What’s New in Marketing? August 2012

There were no major updates on the major digital platforms this month; perhaps the most significant was the announcement that Pinterest has opened free access to all and developed new mobile services which could further spur adoption.

I’d pick our first alert on the new content streaming services as the most interesting topic of discussion for this month, it shows how digital communications platforms continue to evolve.

I’ve summarised the updates on what’s new in the standard five areas to make it quick for you to scan what’s new.

Strategy and planning

• The co-founders of Twitter unveiled two new social websites - This alert by The Drum simply says they’re called Medium and Branch and are currently invite only - one to watch. If this sounds insignificant, ReadWriteWeb says “we’re witnessing another sea change in Web publishing” - take a look at this summary by Richard MacManus for 5 reasons why web publishing is changing again which covers new services like App.net and Svbtle which were discussed a lot in August (in tech circles at least).
• Can you use Pinterest to sell more products? As Pinterest continues to grow, it’s a question that many marketers are asking. Here are our 8 examples and practices of companies who are using Pinterest effectively.

Social media marketing

• Pinterest now open to all without invitation - Techcrunch reports that Pinterest hit 10 million unique monthly U.S. visitors back in February, and hasn’t shown signs of stopping. By April, Experian said Pinterest had 107 million visits per month to become the third most visited social media site behind Facebook and Twitter.
• Google (finally) launches vanity URLs for Google+ brand pages - Google has announced via the G+ page of employee, Saurabh Sharma, that brands can have specific URLs to promote via offline media.
• Most popular social media management tools - A useful summary of which large companies use which tools for managing their social media activity.

Search marketing

• New evidence that social media marketing supports SEO - This research by Dan Zarrella shows a correlation between backlinks and social media shares.
• Facebook now has AdWords like PPC ads in search - this is not a huge upgrade, rather Facebook monetising additional user journeys. Does anyone know the number of Facebook searches a day though - must be significant?!

User experience, analytics and conversion optimisation

• Tesco virtual store at Gatwick - You may have seen the example in 2011 from South Korea of the virtual store in a subway? Well now we have the first example in Europe. We’re not sure it will catch on.

• +Using Google Analytics to track social media marketing - one of our most popular posts of the month was by James Gurd who reviewed the new Google Social Reports.

Email marketing and CRM

• Most effective subject lines - An interesting compilation for email marketers working in B2C, B2B, Event, Charity or Ecommerce marketing. Similar practical advice was available in this post from Tim Watson on 9 real-world strategies to grow an email list and Richard Austin on Socialising Email marketing.
• 5 ways to take advantage of the unexpected in email marketing - I liked this left-field thinking from Mark Brownlow in his post this month - think different!

That's it for this month, do let us know if you think there were any BIG developments marketers need to know about which we missed.