IABs Digital Advertising Policy Guide simplifies 100 pieces of UK marketing legislation

Value/Importance of  new advice: [rating=4] (for UK readers)

Recommended link: IAB Digital Advertising Policy Guide

As a marketer, we know that advertising rules and compliance is constantly changing to keep up with the pace of new digital and social media channels.

How do we keep on top of it when there are so many rules and codes? Digital marketing in the UK is regulated by DPA 1998, Privacy and Electronic Communications and self-regulatory rules including CAP - in addition to T&Cs set by individual channels such as Facebook, Twitter etc.

Sometimes savvy customers know more about their rights than marketers or businesses. The number of laws and the frequency of updates raises a lot of questions... So how do we keep on top of it? How do we know the rules to follow as a business?  What happens…

LinkedIn launches University Pages to help career-minded students find the right college

LinkedIn, the network that aims to link professionals with potential employers just launched its University Pages. These new pages are meant to help prospective students find the college or university that fits those best. Connecting with those institutions, their alumni, current students or even prospective students are some of the features students will be able to use starting September 12. Additionally, LinkedIn has brought down student limit age from 18 to 14 in the US and Canada to help grow its base of professionals networking on its platform. Two hundreds colleges and universities got the beta University Page. Among them, a few Canadian universities, including York University, McGill University and the University of British Columbia. Thousands of additional schools are expected get access to University Pages in the coming weeks. …

Measuring mobile activity with Google's mobile calculator

eBay Europe recently reported that UK consumer spend on mobile has increased by 55% year on year, and is set to grow a further 115% over the next 12 months.  Olivier Ropars, Senior Director of mCommerce at eBay Europe urges retailers to 'act now to turn this opportunity into an exciting reality'. I’d argue that leading retailers have made a serious investment in mobile already to improve the shopper experience throughout the purchase cycle. The IAB’s mobile retail audit of the top 50 UK retailers shows that most have invested in mobile: 74% now have mobile optimized sites, 62% have a mobile app, 48% have optimized their mobile search, and 14% have WiFi in-store. Leading brands are seeing healthy returns: eBay generated $8 billion in sales from mobile last year. But the mobile opportunity which Ropars describes is far from…

Facebook Embedded Posts follow the Embedded Tweets model

Value: [rating=3] Original 31st July announcement: Facebook developer blog Facebook has now announced that this feature was now available to all on 20th August 2013 and has given more examples. We couldn't demonstrate it when we first alerted readers to it, but can now show how easy it is to add to blogs. This example for "everyone's favourite band" shows how images and video are supported, just click on the down arrow on the "Like Page" button to image. (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_GB/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Post by Mumford and Sons. This is a neat feature since the Twitter Embed Tweets feature has proved popular for adding tweets or pictures to blogs or campaign sites - they’re a great way…

Ideas for using Social Media to support marketing events

Eventility have created an infographic which we thought could be useful to B2B marketers who plan events (or consumer events) now that social media is a key digital event marketing tool alongside email marketing.

The 4 key streams where social media can help event management

The infographic is built around social media can be integrated throughout the plan for the lifecycle of an event.

1.  Organising an event: collect information on RSVPs by integrating sign up with social media and enables pre and post event follow-up by email. Share and collect ideas to build up affinity throughout the planning; asking for votes of favourite speakers, ideas etc.

2. Promoting an event: provides strong presence when people are searching for the event, so listing on search engines is key as well as encouraging social media sharing.

3. Engagement during the event: Creating online buzz on the day through sharing videos, photos…

Recommendations on time management platforms for marketing agencies or in-house marketing teams

In another post I reviewed alternative agency costing models and suggested how simple budgets and quotes for marketing projects can be prepared using a spreadsheet. Larger agencies will require more features to manage multiple quotes and to relate proposals back to live projects. I’m often asked about the project proposal and time recording systems I recommend, so in this post I give some of the main contenders that are most widely used.

If you haven’t already done so, you should consider cost (and job management) platforms. Spreadsheets are useful (especially when starting out), but job management platforms are worth investigating for cross-­agency collaboration on both estimate creation and ongoing time / resource management. Supporting the agency’s profitability endeavours by providing easily accessed and accurate reporting.

Time-recording features

Time recording is seen as a huge pain for most agency staff. But are…

Using the Agile process to achieve results faster and reduce development time

While the concept of Agile (Yes, with a capital 'A'), may have started out as a software development technique, the concept has now spread across other areas of business and product development. Businesses are also successfully using the Agile process in marketing, product development and even creative projects. One of the best simple examples of a company using the Agile process successfully is Oreo. Their 'You can still dunk in the dark' Tweet during the Super Bowl outage has become the stuff of legend. It could only have happened with a team put together using the Agile approach.

What is the Agile approach, anyway?

The overall aim of the Agile approach is to produce a functional product in a short time. Traditionally, the client sees the product only when it’s ready. In the Agile approach, the client is…

Getting your message across with a Message House

Message Houses are a simple but effective tool for helping your teams stay on message in their marketing communications across different channels. They can be applied not only for general company marketing and brand positioning, but also for other projects (such as events and conferences) and even for the messaging of an organization as a whole.

You might have seen Message Houses that look like the one in the image below: with an 'umbrella statement' inside the roof, three rooms underneath (each containing a different 'core message'), and with a first floor full of 'evidence, proof or support.'

Let's call it the 'multi-room Message House'.

The idea is to have the contents of your Message House inspire all other communications. Consultants like to tell their clients: 'Stay inside the Message House, and you'll be safe!'

At the …

Examples of how the new Rich Pins in Pinterest are being used in retail

Value/Importance: [rating=3]

Recommended link: Pinterest releases Rich Pins

Pinterest recently released a new feature called ' Rich Pins' which allows companies to add Product price and availability information to their pins. We thought it worth alerting readers to, since it appears to provide a useful way to link Pinterest pins more directly to prompt purchase.

Ecommerce businesses, particularly in fashion and style categories are increasing their traffic and sales orders via Pinterest - according to this research from Shopify, visitors referred from Pinterest are 10% more likely to buy compared to other social networks.

Given this, it's common practice for retailers to feature products with the relevant URL to drive pinners back to their website to purchase.  This pin from HomeDepot shows this. The new Rich pins feature now adds pricing and stock information.

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3 examples of integrating social media and email lead generation from small and medium businesses

Many businesses are wondering what they’re really getting from the time they spend marketing on Facebook and, more importantly, how they can turn their hard-earned fans into customers. To support the integration between social media and email marketing, Constant Contact created a tool, Social Campaigns, specifically designed to make it easy to get measurable results from Facebook marketing. With Social Campaigns, businesses can offer current and potential fans something special, such as exclusive content like prize draws or discounts that help grow their fanbase and generate sales, leads, brand awareness, and social word-of-mouth. The tool integrates with email to help capture email leads too. Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights asked me to share the examples since they show how Social and Email marketing can be used for Permission Marketing today using our tool or others. Editor's…