research

Digital Consultant links for August 4th through August 14th

These are my links for August 4th through August 14th:

What is the alternative to Google bubbles? – Pete Ashton on the issues with social/semantic search limiting diversity of opinion (a literal ‘bubble’). Whilst Google’s log-in search favours social connections and relevancy, options need to be in place to allow search to show results outside of the users network.
Supporting growth in the arts economy – Useful summary by Chris Unitt of the digital elements of the Support Growth in the Arts Economy report by Tom Fleming.
Hyperlocal till I die : daveharte.com – Some good advice on how to keep sane as a hyper-local blogger and the value (hint: most of it not financial) it can bring to you and your readers by Dave Harte, founder of Bournville Village news.
Branded apps are missing the mark – News advice from Freelance Advisor – 80/20 rules apply as 80% of brands smartphone apps generate less than 1,000 downloads, but users are expecting brands to have good apps.
5 Creative Coaching Techniques To Get Yourself Unstuck – Great guide to self-coaching techniques designed to de-clutter and re-focus your desires and priorities. Love the idea of believing you have no head to clutter your thoughts.
All about email open rates – Blog – Campaign Monitor – Although quite old now, useful guidance on how to calculate email open rates, industry averages and improving open rate through popular days and other tips.
Email marketing images – Very neat idea of how to counteract the issue of email clients turning off images in e-marketing emails with a quirky 2D design (not least great as it obscures Jamie Cullen’s face).

Digital Consultant links for April 6th through April 10th

These are my links for April 6th through April 10th:

Clegg’n'Cameron seek Director of Digital • The Register – Not a ‘Twitter Tsar’ (apparently) but the UK government now seek someone to head up their far-reaching digital ambitions, replacing several other roles that seem to have achieved little in recent years (like the rarely Tweeting Director of Digital Engagement).
Sharing Content To Show Thought Leadership – Why do marketers curate and share content? Top of the list is establishing thought leadership, according to this US survey. Added benefits include lead generation and boosting SEO, although this is not the main motivation.
Pepsi on social media metrics – Pepsi’s Head of Digital, Shiv Singh on how they measure metrics for social media: “SIM score, which is like a digital brand health metric. The premise behind it is that what consumers say about us is more important than anything that we say. It’s an indexed competitive score looking at how our brand is doing compared to our competitors, indexed on a hundredth scale. The formula accounts for volume and sentiment, and then weighted by platform.”
Elements of local digital ecosystems – | DavePress presents a neat summary of the types of actors and activities that make up a local digital ecology.
Report into social media excellence published – Summary of Gartner’s report into 200 successful operations using social media. It’s all about gathering together and understand your community of interest.

Digital Consultant links for January 9th through January 29th

These are my links for January 9th through January 29th:

Twitter Ad Revenues to Soar This Year- eMarketer – Prediction of the online/social ad network in next year, which shows Twitter ads to grow from a low starting base to exceed the dying MySpace this year. Facebook remains the daddy of social advertising, with the lion's share of all spend for some time to come.
Top 10 Productivity Tools for Entrepreneurs – Nicely curated collection of online tools for social media, project management and client management for the budding start-up.
Why Is Chinese Web Design So Bad? – OK a linkbait headline, but this post from Think Vitamin talks about the different aesthetics and cultural differences as to why Chinese websites appear so '1995' and cluttered, rarely getting to the point quickly for its users. Having worked on a multi-lingual site recently, this insight is fascinating that its not just images and text but the whole navigation and approach which is distinctly different out east.
Filtering places – Another insightful post from Mr Pete Ashton from his The Future of Local series, this time looking at augmented reality and how layers of data align with our human instincts to filter, or add meta and meaning, to the world around us. A refreshingly human view of the potential of this curious and emerging mobile technology.
Seven Rules for Effective Social Networking For Artists – A good approach for independent artists to social networking, particularly disarming that the 'pin ups' of social success like Amanda Palmer should be treated with caution: establishing human relationships (and unpicking this if you're in a band) with fans is at the centre of a fan engagement approach – and being genuine.
How to Improve Engagement with your Webisodes – Useful diagrams and approaches for transmedia (previously known as cross platform) producers to improve engagement and blending secondary (non webisode) material and scheduling to enhance audience engagement.
Empowerment and Innovation – Great article from online community/social expert Pete Ashton on how blogging can (sometimes) increase the empowerment, knowledge and understanding of the blogger using example of Birmingham bloggers (disclaimer: many of these writers are old friends of mine!). Part of an excellent series of posts on 'The Future of Local' for the 'Talk About Local' project.
Number of global co-working spaces doubles – If, like me, you work from a range of home and client offices its refreshing to know that the amount of coworking spaces for nomadic and freelance workers has doubled from 2010 to 2011. Whilst I've often enjoyed the spontaneous encounters in co-working places many are still problematic: hard to make phone calls due to background noise, lack of easy to book private spaces etc. but no doubt competition will bring more variety to the market. Co-working Europe have a co-working conference this Nov and have published a list of European co-working spaces (no doubt incomplete – the two places I use TechHub in East London and Antenna in Nottingham both missing!) http://coworkingeu.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/more-than-140-coworking-spaces-in-europe-here-is-a-list/ (via Freelance Advisor and Dave Harte)
20 minutes on Facebook – An analysis project showed what a typical 20 minutes of activity on Facebook contained, which was multiplied to show the impact of a year of data. 1 million links and 1.85 million status updates are shared in 20 minutes (doesn't seem like that much to me, far under the volume of Twitter)
17 digital marketing trends for 2011, by Econsultancy CEO Ashley Friedlein – The last 2011 crystal ball gazing article – promise! This time a savvy UK digital marketing perspective from Econsultancy's Ashley Friedlin, including an expectation that social media is less about ROI and more something we have to do, user experience gets more touchy feely, and new ways of harnessing data.
Ten 10 Predictions for Digital in the Middle East, 2011 – Out in the middle east, interestingly the landscape of digital media has many similar challenges and predictions than in the west, perhaps overall reflecting UK trends from around 2008/9.
Internet Marketing: The 10 Biggest Mistakes Made by Artists and Creatives (and How to Fix Them) – Lateral Action's quirky but true round up of creative's internet marketing errors (including social media narcissim) equally applies to a lot of other small business sectors. Adding people without permission to your email list – keep those hands raised!
How Online Video Can Reach the Business Audience – More evidence to show that video is an extremely effective tool for business, with up to 65% of executive visiting a vendors website after watching a business video, and 45% puttng in a call. Compelling video definitely helps speed up the sales funnel.
UK’s Digital Music Boost Slowed In 2010 – In the week HMV announce the closure of 60 stores nationally, more bad news as it seems digital music sales have grown little and overall music sales are likely to have only retained in units and declined in overall turnover, when BPI's figures are announced in March.
Our Bets For Digital Media In 2011 – The excellent media and publishing journal paidContent:UK gaze through a crystal ball to see what's ahead for digital media in 2011 with predictions on the popularity of mobile check-ins, tablets and interactive tv.

Digital Consultant links for November 18th through November 28th

These are my links for November 18th through November 28th:

Understanding Bounce Rates Infographic – Lovely and helpful inforagraphics from Think Vitamin on average industry bounce rates and tips to improve the dark curve of the ‘bounce’ (website visitors who visit one page of your site then leave). Average across all sectors is 40.5%, 4.6 page views per visit and 190 seconds per session. I never knew that!
How to Make Your Website Mobile Friendly (And Keep Your Readers Happy) – Great tips for making your website work for the predicted 1.7 Billion global mobile internet users including minimising big images and flash design.
Have Click Rates Finally Stopped Declining? – Good news. Perhaps. Global online ad effectiveness have levelled their freefall decline down to 0.09% in the last year. What this pitiful statistic shows to me is that a staggering 99.91% of online adverts are ineffective: advertisers, brands and B2B need to find more effective ways of building their own audience through online engagement.
Facebook Messages – some say it’s an “email killer,” others disagree – Interesting stats on how US teens communicate: shows texting growing in popularity and landline calls declining, but just about all others communications means (including social media and email) more or less flat in the last 3 years. Although email has limited use (11%) it still has a plays in teen communications.
20 Things I Learned About Browsers and the Web – Nice little illustrated e-book which brings together the not very interesting topic of web browsers and how these are evolving (including security and HTML5).

Digital Consultant links for October 28th through November 1st

These are my links for October 28th through November 1st:

People that ‘like’ branded content aren’t customers- study – Yet more research into consumers interaction with brands in social media, this time funded by YouTube, shows users are motivated by different draws to share online – impressing and entertaining their friends is critical. Fans may ‘like’ products they aren’t yet customers of.
Internet worth £100bn a year to UK economy – New research shows UK is 6th most e-dependent nation, with a value of £100Bn (60% from consumption) and net exporters of E-goods, employing 250,000 in the e-commerce sector with growth predicted at 15%.
Virgin to roll out 100MB broadband from December – Superspeed broadband hits the UK in full force this Dec – Virgin’s 100Mb (though note the upload speed is only 10Mb) broadband sets the benchmark for other providers to offer faster connection at affordable prices, encouraged by a government fund of £300M for rural broadband, this could see Britain finally catching up with the rest of the world in our connectivity.
Planning and managing a digital strategy white paper – This is a really fantastic e-book from marketing consultancy Red Ant and covers all the considerations and planning processes you should be thinking about when planning an digital strategy. It is particularly focused around campaigns and using different methods to measure financial and non-financial success and return on investment. Brilliant!
How to Make Users ‘Stick’ to your site – Great article from web designer’s perspective on how to develop ‘sticky’ content on your site, one of my big soap box topics. Great content, encouraging engagement and great design all increase how often, for how long and how visitors will come back to your website.

Digital Consultant links for August 4th through August 14th

Digital Consultant links for April 6th through April 10th

Digital Consultant links for January 9th through January 29th

Digital Consultant links for November 18th through November 28th

Digital Consultant links for October 28th through November 1st

Categories

Recent articles

Blog archive