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If you work in SEO, particularly if you’re doing it right, the most important thing in your toolkit isn’t an accurate rank checker, a nifty keyword research tool or ninja Excel skills (although these all help), it’s actionable data. Data about how people are finding your site and about what they do when they’re there. If you’ve got this information, you can make real decisions about what – and who – you should be targeting with your content, what keywords you should be optimising for and what you should be changing to turn those visitors into customers.
Without paying close attention to this data, you’re flying blind. All the keyword research in the world won’t help you without this. You might think a keyword’s right for your website, you might like the search volume that comes with it and you might even be able to make it rank at the top of the search engines, but what if 85% of the traffic that you get from this ranking bounces? What do you do if the vast majority of the people that come to your website after searching for this term take one look at your site and decide that it’s not what they’re looking for?
If you’ve got access to data like this, you can make a decision. You know instantly that this isn’t the right term for you and you can switch your focus effectively. But what if the data that you need to use to make these decisions was suddenly taken away from you?
That’s what happened in November last year when Google switched everyone who was signed into a Google property like Gmail, YouTube and Google + onto a “secure” version of the search engine, which means that the keyword they used to find your site is reported as (not provided) in all analytics platforms with no way to get it back. Sure, there are ways that you can make a best guess by drilling down into landing pages and working out what terms that page is visible for and extrapolating any provided data, but it’s not as accurate as it used to be.
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Ever wondered what happens to your email after you click send? We thought we would share this great little animated video from Google that explains it as it’s a bit more in depth than you might think. Its good to see that Google are doing their bit to keep things green too.
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Who can take a mobile, sprinkle it with dew, cover it with chocolate and some digital or two…? Well for some marketeers this can be a struggle.
I was recently at a client-side conference where Mobile was repeatedly referred to as a channel, a very important channel that needs attention (I’m not arguing with that!), but a separate channel nonetheless. The speaker went one step further and determined that mobile is ‘a spoke in the marketing wheel’, along with search marketing, display advertising, social media et al.
Surely, if that’s the analogy they’re looking at, then mobile is a wheel within the digital wheel? With the channels – search, display, social – being the spokes through both the digital and mobile wheels that make up this marketing unicycle?
Now at the risk of getting lost in a semantic minefield, if clients do see mobile as a separate channel, then they are forcing themselves to make a ‘choice’ – both budgetary and strategic – and then the marketeer will be spending their pocket money on mobile (because it’s the ‘future’!) and hoping that their Mum will pick up some search, social and display as an extra special treat!
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MINI – there is something almost akin to motoring magic in the word.
The brand that owes it origins to a more shall we say ‘mystical’ motoring era in the 1960s when everything adventurous lay ahead.
And so it seems the marketing powers over in MINI would agree with their latest online campaign going all out to capture the digital audience’s attention.
Because wait for it…I am getting something through. Yes there it is. I can reveal that their latest bit of online wizardry is a Psychic MINI Roadster.
After we were left weak at the knees with the latest Volkswagen online campaign it seems only fair that something as unique and innovative as this from MINI should be featured on Keeping Brands Human.
As humans there is one subject that never ceases to entertain us – Ourselves. Self-interest is not to be confused with selfishness. It is only natural that we should be drawn to what might happen to us in the future. Will we meet the love of our lives? Where will our careers be in ten years’ time? Will we travel or become rich? You get the picture.
This is something fundamental within us that the team at MINI have tapped into with a simultaneously hilarious and irreverent idea that the Roadster steering wheel has the ability to predict your future.
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It’s that time of year when everyone’s minds turn to their summer holidays. Where to book? What to do? And most importantly how much will it cost?
It struck me as I was posting up some new case studies today on our main website just how many travel and transport brands we work with in 20:20 Agency.
An interesting one is STA Travel, where we worked to deliver a global digital identity for this major student travel brand.
If you watched a new documentary all about the seventies last night on BBC2 you may have been surprised like me to discover that foreign holiday companies were originally Government owned before being sold to private providers in the early seventies.
It seems unfathomable now but there were also amazingly tight restrictions on the amount of money you could take abroad up until that point (£50 a year per person). The lifting of these limitations really opened up the travel market to the average Brit forty years ago and for many people now an annual getaway is just part of everyday life and nothing out of the ordinary.
The recent Visit England celebrity campaign fronted by Stephen Fry and Julie Walters which encourages Brits to stay home this year because there is so much to celebrate (Olympics and Jubilee notably) is all very well and good but when I think of a holiday it’s always abroad that excites me more than the UK.
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20:20 Agency are delighted to share the news that we have been recognised with an official honoree distinction at the 16th Annual Webby Awards.
In recognition of the work 20:20 have done with Carlsberg it’s a fantastic accolade for the agency from the leading international award body honoring excellence on the Internet.
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Tots 100 founder and super blogger Sally Whittle has produced a fabulous white paper for DWPub to help PR folk work smarter with the ever increasing number of bloggers popping up in the blogosphere.
It’s a great paper, one that clients and anyone working in communications would benefit from reading. Whilst some of it may seem obvious, even I’ve been shocked from time to time by people’s penchant to blast a release out to 200 bloggers in the hope that one will stick without much prior thought to the recipients at the other end.
There’s also something to be said for appreciating that bloggers are real people, often writing out of passion – it’s a vocation rather than just a job, often undertaken with very little reward. They aren’t (usually) journalists.
So take some time to get to know them, show some appreciation for what they’re interested in and how your brand or products might interest them before pressing ‘send’.
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Here at 20:20 Agency we’ve been measuring and monitoring people’s conversations on different social networks for a decent amount of time now, but surprisingly not one of us has attempted to do a little blog about what we do and why so I thought I’d give it a go. Apologies if this is boring/old news/a bit dull to all you sexy creative types but I’m a born researcher this is the stuff that floats my boat.
So firstly why do we monitor social media conversations? It’s not just because we can, it’s because that’s where opinions and beliefs have been logged by normal people for the world to see. I have a few Twitter accounts, I’m not going to lie. I’ve got a professional work one @EmmelineScott (please follow me) a personal one (don’t follow this one) and one specifically to talk about The X Factor (I was forced to create this as my tweeps were getting annoyed at me spamming them every weekend from October to December). My personal Twitter account is the one where I have a bit of banter mostly, but sometimes I feel the need to express my opinions on a subject or brand to the world so that I can throw my two penneth into the mix. If I’m putting it out there in the twittersphere I want you to know about it.
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Response to the EU Cookie Directive & Recommendations on First Steps to Adhere to this Directive
In May 2011 the EU Cookie Directive came into force (a copy of which can be found here).
The new directive states that you will now need to receive ‘consent’ from anybody who visits your website if you are using cookies to track their use of the website – this tracking can include details of which pages they visit, what information they submit in forms, their purchase behaviour, etc.
The consent will not allow for an ‘opt-out’ option but must be a specific ‘opt-in’ by the website visitor.
Therefore, websites setting cookies must:
Tell visitors to the site that the cookies are there;
Explain what the cookies are doing, and;
Obtain their consent to store a cookie on their device.
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Mashable have gathered a list of nine social networks they think people should be keeping an eye on.
Location-based functionality seems to be the order of the day with most of these these sites. Much like Foursquare they all have a goal to connect people beyond the digital space in their real local areas.
Highlight promotes itself as a ‘fun way to learn more about people nearby’ where as Local Mind promises to let you know ‘what is happening NOW’.
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