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:
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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
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Use these tools to assess and improve on-site user interaction
Time-on-site, bounce rate, page views. You've probably grappled trying to boost these metrics for a while, and it can be difficult to make big improvements. Getting the right tools can make a massive difference and really help to generate that all important engagement which lets you boost these key metrics and thus helps you rise in the SERPs and sell more products. So we took at look at 5 of the best page engagement tools so you can see which ones are right for you and give them a try.
What do these tools do?
These tools help assess and improve the effectiveness of website design including different page template types such as home page, landing and campaign pages.
Why are they important to digital marketers?
These…
Examples of the latest trends in creating desktop and mobile digital experiences
In this article I'm going to review the trends in digital experience design that we've seen so far in 2016. As a designer and developer, I’ve written about such trends before, but this is the first year where I have started to notice the more significant changes I'll describe first.
In the web design/digital experience development community, there has often been separation between the way a website looks and the way a website works. This has generally resulted in differences of opinion between designers and developers. In recent years we have started to see this change, but for the first time we are seeing less of a divide with designers now paying serious attention to functionality and not just to form and design.
1. Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence will have a big impact on the way designers…
Analysing time spent on various platforms highlights where engagement is going
As marketers, we're always beeing told to check out a new platform to see if it is worth the company using it to promote itself. When it comes to social networks, we tend to use size as the key metric when we assess if it will be worth using. By size me mean the number of people using the platform, but is this really the best metric? There is a massive difference between someone that logs in to a network one a month to have a quick check of their messages, and someone who spends hours a day deeply engaged with the platform.
So marketers should also consider this less talked about metric shown in the chart below, hours per user per month, or HUM as I'd like to call it.
As we might expect Facebook does well on this metric, but…
When selecting colours for your site, consider which are most popular
You see endless posts about the meanings of various colours. Purple conveys superiority, blue= calm, red= passion and yellow= happiness. This is all well and good, but misses one crucial point which should be considered when assessing site colour; what colours do people actually like?
This chart shows the favourite and least favourite colours of over 200 people across various age groups, although the majority were aged 19-35.
It's interesting that blue was so popular across genders, and brown was almost universally unpopular. When it came to purple there was a big difference between genders, with almost a quarter of women saying it was their favourite colour and over a fifth of men saying it was their least favourite.
So it's probably best not to use too much brown…
Our review of Twitter dashboard - the new web app that will let you schedule Tweets and review analytics all in one place
Importance: [rating=4] (For Small Businesses)
Source: Twitter blog
This week Twitter announced the launch of its latest offering to help attract and retain small businesses yesterday. It's called Twitter dashboard and it's been designed to help smaller companies get more out of Twitter, by providing scheduling and analytics all in one package.
We hooked up our account took Twitter dashboard for a test drive so we could let you know if it was worth using for your business.
Our initial thoughts from evaluating it are:
It's cleanly designed and easy to use. Everything is intuitive and extremely simple, so it's perfect for those just starting out who haven't already mastered slightly more complex scheduling and analytics packages.
The analytics are well presented, but the…
From banal to the facile; a review of Cannes Lions thusfar
Cannes Lions has always showcased the best in creative advertising. Each year the event reflects society trends. 2016 is no exception to the rule.
In chandelier adorned halls Creatives and Suits keep fingers crossed, trouser zips in check and lipstick refreshed …all in the hope that they will walk away as champagne winners rather than stumble through the rest of an evening in a drunken stupor.
Behind the scenes, organisers check that entrant ‘invitations’ to submit work have covered costs for food, guest appearances, judge ‘expenses’, photography, staging, hotels and left enough to cover personal executive comfort upgrades.
Beyond behind the scenes smoke and mirrors, the real winners of the Cannes are neither the brands nor agencies that pick up coveted gongs to display in otherwise drab offices (beyond reception areas) or feature in resumes as power-play points for claiming higher salaries. Valiant victors…
Using social listing to respond to your customers before they contact you
Let’s put the wonders away for now. Let’s talk business.
How do you know what people say about your company? How do you detect unhappy customers who don’t tell you in your face that your product sucks, but make sure the universe (or, in most cases, Twitter or Facebook) knows about that? Finally, how do you find people interested in the subject relevant to your business in real time and engage them before someone else does?
Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to social listening.
What is Social Listening?
Social listening allows you to discover what people are saying online about your brand, product, competitors or any specific topic in real-time. You get instant notifications that allow you to act upon your mentions immediately. It’s super easy.
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Snapchat's new offering provides a great way for brands to reach younger demographics.
Snapchat's massive popularity with twenty-somethings and teenagers has driven its massive growth, from an already impressive 50 million daily active users back 2014 to nearly 200 million today. Its users are highly engaged, and spend an average of 20-30 minutes per day on the App, fueling 10 billion daily video views.
The platform introduced some very basic advertising, in an attempt to monetise back in 2014. Now it's popularity has exploded, it will be looking into going public and increasing revenues, which means offering more and better ad options. So that is exactly what Snapchat has done, announcing an impressive range of new ad types as well the launch of an API for ads on June 13.
The new ad options launched yesterday include:
Ads between 'stories'
Snapchat stories let you see what people you are following are posting. Snapchat…
