Archive for the ‘Content’ Category
Increase Your Speed to Market with Mobile – SDL Bemoko webinar
April 14th, 2013
I had the privilege of moderating an excellent webinar last week where Phillip Clement, Marketing and Sales Director of SDL Bemoko presented some great ideas and data how to increase your speed to market with mobile.
Phillip focused on ways to manage customer experience across multiple channels, dealing with the rapid pace of change in technology, the blurring of real with digital worlds and the imperative to control budgets.
The presentation deck was lengthy and packed with excellent info so there is only space here to touch upon some of the themes but you can download it through a link at the end of this post.
Phillip advised on practical ways to simplify mobile and tablet delivery, for marketers to adapt more quickly their campaigns for mobile faster, to manage customer experience across multiple channels and respond to the rapidly changing needs of customers.
He explained that “Doing mobile” is not the challenge; rather the challenge is delivering against expectation, keeping pace with change and breaking down traditional silos – marketing and IT. This necessitated the deployment of the right technology, empowering IT staff, reduce cost and complexity of delivery, speed commercial innovation without compromising resilience and ensure that businesses were always ahead of customer adoption
Phillip advises: “Traditional methods will bog down progress and increase cost, when you are trying to control budgets effectively.”
He believes that early adopters and late to market businesses are now on a level playing field but that customers’ expectations are high and businesses with agile technology platforms will succeed and grow faster than their competition.
Multi-channel or omnichannel marketing is rapidly becoming the de facto standard for brands of all sizes, and the technology engagement layers within these are becoming more complex, including wearable web devices, even “sentient tattoos”.
This is why marketers and IT professionals within companies must find new, more agile ways to communicate.
You can download the SDL Bemoko deck here.
Twitter Tirades never end well
April 12th, 2013
It’s that time again when we look at the latest case study of someone that should know better using social networks to vent personal beliefs/opinions that reflect negatively on their employer.
No prizes for guessing what happens next.
This time, the brand in question is Microsoft, specifically Xbox, and a recent conversation in relation to the next Xbox, which will be released on May 21st, and its probable always-on feature.
For those that are familiar with always-on gaming, it has been far from a smooth path, and games fans are wary of related issues, especially in light of problems with titles such as SimCity and Diablo 3.
In this instance the conversation was U.S. –based where Internet connectivity varies depending on location, and some parents have also expressed worries that an always-on connection would break broadband caps without their knowledge.
The issue began when A creative director at Microsoft, Andrew Orth, appeared to confirm a rumour that the next Xbox will require an always-on internet connection. Orth has been working as a creative director at Microsoft Studios on a game, which is yet to be revealed, since February 2012 and he was involved in a sarcastic exchange about the benefits of being connected. This was seized on by games fans, which in-turn triggered an online debate.
The discussion, which can be seen below, took place between Orth and Manveer Heir, a senior game designer at BioWare. Orth and Manveer are apparently close friends who seem to have been making fun of each other, but sarcasm does not always translate well, especially when Orth commented “why on earth would I live there?” when asked about towns that do not have good levels of connectivity such as Janesville, WI and Blacksburg, VA.
After a week of controversy, Gameinformer reports that Adam Orth has now voluntarily resigned from the company, which had been forced to apologise for his comments and indiscreet references to the new Xbox project, as below:
“We apologise for the inappropriate comments made by an employee on Twitter yesterday,” said the company.
“This person is not a spokesperson for Microsoft, and his personal views do not reflect the customer-centric approach we take to our products or how we would communicate directly with our loyal consumers. We are very sorry if this offended anyone, however we have not made any announcements about our product roadmap, and have no further comment on this matter.”
This may have been a case of a sarcastic conversation that went wrong, rather than an attack, but the outcome was the same; damage to the brand, resulting in the individual leaving the organisation.
The lesson is simple, Social networks are not private, and anything you write is accessible, so think before you tweet, and remember Twitter Tirades never work!
Read more at:
Newspaper sales continue to decline, as online growth builds
March 20th, 2013
2013 has been a difficult year for the newspaper industry with press regulation post-Leveson enquiry and falling sales, but online growth offers a ray of light.
As we await the latest ABCs, a look back at last month’s figures show a sharp contrast in the outlook for newspapers online and offline.
Overall, total national daily circulation was down 8.32% to 8,240,400 over 12 months:
- The Times suffered the least with circulation down just 0.94%
- The Mirror fell 5.91%
- The Daily Mail lost 5.97%
- The Telegraph was down 6.52%
- The Guardian shrunk 10.37% putting it below 200,000 circulation
- The Sun fell by 11.63%
- The Star dropped by 13.19%
- The Independent reported a 28.56% fall
The one winner, i was up 12.7%, helped by a 20p cover price.
However, online it’s a very different story.
In brief:
Mail Online added nearly 1 million daily unique browsers month-on-month to end up with nearly 8 million – a new traffic record. The Mail site recorded a 13% rise compared with December to reach an average 7,977,039.
Guardian.co.uk also set a new traffic record with 4,319,370 average daily unique browsers, an increase of 17% month-on-month, helped by record video views that rose 40% from December to January to 11.3m across the month.
Telegraph.co.uk was up 11% month-on-month to 3,129,599 average daily unique browsers.
Sun.co.uk and Mirror Group Digital recorded 1,816,106 and 1,064,924 average daily unique browsers respectively, equivalent to month-on-months rise of 16% and 24%.
Independent.co.uk reported a 25% increase from January to 1,214,144 average daily unique browsers.
In terms of the free papers, The Evening Standard saw daily average browsers increase 45% month-on-month to 207,484 and Metro.co.uk recovered after a traffic dip in December following the launch of a more mobile-friendly site. Average daily browser numbers bounced back to 260,119.
We wait to see how the current figures look, but my bet is the trends will be much the same with online continuing to build and offline looking decidedly shaky.
A deeper look at the demographics of Social Media Users
February 19th, 2013
The Pew research Center has recently releases its U.S.- focused social networking report
which highlighted some interesting trends on who’s using social media most and which social networks are most popular.
You can download the full report here:
In summary: “The Demographics of Social Media Users 2012” study found that the most frequent social media users are women aged 18 to 29. Women have been significantly more likely to use social networking sites than men since 2009. In December 2012, 71 percent of women were users of social networking sites, compared with 62 percent of men.
Overall, 67 percent use Facebook, and 16 percent use Twitter, which is especially appealing to adults in the 18 to 29-year-old category. Key demographics are charted in the images at the bottom of this post.
Pinterest has practically caught up with Twitter, with 15 percent of adult U.S. Internet users.
Pinterest, which launched in 2009, has experienced explosive growth. Women are five times more likely to use Pinterest (5 percent vs. 25 percent) and almost twice as likely to be white and college-educated.
13 percent of U.S. online adults say they use Instagram, 6 percent say they use Tumblr, and 20 percent of U.S. online adults say they use LinkedIn as of August 2012.
40 percent of mobile phone owners use a social networking site on their phone, and 28 percent do so on a typical day.
The report also looked at Creators and curators, defining them as follows:
As of August 2012:
• 46 percent of U.S. adult internet users post original photos or videos online that they themselves have created. We call them creators.
• 41 percent of U.S. adult internet users take photos or videos that they have found online and re-post them on sites designed for sharing images with many people. We call them curators.
Overall, 56 percent of internet users do at least one of the creating or curating activities studied and 32 percent of internet users do both creating and curating activities.
Interestingly, not using social media may be an elite thing. Those with a college degree are slightly less likely than those with some college education to use social networks (69 percent vs. 65 percent).
Retailers have survived the first digital coming, but what’s next?
January 25th, 2013
(This post was originally published on Mob76 Outlook as a guest post)
HMV’s recent demise was hardly a surprise. The writing has been on the wall for so long that it’s been painted over and graffitied many times since.
If we rewind ten years to 2003, the conversation around retail was focused on the importance of the web , and although not all major retailers had made the move to reinvent their web presence, it was on the agenda.
In many cases this move took some time to happen and latecomers lost market share and revenue opportunities… but those up against the online leaders such as Amazon (launched 1995) and Play.com (launched 1998) lost much more. They eventually lost a business.
To read the full post please click here Mob76 Outlook
The dream of the connected economy
January 22nd, 2013
We proceed in fits and starts in this new age, which, despite our protestations, is a part of the continuum that regulates and defines our procession towards the goals we hold dear.
Nothing can illuminate this more clearly than our current passion for mobile connectivity. At a time when large areas of the landmasses that qualify as the British Isles do not have any connection capability to the internet, we laud the rise of mobile (myself among the crowd).
But when you step back, just half a step, you see quite clearly that this new age is built on a raft of dreams.
This is not to say that the connected economy will not be built, far from it. But it will be built with more dislocations and inequalities than any other age.
To take a broad and inexact sweep from history, the Victorians with capital understood the nature of communications much more precisely than us, I believe.
They knew that to build a communications facility, a major road or railway line for example, would add value to the wealth of the nation and to them because this construction would raise the speed of production and exchange.
It is less clear in our more complex present age how the construction of new connections can benefit both the wealth of the nation and the more hidden corporate structures, rather than individuals or small groups that seek profit from the risk enterprise.
The very fact that connectivity is an extant and growing social concern is witness to the unique problems we have in making distributable money from circuits and conduits.
An expert on Victorian history could provide comparative advice on whether this is a replication of the communications inequalities of that age but I cannot.
What I do see is the building of a highly fragmented series of networks that do two things. First, they always, without fail, promise more than they ever deliver. Second, the companies who are building these conduits ally with device manufacturers to deflect attention from the structural inadequacies of their offerings.
This uneven development “strategy†has no benefit apart from the enormous profits, often subsidised by the taxpayer, that accrue to the builders of the new connected economy.
No doubt, my great grandchildren might look at this post and laugh aloud. I do hope so.
Mobile set to drive U.S. online ad spend beyond 25% of total ad budget
January 14th, 2013
According to J.P. Morgan, online advertising will pass a key milestone during 2013, accounting for one out of every four dollars spent by U.S. advertisers, as they increasingly follow consumers online.
Internet sector analyst Doug Anmuth has highlighted the importance of Internet-connected mobile devices, as well as the continuing momentum of social media platforms as a key part of online’s growing influence.
Writing in a report released to investors last week, Anmuth confirmed: “As consumer behaviour and time spent online rapidly shifts towards mobile, we expect advertising dollars to follow. We are projecting Internet advertising in the U.S. to grow to $43.5 billion in 2013.”
This represents a 17.4% growth on 2012 online ad spending levels and puts online media at 25% of all U.S. ad budgets.
To underline the influence of mobile, Anmuth estimates about half of the projected growth will be coming from mobile web ad spending. Without the mobile stimulus, online ad spending would grow by roughly 10% from 2012.
The importance of online is nothing new, but it’s continued solid growth and our demand to be connected everywhere is impacting all forms of media, and dictating the development of the advertising that we consume.
Ad funds will always follow the consumer, and the consumer is staying connected, no matter where they are.
Full story here.
2012 a year in social network numbers
December 21st, 2012
As we quickly approach 2013, many people are in reflective mood as they look to round-off their year with a 2012 summary post.
I’m going to keep it simple and avoid the fluff by hitting you with some of the statistics that evidence the ever-widening reach of social networks.
So sit back and spend a few minutes taking the numbers in while we rejoice in the fact that the world didn’t end today, at least not yet:
- 25 percent of users on Facebook don’t bother with any kind of privacy control. (source: AllTwitter)
- Monthly active Facebook users now total nearly 850 million. (source: Jeff Bullas)
- 488 million users regularly use Facebook mobile. (source: All Facebook)
- More than 1 million websites have integrated with Facebook in various ways. (source: Uberly)
- 77 percent of B2C companies and 43 percent of B2B companies acquired customers from Facebook. (source: Business2Community)
- 56 percent of customer tweets to companies are being ignored. (sources: AllTwitter)
- 32 percent of all Internet users are using Twitter. (source: Marketing Land)
- Twitter is projected to make a total of $540 million in advertising revenue by 2014. (source:Web Analytics World)
- In 2012, 1 million accounts are added to Twitter everyday. (source: Infographics Labs)
- 34 percent of marketers have generated leads using Twitter. (source: Digital Buzz Blog)
- Instagram was one of the largest acquisitions of a venture capital-backed consumer Web company since Zappos was bought by Amazon for $1.22B in 2009. (source: Factbrowser)
- According to Followgram’s research, 37 percent of Instagram users have never uploaded a single photo and only 5 percent of users have more than 50 pictures. (source: Siliconrepublic)
- It took just 10 months for Instagram to reach the milestone of 150m pictures uploaded. (source: Siliconrepublic)
- 80 percent of Pinterest users are women, while 50 percent of all Pinterest users have children. (source: Search Engine Journal)
- The average Pinterest user spends 98 minutes per month on the site, compared to 2.5 hours on Tumblr, and 7 hours on Facebook. (source: Arik Hanson)
- The Google +1 button is used 5 billion times per day. (source: AllTwitter)
- Google+ pages appear in search results for 30 percent of brand term searches for brands with G+ pages, up from 5 percent in February 2012. (source: Bright Edge)
- 48 percent of fortune global 100 companies are now on Google+. (source: Burson-Marsteller)
- Google+ cost $585 million and took 500 employees to build. (source: Social Media Delivered)
- Google+ is expected to attract 400 million users by the end of 2012. (source: Remcolandia)
Source – Huffington Post
UK shoppers spend the most online
December 14th, 2012
The UK is leading the way when it comes to shopping online, according to Ofcom’s International Communications Market Report.
The report looks at the take-up, availability, price and use of broadband, landlines, mobiles, TV and radio across 17 major countries: UK, France, Germany, Italy, the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Poland, Brazil, Russia, India and China.
Ofcom’s figures confirm that consumers in the UK spend an average of £1,083 a year when shopping online, compared with Australia which spends the second highest at £842.
Mobile devices play a large part in the success of online retail in the UK, and we download more data from our mobiles than any other nation. In fact, 16% of all web traffic in the UK is from mobile devices, which is more than any other European country.
Outside of Europe, British mobile use still leads the way, for example; in December 2011 the average UK mobile connection used 424MB (megabytes) of data, higher than Japanese users who averaged 392MBs.
Considering the UK population’s love of mobile access, it’s not surprising that we have one of the highest penetrations of smartphones, with almost 60% of British mobile phone owners saying they have one, second only to Germany, and up from 46% in the last report.
Only 37 per cent use a desktop computer as their most frequent means of accessing the internet.
Social networks have played a key role in demand for mobile devices, with 40% of UK adults accessing their profiles via the medium.
British 18-to 24-year-olds are also proving to be the world’s top mobile social networkers, with 62% accessing their profiles from smartphones and tablets, a higher proportion than any of the countries analysed in the report.
The Business Show – social communications, the myths and realities
November 23rd, 2012
Yesterday I attended The Business show, which is the UK’s largest business event, and continues today, Friday November 23rd.
I was also invited to give a presentation at the event, in the Telnames theatre, and based the discussion on my recent article for TechCrunch titled: social comms for start ups, the myths and realities.
On arrival at the show, two things struck me. Firstly the size of the event, which was impressive covering every possible element of business life for start ups and growing businesses. The second was the number of social media-based presentations. For example at 2pm (my slot), there were three social media related presentations and another that was search marketing related.
I feared I might have fallen into the realms of ‘me too’ with my presentation, and expected a low turnout as a result.
Thankfully, my initial fears proved unfounded as the theatre was packed for my presentation, and Guy Clapperton was also kind enough to introduce me to the crowd.
In brief, the feedback I received from the presentation was very positive. The purpose of which, as the title suggests, was to cut through the never ending social media myths, both from the social side and the corporate side.
As part of the presentation I tried to ‘out’ those corporate misconceptions about social, such as ‘social media will expose us to negativity’, ‘social media is free’, and ‘social media is a time waster’.
As well as remove the social media clichés such as ‘tricks’, ‘get rich quick’ and ‘short term wins’.
Instead, I tried to focus on the practicalities for growing businesses, and in truth these fundamentals are true for any business.
I then tried to break down the process of developing a social plan, including; listening, data, learning and engagement. See Liberate Media’s Social CRM whitepaper for further information. We will send this through to you if you request it via hello@liberatemedia.com.
I also had a number of enquires at the end of the session in terms of specific social media tool lists and recommendations, so I have included a few links here from:
ViralBlog – 88 social media monitoring tools
Dreamgrow – 54 free social media monitoring tools
Social Media Monitoring Wiki:
I also referenced the Harvard Business Review analytic services report – The New Conversation: Taking Social Media from Talk to Action
The presentation is available via slideshare.
Let me know what you think.