editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

The top 5 creative brand ideas you need to know about right now

November 1, 2019 No Comments

By Ann-Christine Diaz and Max Sternlicht.

Welcome to our weekly rundown of the Top 5 most innovative brand ideas you need to know about right now.

5. Cadbury: ‘Donate Your Words’ Pop-Up Store, VCCP
Chocolate brand Cadbury continues its ongoing campaign from VCCP alongside seniors charity Age UK to combat loneliness among senior citizens. The brand opened a pop-up retail store where customers don’t need money to pay for goods. The currency is committing to acts of kindness for the elderly.

4. Budweiser: ‘Halloween Mugshots,’ David Miami
Budweiser and David Miami’s Halloween campaign wants to “scare” people into drinking responsibly. It features mugshots of real people who were arrested during the holiday for intoxication-related offenses, with the line, “Don’t let Halloween haunt you forever.” The subjects are the real deal and actually did commit crimes on the holiday, but the agency took creative license and created the Halloween-themed police shots.

3. Plastic Change: ‘Plastic People,’ Bacon
Environmental campaigns have often depicted the gruesome effects of plastic waste on sea creatures, but this new ad from Plastic Change and directed by Ida Andreason via Bacon puts the issue in a different perspective–by showing humans entangled and trapped in six-pack rings and other garbage.

Miller Lite pulled a bold move—by asking people to unfollow it on social media. In a campaign from DDB Chicago, the brand is plugging itself as “the original social media” and is trying to reimagine the classic “It’s Miller Time” slogan by trying to help our digitally-addicted culture shift their focus back to the here and now. As part of the effort, the brand is also taking a two-week break from social media posting.

Another smart idea from Bud. Along with VaynerMedia, Budweiser is boosting its support for the National Women’s Soccer League with a campaign trying to recruit other big brands to come on board as sponsors.

That’s it for the Top 5. Make sure to check out more of the best in brand creativity at Adage.com/Creativity.

By Ann-Christine Diaz and Max Sternlicht.

Sourced from AdAge

In News

Why I Removed My Children’s Images From Instagram and Facebook

November 1, 2019 No Comments

By Cillian Kieran

Who knows what these data-hungry platforms will do with the photos down the line

My wife and I recently removed all images of our children from Instagram. Like most people, I don’t trust Facebook, Instagram’s parent company very much, these days.

This fact isn’t so remarkable in and of itself, but it begs the question of why. Of course, there’s the oft-cited Cambridge Analytica scandal, but across history, brands have had various scandals that touched their users and managed to emerge relatively unscathed.

So then why do I, like so many other people, have a deeply ingrained trust deficit with Facebook and, more broadly, big tech? And is the cause of this something more serious that other brands should be observing and planning for?

This isn’t a product issue per se. On the surface, Facebook is a great consumer product. It offers a host of services, largely free, that connect us with our nearest and dearest, keeping us in contact in a way that would have been unimaginable before it existed. Sounds great, right? Yet people don’t like Facebook. Indeed, the company has a serious trust issue. A 2018 Trust Index of U.S. adults by Jebbit found that Facebook had the lowest consumer trust score (3.1) of any surveyed brand. How a company that offers such a great, valuable product could come to be disliked and distrusted so strongly speaks to the changing nature of trust in the data-driven internet era.

There are two issues at play here. The first is the lack of understanding that consumers have of just how much data is being collected about them and how deeply this is mined to synthesize incredibly personal insight. The lesson that Cambridge Analytica should have taught us is not simply that elections can be manipulated, but that we can be simultaneously susceptible to deep suggestions and unaware that it’s happening. This is covert mass manipulation.

Allowing any company to accumulate a pattern of your child’s behaviour or facial characteristics from birth to early adulthood is a treasure trove of data.

The second is a lack of understanding as to how this data may be used in years to come. The information we expose about ourselves or our children may not seem relevant today, but allowing any company to accumulate a pattern of your child’s behaviour or facial characteristics from birth to early adulthood is a treasure trove of data that, in decades to come will be mined, analysed and exploited in ways even engineers have not yet considered today. This is the risk. You’re placing your data (and faith) in a future state of technology driven by process automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence that no one yet quite has a grasp on.

Here’s a thought experiment, none of which is beyond even current technology. Suppose you have a public Instagram feed with photos of your children posted over several years. As a young adult, your child applies for health insurance. In this future universe, the systems that exist within the insurer’s actuarial armory have already scraped the photos from their childhood and noted an excessive amount of time in bright sunlight, and using skin pattern scanning, note some blemishes that may be early indicators of skin cancer. They’re denied insurance or even a human review.

The technology I’ve described above sounds frightening and sci-fi-like, but many of the technologies outlined here exist today with varying degrees of accuracy. Our images are regularly scraped, indexed and searched by systems, and various algorithms can be run on these. This is for data you can naturally see, notwithstanding the vast quantities of data you create without perhaps realization, such as behavioural traits, interests and physical location, all of which can be used to triangulate a detailed understanding of your personality, habits, disposition and socioeconomic status.

Consider as an individual, a parent or a company, how are you managing the data you create?

By Cillian Kieran

Cillian Kieran is CEO and co-founder of Ethyca.

Sourced from ADWEEK

In Jobs

SEO Specialist

November 1, 2019 No Comments

KAX Media Ltd., Dublin, Ireland

The primary role of the SEO Specialist is to analyse and execute search engine optimization campaigns for KAX Media. The Technical SEO Specialist works closely with the Product Manager, Content Team, UX and Web Developers to consistently improve ROI.

Your core responsibilities:

Works closely with the Product Manager, Content Team, UX and Web Developers to consistently improve ROI.
Analyze and execute search engine optimization campaigns for KAX Media
Work in a cross-functional product team to make sure SEO is considered in all decisions
Planning with Product, UX and Development team
Recommend changes to website architecture, content, linking and other factors to improve SEO positions for target keywords
Work with the development team to ensure SEO best practices are properly implemented on newly developed code
On-page SEO optimizations
Keyword, market and competitive research
Help manage teams high level goal targets
Strategic planning with content team
QA / Audit all new product feature launches for SEO
Track and report SEO progress and fluctuations to SEO lead and management
Optimize copy and landing pages for search engine optimization
Research and implement search engine optimization recommendations
Develop and implement link building strategy
Work with editorial and content teams to drive SEO in content creation and content programming

Requirements:

Proven technical SEO experience
Experience conducting detailed competitor analysis and market entry research
Data driven thinking as this is a very technical and data rich environment
In-depth experience with common SEO tools i.e. Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz, DeepCrawl, Screaming Frog
Knowledge of ranking factors and search engine algorithms
Experience working in the digital marketing and SEO industry
Solid understanding of performance marketing, conversion, and online customer acquisition
Up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices in SEO and UX
Working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript development and constraints

The Perks

Comprehensive private Health Insurance with Laya

Flexible work environment

€400 Tax-free Gym Benefit

Monthly on-site massages

Fresh fruit deliveries

Excellent coffee and even better hot chocolate

Regular company events including annual summer races party

Ergonomic work environment with aeron chairs and electric height adjustable desks

Company Paid Volunteer Day

PRSA through Irish Life

Regular employee spot awards

TaxSaver commuter scheme

Employee Bike to Work scheme

Click HERE to apply for this job.

In News

Return to Sender: Email Marketing Is NOT Dead, But It Needs Rejuvenation

November 1, 2019 No Comments

By Nick Nelson

Oh, look. Another death of email marketing headline. All too often, we see posts that lead with this provocative clickbait proclamation, while keeping the contradicting nuances under the surface.

Ironically, this kind of practice is exactly WHY email marketing has seen its reputation tarnished. The focus has shifted too far toward style at the expense of substance. Marketers became so singularly obsessed with compelling opens and clicks, through irresistible subject lines and poppy CTAs, that many of us lost touch with the core value of this digital channel: direct, one-on-one engagement.

I’m here to tell you that this value still exists, and might be more essential today than ever, in spite of (maybe even because of) the waters becoming so muddied. Recipients will welcome a little freshness and clarity in their inbox, from those brands and influencers that are willing to buck the trend.

Dead? No way. Email marketing is alive and well, and it can still be a central component of a successful, customer-centric marketing strategy when done right.

The Rise and “Fall” of Email Marketing

This life experience might be unique to fellow millennials, but I’ll never forget the jolt of excitement I felt as a preteen logging into America Online in the mid-90s and hearing those three magical words: “You’ve got mail!” The internet in general was too new and grand a concept for my young mind to grasp, but anyone could take delight in a mysterious message sent expressly to you — like a present waiting to be unwrapped.

via GIPHY

Fast-forward a couple decades, and the quaint charm of a full inbox has largely disappeared. Irrelevant messages began to proliferate and pile up like AOL trial discs. Spam started running amok, to the point where — as of March 2019 — 56% of all email messages were categorized as such. The sheer volume of messages we receive, and the dread of digging through them all, can cause legitimately troublesome levels of stress and anxiety.

As a result, many emails are now being cast aside, either because inundated human users click delete instead of open, or because increasingly stringent filters are diverting them to the spam folder — especially if they come from a company or unfamiliar sender.

There’s no doubt that trust has been shaken. Anecdotally, I’m sure most people reading this have been scarred by an experience where they had to completely shut down an email address because it became overwhelmed by promotional junk, or where they repeatedly tried to unsubscribe from an unwanted newsletter to no avail.

It is at times like these that well-intentioned, creative, value-driven marketers can answer the call and rise above the fray. Here’s how.

Rejuvenating Your Email Marketing Strategy

A fact that might surprise you: open rates aren’t in a state of steady, ceaseless decline. In fact, according to Super Office, the average rate has generally been increasing (or at least remaining steady) year-to-year over the past decade-plus:

Meanwhile, a new Email Usage Study from Adobe finds that the average person spends 5+ hours per day checking email, including 3+ hours at work.

As Adobe’s Sarah Kennedy puts it in a blog post: “The Adobe survey findings solidify how important email still is in the everyday lives of our customers, and this means there is still a big opportunity for marketers to utilize email to engage with people in relevant and useful ways.”

Relevant and useful. Therein lies the key. Here’s how we can pursue these ideals.

Refine Your Mailing List

First of all, opt-ins are essential. If you can’t verify that a person on your list actively volunteered to receive emails from you, remove them. You might even want to consider a double-opt-in (send a confirmation email once a person signs up). It’s better to write for 10 people who truly want to receive your messages than 100 who are ambivalent or worse.

From there, any type of segmentation you can do will help. Can you divvy up your list based on areas of interest or specialization? If so, you’ll be able to create different content (or even slight variations of the same content) oriented more toward the specific individuals receiving it. A little personalization goes a long way.

It’s better to write for 10 people who truly want to receive your messages than 100 who are ambivalent or worse. @NickNelsonMN #EmailMarketing Click To Tweet

Use Email to Build Relationships, Not to Sell

There are multiple problems with salesy emails. One: people generally don’t like them. Two: spam filters tend to be triggered by the terminology used in these messages. Three: they represent a fumbled opportunity.

When someone opts into your newsletter and then starts getting overtly pitched right away, it can feel like a betrayal of trust. As a relatively direct and personal form of marketing communication, email should be used to deliver value and build brand affinity. This is not to say you must avoid any type of lead generation elements in your messages, but make them subtle and sparse.

When someone opts into your newsletter and then starts getting overtly pitched right away, it can feel like a betrayal of trust. @NickNelsonMN #EmailMarketing Click To Tweet

Speak as a Human, to a Human

Your emails should never come from an address that looks like this: [email protected]. Use a real person’s name in the sender field (an executive or marketing manager or whomever you want to use as the face of your outward brand communications) and craft content in a way that feels human and friendly.

Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs, has an awesome newsletter called TotalAnnarchy that epitomizes this genuine vibe. At Social Media Marketing World earlier this year, she gave a talk about creating a newsletter people want to read. Among her tips: focus less on the NEWS and more on the LETTER, make it delightful, and write as if your message were only going out to one person.

I love the way Ann frames the present value of this channel as a marketing tool: Email is the only place where people, not algorithms, are in control.

Email, when it’s done well, is like hot fire. It can burn like nobody’s business. Ann Handley @MarketingProfs #EmailMarketing Click To Tweet

Make Your Emails Visually Interesting

This is tricky terrain because different email clients will display images differently (and sometimes not at all) but in general it’s wise to err on the side of making your emails more colorful and lively. Among their examples of powerful B2B marketing campaigns, Campaign Monitor shares this webinar promo email from AdWeek featuring an animated GIF to infuse their content with understated movement.

(Example via Campaign Monitor)

Just like on social feeds, compelling visuals can make your emails stand out in a crowded inbox. But make sure you don’t cross the line into gaudiness.

Make Email a Thoughtful Part of Your Overall Strategy

“We need more traffic to our blog post. Do an email blast.” This kind of reactionary thinking is a problematic aspect of email marketing.

As we say repeatedly, promotion should be built into campaigns from the start, and every channel should have a distinct purpose. Connect your email strategy with your goals and give it the proper effort to become a worthwhile standalone piece rather than an obligatory add-on.

Bring Your Email Marketing Strategy Back to Life

The rumors of email marketing’s death are greatly exaggerated. This channel can still be a key fixture in your content strategy if you give it the care and attention it deserves. But like other content channels, in order to maximize its efficacy we need to emphasize quality over quantity, focus on building trust-driven relationships, strike a human resonance, spice up the visuals, and connect it to our larger goals and strategy.

When you achieve this, you just may reignite that “You’ve got mail!” spark of wonder that recipients feel when your messages pop up in their inbox.

By Nick Nelson

Sourced from TopRank Marketing

In News

AAIToolkit – Nuts and Bolts of Advertising with Peter McPartlin

October 31, 2019 No Comments

“Advertisers, Agencies, Media & Audiences – Where did it all go wrong?”

AAI Nuts and Bolts of Advertising seminars form part of the AAI Advertisers’ Toolkit, an initiative to help advertisers and marketers keep up-to-date on important advertising topics and useful marketing questions.

Our next guest speaker is Peter McPartlin, one of Ireland’s best-known advertising and media professionals. Peter has some interesting and provocative observations to make on the state of Irish advertising and what must be done to restore its lustre – so join us from 8.15am on Friday 22 November at 1 Windmill Lane in Dublin.

Seminar Details

The Irish advertising, marketing and media business has undergone a torrid time over the last decade. Adspend fell off a cliff in 2009 and has barely recovered since then. This has had enormous consequences for our indigenous media and once harmonious relationships in the marketing and agency community.

The disruption caused by digital media and a focus on short-termism has further compounded the sector’s challenges and, alongside changing consumer expectations, there have been knock-on effects on the standards of creativity.

Promiscuous consumers, rapacious tech disruptors, tormented media owners and risk-averse practitioners – Peter believes the Irish ad business is at a cross-roads.

Has fear and loathing really taken hold in this key sector of Irish business? Come along and hear McPartlin’s ‘hot takes’ on November 22^nd.

About the Speaker:

Peter has 40 years’ experience in the Irish media and marketing industry, working with some of the country’s largest agencies and on strategies and campaigns for many of the country’s best-known brands.

He was CEO of Today FM, Ireland’s largest independent radio station, for four years and led the station to become ‘National Station of the Year’ in 2014. He also established the short-lived but much-loved alternative rock station, TXFM, to promote new on-air talent.

Peter has won a range of different accolades within the industry including 3 Gold All-Ireland Marketing awards and two AdFX effectiveness awards.

Peter is passionate about media and music and writes and speaks regularly on various aspects of both industries.

As well as acting as a business advisor to a number of media companies, Peter is currently working in a pro bono capacity with IASCA (The Irish Association of Songwriters, Composers and Authors) to help gain better exposure for new Irish music through the PLAYIRISH digital station which he co-founded. He is also an investor in Ireland’s new vinyl record pressing plant, Dublin Vinyl.

Keep up to date and join the interaction

Free to AAI Members – please register your attendance

€35 + booking fee for non-members
Book now

Friday 22nd November, 8.15am

In News

Three E-Commerce Channels Every Retailer Should Consider

October 31, 2019 No Comments

By Lin Grosman

In recent years, a lot has been made about whether or not the standard marketing funnel has changed for e-commerce retailers.

Traditionally, shoppers went through the following three stages:

• Awareness: “I have a problem.”

• Consideration: “What are my options for solving this problem?”

• Acquisition: “I’m ready to buy a product to solve this problem.”

The truth is that these three stages are still relevant to e-commerce retailers. To make the most of each stage, online retail marketers should consider taking advantage of the following three channels.

Pinterest: Absolutely Own The Awareness Stage

For years, Pinterest was a hit with users but wasn’t a go-to channel for pay-per-click (PPC) marketers. While there were some ways to take advantage of the visual-friendly website, those options weren’t as accessible as Google and Facebook.

Recently, that’s changed. Pinterest might actually represent one of the most exciting opportunities for retailers at the moment. Earlier this year, Pinterest launched a revamp of its marketing platform. Among other things, the new catalogs feature allows retailers to upload multiple images of the same product, organize their inventory by category and even turn their product images into dynamic product pins.

The reason this is such a big deal for retailers is that shoppers often visit Pinterest when they’re in the awareness stage. They may be looking for ideas for decorating their home this Christmas, planning a new outfit, picking the furniture for their living room, etc. Placing your products in front of them during this critical time can produce incredible outcomes.

Facebook: Introduce Yourself And Stay Top Of Mind

Today, if you’re an e-commerce marketer who isn’t taking advantage of Facebook, you likely have some grateful competitors. Facebook is another great platform for the top of your funnel because you can introduce yourself via Facebook ads, which can be targeted at users based on their interests.

This targeting is valuable since many users have problems related to their hobbies, activities and other interests. For example, if you’re currently in the market for new jogging shoes, it’s probably because you like jogging. You might have even mentioned this in your Facebook profile. This makes it easy for a retailer to send an ad your way, letting you know about their incredible shoes.

It’s worth noting that Instagram ads are similar in this regard. I find that they’re not as powerful at the moment, but given how popular Instagram is, it might be worth exploring how much potential Instagram ads have for targeting your prospects.

Of course, as every e-commerce retailer knows, most customers don’t purchase right from the awareness stage. They need time to consider their options — in the consideration stage — before finally reaching the acquisition stage. That’s why you have to stay top of mind, which can be done by leveraging Facebook’s dynamic product ads. When someone has signaled that they are interested in what your brand has to offer, use these ads to stay in front of them again and again until they’re finally ready to purchase.

Google: Level The Playing Field With Amazon

If you’re an e-commerce retailer and you’re not using Google Ads, you may be struggling to attain sales unless they’re coming through Amazon. In order to keep more of your revenue, you need to show up before Amazon in Google’s search results, and one of the best ways to do that is with Google Shopping.

On this platform, you can create image ads that show people your products, which appear right at the top of the Google Search page and bring users to your listing the moment they click.

In your listing, you can answer all of the relevant questions people have when they’re hoping to make a purchase. For example:

• Do they have this item in my size?

• Is my favorite color available?

• Can I just buy this product at a nearby store?

• Are they running any sales to save me money?

Two other options e-commerce retailers can take advantage of on Google include Google Merchant Promotions and Google’s local inventory ads.

Just like the name implies, with Google Merchant Promotions you can create “special offers” for any of your products listed in Google Shopping. So, whether you have a surplus of inventory or you just want to boost sales, it’s as easy as logging into your merchant account and dropping your prices.

Finally, with Google’s local inventory ads, you can show searchers that one of your nearby stores already has the item that they want. If they’re already at the acquisition stage and are ready to buy, you can show them there’s absolutely no reason to wait.

Google Shopping is a powerful tool no matter where your prospect is in your marketing funnel. Whether they’ve just become aware of their problem or they’ve decided to spend money, there’s a good chance they’re going to do some online research on this platform first. Meet them there.

Upgrade Your E-Commerce Marketing Funnel

Before you go turning your entire e-commerce marketing funnel upside down, introducing new stages or throwing it out altogether and starting anew, consider revamping your traditional strategies. Arm it with the three channels I’ve outlined above, and you’re on the right track to more visibility.

Feature Image Credit: GETTY

By Lin Grosman

Lin is Director of Communications & PR at GoDataFeed, a multichannel platform that helps retailers sell more on e-commerce channels.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Content curation guide for small Irish businesses

October 31, 2019 No Comments

By Claire Newton.

In today’s digital age, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information at your disposal as soon as you open your internet browser or sign into your social media accounts. All you have to do is type a term into Google or scroll through your timeline and you’ll be inundated with content.

In the media world, you can inundated with content. From releases to updates and everything in between, there is no shortage of content. But is that content any good? In a highly competitive market like media, you need to have the best content in order to be seen.

In recent years, the importance of inbound marketing has been widely recognised, leading to a surge in brands focusing on their content. While creating content is an important element of any successful marketing strategy, so too is curating content.

But how does content curation look forIrish businesses? The following article will cover just what content curation is, why it’s important for your SME, and how you can curate great content for your Irish brand.

What is content curation?

Before you become a world class Content Curator (and we know you’ll get there!), it’s important to understand just what content curation is. We think that this definition from Beth Kanter sums it up nicely:

Content curation is the process of sorting through the vast amounts of content on the web and presenting it in a meaningful and organized way around a specific theme. The work involves sifting, sorting, arranging, and publishing information. A content curator cherry picks the best content that is important and relevant to share with their community.

Successful content curators help us cut through the noise and discover content that matters.

Like a museum curator chooses the finest art to display, a content curator selects content that will engage and delight their audiences. Instead of hanging artworks on the walls, you’ll be sharing your curated masterpieces with your followers.

The process of content curation can be simplified into three basic steps: discover, curate, and share. At the discovery stage, you’ll search online to find the most relevant content for your target audience.

The curation stage is when you read and weed through the content you’ve discovered in stage one to find the gems (we’ll get into this in more detail later on in the article). The sharing stage is exactly what it sounds like: taking the content you’ve so carefully curated and distributing it via your chosen channels.

Image via Pikwizard.com

Why is curating content important?

There are plenty of reasons why curating content is beneficial for smaller Irish businesses. These include the following:

Curating content is simpler than creating your own:

From coming up with the right topics to writing 500+ words about those topics, content creation can be extremely time consuming. In fact, having a steady stream of blog posts or articles is difficult if you don’t have the resources for a designated content creator (which many small Irish businesses won’t). It can be weeks or even months before you’re able to publish something substantial. Content curation is much simpler and less time consuming, so you’re able to be more consistent with your sharing.

Content curation helps you build relationships with other sites:

Sharing content from sites across the web can help you forge relationships with those sites. This will broaden your network, and these connections may be able to be leveraged for your benefit in the future. When you help others, they’ll want to help you (and friends are especially important for small businesses).

Image via Design Wizard

Content curation helps you grow your brand:

Each time you share content, you’re increasing your exposure. Every piece of curated content is another opportunity for you to be seen, and another reason for people to pay attention to your brand. Content can be shared and reshared. It lives forever and so does the exposure it brings.

Content curation can help you become a thought leader in your industry:

A successful content curation strategy will help your brand distinguish itself as a go-to source for media information. Each piece of content you share will give your audience something of value, and this process will establish your authority within the field.

Image via Design Wizard

Content curation will keep you informed:

If you’re constantly on the lookout for great things to share, you’ll be reading plenty of relevant content. Obviously, the more you know, the better informed you’ll be. Knowledge is power, and content curation forces you to monitor the conversation and stay abreast of current happenings.

How to curate great content

Becoming a great content curator doesn’t just happen overnight—it takes effort. Below are some tips that will help you on your curatorial journey.

Image via Pikwizard.com

1. Share content that adds value:

The foundations of a successful content curation strategy depends on sharing content that your audience will find useful and interesting. For example, if you’re a local Irish restaurant, your followers are likely to be interested in things like recipes, chef interviews, restaurant reviews, and Irish foodie news.

Most people find these types of content useful and interesting:

Tips and tricks
Case studies
Videos
Statistics and data
Local news

2. Cite your sources:

It’s important to give credit where credit’s due. Not citing your sources is not only a bad practice (that could end up landing your business in hot water, hello plagiarism how are you). When sharing your curated content, it’s essential that you let your followers know where it came from.

Image via Design Wizard

3. Keep it timely and relevant:

If you want to establish yourself as a master content curator, the content you share must be significant when you’re posting it. Posting old news or inappropriate content is a surefire way to damage your online reputation and lose the trust of your followers.

4. Use tools to help you:

Who says you have to go at it alone? We say take all the help that you can get! There are plenty of tools that will streamline, or even automate, your content curation. Tools like Pocket, Curata and BuzzSumo will help you discover and share the most impactful, noteworthy content.

Image via Design Wizard

5. Ask your audience:

If you’re stumped as to where to start, or simply want some more ideas for content your followers will want to read— just ask! People in the media industry are not shy, no doubt they’ll share their opinion if asked. If there’s one thing we know, it’s that users & peers love to share their opinions. Your followers will only be too happy to let you know what they’d like to see more of.

6. Share regularly:

Consistency is key in both creating and curating content. We recommend sharing content at least once every other day in order to stay on the minds of your followers. If you want to establish your business as a leading source of information, you’ll need to keep content in regular supply.

Image via Design Wizard

Conclusion;

Us Irish love to talk, communication is in our blood. Using content for visual communication is a method that needs to be undertaken by Irish business. Not only does it satisfy the need for a chat but also gives your audience a way of understanding more about your brand. Media can be hectic but using content can put you on the right side of busy!

Feature Image Credit: Image via Pikwizard.com

By Claire Newton

Author Bio; Currently working as a Marketing Executive at Design Wizard, Claire is passionate about creating amazing content and bringing people together. Having recently graduated with her masters degree in Marketing she is keen to impact the digital world. Outside of work you can catch Claire taking photos of her rescue dog Storm and checking out social media.

In News

‘It’s always a struggle with reengagement’: How publishers rely on email

October 31, 2019 No Comments

By Kayleigh Barber

A constant for many publishers is email. But challenges including lapsed subscribers and the challenges of including traditional advertising in an email strategy, publishers can have a hard time justifying investment in the platform. Here’s some candid thoughts from publishing executives at the Digiday Hot Topic: Email for Publishing event held yesterday.

Limiting sign-up friction gets you more emails
“We stopped requiring first and last name at sign-up. It limits personalization, but there’s also less friction at sign-up. We missed having that information though.”

“You don’t want to ask for 15 things off the bat — just get their email. But on the second interaction, you can ask for more personalized information to get more data.”

“For now, my vision is to make the user journey a priority. User data will trickle in, and we can use that to make inferred relationships.”

Your most valuable subscriber is your brand evangelist
“A brand lover is worth 100 times more to you than a casual reader.”

“We get more than 1,000 views a day based off our referral program, and the referrals are incredibly high quality.”

“Thirty-seven percent of [paid] members were free newsletter subscribers first, and 10% of members subscribed directly from a free newsletter.”

“Four percent of our audience is a habitual reader who has seven or more sessions per month, but the average revenue per user in that group is five times that of a reader with one to four sessions [94% of their readership.]”

30 to 90 days is the best time to attempt reengagement
“Our retention program works best, we found, at 30 days, but we’re predominantly a daily newsletter company.”

“It’s always a struggle with reengagement. Is it worth the effort to reengage someone versus the value that you get from them after they are reengaged? Because we typically find that if they disengage, they don’t really want to come back.”

“Old subscribers for us, we find that since more often publishers are landing in the promotions folder, an email coming from a different email address than they normally receive the email from is really effective in reengaging people.”

“What we started doing is actually buying their, what we call singles, so we’re able to see and match up in real time against their database when a user is opening and clicking other emails from other brands and then being able to trigger reengagement emails then, and that gives us a much better open and click-through rate.”

“We tend to look at it more of how we on-board people better to prevent them from disengaging. I think a lot of people are scared to ask upfront why you’re starting to disengage, but it’s about flagging it early so you’re not waiting for 90 days.”

Finding a place for affiliate links can increase the value of your newsletters
“The beautiful thing about affiliate data is that it can be used in many ways, but you can take it out to new advertisers to prove that there is an engaged audience getting to the point of sale in that email list.”

“We have 42 newsletters that we’re tapping into that have a highly engaged audience; 10 are relevant for commerce on average, but depends on the time of year.”

Include the editorial staff in your newsletter strategy
“For editors, being in the weeds helps them learn more about the audience than they would normally on the site, and that’s where we’re getting the ideas to create new newsletters — in the weeds.”

“Voice emails that utilize editorial talent build personal relationships with readers.”

“It’s important on the product-side to make the tools as easy as possible for editorial use and learn.”

By Kayleigh Barber

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In News

Waze offers cities a trove of data to help fight traffic

October 30, 2019 No Comments

By Stephen Edelstein

You may have used the Waze app to avoid traffic, but what if that data could be used to fight traffic data on a larger scale? That’s what the Waze for Cities Data program aims to do. Waze is making anonymized user data available to cities for free on Google Cloud and adding the tools to help urban planners analyze it.

Waze for Cities Data launched in 2014 as the Connected Citizens Program. It started with 10 city partners and has since grown to 1,000 partners globally, according to Waze, encompassing both cities and other entities that can make use of the app’s crowdsourced traffic data. Partners will now have access to Waze data collected since April 2019 via Google Cloud, as well as analysis tools BigQuery and Data Studio, which were designed to make sense even to lay audiences, according to Waze.

What can users do with this data? Genesis Pulse, an emergency services software provider, started using Waze data to give first responders real-time crash alerts from Waze users. In 40% of cases, crashes are reported by Waze users 4.5 minutes before they are called in via 911 or an equivalent method, according to Waze. According to the Federal Communications Commission, a one minute decrease in average ambulance response time saves more than 10,000 lives in the United States annually, Waze noted.

Public agencies that apply for the program can analyze up to 1TB of data, and store up to 10GB of data, for free each month. The basic data analysis tools are free as well, but more advanced tools will require a paid account. Cities will also be able to store and analyze their own data, while maintaining complete control of it, according to Waze.

Waze’s data-sharing scheme is already proving popular. The top three contributors are the cities of Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Jose, according to Waze. The government of Miami-Dade County and the state transportation agencies of Massachusetts and Virginia are also major contributors, as are both New York City and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates large chunks of the Big Apple’s transportation infrastructure. So the next time you open up the Waze app, know that you may be helping to fight urban traffic.

Feature Image Credit: Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

By Stephen Edelstein

Sourced from Digital Trends

In News

TV networks are using a new strategy to sell ads more like Google and Facebook

October 30, 2019 No Comments

By Megan Graham

OpenAP, an advertising group owned by Fox, NBCUniversal and Viacom, is officially launching a marketplace letting advertisers buy across digital and linear TV programming.
This is a way of making inventory easier to buy, like it is from digital companies.
It’s also bringing automation to the area of TV buying.

OpenAP, an advertising company founded by a group of some of the biggest TV companies, announced on Tuesday a new platform to let advertisers buy ad campaigns on linear TV and digital video across publishers. As TV ad spend has been bruised by the rise of digital and other factors, this kind of move could grow ad dollars flowing to big TV networks by making it easier to buy and reach more specific audiences.

OpenAP came together in 2017 as a consortium including Fox, Viacom and Turner (now AT&T’s WarnerMedia) as a way to make it easier and more valuable to buy more specific, data-driven audiences than standard TV demos across multiple publishers. WarnerMedia pulled out in April 2019 after becoming part of AT&T, which has its own advanced advertising functions. NBCUniversal joined OpenAP last year.

The coming together of the networks may be a way of making TV more competitive against digital, as digital ad spending in the U.S. is poised to exceed traditional ad spending this year, according to eMarketer. The platform will let advertisers buy inventory from Fox, NBCUniversal, Viacom and Univision using automation, which “really hasn’t been something that has been the case” in the past, OpenAP CEO David Levy said.

Here’s how it works.

Let’s say an advertiser wants to reach a certain audience, such as people interested in buying a car. That advertiser can pull together one buy across TV networks and both linear and digital viewing environments. Advertisers only pay when that ad reaches that intended audience. Levy said it’s possible because in recent years, TV networks have been investing in data science platforms to help forecast which shows specific audiences are likely to watch. But until now, it was harder to execute on a one-off basis, he said.

This move should make it easier to target a big group of consumers across publishers in one fell swoop. The members together hold more than 20 cable networks and three broadcast networks. The digital video included in the inventory for now is on 30-minute or longer shows, Levy said.

This could bring more of the ease that advertisers have on digital giants Facebook and Google, which have self-service tools for advertisers. Those tools are attractive to small businesses that typically don’t have the budget to make large ad buys. It also gives Google and Facebook a massive base of advertisers compared with the more limited pool of advertisers for TV.

“Linear has always had, content-wise, a significant edge versus digital,” Levy said. “But it’s difficult to buy,” especially for smaller brands.

He said that’s because advertisers have to either have a direct relationship with the sales rep of a big network or a relationship with a big national agency, along with minimum spends, among other factors.

“Part of this approach is really to start to create an easier way for more DTC brands to buy directly and for other smaller brands to make it a lot easier and a lot more manageable, in a way they’re used to buying it,” Levy said.

Feature Image Credit: David Levy. Source: OpenAP

By Megan Graham

Sourced from CNBC