You could refer to us lot, here at Crowdbait, as a bunch of gossips. We wouldn’t mind. We admit, we do love keeping up to date with the latest goings on in the world of content marketing, social media and digital communication. Investigating the news and opinions issued from some of the world’s most progressive markets is one of our favourite pastimes, and passing them on to you – well, that’s just our duty… This week, we visit our old friends at Econsultancy to see what they’ve been talking about, consider approaching psychopaths for marketing advice and share with you an SEO infographic with a difference…
Generating a buzz in the social media jungle
It sure is a jungle out there; with so much content – and good content at that – flying around, how is your content supposed to stand out? This is exactly what Debbie Hemley of Social Media Examiner thought before she went delving into the realms of social media in search of ways to strengthen the impact of the content you create. Hemley has pulled together an A-Z guide of ‘26 tips to create a strong social media content strategy’, in which she explains how to generate traffic and create a following by setting social media goals and aligning them with your content development, and the importance of daily updates and infographics. Hemley really has covered all the bases in her article, you’ll find a mix of innovative suggestions and simple actions explained. It’s worth sharing around the office.
Psychopaths as marketing experts
You’d be forgiven for assuming that every psychopath’s wish was to gut you like a fish and stuff you like a teddy bear – it’s what we believed too. Thankfully, Michael Taggart’s post on The Wall has now set us straight. They’re not all mass murderers at all, in fact, Taggart has advised us how we can use the mind of a psychopath to help us better our marketing strategies. It would seem that psychopaths (who, by the way, can be anyone from a narcissistic chief executive to a charming political careerist) have a particular thinking that would require a marketer to explain exactly what their product does and why, cutting out the sense of emotion and excitement normally used in successful campaigns. So, how can this help at all? We’ll let Taggart explain…
We love Econsultancy
The gang at Econsultancy never fail to educate and entertain us with their informative blogs discussing all things digital marketing, and this week is no exception. Take a look at what they’ve unearthed in our brief summary…
Yahoo do you think you are?
Yahoo has caught quite a stir of late after announcing new changes to their email accounts that will see inactive accounts being released ‘back into the wild’ if not activated by 15th July. With privacy and security fears already through the roof, this has caused anger and worry amongst both marketers and consumers alike as emails could continue to be delivered to email addresses now with new owners, risking the wrath of a spam complaint and potentially sending sensitive information to unintended recipients. Surely writing off the unused addresses rather than reusing them would be a better idea?
Big, unhelpful data
Econsultancy’s recent Online Measurement and Strategy Report 2013, revealed that 8% of marketers simply don’t care about big data and that they believe it to be a ‘pointless marketing term’. While big data poses as something of relevance and importance, it seems that it has had little to no impact on businesses, with many marketers not having any understanding of what it is. Many companies are still trying to get to grips with their current analytics tools, so trying to process new ‘big data’ on top of everything else is a struggle. Econsultancy members are waiting to see if it catches on.
1940s content marketing
There’s not much we don’t love about people in the 1940s and there’s a lot we could learn from them too. More than the fashion and good manners, they seem to have had their content marketing sussed too. This article by Danny Ashton is really just a bit of fun, but still highlights some great advice to take on board when creating content. It’s a great read.
#explained
Now that Facebook has adopted the use of hashtags to make user-generated content searchable and clickable, what does this mean for marketers? Adit Abhyankar and The Wall have posted a detailed investigation of what opportunities the change might create for advertisers. The flexibility of what you can hashtag could mean that trends are able to build and move quickly, and generates data on the user, adding to the richness of Facebook’s unstructured data. This could make it easier to use the platform to provide more targeted and relevant advertising. Abhyankar explores the matter in further detail; we’re cautious on this front, as we’ve seen little uptake on the use of hashtags by consumers except in those who already have their accounts synced with their Twitter profiles…
SEO infographic
You know we like to include one useful infographic in each of our posts, so this week we’ve picked this useful table that depicts important SEO factors to remember. This has made its rounds for some time, and you might remember that the guys at SearchEngineLand.com have set it out as a Periodic Table. Despite its apparent age, it’s informative and a useful guide to follow. We’ve even heard of a few places printing it out poster-size for the whole office to see.
In other news…
As if we didn’t already have enough platforms to contend with, now we can look forward to adapting our websites to fit the new iWatch. We heard back in February that Apple had started experimenting and developing a new watch-like device, but now it has been revealed that they filed a trademark on the word iWatch in Japan last month. If Apple have done it, others will undoubtedly soon start following suit. Time to start reading up on the ol’ responsive design, then.
Twitter is set to follow Facebook and Google into ad targeting, by allowing brands to use tweeters’ web browsing history to better target them with relevant information. While this may seem like a bit of a privacy breach, Twitter is reassuring users that they can protect their privacy by opting out of the new feature if they are not happy with their account being matched with external data. They also claim they will email all users to notify them of the change.
In case you thought Microsoft were being left out again due to all the hype over Apple’s latest venture, don’t worry, they’re happily entertaining themselves. They have recently shown off a new touch-screen television that touches users right back. The screen mimics how physical objects feel by offering ‘tactile feedback’ to users. Haptic technology, as it is known, uses pressure or vibration to create the feel of an object. It sounds useful to us!
That’s just about it from us for this week, but be sure to keep an eye on the Crowdbait blog for more Create, Curate and Circulate posts, as well as other insights views and opinions.