Learn how to create interactive content and use it to boost your PR efforts

One of the biggest challenges that digital PR practitioners face today is getting their client noticed by customers. In addition, they work very hard at differentiating their clients from their competitors in the market with the help of social media, articles, and blogs. Customers are bombarded with volumes of information every day through their laptops, smartphones and tablets. In order to grab and hold their attention, PR professionals need to stop selling and start engaging. Herein lies the importance of interactive content. The last thing modern customers want to do is sieve through a pile of data for a small piece of pertinent information. It is, therefore, necessary for marketers and PR practitioners to whip up creative ways to not only gain audiences’ attention, but also keep them engaged.

Enter interactive content

Speaking of interactive content, here are a few interesting facts: …

Periscope proves persistently more popular than Meerkat according to iOS rankings

Live-steaming has created a whole new type of social app, which has already started to have a major impact on how people are using social. Facebook has even sought to co-opt the trend by introducing it's own live streaming feature. Brands have plenty to gain from live streaming; whether it's streaming a conference, a new technology launch or a behind the scenes video. When considering which live streaming app you should use when starting out with live streaming, the market has a clear answer for you- Periscope. It has been at the top of iOS ranking among social apps since it launched last year, and has pulled far ahead of it's rival Meerkat. Source: Atlas Data Source: Apple iOS app store rankings Date: July 2016 …

You've invested in personalisation for email, so why is your site the same for all users?

Your email marketing is up to par; it’s personalized, automated and monitored. Exactly like it should be. But what about your website, does it adhere to the same standards? Probably not, since 95% of anonymous website visitors, remain just that - anonymous. The main reason behind this is that your Website Visitor Experience isn’t personalized. Which is strange, since ALL B2B conversion action is happening on-site. The same way your email marketing is personalized, so the on-site experience you offer to visitors should be.

Why 95% of Anonymous Visitors Don’t Convert?

It’s a staggering number, one that marketers need to stare at. There are three main reasons for this: Irrelevant content, product or services False promises Sometimes people are just not in the mood…

Acquisition cost, lead gen, cost per lead, customer life-time value, ROI... Making sense of customer acquisition metrics

We live in a world of supply and demand, this applies to customer acquisition. Gaining a customer isn’t free, nor is it cheap. It’s a necessary expense when running a business, but it is possible to overspend. It’s important to find a good balance when it comes to customer acquisition, but that’s no easy feat. It’s difficult to keep costs down because of the competition that’s inherent in any industry. Marketing costs are necessary to beat out the competitors. With so many more demands for customer attention circulating in the modern world, your draw needs to stand out in order to succeed. Looking at the overall economics of the situation can help with this.

Supply and Demand

The idea of customer acquisition isn’t much different from the way the stock market runs. It’s driven by supply and demand.…

Mobile revolution spreads eastward in 2016

From only a very slight penetration at the start of the decade, by 2019 over half of people will be using Smartphones in Poland, Russia, Turkey and the Czech Republic. These countries will be important for marketers in the coming few years, as a slowdown in China means greater focus on the 'near-East' rather than the 'far-East'. In these areas where smartphone use currently lags behind the western world, there is still room for double-digit annual growth in penetration. This rapid growth in-turn leaves gaps open in the market just waiting to be filled by people who have developed compelling mobile responsive sites. Marketers should thus pay attention to these often overlooked markets. eCommerce folk that already have great customer journeys for those on mobiles should look at increasing language options to include these countries. …

How to increase loading times and keep web visitors happy

Loading Times: Are They THAT big of a deal? Web performance optimisation, or WPO, is a term that relates to the various techniques IT specialists use in order to increase the speed in which websites are downloaded and displayed on a user’s web browser. You may be thinking, “what a waste of time – most pages load quickly enough, and what difference is a few seconds going to make?” Well, honestly, you’d be surprised. And, more often than not, we’re talking milliseconds rather than seconds. In fact, according to this compendium of web performance stats by Radware, there are 55 reasons why you need to optimise your website’s performance and page loading times: 44 percent of online shoppers claim that a slow transaction increases their anxiety about that purchase. Online shoppers remember load times as being 35 percent longer than they actually were. …

How to Increase Your Website’s Speed And Ultimately Your Conversions

The time that it takes your website to load is one of the most important factors your online business will face. Literally every second counts as even the smallest of delays can cause customers to go somewhere else. Today we’ll look at just how much your site’s speed affects your bottom line and how you can lower loading times with quick and easy fixes. Logic may dictate that another second of loading time is worth it for a great web design, users today are more interested in how fast your website loads. A slow website will kill your conversions faster than anything else. Not even an amazing digital marketing strategy can save a slow website. You may know how to create a blog, but if you want it to be successful, it has to be fast. Consider these compelling reasons why you…

This experimental new 'Podium' feature from Google hints at plans for slightly more social SERPs

Google Posts wasn't so much launched by Google, as it was quietly rolled out with little to no fan-fare. Months have passed since the feature first went live for a select few people, but still most digital marketers haven't heard of them. So what exactly are Google posts? Google Posts are short snippets of text, rather like Tweets or Facebook status updates, uploaded directly to Google rather than social networks. At the moment they are only available for US Presidential candidates, but their landing page suggests that Google aims to open them up to "verified people and organisations". You can see an example of a Google Post below for a 'brand search' on Hillary Clinton where it forms part of the Knowledge Graph on the right. …

With Google's algorithms are changing all the time. What works and what doesn't?

Tim Soulo wrote a rather controversial article two weeks ago, the backlash of which has seen Ahrefs remove all the 'controversial' content. However, this shouldn't detract from the data they extrapolated from the study. The study was conducted to identify the correlations of different on-page SEO factors, with Google rankings across 2 Million random keyword searches. They were very keen to point out that although correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, the results are certainly interesting.

What am I referring to when I say On-Page SEO Factors?

Typically when discussing SEO ranking factors, you have three main areas. Off-the-page: Which are referring to factors publishers can't themselves impact. Violations: Typically underhand tactics, that search engines frown upon e.g. spammy link building On-the-page: These refer to the factors publish can actually control e.g. HTML, sitemaps, page speed. It these, that the chart is discussing today.…

5 powerful nudges that influence human behaviour

Consider the following puzzle: A bat and ball cost £1.10. The bat costs one pound more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? The number that many people arrive at is 10p, dividing up £1.10 neatly into £1 and 10 pence. However, the correct answer is 5p (if the ball costs 10p then the total cost will be £1.20 - 10p for the ball and £1.10 for the bat). Now consider another question: How many animals of each kind did Moses take into the ark? This question is commonly referred to as the ‘Moses Illusion’. Moses took no animals into the ark; Noah did. The incorrect answers many people give to these questions offers just a glimpse into the overwhelming evidence that indicates that one of the underlying assumptions of social science, that humans are generally rational and their thinking normally sound, is flawed. Many of us believe that we know…