by the account I've used to take the screengrabs.

Image 1: Not Logged In to Google+

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To grow your online community you need to engage it

For many brands, social media is becoming a significant part of, if not central to, theirdigital marketing strategy. This being the case, the question of whether or not to grow a brand’s online community is often likely to be a matter of when rather than if. Having recently gone through this thought process with a couple of the brands, I thought I’d share some of the insight from this experience.

The advantages of organic online community growth

Growing an online community organically, whether on facebook or anywhere else, has two great advantages. First, it’s inexpensive to do. Second, it will usually attract people who are most interested in a brand. This can lead to a community full of brand advocates and customers who have engaged with a brand’s social media at some point in their buying…

An infographic explaining how inbound marketing works together with content marketing

Whether you call it inbound marketing, social media marketing or content marketing, we're broadly referring to the same thing; at least that's how we see it. Dave and I believe that inbound marketing starts with considered, quality content, well published and promoted that, in turn, drives the inbound benefit through sharing and search. The 'free bonus' is that you're link-building and gaining social signals for search engine optimisation as well creating great content - something so often over-looked and under-valued.

The Content Marketing model infographic

This Content Marketing model was developed at First 10 Digital when working with a client who wanted to understand the full process for her team. We hope our infographic will help you plot your success too.

Content marketing blueprint

People liked it so much we thought it deserved a more polished design…