It's Digital Marketing

Digital Marketers: A Call To Advocacy

Gary — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:36:48 +0000

You've seen it before, the head-shaker. The comment left in social media that makes you roll your eyes and mutter "FFS!" under your breath. It's usually either blatantly wrong, unfair or just plain moronic. Either way, there just isn't anything you can do about it. As a representative of the brand you know you can't retaliate, you can't appear defensive and you can't tell them where to stick their custom if they're not happy with your perfectly reasonable offering. It won't reflect well on your brand and you have no desire to be lampooned as the next brand #socialFAIL. So you bite your tongue, cast a few colourful expletives into the wind and try to move on. But it doesn't have to be like that. There is another way.

3 principles of realtime interaction in an Always On culture

Gary — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 10:32:17 +0000

It's remarkable how quickly the Always On culture has established. It's insinuated itself within our lives to the point people often remark they cannot remember what they did or how they coped before it. Social and Mobile are, of course, at the heart of its meteoric rise. The adoption of both as 'must-haves' in our lives has changed the way we, as individuals, behave. As a consequence it has also changed our expectations. Urgency and immediacy are the expected norm. Like much in modern life we want things now. The big difference is that the new channels have given the consumer a voice. The relationship between brands and people has changed. The message - controlled by the brand - has now become a conversation, with the individual exerting more influence than perhaps is comfortable for brands. Brands need the individual. They must work together in collaboration. And that's not the future, that's now.

Our Future Technology: It’s Child’s Play

Gary — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:35:13 +0000

Me: what did you do at school today? Son: Learned about the world using Google Earth. I really hadn't expected that answer. If you think about that for a moment it's quite staggering. My son is 5 years old and in his first year of school. When I was 5 I can't imagine I even knew what an atlas was and maybe I didn't know the world existed outside my town, let alone my country. So after dinner we took a trip up and around the top of Mount Everest. We also visited Ayers Rock in Australia, the Great Wall of China, the Eiffel Tower in Paris and my personal favourite, we zoomed in to the 50 yard line of Soldier Field, home to the NFL's Chicago Bears. Ain't technology awesome.

Smile! You’re Feeding the Facebook Machine

Gary — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:00:39 +0000

Yesterday Instagram revealed that as of January 16th, it will have the perpetual right to sell users' photographs without payment or notification. This disturbs me. I've been a fan of Instagram for a long time, though not a prolific user. I admire their journey, how they built this incredibly popular tool and network with just a handful of staff. The day they sold to Facebook, I had mixed feelings. On one hand, the founders got their big payday, the pay-off for all the hard work they put in. Can't blame them. On the other hand, I had a sense of dread that Facebook were about to royally fuck it up. Guess what? I think that just happened.

Challenging your routines for performance optimisation

Gary — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 11:13:12 +0000

When we do something for long enough, we start to find ourselves falling into routines. It’s how we get through the day, the week, life, without having to over-analyse everything. The problem is those routines aren’t always for the best. We take shortcuts, connect dots where they shouldn’t be connected and hold on to conventions. [...]

10 Things Die Hard Will Teach You About SEO

Gary — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 15:47:50 +0000

We all know the film Die Hard. It's the iconic 1988 action movie starring Bruce Willis, where an international band of terrorists hijack an entire Los Angeles office building and get their asses handed to them by a seemingly unstoppable, quick-witted John McClane. Now, I've watched Die Hard more times than I care to admit to, but just recently, I realised SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and Die Hard have a lot in common. Here are 10 of the similarities I spotted. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

The Recruiters Guide to Optimising Job Ads

Gary — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:10:05 +0000

Smart ecommerce retailers enjoy healthier profits by employing conversion rate optimisation techniques on their websites. Smart recruiters could do well by following suit. If you're new to the term 'conversion rate optimisation', its essentially getting more people to do the thing you want them to do. In retail terms, getting more people who land on a product page to place the item in their basket and pay for it. If you flip the retail scenario over to recruitment, browsing shoppers are your candidates, buyers are your applicants and product pages are your job ads. From all the jobs on the display, you want the jobseeker to select yours. The transaction, in this instance, is made with the CV. Of course, it's clearly not just about the volume of applications, relevancy is crucial too. So you also need to ensure an accuracy match between the 'buyer' and 'product'. So how do you get more relevant applicants to apply for your jobs?

Are you a Facebook Fanatic?

Gary — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:27:26 +0000

It has been suggested to me on more than one occasion that I may be spending far too much time in social media. And they may have a point. I have five accounts on Twitter, two on Facebook, plus underused pages on Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, Foursquare and Quora. I’ve at least kept away from Pinterest. Whilst I do have quieter times, I just can’t help coming back. I blame my iPhone for that. Thankfully, I’m not alone.

Social Media: Are you listening to the good stuff too?

Gary — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:04:25 +0000

“Oh no. Have you seen what this guy said about us on Twitter?” Words to strike dread into any Marketer. “Stop what you’re doing, we need to fix this. Now” If you monitor social media mentions of your brand, you’ve probably experienced a variation of this scenario yourself. It’s not fun and depending on what’s happened it can be a small inconvenience or a major headache. Like any good social media-aware marketer this is why you monitor and you know how you need to respond. You have a strategy for dealing with negative comments and feedback – that’s great, you definitely need one. But what about your strategy for dealing with positive feedback? Huh? Come again?

Digital talent: riding the wave of change

Gary — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 21:41:56 +0000

In his post ‘Social Media requires a different perspective on talent – developing a social workforce’, Felix Wetzel referenced a comment from Brian Halligan’s (Hubspot) presentation at Dreamforce: ‘No traditional marketing skills and background are required, instead “hire people who speak digital without an accent. Hire people that blog, have twitter followers and are on G+”’ I’m sure it’s a bold and contentious statement for many, but from where I’m sitting it has merit.