miércoles, 31 de octubre de 2012

The grey swan of marketing: measuring value

Posted 30 October 2012 09:10am by Paul Mead with 3 comments

Advertising guru Sir Martin Sorrel talked about the 'four grey swans' affecting the global economy when he released WPPs quarterly figures last week.

Grey swans being known issues and black swans being unknown, unpredictable events. It was Rumsfeld-esque. 

If we zoom into our own world there is a long list of things for marketers to be thinking about in a digital world which is changing more rapidly now than at any time in the last ten years.

But for me there is one big 'grey swan' - and that is how we measure value. 

Despite the modern challenges of big data and a proliferation of technologies, marketing remains a very simple beast at heart. One of the things I talk a lot about is 'media optimisation', the process of making budgets work harder, not just in paid media but across paid, owned and earned.

And there is always one starting point. There is always one thing that I think every marketer should worry about more than anything else - measuring value. 

What do we mean by measuring value? Of course you already 'measure value' in some way by tracking spend versus a wide range of metrics like impressions, clicks, leads or sales. But one of the biggest opportunities to uplift performance is by being better at measuring value. 

That means thinking about all the valuable events that a customer could perform (not just a sale) and all the things that contributed to that event happening.

Of course there are some things we can track and many things we can't track but being better at measuring value means moving your business closer towards what is technically possible. By doing so you will spend more of your marketing budget on what is really valuable and less on what isn't. 

So here are five questions which might help you work out where you could be better at measuring value:   

1. Are you measuring real and relative value? 

What is a 'conversion' for your business? How closely does that match how you really make money? For example, if you are a credit card company and you measure your media to a cost -per –application then clearly that is not aligned to how you make money.

Many applications are instantly rejected or referred for further evaluation. Even if you only count accepted applications that acquired customer will only start to make the business money at the end of the 'free' balance transfer period or if they go on to buy other products.

Is this 'real value' data being fed back into your marketing? 

Most traffic to a website doesn't convert. Are all the people who visited your website and did not buy worth the same? Of course not. Some are close to buying and others are not planning to buy at all. Lots of people could be in between.

To account for this are you measuring the other valuable interactions outside the hard conversion event? Someone who spends more time on your site or looked at certain pages might be relatively more valuable than someone who didn't.

A user who viewed the store locator could be about to visit your shop and buy offline.  Did the user make a phone call or download a brochure or watch a video or simply not bounce on the home page? You don't have to know the real monetary value of all these interactions but its worth thinking carefully about their relative value.  

2. Do you have a single view?

By single view I mean a single cookie view rather than a single customer view. There's a distinction. The modern customer journey for many brands is non-linear and complex, it's across multiple devices, it's online and its offline, the real influences are many, so it's good to start off with what we can do.

Focusing on cookies as a proxy for people isn't perfect of course but it's much better than tracking some channels through analytics, some channels through your ad server and some using completely isolated systems and data sets.

Bearing in mind most advertisers use a last click attribution model, getting a single cookie view of the online user journey including 'organic' touch points like SEO is a step in the right direction.  

3. Have you closed off the big data leaks?

Where are the leaks? How much of a difference might that missing data make? Could it be the difference between a piece of media being positive or negative in terms of ROI?

Online to call centre is certainly a loop you must tie up with call tracking software if your business drives significant revenue through its call centre.

There are different levels of call tracking depending on the integration and the software being used but first base is knowing the channel mix that delivered the call as a 'conversion event' (from which you can apply an average call centre conversion rate for a rough approximation) or better still, track the real value of that sale by passing the revenue and margin data back through the software.  

Research Online Purchase Offline (ROPO) measurement is more of challenge but it's about steps towards understanding value in areas like this rather than a final solution. 

4. Do you 'share the love' in your attribution model? 

Once you have moved your metrics closer towards how the business really makes money you might want to think about how you share the value of that 'conversion event' between all the touchpoints that contributed towards it. This is attribution.

Of course, if most of your conversions happen in one touch point then attribution is never something you need to worry about! If that's not the case then remember that attribution can mean many things. Cross device, across online channels and ROPO for example.

The first one and the last one are a major challenge. The middle one is easier and should be your first step away from a last click model once you have your single cookie view in place.  

In terms of attribution across the online user journey think about the value of each touchpoint. Is the touchpoint active or passive (i.e  is there engagement like a 'click' which means it's 'active' or it is something like a 'view' which is 'passive').

Thinking about search touchpoints, do you attribute brand in a different way to generic bearing in mind brand is largely navigational? Is the touchpoint the first, the last or somewhere in the middle? Is it recent or less recent?

Just as in the first point the right attribution model simply considers the relative value of these touchpoints and shares the credit for the 'conversion' accordingly. 

5. Can you act on what you know? 

Finally think about application. Measuring value more intelligently requires active application rather than passive analytics. Unless you can apply all of the above to move your media spend towards the areas that are driving real value then what's the point?

Ideally the platform you use to deliver your single view and your attribution model should be the platform that is managing your media and as programmatic buying becomes more prevalent this connection will be increasingly important. Sucess in biddable media is entirely based on an accurate calculation of value in the auction. 

So is measuring value the 'grey swan' of marketing? I'd love to hear your views and I hope some of these questions are helpful in forming your plans for 2013.

I firmly believe that the closer your measurement to your reality in terms of value, the better your marketing will perform. And with Sir Martins 'four grey swans' looming over us all that has to be a good thing! 

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With The New iPad, Apple Accelerates; With The iPad Mini, It’s Pedal To The Metal

"So why is iPad so phenomenally successful? Well it turns out that there's a simple reason for this," Apple CEO Tim Cook told an audience at the Apple event last week in San Jose. "People love their iPads."

The response drew some awkward laughs as it seemed almost like the punchline of a misfired joke. But it wasn't a joke — Cook was absolutely serious.

On the surface, such an answer seems to lack the depth to provide insight into the tablet riddle. After all, there have been many failed tablets before the iPad, and perhaps even more since the iPad. But it turns out that everyone may have been over-thinking it. The iPad is successful because people love it. Said another way, the iPad is successful because Apple was able to create a brilliant product. It's not about having certain specs or being a certain price. It's not about checking off boxes. It's about the product as a whole. It's the culmination of intangibles which only Apple seems to be able to nail time and time again. There is no question, the iPad has been a phenomenon.

"But we're not taking our foot off the gas," Cook continued.

The Fourth Generation iPad

What Apple proceeded to show off was two products. The first, was the iPad we're all well aware of by now. The 9.7-inch, 1.5 pound slab of glass and aluminum. Even though Apple had just revealed the third-generation of this device (dubbed simply "the *new* iPad") this past March, Apple really wasn't taking their foot off the gas — it was time to show off the fourth generation of the device.

Truth be told, the fourth generation of the iPad isn't all that different from the third-generation model. It's more of an "iPad 3S", if you will. I don't mean that as an insult, or to downplay the update, but this is primarily an under-the-hood update. It's all about taking a great product and making it better.

I've been playing with this latest version of the iPad for the past week. Yes, it's faster. Apple claims 2x CPU and graphics performance thanks to the new A6X chip. That claim has been a little hard to test since no apps are yet optimized to take advantage of the new power — and mainly because the previous iPad was already so fast — but things do generally seem to launch and run a bit faster than they do on the third-generation iPad. I did get a chance to see a demo of a game that was optimized for the new chip (though it's not out yet) and that's clearly where this new iPad is going to shine.

For now, one primary way you'll notice that this iPad is better than the last version is in the front-facing camera. Previously, it was a VGA-quality lens (0.3 megapixels). Now it's HD-quality (1.2 megapixels), capable of capturing 720p video. This is key for FaceTime. Apple has slowly but surely been rolling out FaceTime HD video capabilities across all their products. Now the iPad is on board as well.

The new version of the iPad also gets the update to Apple's new Lightning connector, matching the iPhone 5 and the new iPod touches and nanos in this regard. This makes the bottom of the device look a little cleaner, but connection performance is the same.

The real key to the Lightning connector may be that it allowed Apple to tweak the internals of the iPad, since this new connector takes up much less space. As a result, we get better performance while maintaining the same, awesome 10-hour+ battery life. Perhaps more importantly, the new iPad doesn't seem to run as hot as the last version did.

While "heat-gate" ("warm-gate"?) was yet another overblown situation surrounding Apple a few months back, the temperature of the device at times was noticeable (though far less than any laptop, for example). Now it seems less so. Or maybe my hands have just grown callouses due to my lack of oven mitt wearing while handling the device. Hard to say.

If you were going to get an iPad before, obviously, you'll want to get this one now. In fact, you don't even have a choice — Apple has discontinued the third-generation model. The prices remain the same across the board as do all of the other features (WiFi/LTE, Retina display, etc).

Yes, it is kind of lame for those of us who bought third-generation models that Apple updated the line so quickly, but well, that's Apple. To me, the fourth-generation leap doesn't seem to be nearly as big as the leap from the first to second generation or from the second to third generation, so perhaps take some solace in that.

It simply seems like Apple decided they wanted to push out a new iPad version before the holidays with the new connector and gave it a spec boost as a bonus. Why not do more? Because they don't need to right now. As Phil Schiller put it on stage, "We were already so far ahead of the competition, I just can't… I can't see them in the rearview mirror." Maybe the Nexus 10 and the larger Kindle Fire HD changes that. Or maybe not. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, Apple does in the spring, their typical time to push major iPad changes. My guess is that this is a boost intended to hold them over until a year from now.

The iPad mini

"It's all about helping customers to learn about this great new technology and use it in ways they've never dreamed of. So what can we do to get people to come up with new uses for iPad?" Schiller asked on stage as the fourth-generation iPad rotated to reveal the main event: the iPad mini.

I've also had the chance to try out the iPad mini for the past week. My thoughts are much more straightforward here: Yes.

The iPad mini isn't perfect — for one reason in particular (more on that below) — but it's damn close to my ideal device. In my review of the Nexus 7 (which I really liked, to the shock of many), I kept coming back to one thing: the form-factor. Mix this with iOS and Apple's app ecosystem and the intangibles I spoke about earlier and the iPad mini is an explosion of handheld joy.

The first thing you'll notice is how light the iPad mini is. It's similar to the effect when holding an iPhone 5 for the first time, though not quite as jarring. At the same time, the iPad mini is far less than half the weight of a full-sized iPad (0.68 pounds vs. 1.5 pounds), so the difference is very noticeable. The iPad mini is not quite as light as a Kindle, though it's not far from that weight. And it's lighter than a Nexus 7.

The next thing you'll notice is how thin the iPad mini is. When you hold it, it almost feels like you're just holding a sheet of glass. Amazingly, it's thinner than the iPhone 5. Yes, you read that correctly.

By comparison, the regular iPad feels like you're holding a full flat-panel monitor. And the Nexus 7 feels like you're holding a piece of plastic with a screen bolted on. Apple has really nailed the feel of this device with its slightly rounded sides (much less pronounced than the larger iPad), chamfered edge (just like the iPhone 5), and flat aluminum back.

One of the smarter things Apple has done with the iPad mini was trim down the front side bezels of the device. On other tablets (including the iPad), the bezels are extremely noticeable, especially when compared to something like the iPhone, which has basically no side bezel. This detracts from the screen.

The reason for these large bezels is simple: you need somewhere to rest your hands when holding the device. But because you're likely to hold the iPad mini in one hand, Apple has decided to instead fix the bezel issue with software. iOS smartly recognizes when your hand is placed on either side of the screen (when portrait-aligned) and recognizes that this isn't a touch meant for input purposes. For people who have been using iOS for a while, this takes some getting used to — you think you're going to trigger something on the screen by placing your palm on the screen. But trust the software.

The truth is that Apple likely had to come up with some solution here because if they had tried to keep thicker bezels with the iPad mini, it would have been awkwardly shaped. As it is, the mini is already quite a bit wider than the Nexus 7. It's about as wide as it can comfortably be. The bezels would have pushed it over the edge, so to speak.

The reason for this is the screen. As you might imagine, the screen is the single most important factor of the iPad mini — and even more so with this tablet in particular. In order for the iPad mini to make sense, Apple felt it needed to maintain the same screen resolution as the iPad 2: 1024-by-768 (more on this below). This meant they couldn't do a screen closer to the 16×9 ratio that rivals are using for their mini tablets, and instead had to stick with the standard iPad ratio (which is closer to 4×3).

While we're on the subject of the screen, let's not beat around the bush — if there is a weakness of this device, it's the screen. But that statement comes with a very big asterisk. As someone who is used to a "retina" display on my phone, tablet, and even now computer, the downgrade to a non-retina display is quite noticeable. This goes away over time as you use the iPad mini non-stop, but if you switch back to a retina screen, it's jarring.

That's not to say the iPad mini screen is bad — it's not by any stretch of the word. It's just not retina-level. At 163 pixels per inch, it's actually quite a bit better than the iPad 2 screen (the last non-retina iPad), but you really can't compare it to a retina display.

In fact, you can't really even compare it to the Nexus 7 display, which is 216 pixels per inch. Text definitely renders sharper on that display than it does on the iPad mini. However, the overall display quality (brightness, contrast, color levels) of the iPad mini seems better than the Nexus 7.

If you haven't used a retina iPad before, the pixel density is unlikely to be an issue — after all, it was just a couple years ago that Apple introduced retina displays. And overall, I don't expect it to be a major issue in the broad market. Remember that the iPad 2 continues to sell very well despite its lack of retina display. But again, it needs to be mentioned as one potential weakness of the device.

If you can get beyond that (and again, I can), it's hard to find another fault with the iPad mini. When Apple claims that they've essentially taken an iPad 2 and put it in this new form factor, they're not lying. That's perhaps the most remarkable thing about this device. It's an iPad 2 — a brilliant device in its own right, still — at a fraction of the size.

In fact, it's even better than an iPad 2 in a few respects. The cameras (both front and back) are much better. The WiFi technology found inside is better. There's an option to get LTE connectivity (though the model I tested did not have this included). The Bluetooth is better. You can get more storage space (up to 64 GB).

I still can't believe it has the same 10 hours of battery life, but it does. In fact, the battery may even be a little better than the larger iPad. Insane.

The single biggest selling point of the iPad mini is likely to be the app ecosystem. Because the iPad mini runs the same version of iOS as all other iPads, it can also run all the applications that any other iPad can run — and iPhone/iPod touch apps too. And because of the aforementioned resolution, it can run all of these apps completely unmodified.

I'm including this paragraph so you'll take a moment to consider just how important that last sentence is.

The iPad mini can run over 275,000 iPad apps without any modification. And it can run the over 700,000 iOS apps for all devices just as the regular iPad can (at scale or scaled up 2x). Scaled up 2x, some of the apps built for iPhone don't look great (the text in particular), but that was always an issue with the iPad as well. Luckily, most of your favorite apps have already been tailored for the iPad now.

Yes, touch-targets are slightly smaller on the iPad mini than they are on the iPad, but I haven't had an issue with this. If anything, it's a little easier to type with the on-screen keyboard because the keys are closer together, in my opinion.

If Apple had only made the iPad mini as a gaming device, I think it would be one of the best-selling gadgets of all time. Some of the iPad games play so beautifully on the iPad mini that you'd think they were custom-tailored for this form factor. Playing games on the regular iPad is great. Playing games on the iPad mini is fantastic because the device is much easier to hold for extended periods of time in the landscape position.

Gaming has already proven to be a massive opportunity for Apple with iOS. The iPad mini is going to expand this possibility. If I were Sony, Nintendo, and yes, Microsoft, I'd be very worried about this.

The iPad mini is also a great media player. You'll be able to access all the typical iTunes fare, and it's good for watching videos in particular because again, it's so light to hold now.

Books, magazines, and reading apps are likely to be another big use-case for the iPad mini. If you can get past the non-retina text resolution, this device is clearly more conducive to reading in bed than its larger counterpart.

So, all of this (beyond the screen caveat) sounds great. Home run, right? In my mind, yes. I can easily see the iPad mini becoming what the iPod mini was to the iPod — that is, the version that takes a popular, iconic device and vastly expands its user base. Apple says they have sold 100 million iPads since the initial launch two and a half years ago. That leaves roughly 5.9 billion people on this planet without one. The iPad mini can help that.

Perhaps the biggest question mark in my mind is about the price. Leading up to the unveiling, rumors swirled ranging from $249 to $299 — some event suggested Apple may try to lay the hammer down on rivals with a $199 price tag. The reality was much more Apple-like: prices starting at $329.

Apple has grown to be the most successful company in the world because they sell quality devices that people want at a healthy margin. As a result, the profits have rolled in. Last week during their earnings call, Apple made a point of saying that the iPad mini is going to have lower margins than the rest of their products — yes, even at $329. That's not an excuse for the price, that's the reality of the price.

But how will a $329 tablet fare in a world of $199 tablets? It's hard to know for sure, but my guess would be in the range of "quite well" to "spectacular". Apple has done a good job of making the case that the iPad mini is not just another 7-inch tablet — in fact, it's not a 7-inch tablet at all. It's a 7.9-inch tablet — a subtle, but important difference. As a result, it can utilize every iOS app already in existence. And it can access the entire iTunes ecosystem. And it will be sold in Apple Stores.

Apple isn't looking at this as $329 versus $199. They're looking at this as an impossibly small iPad 2 sold at the most affordable price for an iPad yet. In other words, they're not looking at the tablet competition. This isn't a tablet. It's an iPad. People love these things.


Started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, Apple has expanded from computers to consumer electronics over the last 30 years, officially changing their name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple, Inc. in January 2007. Among the key offerings from Apple's product line are: Pro line laptops (MacBook Pro) and desktops (Mac Pro), consumer line laptops (MacBook Air) and desktops (iMac), servers (Xserve), Apple TV, the Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server operating systems, the iPod, the...

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Which content marketing metrics are valuable for Econsultancy?

Posted 30 October 2012 11:13am by Graham Charlton with 3 comments

Recently, I looked at how respondents to our Content Marketing Survey Report are measuring the results of their content marketing efforts. 

Following on from this, I thought I'd provide some insight into the content marketing objectives for the blog, the metrics we look at to measure success, and the lessons we learn from them. 

Why we blog

Our audience is the digital marketing community (if I can call it that), which encompasses a range of roles, areas of expertise and levels of knowledge. 

Econsultancy's brand is built on helping marketers understand and make use of the web, thereby making their jobs easier. For this, we have a range of great reports, training, events, and the blog. 

Another important factor for Econsultancy is to take seemingly complex issues and present them in plain English. We hate unnecessary jargon, and you won't find us leveraging anything. Not if I can help it anyway...

The blog is about getting the brand known and providing articles which digital marketers will find useful, which will create informed debate and perhaps inspire people to investigate the site further and check out our splendid reports, events and training. 

In that sense, we have been content marketing ever since the blog was launched more than six years ago, even if we haven't always called it that. 

The quality of the content is the prime consideration. While we do sell ads on the blog, this is not necessarily the primary source of revenue for us. Hey, we use a bit of linkbait now and then, and we know the value of lists online, but it's not all about the pageview numbers. 

Content marketing metrics used by publishers

Our Content Marketing Survey Report found that the most common metrics are unique visitors (88%), page views per visitor (76%) and page views (71%). Only a third (33%) stated that ad clicks were used as a metric.

Which metrics do you use to measure performance and engagement with your web property or web properties?

 

What do we measure? 

We look at most of the metrics covered in the chart above, though I would add SEO and linkbuilding to that list. 

Traffic metrics help us to identify hot topics and issues that are interesting to our readers. One such example from this year is the EU Cookie Law. One article we published in March, a few months before the ICO 'deadline', attracted tons of page views and lots of comments. 

This brought the scale of the problem home to us, as well as the fact that, despite the ICO's own guidance documents, people really didn't know what to do about the legislation. 

So, we produced a report providing guidance and suggested solutions for compiiance, we interviewed the ICO, conducted surveys, and created useful blog content on the law, all of which hopefully helped businesses to decide what to do (or what not to do). 

We can also use the blog as an early warning system, as with the Cookie Law example I mentioned above. If a particular post gets more views, comments and shares than you would expect, then this tells you that readers are concerned about a particular issue. 

If that's the case, then we can write more on the issue, look to produce a report, or make sure it receives some coverage at our events. 

Pageviews

Beware outliers... 

One of the most popular posts earlier in the year was this on the number of users Zeebox gained during the screening of Dancing on Ice. 

You can see the spike here. Just look at it: 

It was published on the Monday after the Sunday night show, and caused a traffic spike that morning, but check out the bounce rate: 

Clearly, people were more interested in celebrity gossip than digital marketing. Not the kind of traffic we're looking for. 

On the other hand, the aforementioned post on the cookie law attracted a decent amount of traffic, but also kept people on the page for longer. Thanks to links to related reports and content, the exit rate is far lower. 

I can also tell by looking deeper that it sent a good number of users to the report page on cookie compliance. An important metric for us. 

Page views are useful, but only in context, and in relation to other metrics. 

For us, an article with 100,000 page views is great, but we'd rather have a tenth of that if it was a post that led people to stay on the site longer, and download a report or two. 

We share these stats with our writers, as I think it's important for writers to have access to the various metrics for their posts. If nothing else, they're curious to know how many people read or tweeted their post, but they should also be learning from this.  

I would never criticise someone if they wrote an excellent post that just didn't happen to get the traffic it deserved, but it is important to learn from what works well. Also, I also think a little competition doesn't hurt. 

We have experimented on the blog from time to time. Some things work and some don't, but the important thing is to learn the lessons.  

For example, we did try to focus more on news at the end of last year. On reflection, this didn't really work for us. Perhaps we're not seen as a source of news, or perhaps our audience prefers to see more analytical insight from Econsultancy. 

We have since changed tack and, 'non-news' works much better for us than news did. The stats showed that, when we changed the focus away from news, the traffic went up and the bounce rates dropped. 

Inbound links

One metric which wasn't mentioned in the content marketing survey was links generated by content. This isn't necessarily something we measure religiously, but it's good to see which posts are generating links and what we can learn from this. 

It isn't necessarily a question of popularity either. Some of our more popular posts have generated relatively few links, while the reserve is often the case. 

For example, this post on the 2009 Innovation Awards winners has generated 2,440 inbound links, yet had a relatively modest number of page views. Shows the value of ego-bait. 

This post, on 25 reasons why I'll leave your website in 10 seconds many more page views than the awards announcement, more than 2,000 tweets, 190 comments, yet this produced 383 links.

So what's the secret of a 'link-able' post? 

These three posts all had 1,500+ links: 

20+ mind-blowing social media statistics revisited

Is Pinterest a copyright time bomb?

Site search and merchandising: seven key takeaways from Digital Cream

It's not about traffic. The social media stats post did attract a lot of traffic, but the other two a modest amount. 

I think the common theme is that they were all timely and useful posts.

The social stats post is from 2010 when people were desperate for information on social media marketing, Dave Wieneke's excellent Pinterest post (one of a series of three) provided information on Pinterest when people needed it, while Matthew Curry's round up of the issues from his Digital Cream roundtable provided useful information for people who couldn't be at the event. 

Keeping people on site 

While more than half of our total traffic comes to the blog, and we hope that people stick around for a while. One way to do this is to provide recommendations for other content, based on the page or article they visited initially

Of the publishers surveyed in our Content Marketing Report, 69% said they use internal recommendations to provide inspiration for where to go next. 

50% are using third party technology for this, 35% in-house solutions, and 15% are providing manual recommendations. 

We use a mixture of these at Econsultancy. We are also big on a strong internal linking strategy which not only provides relevant articles for people to view, but also allows us to use anchor text wisely and helps us rank for target keywords.

We also have the most popular / most commented post table which you can see on the right of this page, with the aim of providing further inspiration. 

In addition, we use automated recommendations for further reading which are provided by Idio.

Bounce rates

Bounce rates is one indicator of whether we are encouraging people to stick around. High bounce rates, such as on the Dancing on Ice post mentioned above, tell us that very few visitors decided to explore further. 

Other posts have relatively low bounce rates, such as this one, which is a compilation of useful posts on Google Analytics. It's basically a bunch of links, but you can see how giving users ideas for what to read next can keep them on site. 

I also look at the navigation summary in Google Analytics, which is great for seeing where certain posts are leading users. 

In this example, a post on EU cookie law compliance has generated 811 pageviews of the related best practice report, as well as related blog posts. 

This tells me I've done something right with the post. It wasn't a sales pitch for the report, it was an article which works as a stand-alone and provided useful advice for readers. 

What it did do is demonstrate to people looking for advice on the topic that we knew what we were talking about, and made a good proportion of readers check out the report itself. 

Social shares

Econsultancy generates a decent amount of traffic via social media, and Twitter especially. Social media, while it is rarely the last click before a conversion, does very well indeed when you look at assisted conversions. 

We have a Social Media Manager who is excellent at analysing our social traffic and optimising our social accounts for the best results, but the blog team hopefully helps him out. 

First of all, we try and produce content that is worthy of sharing on social sites, but that isn't always enough. You have to be smart in the way you promote your posts.

As Stephen Croome (@firstconversion) pointed out on Twitter last week, most of the most popular posts listed in the sidebar started with numbers. 

In fact, they all started with numbers. We just fooled him by typing the number five...

It isn't always so, but the reason we use lists is to make this content more appealing to people. It can make it easier to digest, it can provide a way to quickly get up to speed on a given subject, and it makes the article that bit more shareable. 

In fact, we even have a list post which shows why list posts work...

This is part of the tactics we use to make our content more appealing and easy to share. We can write very descriptive, almost academic titles describing post, but what's the point if no-one reads them? 

It's not just about lists. If you want people to be able to share your posts on Twitter for example, then they need to be short enough to allow room for a retweet and a comment.

The need to make things easy to share is the reason for the 65 character headline rule. We don't always follow this religiously, but it's a good guide. It also applies to email subject lines or Google search listings. 

To take Twitter as an example, there are a number of things we can do to make it more likely that our posts will be retweeted. 

Timing of posts

When we publish a post can make a big difference to its success. Twitter has a lot to do with this (and more on that further down) but, if we publish at an optimum time and day, push out via Twitter, this can give a post legs and ensure that it does as well as it can. 

So, if I had a post I really wanted to push, i'd publish it mid to late morning on a Tuesday. This is what the stats tell me. I think it's because this is when our UK audience is switched on (they tend to be less so in the afternoons, and traffic tails off on Fridays). 

So, a good, shareable post published at this time will ping around Twitter and elsewhere for an hour or two and, hopefully is still there when the US comes online, giving it a second wind. 

There's no formula for success here, but definitely pays to experiment with publish times. It can make a big difference.  

Timing of tweets

One way to maximise retweets is timing. The map below shows when our followers are most active. 

Those black dots represent 23% of our top 5,000 followers. That is, the ones with the biggest networks (A couple of these are brands obviously).

This means (and we haven't actually been doing this for long) we can target tweets when the maximum number of people are likely to see them. In this case, mid-afternoon UK time seems to be the sweet spot. 

Search rankings

The blog enables Econsultancy to rank well for terms that are relevant to our content and services, and that drive traffic to the site. Roughly 75% of our unique visitors and just over half of total page views come to the blog. 

We can measure our search traffic, which accounts for roughly 35% of all visits. We'd love to look at the key search terms that send people to the site, though this is becoming more difficult, thanks to encrypted search: 

We will target search keywords connected with our content, and this enables us to have a strong search footprint for these issues. For example, we published several articles on the EU cookie law and as a result, we occupied high positions in Google for terms related to the issue.

I'm not totally convinced by the Queries section on Google Analytics, as the numbers are suspiciously round, but here they do give an indication of our search visibility on cookie-related matters.

It shows the average position for the top ten terms related to the law, between April and June this year.  

What do we do with this information? 

Gathering this data is all very well, but it's no use unless you learn from it and use it to improve what we do.

To summarise, we use these metrics to: 

  • Let our writers know what works.
  • Identify issues of concern for our readership. 
  • Improve timings of posts and tweets. 
  • Learn more about what works for us. 
  • Find ways to keep people on the site for longer. 
  • Improve our search rankings. 

I'd love to read your views on the most valuable metrics that you use to measure your blogging / content marketing efforts. What works best for you? 

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martes, 30 de octubre de 2012

The CIM Annual National Conference 2012: Our picks of the day

We swapped our lively office in Leeds last Thursday for the luxurious Cumberland Hotel in London for the annual Chartered Institute of Marketing National conference, which boasted an itinerary packed full of marketing insights and advice from the most experienced and skilful marketers in the country.

Based around a theme of 'Survive, Adapt, Thrive'; talks at the conference focused on the continuous struggle marketing teams face in the wake of the economic crisis, and increasing expectations from superiors who want everything 'quicker, cheaper, better.'

As marketing enthusiasts, the CIM conference gave us the chance to keep our finger on the pulse of the marketing industry, giving us a better understanding of the challenges facing it, and more excitingly, the ways in which we can change and evolve to maximise our efforts and ultimately deliver better results.

All too often, brands involve agencies without a clear goal in mind and equally want more KPI's than is necessary for indicating performance. In terms of SEO, brand marketing is something which is only coming in front of people this year now that the Penguin update has finally caught up with dodgy quick-win tactics.

We feel that quite often, outreach is overlooked as part of a brand's messaging strategy, and equally brands are not using the value (20% according to Mike Ashton) of their brand to successfully impact their SEO.

So, after surplus amounts of coffee (and a few sneaky biscuits…) it was over to Anne Godfrey, the recently appointed Chief Executive of the CIM, to set the scene for the theme and structure of the day, and to introduce the much-anticipated speakers. With a wealth of experience and plenty of anecdotal advice; much of what the speakers told us was valuable guidance, but here are just a few of our best bits of the day, and the quotes which really stood out for us:

"We should be focusing on insights and strategy, rather than just communication."

"Marketers are the 'architects of competitive advantages'."

Angela Hatton, leading author on marketing strategy and planning, consultant and trainer

"Marketing strategy needs to align to business objectives, they shouldn't be two separate things."

"Great work won't hide a bad brief."

Stewart Pedler, Director of Operations, Global Marketing and Creative Services, Thomson Reuters

"Executives still aren't basing their decisions around the customer."

Nick Turner, Partner, Deloitte

"We have more information and data presented to us now than we can get our heads around, 1 in 5 marketers don't understand the information they're receiving."

"Go back to the beginning, go back to competitor analysis and segmentation."

"We're always going to receive a lot of data which gives us answers, but it means nothing unless we know why."

Nick Bonney, Group Market and Customer Insight Director, EE

"The marketer is: The Instigator, The Innovator, The Integrator, The Implementer."

"Constantly challenge the status quo."

"The next 'big thing' is always around the corner."

Georgios Kolovos, European Marketing Director, GE Capital

"If you don't change, you're not cutting-edge."

"Manage expectations, don't promise everything and not deliver."

"The process should be:

    1. What do you want to change?
    2. Write it down
    3. Tell someone about it"

"Changing a culture is a person-by-person task."

"Brand / customer experience is absolutely critical, the brand accounts for around 20% of a company's profits."

"How in touch are boardrooms with what makes their customers tick?"

Mike Ashton, former CMO, Hilton International, now Managing Director, ABCG

"A clear vision is absolutely critical."

"Keep things simple, what's on your customer's mind? What are they talking about? What do they want?"

"Make it easy for people to use your brand."

"The race never ends."

Nick Adderley, Marketing and Insight Director, Heathrow Airport

"Your brand is a promise, you'll survive if you deliver on that."

"What exactly are you trying to say? Who exactly are you trying to say it to? Why should they give a damn?"

"Brand reputation marketing and promoted marketing should never be two separate things."

Brendan Dineen, Director of Marketing, Demand Programs, IBM UK and Ireland

"It's not always about the numbers, the processes are, but the results aren't."

Martin Glenn, Chief Executive Officer, Iglo Group

So there you have it, a truly insightful day which not only put the minds of marketers around the country at rest that we're all facing the same challenges, but better still, gave us the advice and hope we needed to understand how to make the most out of the resource we're given, and believe that we can facilitate change. We're already looking forward to next year's conference!

BY Mike Jeffs

Mike has a background in business and marketing, with experience both client and agency side. Working as part of the Branded3 search team – when he's not getting his SEO on, he's either song-writing or gigging.

BY Felicity Crouch AT 1:56pm ON Monday, 29 October 2012

With a deep knowledge of creative writing, journalism, and social media; Felicity is our Marketing Manager. Transforming our impressive achievements into words; Felicity uses her skills to raise Branded3's profile, combining a creative background with a passion for current industry affairs.

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Four simple actions that will help you get the most of Google+

Posted 29 October 2012 12:24pm by David Moth with 1 comment

Love it or hate it, Google+ is here to stay so you may as well start trying to use it to your advantage. The overriding argument for getting on G+ is that, put simply: "It's Google."

Think how much of your traffic comes from search. Don't you want to do everything you can to ensure that you maintain and improve your search rankings?

We've previously looked at how G+ and +1s impact SEO performance, and while there doesn't yet appear to be a direct correlation between the two, there is evidence to suggest that sites with strong social profiles experience a strong uplift in organic traffic.

At Social Media Marketing 2012 Site Visibility's Kelvin Newman took a closer look at the relationship between G+ and SEO.

He suggested that G+ was created as a way to help Google improve search results by giving it a better understanding of which websites are high quality and relevant by adding social proof.

At its most basic level, if something gets shared more then Google can probably assume it's better content, though there are obviously exceptions to that rule (see Samantha Brick).

Furthermore, Newman said that off-site SEO is influenced by three overlapping factors: author rank, social shares and links. G+ now forms part of both author rank and social shares, so it's clearly important for brands to be involved.

So if you're convinced of the benefits of G+ or starting to come round to the fact that it might be important, here are four simple actions you can take to make the most of G+:

1. Add author snippets

If your site hosts blog content or articles then it's important that the people writing that content signup to Google's authorship program.

This is done through G+ and allows authors to get more enhanced listings (such as a mugshot and links to other articles) in the search results by using the rel=author mark up.

It's fairly simple to implement and results in higher CTR for your articles as it makes them more prominent and adds social proof as users can see how many G+ circles the author is in. 

Newman points out that it's a great way of increasing search traffic as if you can't improve rankings you can still capture more clicks by using rel=author to boost CTR.

For more information checkout our step-by-step guide on how to implement rel=author.

2. Download Do Share

Do Share is a Chrome plugin that helps to save time by allowing you to schedule G+ posts.

It's a useful tool for busy page admins as they can plan their updates throughout the week without having to spend time everyday editing and uploading content.

3. Add another sharing button to your site

It's an obvious point and the benefits may be minimal at first, but adding a G+ button to your site is really a no-brainer. The chances are that your site already has social sharing buttons, so adding a +1 button isn't going to take much effort.

Newman said that +1s are another way of showing social proof in SERPs as its shows that someone has vouched for that page.

In the long run this is likely to become more important and could even have an impact on the user's behaviour on site, such as their propensity to buy or signup to something.

So don't be put off by low numbers of +1s at first, as it's all relative and it's likely that your competitors also have low numbers.

4. Mark up using the Open Graph protocol

The Open Graph protocol aims to bring consistency to the way webpages are shared across social networks by bringing together a number of different technologies so developers only have one thing to implements.

It is recognised by both Facebook and Google and Newman said that it basically tells social networks what are the most important pieces of content that should be displayed when a link is shared. 

Site owners can then choose which title, image and text to display to make their content appealing to other users, thereby maximising traffic from social shares and improving your social footprint.

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Australia Post declares $2bn digital strategy: Part two

Posted 29 October 2012 22:00pm by Claire Brinkley with 0 comments

Australia Post will shortly be releasing their free Digital Mailbox in an attempt to future proof their business and step further into the online world.

The Digital Mailbox is part of Australia Post's $2 billion dollar investment plan to digitise their current operations and it will allow all Australians to securely receive and pay bills, as well as store important documents and communications.

Australia Post's managing director and CEO, Ahmed Fahour, says he hopes the Digital Mailbox will become as essential to everyday life as regular mail is. But the big question is, do Australians want it?

Just as the traditional letterbox has been a vital part of people's communications for the past 200 years, we think the Australia Post Digital Mailbox will become an integral part of everyday life.

The digital mail revolution 

Essentially the Digital Mailbox is a letterbox hosted in the cloud that allows users to read and print mail, pay bills, set reminders and store important documents like tax records or copies of your passport. It can be accessed anytime, anywhere, on any device, making it particularly useful for people who are often moving or travelling.

Fahour said the Mailbox is a vital upgrade to Australia's communications infrastructure and a digital manifestation of Australia Post's original purpose. 

Australia Post has a proud track record of being the trusted intermediary that connect businesses and consumers and the Digital Mailbox extends that relationships into the digital world. 

It is easily accessed with one password, from any internet enabled device, 24/7, from anywhere in the world. But most importantly, Australians can trust their information is safe, stored securely in an Australian based cloud, provided by Telstra. 

So far Westpac, AMP and Telstra have come on as partners for the Digital Mailbox and Westpac has confirmed that it will use the Mailbox as a way to communicate and transact with customers. 

The competition

The idea of the Digital Mailbox may be new to some, but another organisation called Computershare offers a very similar service. The two are actually so similar, that Australia Post took Computershare to court to try to prevent it from using the name Digital Post Australia. They lost, turning it into a battle of first-to-market speed.

Currently, Computershare offers their digital mailbox service to the United States and has launched a limited release here in Australia, which could pose a potential threat to Australia Post.  

The risks

The idea of hosting all of your important details online is appealing, but what about security issues? Only last week did a computer glitch expose the names and locations of thousands of Australians who had been sent parcels, forcing Australia Post to shut down its electronic parcel tracking service. And, this was only a fortnight after the mail service was made to suspend its "click & send" service that is used for online shopping after the names and addresses of customers were exposed through manipulations of the website URL. 

Granted, traditional mail is no more susceptible to security breaches - snail-mail can be intercepted by anyone during its delivery cycle - therefore, in such a security conscious world, will Australians see the idea of the Digital Mailbox, that encourages you to upload copies of important documents like tax receipts and passport scans, too risky?

Roger Montgomery from ABC1?s Inside Business doesn't seem to think so, exclaiming "sign me up" when discussing the idea of Computershare's Digital Post. 

If they can get this right, if they can bank level security, if they can tie it in with a text message to tell me I have a bill to pay, and I just press a button, and if they can tie it in with BPay or whoever else, well they're going to be bigger than Webjet, bigger than realestate.com.au, bigger than Carsales. 

Not everyone buys a house, not everyone buys a car, but everyone has to pay bills.

A necessary upgrade - or is it?

For businesses, the Digital Mailbox offers a way to connect with customers in a secure, digital way. But some people are wondering if this is a solution to a non-existent problem. 

For now the Digital Mailbox will not replace having a physical letterbox or PO box because not all of your mail will, or can, reach you via the internet. It's not expected to be an environment for personal communications or deliveries: It is simply a way to view and deal with more service-driven functions, such as bills. 

It is clear that Australia Post needed to look to the future to make sure the services they were offering were relevant and digitised. But given that the services do not offer much more than existing services, such as BPay and POSTbillpay, it seems only time will tell whether this is a technology-driven function that the Australian public truly wants. 

The first part of this article is available here. 

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This Button Will Be Your Headphone’s New Best Friend

The button. It's so simple, so underrated and so under-appreciated. But all of that is changing now.

Shapeways has revolutionized buttons. Instead of just keep your shirt from flying open, it now doubles as an elegant holder for headphone cables.

SEE ALSO: Listen Up: Here's a Brief History of Headphones

Who hasn't suffered that irritating moment when your headphones get snarled around your sweater or snagged on something and get yanked from your ears? The Button 2.0 will hold the cord securely in place, keeping them tangle free and leaving you cord-free to enjoy music hassle-free.

It works especially well with Apple ear buds and any cords with a two millimeter diameter.

Would you buy this handy button accessory? Tell us in the comments below.

BONUS: Headphone Round Up: Our Top Picks

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