You will know about Brin and Page, but perhaps not Sundar Pichai and Matt Serlin...
Importance to Digital Marketers: [rating=5]
Recommended link: Official Google Blog announcement of Alphabet
Is 'Alphabet' 'for real'?!
Well, you might have thought that Google had grown so well established and large, that it had lost the capacity to surprise. Not so! It surprised me with the announcement this week of Alphabet. In fact, I had to check it wasn't one of those April fool PR efforts with the stunning, but curious new brand and domain name of Alphabet (http://abc.xyz).
So I headed straight to the ICANN WHOIS domain registration database and learnt that there is a San Francisco connection, Although Matt Serlin (the main registrant is nothing to do with Google), but he is part of Mark Monitor which is a domain management organisation, but if you take a look…
It's maybe not the social networks you expect
13-17 year-olds are the 'digital natives' and with 92% of teens are online on a daily basis, if you are looking to advertise to this market, it pays to know what social platforms they are using.
So which social media platform is the most popular with teens?
The 2015 update of Mary Meeker's Mobile marketing 2015 analysis shows that it's certainly not the case that Facebook isn't used by the teenage audience, but across this heterogeneous age group, Instagram and Snapchat are growing while Facebook and Twitter have declined in popularity between 2014 and 2015.
A recent study from Pew Research Centre highlights that over 70% of teens are using Facebook and these 13-17 year olds are still sharing content across more than one social network. The findings show that Instagram and…
Compare cost-effectiveness with volume or leads and sales generated
In this post, I'm taking another look at some data points from our 2015 research, in association with the TFM&A where we asked marketers which were the most effective online media.
The research showed the ongoing importance of the core digital marketing channels and Email Marketing rated highly or very effective by 51% of respondents, followed by SEO (44%) and Adwords (34%). Organic use of social media wasn’t far behind with 32%, but with only 21% believing paid social media was effective.
In terms of cost or return for buck, SEO was seen as the most effective by 50% of our respondents.
Our respondents rated SEO as the most highest-rated channel for generating leads…
The key trends and channels for travel marketing in 2015
This seasonal infographic created by our partners JBH Marketing gives an interesting overview of travel marketing. Of course, digital marketing is now an important channel for marketing different types of destinations and packages. Holidaymakers are increasingly turning to digital to book their holidays rather than using high-street travel agents. This infographic looks at consumer behaviour in selecting holidays and the channels that are important.
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Help up build a picture of the current digital skills landscape
This infographic shows that there are 1.46 million people working in digital companies in the UK, with 45,000 more jobs in digital currently being advertised.
Digital marketing requires a huge breadth of skills, with some marketers specialising in key areas such as SEO, content marketing or Paid Search. Many however are generalists, who have a wide set of skills. This can be highly useful, but it is also tricky to keep all these skills up to date.
Some 5 million people globally work in digital marketing, and as the industry rapidly grows a skills gap is developing.
We’ve come up with a list of 20 skills that digital marketers may require, and…
How do your digital marketing skills compare?
Developing your Digital Marketing skills is now crucial to staying relevant in your career and, for employers too, 'digital talent development' is vital to stay competitive. Through our resources and blog articles we're keen to help members develop their skills and of those in their team. To help here, we will be grateful if you take our new Digital Skills research survey which will show which skills are most sought after and the best techniques to gain and develop your skills.
To develop this new research we have again teamed up with the organisers of the TFM&A and eCommerce Expo where the research will be presented - thanks for their input too - full details of the upcoming eCommerce Expo conference is available at the end of the survey.
We will let you know by email when the full report is published and available for…
It's all about the story...
It’s a jungle out there, dog eat dog, and unstructured data is proliferating at an exponential rate. As a marketer you have to be careful, you don’t want to get sucked into this digital Wild West, even the quickest out there could get stung.
Yet, there are opportunities to be had, little nuggets of 24-carat gold that can provide your business with a cutting edge worth millions. Sounds like an opportunity, right?
However, just as the prospectors found it tough trying to make a buck during the 19th century Alaskan gold rush so businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to make sense of how to make big data pay. So even at this early stage of its evolution businesses are asking, what does the future of big data look like?
Image/Copyright Source: wikimedia.org
There isn’t an easy answer but…
GDPR Summary - Part 1 - On your marks, get set, go!
Companies and organisations that use data at the centre of their sales and marketing activities – and that’s just about everyone reading this blog - will be impacted by the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Yesterday (Monday 15 June), the European Council of Ministers gave its strongest signal yet that it was prepared to negotiate the detail of the GDPR with the European Parliament in order to try and reach agreement by the end of 2015.
Agreement between the European Parliament, Council of Ministers and European Commission now looks like a distinct possibility in November/December 2015 after which there’ll be a two-year transition period before sanctions begin to bite.
However, as the blogosphere went into overdrive, many critics were sceptical that this could be achieved in a 6-month time frame given that both sides will…
Digesting Mary Meeker's 2015 Internet Trends Analysis
I always enjoy and gain great insight from Mary Meeker's 'State of mobile marketing' reports which she regularly publishes at this time of year via Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. It's part of a 2015 Internet Trends report available from KPCB and also available in Slideshare format.
2015 Internet Trends Report from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
The only issue is their scale - the deck is pushing 200 slides, so this year we're again giving a need-to-know digest of what's hot and what's new to save your eyes and digestion system.
Of course there are a lot of data points showing that Mobile use is BIG and growing BIGGER, but you'll know…
A report from the 9th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), Oxford, Spring 2015
Over four days in Oxford, the 9th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) took place, at the Mathematical Institute. The event sponsors include Facebook and Yahoo and it’s not a huge conference, just over 250 researchers in computer science and social science who gather to “share knowledge, discuss ideas, exchange information, and learn about cutting-edge research in diverse fields with the common theme of online social media.”
I’d stumbled upon the conference whilst reading articles for my PhD. The conference is often in far flung locations (2016 it’s Cologne, 2017 it could be Montreal, Doha or Seattle) and discovered it was taking place in the UK. I managed to attend just one day and sat through 20 presentations. Here’s what I discovered.
Beware of trolls
Justin Cheng of Stanford University and others are researching ‘Antisocial…
