Topic “Social Media and UGC”

How to Optimise Your Blog Posts to Rank in Google

Submitted by Adam Smith on Thu, 08/09/2011 - 14:08

Today I’m going to explain how to search engine optimise your blog posts for the search engines, most importantly Google.

Now, blog post search engine optimisation (SEO for short) is surprisingly simple, because you’re unrestricted by the usual limitations of meta titles, meta descriptions and on page content associated with product, category or directory pages.

Instead you can write as much content as you like, making the page more contextually relevant with lots of well spread out keywords. As a result this makes your blog post more likely to rank naturally in the search results

Long Tail Search Terms

Take this blog post for example, which has been optimised to rank for a number of long tail phrases around ‘blog posts’ and ‘optimisation’ as well as ‘rank’ and ‘Google’.

So someone could find this page by asking the search engines “How do I optimise my blog posts” or by entering a search query as simple as “Optimise blog posts” or “Make blog posts rank in Google”.

Look up at the title and the first two paragraphs to see all the relevant keywords and how they closely relate to these example enquiries –especially how they appear in order from left to right. Remember that Googlebot scans from left to right, just like a real person.

While these aren’t huge search terms, collectively they could generate a few visits a day. This is good because as a blog grows in content, it grows in traffic. So a thousand blog posts, each receiving a single visit per day, would equate to a thousand visits. Now there’s an incentive to write more articles!

Head Search Terms

Blog posts can also rank high in the search results for bigger search terms. Typically this happens in less competitive niches. Product reviews and exclusive content can rank highly and very easily if you’re the early bird that catches the worm.

If your review is exclusive and particularly good, it will be easy to market and gain many natural links, making it more likely to not only rank high for search terms like “Product name review”, but even the name of the product itself.

Magazine Style Titles

The greatest downfall of good quality content on the internet is often the title. This is because writers and journalists have been creating eye catching headlines for centuries. Can you imagine any of The Sun’s catchy puns ranking for popular search terms in Google?

Search Engines are an Index

When scanning through an index, what do you look for? Keywords relevant to your search of course. Despite all the intelligence and algorithms that drive them, search engines are no different. And this is why a keyword relevant title will always rank much higher than a catching headline.

And because the search robots scan from left to right, just like a person, it’s always a good idea to place mention the most important keywords earlier in the title.

Keywords Focus

Just like a good meta title and meta description, an optimised title and introductory paragraph that’s rich with relevant keywords can make all the difference when it comes to search engine rankings.

To ensure that I meet the needs of both search engines and people I often enter the exact same (or near exact) title and description into the meta data. However, if you neglect to enter any meta information into the SEO fields of your Wordpress blog, Google will display the title of the blog post as its meta title and the first paragraph as its meta description.

Also make sure that the URL of the blog post matches the title.

Contextually Relevant Content

The more relevant your blog post is to the search query, the higher it will rank in the search engine results. So ensure that your content is crafted specifically to your chosen topic.

To keep your content as contextually relevant as possible, it’s important not to go off at a tangent or start talking about associated topics if they’re going to steer the reader’s journey away from the main topic. Because if you’re steering your readers away, chances are that you’re steering the search robots away from the relevancy as well.

I could stop talking about blog post optimisation and make a quick mention about link building for example. But so long as it doesn’t take up the majority of the article, the search engines will still know that this article is focussed on optimising your blog posts and not about link building.

Link Building

We know that the best links for SEO come from high quality content. But the very best links come from relevant content with a relevant keyword link which points to an equally relevant page. As a result, well optimised blog posts can also become a powerful link building tool, because a good link it’s just about passing strength, it’s about passing relevancy too.

Relevant Content + Relevant Keyword Link to Relevant Page = Maximum Relevancy

Scanning Left to Right

Now that we’ve discussed blog post optimisation, let’s revisit the title and introductory paragraphs and see how they would appear in Google.

Based on what you’ve read, scan the meta title and meta description from left to right in relation to the example search queries below and you can see how the content has been optimised to pick up as many of these long tail search terms as possible.

"How do I optimise my blog posts"
"Optimise blog posts"
"Make blog posts rank in Google"
"Blog post optimisation"

I’ve tried to keep the search queries relatively short, but imagine all the different search queries which could be picked up by the correct left-to-right order of keywords throughout the meta title an description.

And of course, the blog post itself is rich in content with over 1,000 words and containing approximately 93 well spread out, contextually relevant keywords.

But What About H2 and H3 Tags?

They’re good in the mix of things. But it’s not worth risking over optimisation by using tags which are too heavily targeted. There are plenty of keywords in the content of this blog post, so keyword optimised H2 ad H3 tags aren’t necessary. Besides, it would look strange to readers if the words ‘blog’ and ‘post’ appeared in every sub heading for an article of this size.

Relevancy & Strength

We’ve done all we can for the relevancy and quality of this blog post. But to achieve prominent rankings, sometimes we need to strengthen the domain as a whole and generate relevant links to the content. However, if the quality of the content is good, then marketing it and getting links to it should be easy.

So to sum up, relevancy is an important part of ranking and link building, just as the quantity and quality of links are. If you can get relevancy right, your rankings can improve based on this and not just the sheer strength of links pointing to a webpage or website.

Adam is a Senior SEO Executive at Starcom Media Vest, London and could talk about content driven SEO strategy all day long.

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Tech Tuesday, 6-9-11

Submitted by Scott Thompson on Tue, 06/09/2011 - 18:38

A weekly update on the world of digital media and technology. This week, rumours of the Amazon Tablet turn to reports, which should contribute to the rapidly growing mobile application inventory- while one premium publisher pulls out of the paid-for app model. And Channel 4 strengthen their 4OD platform, as they move towards better demographic targeting, while Facebook pull out of the Daily Deals market, and strengthen their music connections.

First glimpse of the Amazon Tablet

We've been expecting to hear something about this for a while, but MG Siegler at TechCrunch has the scoop; the Amazon Tablet is real.

Many of the details are confirmation of earlier rumours; it has a 7", full colour touch screen — similar to the Blackberry PlayBook in terms of form factor, with no buttons on the surface, and no camera. But although it is internally running Android, it has a very different user interface and applications to those Android phone or tablet users. Apps include a Kindle book reader, Amazon Cloud Player for music, Amazon Instant Video player, and the Amazon Appstore. In other words, no Google apps, or Google Android Market, and no trace of Google's services.

As MG Siegler puts in in his TechCrunch post;

They are not working with Google on this. At all.

With plans for a launch targeting the end of November, the initial device will be WiFi only, with plans for a larger 10" version and one with 3G next year. And the price? $250- half the price of the base iPad model. Additionally, users will get a free Amazon Prime subscription (regularly priced at $79 a year.)

Perhaps most interesting is the branding; apparently, it will simply be called the Amazon Kindle, just like the current black and white eReader device (rather than a more descriptive "Kindle Colour" or "Kindle Touch.")

No news yet on plans for a UK launch, but I would hazard a guess that it would come in early 2012, with a launch focussing on Amazon's core US market, where Forrester analysts predict it will sell between 3-5 million before the end of the year — assuming supply can meet demand. All those cheap TouchPads from HP's recent clearout seem to have sold well, and the presence of a market for cheap tablets shouldn't come as a surprise. But if Amazon can manage to successfully cross-subsidise cheap tablets with an increase in sales (whether virtual goods delivered to the devices, or physical goods delivered through the Amazon store), then it will certainly have an interesting impact on the market — and don't forget that Amazon aren't afraid of advertising, having sold ad-supported Kindles at a discount, as well as partnering with a DSP in the last few months…

FT retreats from iOS

As I recently mentioned, the changing of Apple's rules about publishing on iOS devices has led to some changes in the way Amazon are approaching the device. Whether the new Kindle's development is a direct result of this friction is hard to say — but they aren't the only ones changing tactic. In June, the FT launched a web app targeting Apple's devices, giving them a way to sell content to iPhone and iPad users without the 30% cut on payments that go through Apple's own systems.

This week, the FT completed the transition, pulling their apps from Apple's app store.

Mobile advertising inventory growing

A report from Flurry looking at the growth of mobile advertising inventory in applications is growing rapidly — fast enough that available inventory could absorb the entire online display advertising spend (at a CPM of $2.50) by the end of the year.

The first thing that needs to be noted is that inventory is the total number of slots which could potentially be filled with advertising, at a potential value of $2.50.

The second point is that while there is undoubtedly a fast growing opportunity being created by the growth of smartphones and app usage, there might just as well be a downside. If the available inventory is filled with cheap advertising (that is, advertising that feels cheap to the consumer), then it leads to a devaluing of the medium. (In much the way that online advertising 10-15 years ago often being associated with irritating pop-ups and flashing images led to problems with the image of online advertising as a whole.)

The growth of mobile app inventory is a sign of the growth of mobile as a medium, and good thing for anyone interested in the potential that mobile has to offer — and particularly for Flurry, whose business lies in selling it. But the value lies in how effectively and profitably that inventory can be filled.

Facebook

Reports of a service that puts music into Facebook's home page are coming through, with some specific details from Reuters, with an announcement expected at the end of September.

Music will come from a number of Facebook partners (including Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio, Slacker and MOG.) Although the services can already be used on Facebook, the move to integrate more deeply with the site expected to lead to an increase in engagement with the services (sharing songs and playlists, seeing what friends are listening to etc.)

The development seems to be a case of Facebook sticking to what its users want from the service — unlike the Daily Deals service it launched earlier in the year, which is being shut down after 4 months of testing.

The news will probably be welcomed by Groupon (a prominent competitor in the "deals" market), although reports from Hitwise about declining levels of traffic may be a more pressing concern.

Meanwhile, BP has launched a daily deals scheme of its own, aiming to drive footfall across its petrol stations. The deals will offer discounts from 10 FMCG partners, with a mobile-optimised website at the heart of the project to collect data and customer insight.

Channel 4's online developments.

As Channel 4 relaunch 4OD with a focus on personalisation, they have also released their online programme ratings, with 242m programme views this year, and ~~3.4m monthly views for July (9m of which were in the Entertainment genre - the most popular for the site.)~~

Correction- 3.4m average monthly viewers, and 29m monthly views for July (9m of which were in the Entertainment genre - the most popular for the site.)

The news comes as they prepare to offer better demographic targeting for advertisers.

The approach highlights a significant difference in online strategies for the various broadcasters, with Channel 4 focussing on building a strong advertising platform for targeting users, while (as Jessica Davies points out at the NMA), ITV, Channel 5, Sky and BBC WorldWide are more aggressively pursuing a payment-based model.

The advantages to aiming for value in scale could give them some other benefits - such as the ability to recruit game show contestants via the online version of the game.

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Actions speak louder than Clicks

Submitted by Adam Rattner on Wed, 31/08/2011 - 16:16

Over the last few months a Starcom MediaVest Group taskforce of our social, digital, data, search and research experts has been on a mission to create a simple yet consistent and scalable set of evaluation metrics for social media.

Our starting point is that the key to understanding the true effects of social is to not just look at the numbers participating, but the level of their involvement. Also, we believe that if we want widespread adoption of our approach we must utilise existing data feeds from the social media publishers and not rely on expensive third party sources or black box models.

Clearly, the more involving the social media experience within a particular channel the better the brand experience. Unfortunately, the available data does not provide any evidence of a link between involvement and actual brand actions that move the consumer closer to purchase.

To address this issue SMG has just conducted a major research study to quantify the value of social media experiences from exposure through to purchase funnel actions. In short we wanted to discover the propensity of someone who perhaps may write a positive comment on a brand Facebook page to then go on to do something of tangible value to a brand, such as consider it, talk about it to others or visit the brand website.

In all we observed a representative sample of 6000 regular Facebook, YouTube and Twitter users and asked them to spend several minutes interacting with content on brand Facebook and YouTube pages in product categories that they had already registered an interest in. Once they had finished, we asked questions about what further engagement they might make with that brand on that social media channel, as well as any possible brand actions they might take in the future. The combination of these two sets of information gives us what we call the Social Media Behaviour Index (SMBI).

In order the make the study as robust as possible we collected information on 6 product categories and 29 individual brands.

The results are very revealing. The key headline is that people who do more than just click on a branded social media site (i.e. play a game, post a comment, would follow on Twitter etc) are twice as likely than those who just visited the site and did nothing else, to do a purchase funnel action ranging from enquiry to preference. As you see in the table below the figures for Facebook were slightly higher than YouTube.

The SMBI highlights the value of social media actions by indicating future brand actions, and identifying the characteristics of people who do them. Put simply, the higher the SMBI, the better social media behaviours are at expressing the value of Facebook, YouTube etc to a brand. Crucially for our work, we noticed that across the different brands measured the likelihood of business specific brand actions following social media behaviours varies from category to category.

Finally, the research dug deep into how specific social media behaviours translated into a greater propensity to future brand actions. We found out that on Facebook tweeting content or following on Twitter correlates with the strongest brand actions (i.e. 9 out of 10 will follow up with a subsequent funnel action) although watching a video, posting positive comments or passing to others still generate high conversions to funnel behaviours except brand preference.

We believe there are a number of important conclusions with corresponding implications from this research. Here are just a few.

• Social media involvement leads to brand behaviours that do much more than improve awareness or drive interest

• The deeper the interaction with social media the greater likelihood of moving the consumer from enquiry to preference

• The most common brand action after a social experience is to leave a brand’s page to go to its website to enquiry so it is very important to know which categories and brands need to make Facebook the final destination

• Tweeting and following via Twitter appear to be behaviours that correlate most strongly with future brand actions so make following a brand via Twitter easy.

• Video, games and competitions are more useful for creating ongoing relationships and loyalty than directly influencing purchase funnel actions

• Keep social media content fresh as interactions are constantly changing

For the SMG team building a new set of social media evaluation metrics this research has done more than just substantiate our belief that activity in the social space is about creating “Likes“ AND subsequent actions. It has also provided the data points to optimise social media objectives with brand action outcomes which is essential information for our proprietary Experience Involvement models.

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Tech Tuesday, 23-8-11

Submitted by Scott Thompson on Tue, 23/08/2011 - 18:47

A weekly round-up of the big news in digital media and technology

Following last weeks big news about Motorola's sale, mobile is again dominating the news as the PC market is in decline, HP make some major changes in direction, and Vodafone start selling Android apps. Meanwhile for website owners, Twitter looks likely to catch the attention of traffic analysers, and the Facebook "Like" button could be getting some site owners into trouble…

Decline of the PC?

Sales of PCs in Q2 this year appear to be in decline. The latest figures on the PC market from Gartner report a 19% decline in Western Europe (compared to the same period last year.)

The main driver seems to be falling interest in the consumer segment, with a 27% decrease in sales (the professional segment dropped by 9%.)

The biggest drop in the market is in the "mobile PC" segment, which saw a 20.4% drop across Europe, and "mini-notebooks" which fell by 53% — presumably hardest hit by the growth of the tablet market. Desktop sales were also down 15.4%

A weak performance by Acer (hit hard by the "mini-notebook" decline) meant that HP became the biggest PC vendor across Western Europe. In the UK, where total PC sales were down 15%, HP also rose to the number one spot, where Acer were also overtaken by Dell, dropping from the top seller (by volume) to third place.

Isabelle Durand (principal analyst at Gartner) commented that;

PCs are not attracting consumers' disposable income, particularly in light of alternative devices. While remaining an important device to consumers, there are few compelling technological reasons to drive PC replacements.

In other words, consumers looking to replace PCs are increasingly looking for something other than a PC for a replacement, while the technological improvements are not offering as strong of a driver to prompt users to upgrade to new models. (A five year old PC can still perform reasonably well for general web surfing, emailling, word processing etc— which is often all that many people really want to do.)

So, HP moved into number 1 positions in both the UK and Western Europe. They are now selling more PCs in the European market than anyone else.

(I just wanted to reiterate that point before you got to the next story.)

HP kills webOS, looks to sell PC division

After announcing their latest financial results (a 2% increase in quarterly turnover), HP dropped a couple of bombshells.

Firstly, that they will be dropping development of the webOS mobile operating system (developed by Palm, who were bought by HP in April last year), and operations for webOS devices. This effectively marks the end of Palm's brands; although HP said they will look to "optimise the value" of webOS, it seems unlikely that a third owner would be able to successfully maintain a competitive position against competition against Microsoft and Google's mobile OS software, as well as Apple and BlackBerry's integrated (software and hardware) mobile products.

The impact on the UK's media landscape will probably be subtle- market share of webOS devices has been minimal in comparison with other smartphone platforms (the latest Pre3 phone was snubbed by UK mobile operators), but the rapid move of TouchPads to the bargain bucket (with sub-£100 clearout prices) could create an interesting blip in the tablet landscape, depending on how many devices are still in the sales channels. (With no software support or upgrades likely and a relatively tiny apps market, their future seems limited as anything other than a web browser.)

But the real shocker was the news that HP is also "exploring strategic alternatives" for its Personal Systems Group (PSG). From the Wall Street Journal's coverage of the earnings call;

"The tablet effect is real, and sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations," Apotheker says, explaining the movement of consumers from PCs to tablets as one of the problems with the PC division. So H-P is exploring options for its unit that "may include separation through spinoff or other transactions."

As John Gruber at DaringFireball.net points out, this is a part of a broader strategic repositioning of HP, away from selling consumer devices and towards a focus on being an enterprise software and consulting company. A massive £7 billion ($10.3bn) investment in Autonomy Corp. is a clear indication of the direction HP is moving towards.

As I mentioned here shortly after HP bought Palm, they seemed to be more interested in Palm's patent portfolio and the potential for using the touch-based operating system in devices like web-connected printers. Clearly, their appetite for developing the software (and hardware) against more dedicated competition was limited. Without devices to sell, how Palm go about "optimising the value" of their patents should be interesting to watch.

But from the perspective of the media industry, its certainly unusual to see a business abandoning a future market in tablets, smartphones and PCs— but holding onto its printers…

Vodafone tie Android Market sales to phone bills

One of Apple's strengths in the Apps Store has been a tight integration with iTunes — after developing a simple way to buy music with small payments of less than a pound for a single, they already had the infrastructure in place to sell iPhone and iPad applications quickly, and at low cost.

It looks like Vodafone users will soon be able to have a similarly straightforward experience, as Vodafone have announced "Operator Billing" for the Android Market. Users will be able to make payments on the Android-equivalent of Apple's App Store without having to enter credit card details for payment, billing directly to their phone bills or prepay accounts. Launching in the UK and Germany, the service is expected to follow in other countries — of particular interest will be markets where large numbers of users are either unwilling or unable to use credit cards.

If Android usage mirrors that seen in the US, this will be of particular interest to publishers, as recent figures from Nielsen indicate that twice as much time is being spent with Android applications than on the mobile web, with the top 10 applications accounting for 43% of all time spent with applications; a huge share for a relatively small number, leaving strong competition among the rest of the 250,000+ Android apps available.

Twitter "gets the respect it deserves"

Last week, Twitter turned on "link wrappers". What this means is that any links posted on Twitter will be wrapped in a shortened "t.co" link — although users will be able to see the full link, they will go via the shortened link.

Twitter's (stated) reason for this is that Twitter will be able to more accurately track traffic levels to different links, and to block links that are scams, spam or malware. But from a website owners perspective, this means that web analytics will now categorise all traffic from the Twitter.com website and Twitter client applications as coming from Twitter. (Previously, traffic from client applications could have been categorised as direct traffic, or from the specific application.)

While this isn't going to do anything to change consumer behaviour (ie. the number of people visiting a website from Twitter), it is going to make Twitter more visible as a source of online traffic. In turn, this will probably lead to increased attention being paid to Twitter from marketers, looking for ways to maximise value from the network. Advice from TheNextWeb.com;

If you haven’t already, I suggest you check which domain has sent you the most traffic since Wednesday – compare Twitter’s T.co vs. Facebook.com vs. StumbleUpon for example – I think many of you will now find Twitter ranks number ONE.

At the moment, unlike URL shorteners such as bit.ly, Twitter aren't offering any specific analytics for t.co links. However, they are expected to be offering access to data in the future — although whether this will be freely available or part of a paid analytics product for professional Twitter accounts is yet to be seen.

Facebook "like" button declared illegal?

Apparently putting a Facebook "like" button onto your website may be illegal — if you are in the german state of Schleswig-Holstein.

The issue revolves around the allegation that the "Like" button sends back tracking data about website visits back to Facebook — whether or not the user is signed into Facebook, or even a member. Thilo Weichert, speaking from the data protection centre of the german state, demanded that websites in Schleswig-Holstein remove the "Like" button from their pages, facing a fine of up to €50,000 if they fail to comply.

Facebook have said that their social plug-ins are in compliance with European data protection laws, saying that although they can pass on data about users (such as IP addresses), they are deleted after 90 days, as per "industry standard." So far, no other states (either within Germany or elsewhere in the EU) appear to have echoed these claims.

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Tech Tuesday, 16-8-11

Submitted by Scott Thompson on Tue, 16/08/2011 - 16:52

Our weekly round up of the big news in technology and digital media.

Googorola?

Google announced yesterday that they had agreed to buy Motorola Mobility for about $12.5 billion; a huge sum in its own right, but a 63% premium on Friday's closing trading price.

Motorola Mobility is the mobile division of Motorola, which began trading as a separate independant company in January this year. In the US, they are well known for the Droid, Droid X and Droid 2 handsets, running Google's Android operating system, heavily promoted and distributed exclusively by Verizon. However, tight profit margins in an increasingly competitive market have seen Motorola losing market share over the last few years.

But it seems likely that the purchase wasn't just about the company's manufacturing assets; Motorola hold a large patent portfolio — an area that has caused Google a considerable number of headaches in recent months (as we mentioned last week, and in July when Google bid $4 billion in an auction for Nortel's patent portfolio — and lost.)

In a blog post, Google CEO Larry Page said that;

Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.

However, the fact is that this now puts Google into the phone hardware business; like Apple, Palm and BlackBerry, they are now able to develop integrated hardware alongside their software. Despite some supportive quotes, it does seem that this could potentially create some friction between them and other hardware partners. It will be interesting to see the direction that Google take Motorola's manufacturing in, and whether it will be towards the higher end and more innovative developments (along the lines of the "Nexus" series of Android handsets which showcase Googles operating system) or a lower cost, mass-market approach to the market.

In a related story this week, Samsung have been blocked by a German court from selling Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablets in the EU while an alleged patent infringement lawsuit is underway. The lawsuit revolves around the device design (ie. not related to software patents), which Apple claim to be "slavishly copied" from their iPad.

Update: MacUser reports that the sales ban has since been overturned after Samsung complained that the court did not have the authority to issue an injunction against its parent company.

Social shake-up

A couple of changes in the workings of some of the big social networking websites; starting with the biggest, as Facebook have started collecting related status updates into "news" stories. If a number of your friends have posted about stories containing the same key words (where the key word has a corresponding Facebook Page— ie. brands), Facebook will group them into a collection. This seems to work regardless of whether the posts tagged the brand names as links, or simply mentioned them, which will increase visibility of brand pages. (While it is possible to post a link to a brand page by preceeding it with an "@" character, this can only be done by users who have "liked" the brand and know about the feature.)

Twitter are making some changes to the way users see activity on the site, with the introduction of new activity streams. One stream ("@username") will show other users' interactions with your tweets (ie. which of your tweets have generated replies, retweets and 'favourites'.) The other ("Activity stream") will show the same sorts of interactions, but related to the people who you are following.

Meanwhile, the latest development in the new kid on the social networking block; Games have been added to Google+. Game playing is a popular pastime on social networks, with Facebook attracting a considerably different gaming demographic to the traditional "teenagers in bedrooms" audience. Whether Google+ (still in a limited "technical trial" phase) will see adoption by similar audiences remains to be seen.

Amazon launch Kindle Cloud Reader, enabling kindle books to be read online via desktop PCs (although only the Chrome or Safari web browsers are supported), or iPads. Notably, the iPad "Cloud Reader" comes at the same time as Amazon have removed the option of buying Kindle books from within the iPad application (to avoid Apple's 30% charge on in-app purchases.) Although the iPad/iPhone application still allows users to store and read Kindle books, they must now visit the website to buy new books. At the same time (although with much less fuss), Amazon are adding social features to the Kindle website, enabling users to more easily let others know what they are reading and share notes.

comScore have published some findings showing the level of usage of QR codes in the US, revealing that users tend to be male, young adults (18-34, with 25-34 indexing highest), and relatively high income groups — probably indicating the kind of people with access to the relevant technologies at the moment. At the moment, the biggest source is printed media (49.4% in magazines or newspapers), scanned in their own home (58.0%.) Although the strength of QR codes clearly lies as a response mechanism, its interesting to note that while it is generally being talked of as an out-of-home experience (where it offers unique opportunities and enables new behaviours), current usage is a little different — perhaps closer to familiar behaviours such as looking up a listed website URL.

Although it seems reasonable to expect these patterns to change as more people get access to capable devices, as Steve noted here recently, they will also face competition from other technologies offering similar experiences.

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Twitter, 3D Audio ad, iPlayer PS3, QR codes users, Jobs & Gates D5 interview

Submitted by Oliver Newton on Fri, 12/08/2011 - 15:40

It was a big week down at Starcom MediaVest towers; we had Twitter in to talk to us about their imminent UK launch (September.)

@AdamBain, the President of Global Revenue(speaking in the picture) and @TonyW the new GM for the UK held a few meetings throughout the morning.

They shared with us their vision for how Twitter fits into the fabric of everyday life, what the new ad ops are and how Twitter will continue to grow through being “baked” into the new iPhone (“out this fall”) amongst other things. Here are some fun facts from the session:

It took 3 years and 2 days to get to their first billion tweets. This now takes just 5 days.
Women tweet 30% more than men
50% of all Twitter activity is via a mobile
1 in 6 people will join Twitter and only ever experience it via a mobile

3D audio ad

At the cinema I still love to hear the full on Dolby Surround sound test at the beginning of the film. You know, the one where the helicopter flies around the room, police sirens etc, all showing off how good the sound system is. 3D audio isn’t anything new but it doesn’t get used a huge amount outside of major productions and is actually quite easy to do.

Here is a great example of it and a real inspiration for thinking a bit differently about communicating with our audiences especially as so much audio listening is coming from mobile phones and with headphones plugged in: http://bit.ly/3Daudio

iPlayer and PS3

For those that missed the news on Monday that the BBC has launched a dedicated version of iPlayer for the PS3, they have been on it via the PS3’s web capabilities since 2008, but this marks a great user upgrade. Collectively iPlayer is looking to become even more accessible and firmly establish itself in the living room and game consoles are a great place to start. Expect more SmartTV focus over the next few months, they are already delivering over 3m program requests via them a month.

Who’s actually using QR codes

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about some cool creative examples of QR codes that showed how you can break free from the traditional black on white box and make them look really interesting. Well here is a little follow up with, everyone’s favourite, an infographic looking at who actually scans them and other interesting tidbits to help you better understand their role.

http://bit.ly/QRinfrographic

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates interview

Finally, this is actually a really amazing interview. Probably the last time you will get both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs on the same panel. It was filmed at the allthingsD conference back in 2007 (jump ahead to 7 mins if you don’t want the trip down memory lane of their previous joint appearances).

Alternatively you can download the podcast version from iTunes.

It’s amazing for a number of reasons; back then the iPhone had just been announced and wasn’t yet on full release. The iPad had been developed but was still 3 years away from being admitted and released. Gates was doing philanthropy work outside of Microsoft and no longer ran the day to day operations so talks quite openly about what the company is up to and what he envisages for the future. It is quite long, but well worth listening to now that you know what has come out and how the two companies have fared over the period. Apple was for a brief moment this week the most valuable company in the world based on market valuation, overtaking Exxon Mobil. Beyond that it is just amazing to hear to absolute gods discussing their worlds.

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Tech Tuesday, 9-8-11

Submitted by Scott Thompson on Tue, 09/08/2011 - 22:20

A weekly collection of the big news in digital media and technology

This week has been pretty much overshadowed by the terrible scenes of the last few days in London and some other UK cities.

Hitwise have published some stats on how traffic to Twitter has spiked as people turned to realtime social news to keep track of events and stay in touch with friends in the city. Meanwhile, there has been some speculation over the role BlackBerry's BBM service played; obviously its a leap to claim that social networking tools are responsible for the events (at least as much as claiming rolling 24 hour coverage on TV is responsible), but as Ofcom's Communications Market Report revealed last week, BlackBerry is the most popular smartphone among younger people.

Mobile

Smartphones and mobile internet usage were something of a theme for Ofcom's report; with 50% of 16-24 year olds now owning smartphones, they are the most likely to be smartphone users, accounting for 27% of all smartphone users. Apple's iPhone is the most popular platform for all other age groups, with a 32% share of the smartphone-owning population. But the BlackBerry's BBM messaging service (offering free messaging between BlackBerry users, over RIM's private and secure network) is a strong driver of platform preference among younger users.

Ofcom's report has plenty more statistics (over 300 pages), with some particularly interesting insights into smartphone users' relationships with their devices, and is a very useful resource for anyone with a need for UK media landscape statistics. It is available in full at their website.

(Speaking of Apple, for a moment today, their stock market value passed Exxon making them the world's most valuable company.)

Meanwhile, Google made something of a statement through a blog post last week on the topic of smartphone patents. Entitled "When patents attack Android" (a play on the title of a recent radio show), the post sets out to describe

…a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.

The friction revolves around the issue of patents; a smartphone involves hundreds of thousands of technologies, many of which are protected by patents. Google, being a relatively late entrant to the mobile handset market (you could argue that it isn't actually a player in selling handsets), doesn't have the kind of patent portfolio that Nokia, Samsung or Apple have at their disposal. There is a complicated network of lawsuits between manufacturers, where a common resolution involves agreements to cross licence patents, using one as a defence against the other. Google's argument is that this network makes it difficult for open-source software such as Android to compete against an organised network of businesses – such as those whose sales are threatened by the rapid growth of Android as a competitor.

Digital TV

This week also saw the release of Virgin Media's Entertainment index, carrying some interesting insights into how users of the new TiVo-based TV set-top box are using the new platform.

25% of TV channel views did not come from the EPG (traditionally the only way a TV channels can be accessed), coming from other services such as "intelligent search". Looking at the popular search terms being used, its interesting to see that half of the top ten were outside of BARB's top 50 programmes by audience;

The Apprentice
Camelot
Doctor Who
House
Glee
EastEnders
Dexter
Casualty
Desperate Housewives
Fringe

This also echoes some of the findings from our research at SMG into how PVR adoption changes viewing habits, with second or third choice channels seeing a noticeable uplift in viewing.

Some other stats of note; 79% of all the TiVo set-top boxes were used to access an app and, on average, each box launched apps 4.5 times a week.

Looking across Virgin Media's entire TV subscriber base in the first half of the year (ie. not just TiVo users, but all cable TV customers), customers made 484 million On Demand views; a 19% increase on the same period of 2010. Last year saw a noticeable rise towards the end of the year (15% higher viewing over the last six months, with particularly high viewing in the last three months), indicating that Virgin Media is likely to be on track for a landmark one billion On Demand views in 2011.

Social Media

In the world of social media advertising, Facebook has now opened its advertising API, allowing anyone to build on it to build their own advertising systems, making the most of the technological opportunities to optimise advertising buying more efficiently across relevant target audiences. Our team has been using this technology for some time- speak to the SMG Facebook Advertising team for more information on how it can be used to make your investment work harder.

As social media grows, the "Web 2.0" buzzword is apparently on the decline – and due to die completely on the 1st October 2012. It might seem like an oddly specific date to attach to such a nebulous idea, but there is some logic behind it; analysis on search queries shows a steady decline in interest in Web 2.0

Search

In the world of search, this week Yahoo UK's search results switched to Bing. Yahoo's US search results have been powered by Microsoft's technology for some time following an agreement last year (in which Microsoft's technology would power Yahoo's search, while Yahoo would continue to sell advertising around search results on their site.)

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Brands and Communities Final part: Technologies and community

Submitted by Steve Smith on Fri, 05/08/2011 - 12:29

In my last post I looked at the roles people give to communities in meeting their and other people's needs.

This final post looks at some of the implications for technology behaviour upon how people practice community.

Always on

How people use new communication technologies means many people's networks are almost ‘always on’. People use technologies to conduct community membership, communication and relationships across space and time such as at work, at home, with friends and family, out shopping, on days out and whilst commuting.

Implications

People expect to communicate 24/7. This doesn’t mean brand owners should do the same. Brand owners need to know their Facebook participants. People want what's useful to them, but they don't want to feel swamped or shouted at.
One study looked at over 2,600 of the most liked Facebook pages and their posts per day rates. It found that brands that posted more than once a day tended to have fewer likes. The researchers found the optimum level to be three times a week. However, these are only averages, and posting frequency will change according to the brand, the characteristics and wants of its Facebook ‘fans', and what the brand owners want to achieve.
People expect to be able to communicate with brands 24/7: brands need to be always available. Some banks such as Nationwide offer telephone support 24/7
People’s communications online weakens the brand/consumer relationship, and strengthens the consumer/consumer relationship. Members of people’s personal communities tend to be more influential than brand owners.
Brand owners can take advantage of always on-ness by providing content that can be shared, or by facilitating its sharing. Make sure your content is easily shareable, for example through mobile apps.

Online communities

Online communities are a specific type of community that is always on. They should not be confused with offline communities that are mediated in part online, such as through Facebook and Twitter. Online communities start online and centre online, and their members tend not to have met offline. They are apt to focus upon a particular interest. Examples include communities for mums, and people with interests in fashion, outdoor pursuits, gaming and crafts.

Opportunities for brand owners centre upon facilitating the following:

Information Access. Accessing information is the most frequently cited reason for joining an online community, meaning that knowledge and information form a valuable currency or social resource in them . Examples include education, pastimes, health and resources for professions.
Social Support Exchange. The structure of the Internet, with people’s ability to search across a multitude of resources, can facilitate finding others in similar situations and the garnering of emotional and social support, sense of belonging and friendship. These include communities for mums, health communities, and people coping with stress from major life changes such as job loss, death of loved ones, or divorce.
Friendship. Friendship is another reason why people join online communities. Although people may join a community based on a particular interest, friendships can often emerge between particular members over time. Becoming an accepted member of a shared interest community can often be less about displaying knowledge about the interest, and more about divulging personal information and helping others.

Communities tend to be geographically spread.

People use new communication technologies to maintain geographically distributed networks that may otherwise collapse. People can stay in touch through online social network services whilst they are at work or on the move, and people can move across the world whilst still being able to maintain their communities.

Despite the use of Facebook and the like to maintain geographically spread networks, distance is not conducive to the maintenance of relationships. Thus, research shows that up to three quarters of people’s contacts live within 30 miles of each other, and friendships tend to be less personal and less rich as distance increases.

Implications

Brand owners are also able to take advantage of personal communities to disperse brand messages across distance. Facebook is an obvious medium for this, of which brands such as More Th>n, Tetley, BlackBerry and Hovis have taken advantage.
Brand owners can aid communication, and enhance closeness and ties across geographically separated people by providing content and experiences that are valued and can be shared. In so doing, they are able to become more integral and embedded into people’s lives. Content on Facebook and YouTube are obvious examples, but so is gifting via apps, such as drinks and games.
Some local brands such as local newspapers, restaurants and shops may rapidly lose their impact as distances increase.

As mentioned, this is the last in this current series of posts about communities. To find out more, please contact Steve Smith

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Tech Tuesday, 2-8-11

Submitted by Scott Thompson on Tue, 02/08/2011 - 22:49

A weekly round-up of the news you need to know in digital media & technology

Social

Some new Twitter stats appeared on the official blog this week;

Over 200 million Tweets per day (up from 65 million a year ago.)
More than 1 million Twitter apps - up from 150,000 a year ago.
More than 600 employees- up from 250 12 months ago.

No doubt, the numbers were posted to add some context to the latest change in Twitters' advertising, as they continue to seek a business model to match the valuation I mentioned last week, with a change in the way their Promoted Tweets will be displayed. The new Twitter ads will increase a brands' visibility among their followers, as Promoted Tweets will now rise to the top of their followers' timelines.

This means that only users who have already chosen to follow the brands who are advertising will be affected; users can dismiss the Promoted Tweets with a single click (although why they would do so isn't clear, given that they will sink from view as quickly as any other tweet.) Twitter will be testing the new initiative with a number of US/Global brands.

Which means that UK brands won't be able to experiment just yet… although not for long, as Twitter's London office (which we have mentioned before) is expected to open soon, with agency talks apparently now underway.

Making the most of Twitter's new advertising is considering the way that your followers' interactions with brands affects the way that brand messages reach their friends and followers. Along these lines, some interesting social media marketing insights were published by Comscore, in a new paper on social media; "The Power of Like." One nice stat to come out of it is that for brands, "friends of fans" constitute an audience 34 times larger than "fans" alone.

In a Starbucks case study, its noted that not all of their 24 million fans will see Starbucks' updates on the site. But when those who do decide to interact with it, then it reaches their friends (at no cost to Starbucks.) Have a look at the paper for more information.

(At SMG, we have been looking at ways to understand the value of "likes", "comments" and other interactions. Be sure to have a look at that as well.)

Meanwhile, Facebook's London office is growing, as they move to a new 36,000 square foot office in Covent Garden. This week, Facebook launched "Facebook for Business", a new resource for Facebook advertisers aimed at small businesses, with tips on creating and managing pages and ads.

(If you're looking for help and advice in this area, then once you have checked out Facebook's new pages, you should also speak to our team.)

Gaming

Nintendo slashed the price of the handheld 3DS console by around a third (in Europe), giving 20 'classic' games to the console's early adopters (or "ambassadors", as Nintendo are calling them.)

A clue as to why might be revealed in an interview with the EA CEO. Consoles are now just 40% of the games industry. Ten years ago, they were 80%. Surely the rise of smartphones and mobile apps (a market dominated by games) is playing a big part. Today, devices like the iPhone and iPad are growing in number - and importance. Not only do they offer an alternative gaming platform, but they are also opening up new gaming opportunities for audiences who wouldn't typically be interested in buying a dedicated gaming device.

With low cost mobile games offering competition to high cost games for dedicated mobile platforms, the opportunities appearing for either branded games or in-game advertising are worth watching out for.

Mobile

With news that the iPhone 5 is now expected in October, developments in the mobile world is proving to be just as disruptive to related markets as they are to direct competitors.

But it isn't all smiles in the App world. Apple recently changed the way they are dealing with in-app purchases, tightening the rules around how publishers can offer their own payment mechanisms, sidestepping Apple's iTunes system (and the 30% cut that Apple take.) Some recent changes made to the Kindle application have removed the ability to purchase content from within the application completely. As Amazon explain;

In order to comply with recent policy changes by Apple, we've also removed the "Kindle Store" link from within the app that opened Safari and took you to the Kindle Store. You can still shop as you always have - just open Safari and go to www.amazon.com/kindlestore. If you want, you can bookmark that URL. Your Kindle books will be delivered automatically to your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, just as before.

Over at Forrester, analysts at "Apps aren't the killer app" – in a blog post, they point out that just 7% of US and EU phone owners regularly download mobile applications, and only 11% of US phone owners have ever downloaded an application from a store or marketplace. (Forrester also cite a study from Pinch media — albeit from over 2 years ago — that found that 80% of free apps are never used again after the day they are first downloaded.) Forresters advice (which I would echo) is that for the publishers of many mobile applications, the need for an app is driven more by the technology than consumer insight; for many cases, a mobile-optimised website is a better solution to the problem than building a dedicated application.

However, its worth pointing out that those figures are looking at a total population –the smartphone-owing population is still a minority, but one that is growing at an incredible pace.

News from BBC Worldwide about the launch of their iPlayer app for iPad is probably one good example of an opportunity that would be hard to seize using a simple web-optimised site; a free application available in 11 markets (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Republic of Ireland, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland) will offer BBC TV content for sale at €6.99 a month, €49.99 for annual subscription, with advertising running around free, sample content.

The app is positioned differently to the UK's iPad application, with eight genres of content available (News Specials & Documentaries; Entertainment; Drama; Comedy; Science & Nature; Family & Kids; Music & Culture and Lifestyle), as opposed to the catch-up model of the UK's app. In addition, the inter nation application will allow users to download content to watch offline- a feature not available in the UK app.

Video

BSkyB has broken the £1bn profit barrier. Apparently undistracted by the recent News Corp. manoeuvring, the latest financial report from Sky shows an excellent year, with a 23% growth in operating profit breaking the £1 billion mark.

Sky is also seeing growing numbers of customers taking "triple play" bundles (broadband, telephony and Sky TV), and there are now 3.8 million Sky+HD customers (up 30% year on year) — an interesting number to keep an eye on as Sky continue to work on their AdSmart technology.

The way online video and TV will develop is certainly of interest to anyone with an eye on the future of media. Digital TV Research are forecasting a growth of on-demand TV revenues to grow to $5.7 billion by 2016 — excluding revenues from sports, adult and subscription services. This is a rise of 58% compared with 2010, with growth expected to largely grow from cable TV.

ITV are also making moves towards the paid-for model, as revealed in their latest financial reports; CEO Adam Crozier noted that;

We plan to have a pay mechanism in place around the turn of the year so that we can test what viewers are willing to pay for, and we continue to work with our partners on YouView, which is on track for launch early next year.

A US survey of online video attitudes and consumption (sponsored by video publisher MetaCafe) has some interesting findings; 63% "can't live without" their PC/Laptop, and 32% say its their primary medium for entertainment. (This compares to 60% who say they "can't live without" television, and 44% who say it is their primary medium for entertainment.)

But among 18-34 male consumers, the picture is slightly different- although the PC is slightly more important, the perceived role of TV is clearly shifting, with only 28% saying it is their primary medium for entertainment.

Its worth noting that with 14% saying the same about games consoles games consoles - which is presumably used through the television - this may be as much a distortion of having to make a single choice in the survey as reflecting different values of respondents.

As well as these attitude findings, it has some interesting stats about platforms; 25% of respondents say that they are accessing the internet through a TV set (mainly through games consoles), with a further 23% saying that they don't presently, but are interested in doing so. Plenty more stats are available in the presentation, available as a PDF to download.

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