digital

Digital Consultant links for August 6th through August 8th

These are my links for August 6th through August 8th:

Summer SEO – Use The Time For An SEO Health Check – More great tips from Hallam Internet on using the August lull to tweak your website to make sure those all important keywords are well displayed in all the right places on your site.
Google to allow trade marks as keywords across Europe – A big shift for those doing pay-per-click Google advertising, as trademark names, from Sept 14, can now be used in most international territories. This means retailers selling branded products can truly begin to cash in.
Big digital ambitions may be brewing at Starbucks – Starbucks have always been ahead of the game in their digital marketing, but a new twist will see the coffee stores in US and Canada competing with ISP portal to offer a channel of new, entertainment and retail content, plus unlimited wifi access in their stores (can we have this in the UK soon please?)
500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
10 reasons you need a digital marketing strategy – Digital marketing legend Dave Chaffey's survey shows a staggering 31% of marketers have a digital strategy, and the rest do digital marketing without a strategy.

Digital Consultant links for June 18th through June 23rd

These are my links for June 18th through June 23rd:

Social Media Playbook – A little 101, but some useful up-to-date stats on the latest hip and happening social media networks, and some tips as to how to use them well for business in this E-Book. I disagree with some of their frequency guidelines: this should depend on the quality of content you have and the level of engagement of your audience.
New training courses I’m delivering: Creating Online Video for Web and Personal Branding – I've recently started to develop and deliver e-marketing training courses for Derby's Creative Exchange, a professional media training centre at University of Derby. I'm really excited about these new courses which are really expanding the reach of e-marketing to new practical and strategy elements. The first two courses are on Creating Online Video for the Web (29 June) and Personal Branding (30 June). Both are free to Derby city residents, and cost £25 if you're not.
The future of social/E-Mail Integration – E-Marketer research on businesses linking their social media to email campaigns, and vice versa. Seems very few are doing it (which seems like a no brainer to me) but more are going to step up their integration. I always say to clients: don't throw baby out with the bathwater: email marketing is still the highest conversion, highest sharing of 'social' media and best way to build in a long term opt-in customer base.
Margaret Gould Stewart: How YouTube thinks about copyright – Video from the Iconic TED conference series on how YouTube's technology allow rights holders to register tracks and when matches in the system are detected (including music in the background and mashups) the rights holder can decide if they wish to allow their film & music work to be used in its new context, presenting a new twist on copyright in the digital age.

Digital Consultant links for May 31st through June 6th

These are my links for May 31st through June 6th:

Well, what is a good digital music strategy ? Part 2 – Social Networks – Virginie Berger with some useful advice and stats on the potential for promoting music on social networks, and some tips to be more successful (like apparently adding 'video' to your video title is a winning tactic).
Public Enemy’s New Sellaband Target – Fan funding – getting your 'fans' to pre-pay for your material to fund its production costs – is a great new innovation in the music industry (I recently fan-funded the new Thomas Truax album and received my pre-release download of it today), but this reflection on the difficulties established group Public Enemy have had meeting their targets suggests fan funding may not yet be a mature enough funding mechanism to replace the role (particularly in sales and marketing) of the music industry.
The State of Online Video – A new report from the Pew survey of American life showing 7/10 adults are watching video online, with a large rise in humourous, eduactional, TV and film and political videos, with an increase in user-created content.
Experiments in delinkification – Nicholas Carr, academic and author of 'Is Google Making Us Stupid?', on why hyperlinking in text may be a distraction from the idea you are conveying, and an experiment with putting links after the text like footnotes in a book. I agree partly with this idea, but actually there's another issue (that newspapers and even some credible online publications like Mashable) that hyperlinking encourages users to leave your site rather than 'stickiness' of moving to elsewhere on your site. It's an interesting balance that needs to be struck between providing context and value to what you write, and making sure the hyperlink doesn't detract from either the flow of your idea or the user journey on your website.
Content is everything, so just do it – This is something that has bothered me for a while: the 'signal vs noise' ratio that we all have to be producing LOTS of content (status updates, links on Twitter, blog articles) in the drive for attention and search engine indexes. Of course this is a nonsense, you should write what is good, when you can (I ususally recommend to clients some sort of minimum commitment per month of types of content e.g. status updates, video, news article depending on the needs they identify). Ideas are good, volume is bad.

Digital Consultant links for May 4th through May 9th

These are my links for May 4th through May 9th:

Interview With Will Page, Music Industry Economist – Great in-depth interview with a very clever man, Mr Wil Page, the Economist of the UK's Peforming Rights Society (music collection agency) on the importance of UK's successful digital sales industry, the weakness of the 'Long Tail Model' and why Spotify and Trent Reznor are worth investigating.
Digital Strategy: How To Develop a Digital Strategy: Part 1 – Great article by Rich Nadworny on the processes (methodologies and thought processes) he uses as a digital strategist. These basically form into two phases: research and intelligence gathering, followed by setting goals and objectives. For my own work I use a variation of these tools – essentially focusing on people and the organisation, followed by intelligence gathering then goal setting/measuring. I'll be blogging more on my own methodologies soon, in meantime sign up to Rich's blog for Part 2.
7 things people get wrong about the Internet and TV – An interesting take on why the internet is not killing TV: far from it, video/web TV needs the maturity of the TV model to succeed. I also read a report this week that suggest that when people are surveyed about their media viewing habits they usually underestimate TV hours viewed, and over-estimate web video. All in all, David Lynch was wrong – TV isn't dead (yet).
Digital Strategy: How To Develop a Digital Strategy: Part 1 – "Digital strategy, simply put, is a plan to use digital, two-way media to communicate with other people. The keys in that sentence are: plan, digital, two-way." Great article by Rich Nadworthy neatly summarising exactly what digital strategy is about: different areas of detailed research followed by setting goals and objectives.
Strategy’s Golden Rule – The one golden rule of strategy: don't try and beat the competition incrementally, but find out what they do badly, then aim to be great at that. Using the example of Apple's bad customer service and others, this is a strong lessons in reinventing the rules of disruptive innovation.

Digital Consultant links for April 16th through April 18th

These are my links for April 16th through April 18th:

(Infographic) What Musicians Get Paid In The Digital Age – This is seriously depressing stuff. It shows how much a musicians needs to sell if relying on online physical sales and digital distribution alone to earn their keep just to the minimum wage. The greatest gap is the multi-million streams needed on services such as Spotify to achieve less than a few pence in revenue – clearly not achievable if you do not have some trigger from 'mass media' to generate it. Further evidence that musicians need to develop a mix economy of live, work-for-hire, licensing to survive.
Near2Home – The local business finder – Here's a new service that may be interesting to hyper local businesses: it's a link you put on your site so if businesses are far away from the areas you serve, you can route them to the Near2Home network. For every three you send, you get two referrals back. May work for more generic types of businesses.
Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards 2010 – Case studies and presentation from yesterday's healthcare engagement strategy awards organised by Creation Healthcare – great examples of how the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector are finding imaginative new ways to communicate important public health and marketing messages to patients and customers.

Digital Consultant links for August 6th through August 8th

Digital Consultant links for June 18th through June 23rd

Digital Consultant links for May 4th through May 9th

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