YouTube overtakes Facebook to become the most visited social network
Not content with being the second largest search engine, earlier this year YouTube beat Facebook to become the most visited social media site in the US.
Yes, you read that right. Research from Compete PRO, which operates one of the largest consumer panels in the US, indicated that unique visitors to YouTube edged ahead of Facebook by over 1.3m visitors in June 2014. While this may come as a surprise to many readers, it’s been on the cards for some time as this graph from Compete illustrates:
You can see that YouTube and Facebook had been slogging it out over the previous few months but finally sometime between May and June this year YouTube got the better of them.
This news mostly slipped under the radar at the time, mainly due to the way the major research…
7 mostly simple online services to hack your growth
Marketers have always relied on non-traditional tactics to make their startups grow rapidly. However, content marketing has remained a staple in their campaigns. The methods of online content marketing can almost guarantee a more successful, well-established business within a short period of time.
There are many different strategies that marketers use to make their campaigns more effective, but their most recognizable approach involves creative, optimized online content that attracts relevant audiences, drives traffic to the main website, and generates actual income.
From YouTube videos to Facebook posts, the method of content marketing are versatile enough to fit into everyone’s needs and preferences. The most important goal to have in mind is attracting new consumers to the services and products you offer. The following content marketing tools will help you do that! and Smart Insights new content distribution matrix gives…
Going Social - what does it do to your brain?
Gone are the days when we received advice from our friends and neighbours on a ocial media treet corner, or perhaps at the most recent neighbourhood block party because face-to-face conversations are becoming a thing of the past. I must admit that I have texted my friends from the next room on more than one occasion.
Back when I was an adolescent, baby boomers like myself grew up with telephone conversations with a phone which was anchored to the kitchen wall, and further restricting us with a twisting and tangled cord. Now landlines are also becoming extinct with almost half of us ditching them completely for our wireless and hand-held devices.
Enter the world of Social Media
This is where social media comes into the picture, as now our dialogues have shifted to these platforms.…
How to avoid the all-too-common mistakes of using infographics
Infographics have been around for centuries. According to the infographic entry on Wikipedia, one of the first IGs was published in Rosa Ursina sive Sol in which infographics were used to visually demonstrate the sun’s rotation patterns.
Fast-forward to today and infographics have exploded in popularity! Simply typing 'infographic' into the Google Search bar pulls up more than 15,500,000 results. Visual content is taking over the web, with more people sharing visual content than text or links.
But first, let’s ask whether infographics should be part of a wider content marketing strategy. Of course they should be. It’s a no-brainer, right? But if it's so obvious, why do we see so many one-hit infographic wonders? Many infographics are created in isolation to illustrate a trend or to convey stats without any other content types to support or complement them.
Instead, infographics…
Studies showing how investing in branding can make a difference
When you’re running a business, investing in a professional to help you with your branding then it can seem like a costly and unnecessary expense – unless your brand is incredibly outdated a rebrand rarely feels like an essential. But the thing is, it’s probably a more crucial tool for growing your business than you think.
Why a brand matters?
Having a lacklustre brand or one that looks home-made and generally unprofessional will make people question the quality of your service or product – if a company can’t be bothered to invest in itself, why should they?
In today’s market, the internet means the consumer is confronted with an abundance of choice from entering a simple search term – and your business only has a few seconds to make a good first impression. If you website, product and brand don’t look the part, it’s likely you’ll lose…
Plus a clever Facebook cover image trick
With ever lowering Facebook reach, fan acquisition on Facebook is increasingly less of a desirable goal. Yet I do believe that the platform still has a major role to play for many brands, not least because of the ubiquity of the platform, but also for its simply awesome targeting potential.
Savvy brands are using the platform to acquire new potential customers, but not necessarily as fans, instead they are using Facebook's wealth of advertising opportunities to data capture email addresses for their own databases.
Page admins have moaned long and hard about decreasing reach - how hard it is to reach fans which many have paid to acquire. With the end of like gating and further algorithm changes afoot in January (Facebook will drastically reduce the reach of Pages that have a tendency to post promotional content with limited "context"), it is most certainly time to…
How to identify and manage the most efficient methods of generating leads
The most successful small businesses know how to identify and manage the most efficient methods of generating leads. Generally speaking, there are two main categories of lead generation tactics: outbound lead generation (where you reach out to the prospective customers via phone solicitation, direct mail, paid advertising, and email marketing) and inbound lead generation (where the customer finds you via Search Engine Optimization, social media, and PPC).
Deciding on the right lead generation strategy
Different methods (or combination of methods) might provide the best opportunity for new business leads, depending on your circumstances. Deciding on the right lead generation strategy depends on what you’re selling and how your customers get information that leads to a sale.
Here are a few key concepts to keep in mind when deciding your lead generation strategy:
Tip 1 - Not all customers are on social media, and…
New Research - The SimpleUsability Online Experience Index for the top 5 Mobile Phone Companies
This post summarises new research from SimpleUsability who reviewed the quality of customer experience delivered by 5 leading mobile networks / telecoms retailers: Three, EE, O2, Virgin and Vodafone. This builds on previous research covering online appliance experience and clothing retail experience.
Key findings from the research of telecommunications websites
Good brand positioning and OVPs, 'though navigation could be improved.
Lengthy checkout processes, with a mix of poor and good information support.
Good product selection filters.
Most websites had a search function, though presentation could be improved.
Persuasion, Emotion and Trust (PET) techniques were low - Proof and Trust shown by only two companies.
Methodology for researching the ecommerce websites
To score each site’s overall experience rating, a panel of expert UX professionals assessed the site in the context of a core user journey of browsing a new mobile phone..
The examiners rated…
Three steps to organic list growth
Often marketers will want to email as many people as possible, as quickly as possible and as cheaply as possible. This is a common mindset which can end in marketers purchasing or renting an email list.
If you are looking either for immediate or long term results, buying a list is not the answer. Instead follow our three steps to organic list growth to build your database without damaging your email list health.
Step 1. Optimise your web sign up
The first step in building an organic email list is optimising your web sign up. This may seem obvious; however web sign up can be easy to get wrong, so make sure you have this basic step perfected to avoid any negative knock on effects further down the line.
Optimise your form
Begin by creating a solid form which will encourage users to hand over their information instead of leaving your site.
Make…
How and why we should move on from "Content is King"
"Content is King"... That phrase has been used so often over the years that it has become something of a mantra and a well-worn one at that. That doesn't make it any less relevant than it was at the time or that we should lose sight of its meaning - which is that content will always, and should always, carry great significance.
In case you're wondering, Bill Gates coined the phrase 'Content is King' - it was the title of an essay he wrote back in January 1996. 'One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create,' mused the co-founder of Microsoft, over 18 years ago.
And Gates was right. As a journalist at the beginning of my career in 1996, I…
