AIM Internet

Content Marketing Strategy and the Latest Web Design Trends

hottubsdirect — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:44:00 +0000

Part of any effective content marketing strategy is keeping up with the latest web design trends. As content has evolved significantly within the past 12-18 months, so has the web design used to present content. The emergence of breakout trends like Instagram, Pinterest and the visual Facebook timeline, not to mention the growth in the use of mobile apps and the mobile web, has led most content marketers to begin focusing on visual content. Even with the many new trends, content still is an essential part of any business’ marketing strategy. However, while content remains “king,” design must be an integral part of every content marketing strategy if it is to succeed. Instead of cramming a website with content, content must incorporate the latest in web design to grab attention, appeal to emotions and convert prospects into clients. Here are a few of the latest web design trends that businesses should explore for successful content marketing in 2013.

Trend #1 – Responsive Website Design

One of the top trends in web design right now is responsive website design, which is an essential part of web development due to the growth of tablet and mobile browsing. It is important to have websites that adapt to fit any device being used to view the site. With responsible website design, businesses can ensure that their content is viewed the way they intent, no matter what device is being use to access it. Why is this important to content marketing? With a huge section of individuals accessing the web via tablets and smartphone s, businesses must ensure that their content is viewed successfully on these devices. Failure to use responsive design increases the chance that website visitors will ignore your content and move on to another website that they can easily view and use on their device of choice.

Google Under Fire From Fairsearch Europe Over Its Android System

hottubsdirect — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:32:05 +0000

Google has come under fire from a group including search engine rival Microsoft over the allegedly “deceptive way” in which its Android operating system dominates the market.

The Internet giant provides its Android platform for free, but Fairsearch Europe – a group of 17 tech firms also including Oracle and Nokia – believes the operating system in an example of anti-competitive “predatory pricing”.

According to Fairsearch Europe, the Android OS is “a deceptive way to build advantages” which aims to “dominate the mobile marketplace and cement its control over consumer Internet data for online advertising as usage shifts to mobile”.

Google AdWords and digital marketing – bricks for clicks

hottubsdirect — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:41:08 +0000

With big name brands fleeing or being dumped off the high street, Rob Jackson asks if tech savvy local retailers could take their place.

With more and more corporate casualties on Britain’s high streets, is a return to the independent retail landscape of the past a possibility? If Google has anything to do with it, then the answer is yes.

Google’s latest AdWords update signalled a significant shift in how their hugely successful pay per click platform works. It is now much easier for advertisers to increase visibility for users on mobiles and tablets. This is potentially very attractive for local business owners who can, for example, target ads to users who are nearby during opening hours.

IT and web design hiring rates outstrip retail hires, technology recruiter finds

hottubsdirect — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:32:11 +0000

IT and web design hiring rates rose 12% last year compared to a 3% rise in retail hiring, according to analysis by specialist technology recruiter Greythorn.

At the same time, growth in online retail sales is dwarfing that of traditional retail.

The number of roles in IT and web design has risen by 32,000 over the past year, said Greythorn. The biggest increase has been in web designers which has risen 19.4% from 31,000 to 37,000 roles. The number of IT business architects and system designers has risen 18.8% from 85,000 to 101,000 in the same period, Greythorn reports.

Growth of online retail

Online spending grew 10.9% in the year to February 2013, two and half times the rate of total retail sales (4.4%), according to the British Retail Consortium. Official statistics are even more stark for high street stores – January saw an 8.7% increase in online retail sales despite a 0.6% year-on-year fall in overall retail sales, according to ONS.

To address this, a number of large online retailers have significantly bolstered their IT teams, including John Lewis who announced the hire of 100 new staff in January 2013. From their own figures, Greythorn said it has seen growth of 89% in IT roles placed in online retail over the past year, compared with the previous 12 months.

Greythorn director, Mark Baxter, said: “The list of high street insolvencies is becoming a roll-call and there appears to be no end of famous names struggling or going under. It is undoubtedly sad news, but there is a silver lining in the growth of IT roles. As online shopping grows, companies are increasingly investing in improving the customer experience and the back office operations supporting online sales. It is a key stage in transferring to a high tech economy. The number of specialised new roles is growing and that is only good news for IT professionals.”

Google’s Schmidt: I Was Late to Social Media Revolution

hottubsdirect — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:38:01 +0000

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, said he regrets coming to the social media revolution late during his ten years as the company’s CEO.

Schmidt, who stepped down as CEO in 2011, said he was proud of Google’s achievements in the past decade.

“The source of pride for me personally is the power of information is so dramatic, that you really do touch people’s lives when you give them the answers to the things they care about,” Schmidt said in an interview with CNBC-TV 18 in India. “I can’t think of a better way to spend a decade.”

He added that his biggest mistake, however, was not seeing the social media revolution soon enough, something he took personal responsibility for. However, he said, that with Google Plus the company was well in touch.

read more: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100573756

Social media photos and data may have to be included in wills

hottubsdirect — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 12:16:25 +0000

People may soon have to start including their Facebook and other social media accounts in their wills if they want family to have photographs and other items after they die.

A legal symposium at NUI Galway at the weekend heard that the days of families inheriting shoeboxes of photos and correspondence will soon end and instead families will be left in a legal limbo following the death of a loved one.

Damien McCallig, a PhD student in the school of law at NUIG, said it was almost inevitable people would have to start specifying who should have their Twitter, Facebook and other social media accounts after they die. But the legal uncertainty about digital records will extend far beyond sentimental photos.

Benefits of Online Marketing

hottubsdirect — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 11:03:06 +0000

YouTube is definitely a well known video placing website allowing a great number of individuals to promote most of the formerly made video clip such as small video clips or even a audio collections as well as animated graphics. For this internet world, YouTube attracts the main interest of website visitors from distinct portions of the entire world, who actually perform variety of roles just like animators, commentators, lovers, learners and many others. YouTube comprises of video clips involving different genres just like the Knowledge, fun, fitness, marketing strategies combined with lot more.

When comparing to some other styles, website advertising working with YouTube is one of the impressive tendencies mainly because it greatly improves one’s business. To upgrade your individual YouTube advertisement video tutorials to a greater range, it might be vital for enhance your own through the internet rank. Right here is the point exactly where ‘Buy YouTube Subscribers’ occurs into picture. At the time you add a video tutorial on YouTube designed for marketing and advertising reason you have to ensure that the particular video actually leaves behind several astonishing notion over the audiences who actually enjoy it. For your personal product to reach forceful progression of advertise, you want to placed in real marketing efforts to attract even more viewers regarding your company’s videos which might be never likely to be that stress-free.

Count the iPad, and Apple Rules PCs

hottubsdirect — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 20:13:46 +0000

Apple lands the top spot among PC makers for the holiday quarter — as long as the iPad is included in the figures, according to the latest report from Canalys.

The market research firm, which includes tablets in its worldwide PC numbers, reported this week that overall PC shipments increased 12 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, with 134 million units shipped during the holiday season.

Tablets accounted for more than one third of those units with 46.2 million units shipped, a 75 percent jump from the same quarter a year ago. In total, 114.6 million tablets shipped in the year.

Apple was last quarter’s PC leader, snagging a 20 percent share of the PC market. It shipped 27 million units in the last quarter of 2012, 22.9 million of which were iPads. The Cupertino company sold 4.1 million Macs. Apple has said both Macs and iPad Mini sales could have been higher if not for supply constraints.

HP took the second spot, shipping 15 million PCs, followed by Lenovo’s 14.8 million computers shipped. Samsung was also able to appear in the top five for the first time, thanks to its tablet sales. The company grabbed a 9 percent market share on the quarter, shipping 11.7 million units. Those figures gave it a fourth place finish ahead of Dell, which shipped 9.7 million units, a 19 percent dip from the same time a year ago.

The addition of tablets also helped Amazon gain traction in the market. The online retailer shipped 4.6 million tablets in the fourth quarter.

Top 5 Web Design Trends in 2013

hottubsdirect — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 11:06:02 +0000

In 2012 we saw quite a lot of trends in web designing that set forth the founding stones of a radical change in the way we approach and design websites. 2013 is going to be one of those years when the rest of the World Wide Web will flock towards an HTML 5 website that’s styled with the brand new features of CSS 3. In the last quarter of 2012 we saw a lot of popular websites doing a complete redesign and defining the emergence of a new trend that is bound to storm into the mainstream webmaster community beginning this year. In this article I am going to talk about 5 such trends that you must adapt or at least prepare your website to be flexible enough to accept such changes.

Going Responsive – HTML 5 is not only about creating games with canvas and showing off the cool animations using CSS 3. One of the fundamental reasons why this markup language gained widespread acceptance amongst developers in the fact that it allows designing of web applications that automatically adjust itself on other small screen devices. This feature is called responsive or fluid design where you will see the entire content of the website shifting and adjusting on an iPad or iPhone. While 2012 saw blogs like Mashable, The Next Web etc. shift to this format I believe that in 2013 there is going to be an explosion of responsive designing. Gone are those days when you had a separate site called m.site.com. Prepare to make your own website fluid because the number of people who access the internet from tablets and smartphones are growing at a skyrocketing pace.

read more: http://technorati.com/technology/article/top-5-web-design-trends-in/

Retail banks warned of social media marketing pitfalls

hottubsdirect — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 10:44:20 +0000

Despite spending a growing slice of their marketing budgets on social media activities, retail banking executives remain unclear about the value of the investment in the face of continuing consumer distaste for engaging with brands online, according to research commissioned by Pitney Bowes Software.

The study, conducted by Vanson Bourne, shows that more than seven in ten marketing directors in retail banking have seen a growing emphasis being placed on social media in their external communications.

In 2013 these firms expect to spend around 22% of their marketing budget on the likes of Twitter and Facebook, up from 16% in 2011, according to the survey of executives from retail banking in the UK, France, Germany, Australia and US.

This is considerably less than other industries though, with telcos in particular preparing to put 36% of their money into the emerging channel, says Vanson Bourne, which spoke to marketers in seven sectors.

The tentative approach may be explained by the fact that only just over half of marketers in retail banking are confident that their social media campaigns are effective, while nearly a third rate them as not.

This caution seems well-placed given that only a quarter of 3000 consumers quizzed use social media to follow and keep up-to-date with certain companies or brands, while more than three quarters are predominantly on the various platforms to keep in touch with friends and family.