6 experts and 6 takeaways on the future of brand advertising

This is a nice piece from Contently. They're asking what exactly does it mean to be a brand publisher today?  They polled a number of thought leaders from some of the world’s biggest brands, agencies and publishers about the future of content marketing and social sharing. Here’s what they had to say.

The 6 take-aways…

Sponsored content - this is interesting from Mashable, a big publisher collaborating with brands on creating sponsored content. Relevance is the success factor from the consumer's perspective. Is this something your brand could look to do for easy outreach wins? The longevity, credibility and scalability of your sponsored content featuring on publisher websites is a paid tactic worth considering over advertising spend?Why content, why now? We’ve written much on this and Contently’s CEO suggests it’s driven by a brand’s need to ‘say something’ and the opportunity created by…

A great summary of the key decisions you need to take to rank in different countries

Making SEO effective for site(s) in different countries has been a long-standing challenge for ranking in local markets. Google has introduced different tools in recent years to help, but you need to be aware of them. Jimmy McCann summarised these in his checklist of 10 common international SEO mistakes to avoid and we also detail the techniques in our 7 Step Guide to SEO. Now Aleyda Solis, a widely recognised leading International SEO Expert in Spain, who has produced a fantastic summary in this step-by-step SEO checklist of issues to consider in this infographic. We are sharing this as it provides actionable steps for companies growing their overseas traffic in new or existing countries. …

How many subscribers open and then click on your emails on different types of mobile devices?

The growth in mobile web access and the implications for mobile optimised web design is now well-known, but what about the implications for email marketers and email design? Some new research by Pure360 Missing a moving target: Mobile device opens and click through rates summarised in this infographic reviews the impact across different sectors. Litmus also have some great research on the popularity of accessing email over mobile - see their research at the end of this post. For me, this data point from the infographic had the biggest impact, how does your mobile unique click to open rate compare? 28% of Emails are Opened on mobile devices... but only 10% lead to clicks. This research is based on detailed analysis of over 35,000 different emails sent by over 119 companies in 23 sectors. The…

Sharing ideas on managing a remote team using social media

While it might be true that in some cases absence makes the heart grow fonder, this is not necessarily so in the workplace. Fortunately, modern technology and a little bit of extra effort and creativity can help overcome the difficulties of building relationships between team members and colleagues.

Source: Image: Bingmanson / Flickr

Out of sight, out of mind..? As someone who has worked and lived in several countries, I am used to working with people from different cultural backgrounds who speak different languages. However in my current position I have the additional challenge of managing a team which is split between two countries: half of my team are at our Head Office…

Video summary of three different mobile email design options

It's common now for marketers to ask the question, "will our emails work on mobile?". But it's not that simple unfortunately... there are several different ways to tackle this and each has its own jargon. So I created this video to help explain the different terminologies such as scalable, skinny and responsive email design. [arve url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxnkP03G3I8" /] Don't have time to view the video? Here's a transcript explaining the alternatives. 1. Fluid Design: The text always takes up 100% of the width of the window, so as you change the width of your email with your browser, it automatically reflows and fits in the window - whether it's for mobile, tablet, desktop etc. 2. Skinny design. No reflow here, so as you change the width of the window, nothing changes within the content.  Companies such as Coke tend to design their email narrow to…

Culture and conversion Part 1 : 5 tips for designing for the culture of site visitors from different countries

Ever wondered why your baskets are bulging in Belgium but spring a leak in Spain? Why your checkouts are chock-a-block in Chile, but empty in Egypt?

Whether you are B2C or B2B business, cultural preferences play a big part in how people respond to your web design. This blog looks at how culture affects your online performance and what you can do to effectively manage an online presence globally.

'Just as nine-tenths of the iceberg is out of sight and below the water line, so is nine-tenths of culture out of conscious awareness. The out of awareness part of culture has been termed deep-culture.' – Edward T Hall, Beyond Culture

Managing Global web design assets

Managing global web design assets is not an easy task. No matter…

4 steps to encouraging influencers for your Twitter campaigns

Influencers are vital to the success of your Twitter campaign. But exactly who are they, why do they matter and how can they be identified? Whether you’re a retail outlet or a business professional, a school or a mail order business, being on Twitter presents a challenge. It’s a conversational platform where you’re supposed to talk to your customers. But how are conversations going to drive sales? And who has the time to have online conversations with hundreds or thousands of individual customers? And that’s where Twitter is misunderstood. You don’t actually need to talk to a lot of people, you simply need to talk to the right people: People your target audience follow People your target audience engage with and respond to. These people are known as influencers. When you talk to an influencer on Twitter, it’s like sitting on stage and having a public conversation…

Recognising and Rewarding Online Advocacy

Every brand will have its Advocates and its Detractors. There’s no avoiding the fact that some online users will be negative about your brand, but this is why you must value your advocates (find out how to respond to those comments in this Smartinsights article on managing online conversations). They will come to your defence, balance any negativity and even, in some cases, turn your detractors into new advocates for you. So what is an Advocate? In simple terms, an Advocate is 'a person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy’ or, in this case, a particular brand, service or product. We’re talking about real advocacy, not people who have been paid to talk about a brand; organic advocacy is much more valuable. These are the people who rave in forums about your products,…

Examples of easily avoidable design mistakes which damage conversion

As grabbing the attention of customers online gets increasingly harder with so much distraction, competition and so many forms of communication on the internet alone, you may be left wondering how to develop your landing page into that gateway which will attract customers. Creating a landing page that boosts your conversion is vital, especially when you consider the fact it costs your business every time someone lands on the page - your main aim should be to overwrite that cost. If your landing page converts it should successfully engage your visitor and convince them to call-to-action, making them to do just one thing, and one thing only I always see a lot of advice online advising me what I should do to develop a lucrative landing page, but I barely ever see guidelines on what to avoid. With this in mind I have summarised what…

7 metrics to calculate web store effectiveness

Lots of marketing techniques can be used to drive traffic to an online store. Marketers for webstores should define the right KPIs to understand which of them bring the most benefit and the highest ROI for the store and which should be reduced or optimised? Here are 7 measures you should consider, many of which are available in Google Analytics.

7 metrics to evaluate marketing channels and online store profitabilty

In this article we have gathered 7 key metrics which will help you evaluate effectiveness of different marketing channels and online store profitability. 1. Website conversion Conversion (from Latin conversiō) is the traffic (visits) to the website which ends with some kind of action beneficial for the website – for example, product purchase or subscription. Conversion Rate is calculated as the number of visitors who have made a target action (purchase, registration, a phone call) divided by the total number…