@BruceDaisely, the UK Twitter Director advises on Twitter marketing approaches

With over 1o million users in the UK, that's 16% of the UK population, and in excess of 140 million worldwide: Twitter is a household name. There's an appetite to use it on mobile too, with 80% accessing it on their mobile.

I was interested to hear Twitter UK Director @BruceDaisely showcase it's successes and value to companies during his presentation at Teradata Connect2013:

'Marketing in the moment' is where Twitter excels according to Daisely; communications must combine relevance, interest and intent'

He gave examples of popular UK brands on Twitter, including some surprises. Automatic Doors have over 203,000 Followers as they are currently the fastest growing brand profile in the UK, according to Socialbakers.com with Nandos ranking top in the number of Followers at over 950,000.

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The Email Marketing timeline

It’s been 42 years since Ray Tomlinson sent the first ever email. The history of email itself is one thing, but the evolution of email marketing is quite another. Over the past 42 years, email (the ability to send messages through a network) has evolved into one of the most cost effective forms of direct marketing. Not only is the method fast and cheap, but it has opened the door to how marketers can monitor and react to consumer behaviour in a way that was never previously possible. This blog post provides the history to email marketing along with an Infographic below. How far back do you remember?

Timeline for email marketing

Billed as the 'Father of Spam' Gary Thuerk, a Marketing Manager at Digital Equipment Corp started the ball rolling for commercial email by sending the first mass emailing. (Ok, it was only a few hundred but in those…

15 key takeaways from SMX London 2013

The recent SMX search marketing expo in London had a great range of speakers that covered a variety of topics over the two days. In this post, I thought I’d share some takeaways on common best practices described by speakers. I've grouped the best practices under three key themes explored at the conference.

From authorship to authority

As search continues to evolve, a number conditions outside of links and on-page SEO factors will begin to affect a website’s authority within the SERPs. ‘Authority’ will become an increasingly important factor and it’s vital that writers and brands claim their online identities through Google Authorship and 'rel=me' for and build trusted and respected profiles. 1. Best practices for building authority: Keep an author consistent on an article URL Verify mark-up with …

Suggestions needed for good interview style questions for a Digital Marketing Assistant position?

This was the question recently asked by David Pool in our Smartinsights Answers forum.

We had some great responses from members, both on the forum and in our LinkedIn group too. Since so many valuable tips were shared, we thought it would be useful to summarise the tips from the contributors on recruiting the right candidates with the right skills, and ensuring they can ' talk and deliver'.

If recruiting for digital marketing, or landing a role is relevant for you, you may also find our Guide on Recruitment for Digital Marketing useful. This highlights the team structures, roles, responsibilities along with additional interview techniques from recruiters.

Our summary of the interview questions

I have grouped the…

Do your social media plans allow for the latest trends?

This is a very useful SlideShare presentation from We Are Social. Useful before you step into your next round of content or social media marketing planning. It's simple and succinct with important take-aways - 10 of them in fact.

 

Here are our 7 reflections

These are our take-aways, from taking a few minutes to flick through the SlideShare, it's well worth it:

Mobile, mobile, mobile… The penetration, usage and therefore importance of mobile to your marketing is, I feel, still startling. I say it, believe it, agree with it and then each time I see more data the sheer scale shocks me. We talk about mobile and it's importance, but slide 4 really drives that home.People, portable, practical… what a great mantra to build…

Webcast catchup and 10 of your digital strategy questions answered

Our recent webcast with PR Smith focused on digital strategy. PR Smith is the creator of the widely used SOSTAC® Planning system voted as one of the top 3 global marketing models in the CIM Centenary Poll. We know from previous polls, that around two-thirds of companies don’t have a digital strategy. Perhaps these figures aren’t surprising since others don’t even have a marketing strategy. Just tactical campaigns. So, we thought it would be useful to look at what involved with developing a digital strategy. We started by looking at the digital strategy question again. This is what we found: Just an informal poll, but showing that many still don’t have a strategy. It prompts the question whether you need a digital strategy - my previous post gives 5 reasons why you don’t and 10…

An example of using Google's Multichannel funnels reports to prove the value of digital media

There have been quite a few recent stories detailing how big brands such as Interflora have fallen foul of Google or announcing they have ‘stopped using’ digital marketing as it ‘doesn’t work’. For example,  a piece of research conducted by Ebay, led to reports in the trade press claiming that ‘PPC doesn’t work’. These stories led me to dig a little deeper into the research conducted by eBay to identify what the real story was and not what the press would lead us to believe. The test conducted by eBay in essence stopped paid search on non-brand keywords for 60 days and results indicated that on average ‘consumers do not shop more on eBay when they are exposed to paid search ads on Google’. They found therefore that Google ads did not play a role in…

If User Experience (UX) is a no brainer then why isn't it higher on the agenda?

There are many tools and resources available to help us ensure that the user experience is improved; whether its enhanced through  user testing, eyetracking research or third-party experience evaluation tools.

Vitamin's Talent's Infographic reminds us of the powerful impact of getting this right since:

97% of websites fail at the UX due to a poor customer experience.86% of users give up as they feel companies don't care.Developers spend 50% of their time fixing issues which could be avoided.

We also included this as an example of a full page interactive infographic.

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New Nielsen research reviews investment and ROI from social media

Nielsen have shared some recent interesting findings from their research on Paid Social Media Advertising 2013.  500 Digital Marketing and Media Professionals were contacted by phone and email, and asked for their views and practices on social media advertising. The report concludes:

'Marketers are increasingly viewing and using paid social media advertising as an integrated tool. Social media is no longer being viewed as its own discrete medium but instead used alongside other tactics to achieve an overall, usually branding related, objective.......,

but there is a gap between how marketers would like to use the medium and the current reality. This gap is the most pronounced when it comes to measuring ROI...'

Key insights I think are worth highlighting include:

3/4 of respondents use Paid Advertising and 64% were seeking to increase spend this year.Budget spend is shifting from off-line to on-line.ROI is…

Aberdeen Research shows how content marketing is becoming more integrated into Public Relations

Value/Importance: [rating=3] Recommended Link : Aberdeen Research: Content Marketing is the new PR In March 2013, Aberdeen Research undertook research to investigate how social media has impacted PR and how companies are reacting to this, through an integrated strategic marketing communications strategy and focus on their content strategy. Their research is compiled from surveys, interviews and data analysis, from 70 end-user Marketers and Communication professionals. Aberdeen present their findings as 'Leaders' and 'Followers'. Here is our summary of two of the key takeaways and the full report can be downloaded freely from Aberdeen's website.

1. What are the aims of integrating Content Marketing into PR?

63% of respondents identified as leaders are aiming to adopt or increase their use of content marketing and 31% view it as a means to improve their brand image (build brand equity). [caption id="attachment_24232"…