editor, Author at Mediastreet

In News

Google Has Teamed Up With Stella McCartney In An Effort To Help Reduce Fashion’s Environmental Footprint

June 18, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from ELLE

The pilot scheme will compile data that will encourage fashion companies do better.

With the fashion industry’s environmental impact significant and growing, pressure is on brands to rethink their production processes. However, one of the main problems with this is that brands do not have the ability to clearly see and understand the supply chains they are using – there is essentially a gap in data and a lack of clear explanation, and this is where Google comes in.

At the Copenhagen Fashion Summit today, a new pilot scheme will be announced, which aims to give brands a more comprehensive overview of their supply chains, particularly at the level of raw material production, which is where much of the environmental impact takes place. To give you some idea, the fashion industry is responsible for 20 per cent of wastewater and 10 per cent of carbon emissions globally and most of this occurs in the first stage of production.

Google will be developing a tool which uses data analytics and machine learning to compile this information. It will then work with eco-luxury label Stella McCartney – which has been a pioneer in the fashion industry when it comes to environmental impact – to translate the data into meaningful figures that can be shared with the industry, so that brands can take action.

The pilot scheme will begin by looking at cotton and viscose, which have been chosen due to the scale of their production, the availability of data and impact considerations.

The hope is that better visibility for brands will allow them to take action in choosing raw materials and processes which have more sustainable practices in mind. This is just the first stage of the process, with Google hoping to continue to develop further schemes that will help the fashion industry to drastically reduce its impact on our environment.

Sourced from ELLE

In News

Axiata urges operators to be realistic on data analytics

June 18, 2019 No Comments

By Chris Donkin

LIVE FROM DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WORLD, NICE: Mobile operators generally hold an inflated view of their ability to sell internal services using data analytics, but underestimate the technology’s cost-cutting potential, Axiata Analytics Centre head Pedro Uria-Recio (pictured) told Mobile World Live.

In an interview, Uria-Recio said: “Typically telecom operators overestimate their ability to increase their own revenue through analytics, because it is not only about analytics. That information will tell you who is likely to buy something, but then you have to reach the customer through the right channel and make the right offer, so it goes far beyond.”

However, he added operators were generally behind the curve on taking advantage of data to improve network performance and cut overheads.

“The second case is reducing cost. Here, I think telecom operators underestimate their ability to optimise the network through [technologies such as] artificial intelligence,” he noted. “There are things you can do to optimise the antennas and location of the network assets.”

When it comes to external use cases and partnering with other industries, he added “there is huge potential, but telecom operators have not yet cracked it”.

Opportunities cited include credit scoring, fleet management and advertising, though he warned many of the most lucrative sectors are “difficult to get into” and require collaboration with vertical companies.

To aid its own efforts, Axiata Group has a team of around 170 people working in data science and analytics. The division works on both optimising its own processes and selling services to third parties.

By Chris Donkin

Chris joined the Mobile World Live team in November 2016 having previously worked at a number of UK media outlets including Trinity Mirror, The Press Association and UK telecoms publication Mobile News. After spending 10 years in journalism, he moved to telecoms PR as a content specialist producing white papers and marketing collateral for some of the biggest names in the mobile sector. Now working as Content Editor across all channels of the MWL portfolio, Chris produces news and in-depth features on key issues from across the industry. @ChrisDonkin1

Sourced from Mobile World Live

In News

Interview: Understanding the difference between analytics and AI

June 18, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from IT Brief

Recently IT Brief had the opportunity to sit down with SAS CEO Dr Jim Goodnight to discuss analytics, AI and the future of SAS.

To start off with can you just tell us a bit more about SAS’ journey within the education industry?

We have always had situations where businesses approach us and ask us to work with higher education institutions to ensure that students are familiar with our products because those skills are vital to the aforementioned businesses. So, we work with universities to set up programs that teach students analytics, and we’ve been doing that for a while.

Can we just switch gears a bit to healthcare, how do you see the industry changing with emerging tech?

A lot of stuff in healthcare we’re doing right now is around computer vision, to help the doctors. In Amsterdam, we’re working with them to try to better understand whether chemotherapy is working or not, whether it’s reducing the size of tumours. And I think as the doctor on stage said that is one of the worst parts of a doctor’s job is to sit there for hours going over CAT scans. We’re working on making that process more automated.

Obviously, we’re still working on this mainly at a university level, however, the potential impact of this technology is immeasurable. When it comes to data, I am of the belief that anything a human can see, we can teach a machine to learn it.

On the note of higher analytics, AI is often used as an umbrella term for analytics tools and this, in turn, can lead to misconceptions about its capabilities. What are some of the major risks of these misconceptions and what would your advice be to CTOs looking to adopt this technology?

Well, that once again depends on what you believe AI is. Artificial intelligence is defined as a computer making choices a human would normally make, however, that could mean a lot of things. The AI systems we have at the moment are primally rules-based, as you mentioned they analyse data and then refer to a set of rules to make their choice. Sometimes this can lead to some issues.

Take for example a bartender serving drinks and replace him with a robot, now the robot asks for age if the person displays proof that they are over 21 they get served a drink because the machine deems that the legal move, however, it does not take into account behaviour or intoxication level. You can see how that might complicate things, it’s the same for most businesses, you need to be aware of the limits of the current technology and not expect it to act beyond its programming.

I consider that most of the heavy-duty machine learning is artificial intelligence, but the strict, strict definition of that term. So, CTOs do have to be careful.

Just to finish off, SAS does a lot of work with children, schools and education programmes, what’s been the major driver behind this?

I think it’s important that the youth be able to read and write and do mathematics. So we do a lot of work in poorer places where kids aren’t often afforded the same kind of education that you and I have received and I believe its important that we do our best to help them receive that and prepare them for a better future. In the US for example, only about 40% of the kids can read at the third-grade level when they graduate from the third grade. We need to live up to our societal duty and help those in need.

Sourced from IT Brief

In News

Why General Mills is spending more of its digital budget on influencers

June 17, 2019 No Comments

By Seb Joseph

General Mills is spending up to a third of the digital budget for some of its brands on influencer marketing.

A recent campaign for the CPG advertiser’s vegan and fruit snack Lärabar cost £700,000 ($905,000) to promote online in the U.K., and around £230,000 ($298,000) of it went to influencers. Speaking at an Oystercatchers event in London on May 14, Arjoon Bose, head of marketing for Europe at General Mills, said the decision to spend more on influencers came from the need to show his bosses how effective influencers are compared to other forms of marketing.

“We’ve dedicated more spend toward influencer marketing. It’s about a third of our digital spend right now,” said Bose at the event. “It’s a license to go and figure things out because we haven’t got all the answers, but equally it’s something that we can bring back to the business with clear recommendations. We’re on a journey.”

That journey has already seen the advertiser start to take more control over how it works with influencers. Previously, an agency would have brokered the deal and managed the relationship with influencer Natalie Glaze, one of those who promoted Lärabar, whereas General Mills took the lead for the latest campaign. “We want to own that relationship, which is why we work with Natalie,” said Bose. More advertisers are building out their own in-house influencer marketing teams in an attempt to nurture long-term relationships with influencers.

Working with influencers directly should, in theory, make it easier for advertisers to understand how they perform. More than a quarter of advertisers believe measurement is their biggest obstacle when it comes to paying influencers, according to Digiday Research. It’s hard to attribute breakfast cereal sales and footfall in a supermarket off the back of an influencer marketing campaign, but understanding a digital footprint, brand uplift and engagement is more realistic. Importantly, this then needs to be incorporated into the wider reporting picture.

“There’s going to be more reliance on data when it comes to influencer marketing,” said Bose. “A lot of us are seeking out data metrics for more transparency and the need for ROI.”

His faith in influencers is a reflection of how important their younger, more impressionable fans are to the future of General Mills. Smaller, healthier food brands that were once considered niche are going mainstream thanks partly to how younger people are changing the way they eat. That taste for natural, organic brands was worth $1.06 billion to the business last year. Influencers are a way to help grow that segment faster in a CPG industry that has relied on selling mass-marketed, mass-processed foods, said Bose.

Working with influencers isn’t without its challenges, however, given the market is still getting to grips with tougher regulations amid growing cynicism from people in the wake of scandals like the Fyre Festival and the proliferation of fraud. According to a Universal McCann study of 56,398 internet users, only 4% trust influencers — even governments were seen as more trustworthy, per the study.

“The move toward longer-term partnerships will make measurement easier, as brands will be able to begin optimizing their briefs and content based on the performance of their influencer partners,” said James Silverstone, influencer marketing manager at We Are Social.

Advertisers are starting to take influencers seriously. Rather than treat them as just another way to sell directly to people with the same tried-and-tested messages, CPG advertisers like General Mills and Kellogg’s are starting to think more carefully about how those influencers can build advocacy over time. It’s why General Mills is more focused on micro-influencers over celebrities. And it’s why Kellogg’s is taking the time to try and understand the long-term impact of its work with influencers.

By Seb Joseph

Sourced from DIGIDAY UK

In News

A primer for using music in marketing

June 17, 2019 No Comments

By Adrianne Pasquarelli.

Brand Playbook looks at best practices for using copyrighted music—and how to avoid snafus.

Indoor cycling company Peloton pedaled into some legal trouble in March—to the tune of $150 million—when the brand was sued for trademark infringement by a group of music publishers representing the likes of Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars. For Peloton, which has made a name for itself by selling a fitness experience built on music, the lawsuit exemplifies a larger issue that newer brands face as they grow from scrappy upstart to seasoned marketer.

“The small startups may get away with using music without a royalty for a couple of reasons: They’re unknown to musical artists or their publishing houses, or they’re just too small to be bothered with,” says Scott Rogers, a partner in the copyright and trademark litigation group at the law firm Ulmer & Berne. “But as companies grow, continued use of unlicensed music certainly has the potential to be a real problem for them.”

When Peloton debuted seven years ago, it was relatively small and unknown. But the brand has exploded in popularity in recent years, investing more in marketing and introducing a new treadmill product as it prepares to go public this year. While it eventually removed classes featuring songs by the popular artists in question, it has also changed tactics, recently counter- suing the group of music publishers, alleging anticompetitive behavior.

“Very often there’s a cavalier attitude toward licensing music, even though music is a big part of what they’re doing,” says Owen Sloane, partner in the entertainment, media and arts department at law firm Eisner, noting the risks could include complaints from brand investors.

Experts say there are several strategies marketers can employ to avoid musical snafus—as well as the unwanted press that goes along with them—and also get the most bang for their buck. Some tactics could even improve brands’ use of music in their marketing by encouraging more consumer engagement.

“Brands that incorporate a good music strategy play a role in the consumer’s life beyond the product,” says Eric Sheinkop, author of the book “Return of the Hustle: The Art of Marketing With Music,” and an executive board member of SoStereo, a company that provides sonic identities for brands.

Try a cover
Marketers that might not be able to afford the costs of securing licenses from all of the creators involved with a song—writers, publishers and
artists—could opt for a cover version of the song instead. In this strategy, the brand only needs to get rights from publishers and, in some cases, from others, but covers are much cheaper options, experts say. Brands could also personalize cover songs for different markets—an Italian version in Italy, for example.
“It gives you the ability to localize anthems or campaigns by doing covers,” says Sheinkop.

Experiment with shorter terms
When Budweiser aired its Super Bowl spot earlier this year, it paid top dollar for the rights to Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” to promote its use of wind power—but those rights were only for a limited time, compared with the typical three-to-six-month minimums. Anheuser-Busch InBev had the Dylan rights for two weeks before turning to a rerecorded version of the song by the Cloves for future broadcasts. Using short-term rights is a smart way to save money but still make a big splash, experts say.

Do it in stages
Some music publishers are willing to work on alternative plans for startups short on cash, according to Sloane. He says that startups could devise a contract with a publisher that starts with a less expensive license, and builds to something more lucrative as the brand becomes more successful and has more money to allocate to music license fees. While this practice is not widespread, it could work for marketers like Peloton, which start small and grow more popular.

Mix it up
Some brands have found success in both avoiding lawsuits and keeping costs low by using a mix of music sources. Zumba, the global fitness brand based in Hallandale Beach, Florida, creates one-third of its music in-house as exclusives; sources one-third from lesser-known, independent artists; and licenses hits from established, popular musicians for the last third. The formula has worked well for the company, which can also claim it “discovered” several musicians who went on to larger success and recognition, such as Jenn Morel and Don Omar. Zumba works with thousands of artists.

“The Zumba experience has many different elements,” says AlbertoPerlman, CEO at the 18-year-old brand, noting switches from Reggaeton to hip-hop to salsa, for example. “When we can’t find the right song we say, ‘Let’s create one.’”

Consider tapping technology
There’s also more technology available to help marketers find the best music mix for their brands. Sheinkop’s company SoStereo has developed an AI tool that will create music in the vein of popular songs already in existence.
“It’s not all or nothing,” Sheinkop says, referring to the choice between expensive big-name artists or bland elevator music. “There’s a lot of opportunity in-between.”

Feature Image Credit: Tam Nguyen

By Adrianne Pasquarelli.

A reporter with Ad Age since 2015, Adrianne Pasquarelli covers the marketing strategies of retailers and financial institutions. She joined Ad Age after a dozen years of writing for Crain’s New York Business, where she also focused on the retail industry. Over the course of her career, she has won awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the National Association of Real Estate Editors and the Jesse H. Neal Awards.

Sourced from AdAge

In News

What Is Business Intelligence?

June 17, 2019 No Comments

By Terin Miller

Business Intelligence software collects, stores and analyses data, turning it into useful information to help businesses make better decisions.

As the internet is used by companies to discern and target potential consumer trends, the desire to collect vast amounts of data has grown exponentially. Making sense and use of the data collected requires a system for collecting, storing and analysing it.

If you’re old enough to remember, or have seen the original “Star Trek” series, you may recall that Captain Kirk and others could merely ask a computer a question, and the computer, after some blinking of lights and strange beeps, would deliver an answer either by voice or print-out.

With Business Intelligence software, an employee at a desk with a computer merely needs to type in a query, and within a much shorter time and without the strange beeps, an answer is displayed.

What Is Business Intelligence?

Business Intelligence, or BI, is the term given software applications that change raw data into meaningful and useful information to help businesses make better decisions. The term Business Intelligence actually came into use around the 1950s. It grew out of early computing technology called ‘decision support systems.’

Business Intelligence systems have grown more powerful since then, due to increased data collection and greater storage capacity, and the burgeoning use of smartphones and wearable devices that all help in data collection.

In the 1950s, companies didn’t have access to smartphone metadata, internet usage records, social media activity, or “smart home” assistants like Alexa and Echo.

How Does Business Intelligence Work?

The main purpose of Business Intelligence platforms is to sift through data to find patterns and trends.

There are usually four components to BI software:

Data analysis, the reports from which can influence company direction, product line ups and even hiring decisions;
Data mining, which is the analysis of large sets of data to find patterns and correlations;
Text analytics software, which sifts through unstructured textual data to find patterns and is used to analyse sentiment in social media posts or online customer feedback, and
Business analytics, which has its own three main forms:

Descriptive, which describes data you already have, to look to identify trends and relationships inside of it, like page views, and even sales numbers within a specific department.
Predictive, which searches for a correlation between a single unit or factor, and the features pertaining to it to find some correlation between different sets of data. This allows companies using it to predict future patterns from past trends, and is according to experts the fastest growing form of analytics.
And decision analytics, which helps companies make decisions by analysing not only past data, and extracts trends, but also looks at future conditions such as manufacturing trends, or what the market it going to be like in a few years. Decision analytics even makes predictions on shortages of resources, to help map out the safest course for a company to take over a number of years.

The main way to make use of all the info available is “data visualization,” which also is growing sub-field in Business Intelligence. Data visualization is the graphic display of results of your data mining efforts, or analytics, and can update in real time.

There are three main types of data used in Business Intelligence functions:

Structured, which resides in a fixed form, is labelled, such as with a name and other information collection boxes on websites, or address fields for shipping information, has a header, and can be put into a database program like Excel, and you can query it or search it with a computer, so it can be analyzed.
Semi-Structured, which has elements of both structured and unstructured data.
Unstructured, which has information that can’t be easily read by computers, and is difficult to organized in traditional databases, because it can’t be stored or collated in rows or columns. This is the most common form of data found on the internet.

Data usually resides across different systems, such as CRM programs, marketing automation systems, customer information – such as consumer sentiment – or reviews in social media platforms.

The first step in BI is to take inventory of data your company already produces, and figure out how you can analyse it and how you can cross-reference them.

The more often data is extracted and analysed, the more up-to-date analytics reports from the data will be.

A method of collecting open-source software utilities to facilitate use of a network of many computers to solve problems that involve massive amounts of data, Apache’s Hadoop, is used with Business Intelligence by large customers such as Facebook (FB – Get Report) , which customizes it, and Ebay (EBAY – Get Report) .

Why Is Business Intelligence Important?

Lowe’s (LOW – Get Report) , America’s second-largest home improvement store chain, uses BI to optimize its supply chain efficiency and cut down on the rate of fraudulent returns in its store.
Starbucks (SBUX – Get Report) , through its Loyalty Card Program, has amassed individualized purchase data on millions of customers, and uses BI to predict purchases or offers a customer might be interested in.
Amazon (AMZN – Get Report) uses BI to personalize product recommendations and market products. Ever wonder how Amazon is able to offer items “you might be interested in”? Amazon (AMZN – Get Report) uses its BI software for logistical business decisions, too, enabling its massive supply chain to run smoothly, optimizing shipping routes and allocating inventory.

Business Intelligence Trends

The trends in BI seen most important in a survey of 2,679 users, consultants and vendors by BI-Survey.com were master data and data quality management, data discovery, and self-service BI.

According to the survey, “While master data and data quality management builds a strong foundation for handling data, the significance attached to data discovery and self-service BI shows that the empowerment of business users is a consistently strong trend.”

The same survey also found that agile BI development and advanced analytics and analytics teams are increasing in importance; agile BI development is connected to a cooperative approach between lines of business and IT, while advanced analytics expresses the need for businesses to use data in a more beneficial way. Advanced analytics also includes machine learning, tightly interconnected to the sphere of artificial intelligence, the survey said.

Meanwhile, real-time analytics and mobile BI appear to be decreasing in importance, the survey discovered. Either current tools and systems aren’t able to provide these kinds of applications, or priorities have changed, the survey suggested.

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock

By Terin Miller

Sourced from TheStreet

In News

How to Turn Your Book into a Year’s Worth of Content

June 14, 2019 No Comments

By Tanya Hall

If you have a book, you’ve already done the hard work and have a full year’s worth of content at your fingertips. Here’s how to divide and conquer your book to make it work for your online spaces.

Though most entrepreneurs understand the value of a strong online presence, blogging and social media can be a pain to upkeep when you’re also trying to run a business. Even when you set aside the time to focus on your online brand, it can be a struggle to come up with ideas, create content, and find the time to post that content once it’s created.

The good news is that, if you have a book, you’ve already done the hard work and have a full year’s worth of content at your fingertips. Here’s how to divide and conquer your book to make it work for your online spaces.

Step 1 – Start With Blog Posts

Assume your book has 12 chapters. Consider each of those chapters a monthly theme. From each chapter, dissect the information into 4 key points. Turn each point into a blog post by recycling content from the book, changing or adding 10-20% to make it readable as a stand-alone piece of content, and including a fresh example or connection to a current event.

Step 2 – Draft Social Media Posts

After you’ve parsed your book into 52 blog posts, it’s time to think about promoting each blog post to your community in order to drive them to your website to engage further with your brand. Draft one LinkedIn update, one Facebook update, and 3-5 tweets that pull out a fact, quote, or key point from each blog post. Plan to sprinkle those social shares in throughout the week.

Bonus: Are you encouraging people to sign up for your newsletter when they visit your website? Be sure to keep those subscribers engaged! You can easily create 12 monthly newsletters that highlight each month’s theme and corresponding blog content. When it’s time to send, just update with current news and upcoming events to make the content timely.

Step 3 – Schedule In Advance

Once you have you have your individual pieces of content, schedule all 52 blog posts, 52 LinkedIn updates, 52 Facebook Updates, 156-260 tweets, and 12 newsletters. This is the tedious part, but it’s worth it to automate your content calendar. Platforms like Hootsuite can help you keep track.

Congratulations! In just a few days, you’ve created and scheduled a full year’s worth of blog, social media, and newsletter content. Now all you have to do throughout the year is engage, and that only takes 15 minutes a day. Respond to comments on your blog and social channels, share current events and news stories, and interact with others. Try to tie your daily engagement back to your monthly theme (which you pulled directly from your book, repurposed into 4 valuable blog posts, and further developed into a week’s worth of social promotion) to maintain consistency and give your content purpose.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Tanya Hall

Sourced from Inc.

In News

9 Advanced SEO Tactics To Outperform Your Competitors In 2019

June 14, 2019 No Comments

By Nick Brown

Everybody nowadays knows what SEO is. You will definitely notice how your competitors are using the best possible SEO tactics around. So now it’s up to you to step your game up a little. Work harder, think outside of the box and find a way to outperform the competition. You should already have the basics down, and now is the time to truly advance your game. Below you can find nine advanced search engine optimization tactics that will push you forward.

Bucket brigade style of content

You always want to keep the basics down if you want to get the best response possible. One of these is content. Namely, it’s all well and good if people just access your content. But, if they leave after two seconds, it will have an adverse effect on your rankings. Furthermore, quality content builds trust and loyalty. People will stick to your brand if they see you give out good content. While improving the writing on your site won’t directly improve your rankings, it will help you avoid penalties, and keep people coming.

The bucket brigade style of writing will improve the flow of your writing. Like a bucket brigade, where you have a line of people passing buckets to one another, perfectly in sync. You do the same with the writing of your content. Each sentence will flow to the next, creating a direct line from the first sentence to the last. Or, you can achieve the same effect by tying paragraphs together in this manner.

Try writing longer posts

While we always advocate quality over quantity in basically every aspect of your work, there are serious benefits to writing larger and longer blog spots. Namely, research has shown that posts which that end up on the first page had around 1900 words. In other words, its better to in-depth blogs and articles can do wonders for your SEO, and it seems these are much more popular than your standard fare. Of course, don’t think you will automatically get your SEO to skyrocket the moment you tack on 800 more words onto your blogs. Simply understand that it’s at the very least worth a shot.

Get quality links

You will notice that a running theme in this article is the point surrounding quality over quantity. We consider this approach an advanced SEO tactic for two simple reasons. First, we can guarantee that your competitors focus too much on the quantity of the work, not the quality. Second, getting quality work in whatever aspects takes much more work and effort than standard SEO tactics. Now, back to the topic.

You want to get excellent, quality links instead of just getting whatever you can get. A good backlink means that you are reliable, it shows Google’s algorithms that you are to be trusted. So, stay away from spam and dead links, and stick to your guns.

Optimize for voice search

Gadgets like Google Home and Amazon Echo are here to stay. You can pretty much count on voice searches being part of our everyday lives. More and more statistics show that a large number of internet browsing is done through voice search. So, you need to hop on this train before anybody else does and optimize your site for voice search.

First, you need to get your site mobile friendly. Then, understand that voice search optimization is mostly based on longer keywords. Think of as an organic process. You use different words and phrasing when typing something online, compared to the way you speak. Place some “keyphrases” in your content, and have them start with What/Why/Where/How questions.

Understand your audience fully

In order to make truly stand out, you need to understand just who your content is aimed at. Don’t just be satisfied with some basic information (though it is of course useful). Actually think about where your target audience lives, what cities, countries…

So, let’s say you are set in Australia, or at the very least your target audience lives there. You want to figure out what Australians of a certain age, gender, class and educational background like. Then, you adapt your content and efforts into that direction. If needed, contact a local company, an SEO Sydney company in this case, and see what they have to say. A local company can definitely give you advice, or provide their services, with much more effectiveness when you deal with a certain location.

Next, what are their interests, how do they speak…? Gather as much info as you can, and take all that into account.

Work on your tag game

Understand that when a search engine moves through your web page, it doesn’t really scan the images on your page. However, you can still step up your game in this aspect by adding tags. Adding the right title or alt tag to your content is that one extra step that will strengthen your SEO greatly. It’s a sign of thoroughness that not every company implements. So, add proper phrases and tags, and implement your keywords in there.

Don’t forget to update old content

A great, and easy, way to get ahead of your competitors is by looking back and analyzing your old content. You may have written a bit about one topic two years ago. What is happening today? Is the content still relevant? Can it be updated? If so, how?

Edit and upgrade that old article. Refresh its SEO optimization, add new information, perhaps remove what’s not useful or true anymore. Furthermore, you can create entirely new articles based on the old ones, using the latter only as a framework.

This represents a very easy and effective way of providing good content and getting better rankings. It’s also something that not every competitor knows about (or wants to implement).

What keywords are your competitors using?

A great way to gain an advantage over your competitors is by figuring out what their weak points are. You should also, however, figure out what their strengths are. One of the best ways to do this is by keeping tabs on what keywords they are using themselves. Here you can see two things. First, places where you can grow, unexplored keyword options or ideas that you haven’t thought about using. The second thing is where they may be making mistakes.

Finding the right keyword research tool can help with this process. However, the point here is that you yourself need to learn and observe what your competitors are doing.

Try posting video content

As always, understand that content is the best way to improve your rankings. It’s organic, it’s clear, and it’s authentic. However, it would be a grave mistake to only limit yourself to actual writing. What you should try is getting some video content in there, as soon as possible.

Now, the reasons why video content is so useful is that it has a much higher visitor retention rate when compared to textual content. You will notice that Google has begun to feature videos when you search for something online.
As far as the type of content is concerned, try some tutorials that are relevant to the services or goods you offer. How-to-guides and general information will definitely be appreciated.

Conclusion

The internet landscape is always changing. Constantly shifting and turning, you never know what you can expect when it comes to this kind of work. If you truly want to stand out, you need to master the basics, and then improve upon them. Get good content, but truly make the words flow. Use backlinks, but go with the best ones, choose quality over quantity. Mix things up, and some videos, implement voice search… Essentially, always keep your ear to the ground, maintain your foundation strong, and move towards new trends.

By Nick Brown

In News

Facebook’s social media dominance

June 14, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from CNBC

When Facebook filed for its initial public offering in early 2012, the company named the ongoing transition to mobile as one of the biggest risks to its future success. If the transition to mobile was indeed the biggest challenge in Mark Zuckerberg’s early career as CEO of a billion-dollar company, he managed it quite well. Not only does Facebook generate most of its revenue with mobile advertising now, the company also owns some of the most popular mobile apps in the world. In June 2018, Instagram announced that it had reached one billion monthly active users, making it the fourth platform in Facebook’s portfolio to pass that milestone.

Considering the size of Facebook’s social media empire and its recent involvement in several scandals, it’s no surprise that calls for the company to be regulated have been getting louder over the past twelve months.

Source: Statista

Sourced from CNBC

In News

Key takeaways for brands after Google Marketing Live 2019

June 13, 2019 No Comments

By Ian Dailey

Digital giant bets big on shoppable ads, cross-app campaigns and real-time intelligence.

There were a couple of telling stats from this week’s Google Marketing Live event, which included many digital ad product announcements and was attended by around 5,000 industry players in San Francisco. In a Google-led study, the tech giant sussed out one particular shopper who wanted to buy a single pair of jeans—the person spent 73 days looking and interacted with more than 250 digital touchpoints (searches, video views and page views) before making a purchase. The modern customer journey can be long and complicated, indeed.

This reality underscores the need for a wide range of customer intelligence—from social media listening and email insights to call data—so brands can act with as much relevance and real-time empathy as possible. Google, as much as any martech or adtech player, understands this need all too well and wants to make it easier for marketers to meet customers where they are at in the shopping cycle.

Now that Google Marketing Live is coming to a close, let’s take a look at the new ad products, stats and takeaways that marketing practitioners need to know.

Ads get more visual across apps

Google Discover, which has been the search engine’s news feed since September, now offers brands ad placements that are swipeable, carousel-style images that Instagram initially popularized a few years ago. Marketers can place the ads on not only Google Discover but also the YouTube home feed and the Gmail promotions tab.

Google also promises that these ads will get smarter and smarter due to machine learning. All told, these developments should be attractive if you’re a brand marketer who wants to run cross-app initiatives that strategically use the Alphabet-owned platforms’ wealth of data.

Advertisers should also pay attention to Gallery ads. Also similar to Instagram’s carousel ads, they are designed to be visually stimulating promos and will render at the top of mobile search results. They entail a scrollable gallery that will include four to eight images and up to 70 characters available for every photo. (Search Engine Land first reported on the emergence of these ads in February.)

Advertisers gain control over KPIs

Notably, Google has made moves on the data front to help ad buyers feel more in control over their campaigns. You can now choose what kinds of conversions (sales, lead-gen, email signups, webinar registrations, etc.) you want as your key performance indicator (KPI) at the campaign level.

Additionally, you can adjust conversion values based on the audiences you want to target. This ability will let you better tweak your ad bidding, which should improve ROI.

Ad tools improve efficiency for marketers on the go

The entire digital advertising ecosystem has gradually moved toward the smartphone mindset, letting you manage your campaigns from almost anywhere. In a growing number of instances, all you need to build and buy ads is a wireless signal. These mobile features help busy, often-traveling campaign managers get their work done in an efficient way.

With all of that in mind, Google now lets you build responsive search ads directly from its Google Ads mobile app. En route to a client meeting across town in a taxi cab but need to launch a last-minute holiday campaign? Google’s Android and iOS app now lets you write the search copy, optimize the headline, place bids and set budget constraints from your smartphone.

Timely data and alerts boost performance

Once again, Google recognizes that marketers aren’t always going to be in front of their laptop or at work. The Google Ads mobile app will now send notifications that alert you of a campaign’s performance as well as when better ad opportunities may be afoot.

Google clearly wants ad buyers to make use of their real-time intelligence. For instance, when certain keywords are performing poorly, you will be able to pause part or all of a campaign. And the app will offer you recommendations that can help drive sales. As one possible example, if you are a sneakers retailer and inventory for the white-hot shoe “Nike Air Presto” is unusually abundant—and therefore lower in cost on the bidding platform—the app will ping you to let you know of the opportunity. Google ad buyers of all sizes should appreciate such information, and the feature underscores how data is transforming all of marketing.

Local ads prove successful

While more and more sales happen online, 88% of all retail still happens offline. Therefore, retailers want their digital ads to not just drive e-commerce but also foot traffic to stores.

In recent years, Google, Facebook, Snapchat and other digital platforms have been working to prove that their ads help drive bricks-and-mortar sales. So, it was intriguing to see Google trot out brand-based statistics ahead of Google Marketing Live and during the show. The most impressive data point offered: Quick-serve giant Dunkin’ increased monthly store visits in some locations by 400% with Google’s location-based advertising.

Such revelations signal that hyperlocal marketing has gone multichannel, and advertisers of all sizes are now using digital to not only drive store visits but also sales in other offline channels like inbound phone calls.

Retail ads expanded

It’s clear Google wants a bigger chunk of retail advertising budgets as it competes with Amazon’s growing ad business.

Google revealed that its Showcase Shopping Ads, first debuted in 2017, have gone from being available for regular search results to the image search results, the discover search results and YouTube.

Showcase Shopping ads are similar to Galley Ads in that they offer the ability to include multiple product images that are scrollable from left to right. The ads also offer an easy way for consumers to click through to a product page and then commence to check out.

Marketers: stay ahead of the digital game

Google Marketing Live 2019 shows the brand marketing community continuing to march toward shoppable ads, tools for the mobile-minded practitioner, and improved targeting that leverages location data and granular performance metrics. For Google’s part, the ad products shown off represent the search engine giant’s desire to become a bigger player in retail.

It’s clear that Google is trying to advance how competitive it will be with Facebook, Amazon, and others for brand marketers’ ad dollars in the coming months—especially the holiday season. For all nearly all marketers, it’s imperative to keep pace as the available tools and best practices change at lightning speed.

By Ian Dailey

Ian Daily is Sr. Director, Product Marketing at Invoca. He has worked at the intersection of technology, marketing and media since 2003.

Sourced from Marketing Land