Team Event: Exhilarating Experience

As part of our monthly team events, Farah and I arranged for the team to experience a RIB Speed Boat Ride along the Jurassic Coast which is located just a 5 minute walk from our Head Office.

We are very lucky indeed to be working so close to the coastline, alas all of us are guilty for not making the most of it.
The RIB ride was arranged with Poole Sea Safari, who has received some fabulous 5 star visitor rating reviews on their Trip Advisor account.  It was great to see that Poole Sea Safari were responding to the positive comments on Trip Advisor too. Great online customer engagement, we like it! The comments they had received on TripAdvisor was the main reason for booking this trip, it gave us confidence that everyone was going to have a great time.

The team spent a lovely afternoon together on their 90 minute coastline tour, learning about the local wildlife, geology and the history of the coastline.  Along with the interesting commentary, the team also learnt what ‘donuts’ are in skipper terms, and that “iPhone 5’s” are water proof!

The passengers enjoyed every minute and were buzzing with compliments after the trip.

The ride started off sedately out of the shallow harbour but soon got up to an exhilarating speed. The views offer an amazingly different perspective, being so ‘up close’ to the geological folds and layers of the rock formations and cliffs from The Triassic to Cretaceous Eras. Another highlight was cutting the engine and floating into a cave of nesting guillemots and puffins. It is easy to see why the Jurassic Coast is England's first natural World Heritage Site. It was a ‘naturally’ great shared experience and a good laugh!

Further compliments included: A Rib-Tastic afternoon, exhilarating experience, highly recommended and one to remember.

Last month's team event included a Pool Competition and prizes were awarded for not just the winners, but those who provided support and encouragement.

This month Alex and David are planning the team event.  Should be interesting!

Author: Sarah Griffiths and Farah Khan

Geek Video of the Month

Sharing with you a topical Geek Video, topical as relates to Wimbledon and ties in with our most popular blog subject Google.

For the past two weeks the American Pro tennis player Bethanie Mattek-Sands (AKA: Bee), often referred to as the Lady Gaga of Tennis thanks to her non traditional outfits on an off court, has been part of a select Google Explorer group of about 1K people who are testing Google Glass in the products pre-release format. To keep up to date with the project, follow Project Glass on Google+ or view some of their Google Glass introduction videos over at their YouTube Channel.

In summary 'Google Glass' or 'Google Glasses' is a voice activated device designed to be worn as a pair of spectacles. It can be used for activities you would normally use your phone for, for example: take pictures, reply to emails, check diary, view sat nav directions...

This video is a good example on how you can use Google Glass in your daily life.  Bee reports in the video: 

"Glass helps me stay organised, so I can stay focused on my tennis and what I need to do"

Personally I love the part in the video, when she is packing her bag and she has her packing list, right there in her eye line. Brilliant ! I would find this feature so useful when wrapping presents at Christmas time.

I Google so much, Glasses would be ideal for me, to find out about the things around me.

Bee will be reporting back to Google's Explorer team soon, giving her thoughts on usability and what things could be improved upon.   

So are you excited?  Can you see yourself embracing Google Glasses in the coming years? 

I certainly can. So Google if you are reading this, the answer is yes, I would love to be part of your #glassexplorers team, send me a pair!

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Did you Google or did you DuckDuckGo?

Search Engine Land reported on Tuesday last week that the upstart search engine 'DuckDuckGo', which has the USP (Unique Selling Point) of protecting its users’ privacy, hit a new milestone on Monday as searches for the website hit 2 million direct searches. 

Pretty impressive statistics, right!!

A huge growth spurred by New Media advertising and most probably because of the recent PRISIM scandal which questions how Google, Bing and Yahoo etc are sharing their data with Government agencies.

DuckDuckGo’s meta description states:

“Search anonymously. Find instantly. DuckDuckGo is a search engine that does not track you and, has more instant answers and less spam/clutter”.

 

Could DuckDuckGo be a threat to the three main search engines, well given an appropriate marketing budget, we certainly think it has potential from a ‘search experience’ point of view (less clutter).

Search Engine Land conducted a review of keyphrase placement here: and it appears to be doing a good job. Read the comments on the review, have a go with the search engine and decide for yourself. 

Will you make the jump to DuckDuckGo or will you find it hard to break the ‘To Google’ habit?

Don’t forget if your website, product, brand, service needs help being found in search engines please do get in touch with our Sales team, to discuss your Search Engine Marketing requirements further. 

We would love to hear from you.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Geek Video of the Month

This month's Geek Video was sourced by Fiona Anderson, from the Flashlight Search Marketing team.

The 37 second video promotes a 'pro-type' smartphone which changes shape dependent on whether it receives a text, email or phone call.  The idea is that the flexible smart phone technology will provide visual cues as to what type of communication you are to engage with.  The 'brains' behind this are researchers at Queens University Human Media Lab in Canada.

Despite all the work that must have gone into developing this prototype, the flexible smartphone reminds us of those 'little red palm reading fish' (named 'Fortune Teller, Miracle Fish') that you receive in cheap party bags. If it curls up you are happy, lies flat bored, raised edges in love etc.  The fish are a novelty and we believe the above is too.

What do you think?   Can you envisage this technology being used elsewhere in the home or office?

Personally, rather than changing shape to tell me whether I am to receive a call, text, email etc, I would be more interested in the smartphone if it was able to jump out of my handbag  (or where ever I put it down!) and walk, or roll over to me, or even better, fly. (Harry Potter Talking Letters AKA Howlers!).

Now that would be smartphone progression!

Author: Sarah Griffiths (Sourced by: Fiona Anderson)

Optimising for YouTube

We recently found a fantastic resource on YouTube to help people and brands ensure that their videos reach the widest possible audience.  And we just had to share it with you.

The useful content provides a comprehensive overview on YouTube video optimisation and discusses the importance of meta data and thumbnail optimisation.  The resource also provides additional advice on adding annotations, channel optimisation, how to maintain the channel feed and using YouTube analytics.

We are really impressed with the content. Hope you are too.  Please visit the YouTube optimisation guide here.

If you don't have time to digest the content straight away, but wish to launch/host videos onto a channel such as YouTube, then we have shared our "must do lists" for video optimisation below:

Video SEO Optimisation

• Add meta data information while uploading - title and description for your videos.
• Add links to your website
• Create a video sitemap and upload the video sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools

Video Sitemap Requirements (Google)

• Title: This should be the same as the title of the page your video appears
• Description: Make this exactly match the meta description of your page
• Play Page URL:  The canonical URL of the page your video appears
• Thumbnail URL: By thumbnail they mean a high resolution image up to 1920x 1080
• Raw video location/URL: This URL is found in the embed src link you find when you go to share a video and click embed.

If you require further assistance with optimising one of your video channels to increase traffic and customer engagement, then please do get in touch.

Author: Aysegul Yigitbasi and Sarah Griffiths

Introduction to Adwords Enhanced Campaigns

Early in February this year, Search Engine Land shared their thoughts on the news of the latest Google Adwords update, titled: 'The Big Adwords Update: Enhanced Campaigns Puts the Focus on Mobile'.

The February 2013 Adwords update has been designed to simplify PPC campaign management across many devices, and seeks to increase the use of mobile advertising. Paid search managers are able to set different bids and show different ads based on a user's device type, location and time of day, all within one campaign.

Google have remained progressive with their Enhanced campaigns and on April 22nd Google let their advertisers know that all enhanced campaigns will now include social annotations when they can improve ad performance, (without additional edits to the campaign).  In order to receive this feature your Google+ page must have a significant number of followers and be linked to the website that matches the URL of your search ads. You can learn more about this particular feature here and the launch of a way for advertisers to reach app users; with 'ads in apps'.

Following the recent advancements, Google reported that since launch of the enhanced campaigns:

"advertisers have already upgraded over 1.5 million campaigns and have shared many success stories"

As enhanced campaigns reduce the overall number of campaigns you need to create (as you no longer need to create separate campaigns for each target devise type or location), this will save time and generate a better return on ad spend (ROAS).

We are welcoming the increased ROAS, the time saving, the more comprehensive reporting, the simplified budgeting and dynamic delivery to show the right ads to the right person at the right time. A great move by Google product teams and a very useful feature. Naturally, some transitional concerns may arise from sites, for example, some e-commerce sites, where mobile doesn't traditionally convert as well as desktop.

Some of the main features of enhanced campaigns include:

• Powerful advertising tools for the multi-devise world: Ability to manage your bids across devises, locations and time. 

• Smarter ads optimised for varying user contexts: Ability to show the right creative, sitelink, app, social annotations (where suitable) or extension based on the context of your prospective customers and the devise they are using.

• Advanced reports to track and measure new conversion types: such as Phone Calls over 60 Seconds Counted as Conversions, digital downloads, and conversions across devises.

Benefits to Businesses

To help explain further about how your business can benefit from Google AdWords enhanced campaigns, the Adwords blog post on the February 2013 update, gave the below three examples:

"A breakfast cafe wants to reach people nearby searching for "coffee" or "breakfast" on a smartphone. Using bid adjustments, with three simple entries, they can bid 25% higher for people searching a half-mile away, 20% lower for searches after 11am, and 50% higher for searches on smartphones. These bid adjustments can apply to all ads and all keywords in one single campaign"

"A national retailer with both physical locations and a website can show ads with click-to-call and location extensions for people searching on their smartphones, while showing an ad for their e-commerce website to people searching on a PC — all within a single campaign"

"You can count phone calls of 60 seconds or longer that result from a click-to-call ad as a conversion in your AdWords reports, and compare them to other conversions like leads, sales and downloads"

Learn more about enhanced campaigns

To understand more about how you can reach customers, at the moments that matter, across devises with more relevant ads, please visit the Google Enhanced Campaign landing page or watch the above video.

Google plans to update all Adwords PPC campaigns to enhanced by June, this year.

Should you have any further queries on launching paid search campaigns, please do get in touch and contact our sales team to discuss your requirements further.

Author: Fiona Anderson and Sarah Griffiths

Geek Video of the Month

Our Geek Video of the month was sourced from the Bit Rebels' blog (top blog for Geek News, Tips and Trends) who profiled the JWT Intelligence 'Our 10 trends for 2013 in 2 minutes' video, which researched lifestyle trends for 2013. Read the Bit Rebels take on the video here.

The video is only 2 minutes long and features some great content on the lifestyle of 'digital natives'; a lifestyle we may all soon be living.  The purpose of the video is to profile the JWT Intelligence's 171 page corresponding report, which is available to purchase.

Find out more about JWT Intelligence, the New York based HQ, Marketing Communications brand and their methodology for retrieving all the data over at their website.

The research is relevant to a UK audience, as the survey included 519 Americans and 497 from the UK.

We are especially interested in this video as several of the featured trends for 2013 link with the work we are conducting for our clients; such as database developments, personalisation, connectivity from objects to brands and peer power / social media strategies.

The 10 Trends for 2013 include: 

1. Play as a competitive advantage
2. The Super Stress Era
3. Intelligent Objects
4. Predictive Personalisation
5. The Mobile Fingerprint
6. Sensory Explosion
7. Everything is Retail
8. Peer Power
9. Going Private in Public
10. Health and Happiness Hand in Hand.

If we can help you get ready for the 2013 online digital lifestyle trends, then we would love to talk to you further. Call our Sales team on 01202 678777 or visit our contact us page.

We hope you all enjoy your Sensory Explosion this year and here's wishing you a happy on the move shopping trip.

Author: Sarah Griffiths