How to Optimize Email for Mobile Audiences
With the surge of mobile uptake in recent years, email subscribers are now viewing emails in a diverse ecosystem of desktop, mobile and social contexts. Therefore, it's imperative to design your email marketing campaigns with mobile in mind, to ensure that your mobile recipients are getting the best user experience from your messages. If you’re not optimising your email marketing for mobile, you could be missing valuable opportunities. Read on to find out how to optimise your EDM campaigns for mobile audiences. How do I know if I have a mobile audience? Web analytics and surveys can help you decide. Most email marketing software includes email analytics to collect information on which email clients and devices your subscribers are using to view their emails. A gener...
4 Ways to Generate B2B Leads Through Social Media
B2B social media is on the rise, connecting businesses to prospective clients and providing value to current clients. However, despite its relationship-building benefits, many businesses have trouble converting social media interactions to leads and sales, and proving their social media programs are contributing to business revenues. According to a White Horse marketing survey, 86% of B2B firms are using social media, compared to 82% of B2C firms. However, B2B firms aren't as active in their social media activity - only 32% engage on a daily basis, compared with 52% of B2C firms. In addition, a BtoB Magazine survey found that 59% view lead generation as their greatest online marketing channel. But, it doesn’t have to be difficult. So, how do you make social media an efficient, cost-effective channel for finding new customers and clients online? Step 1: Consider Your Staff, Channels and Customers To ensure your business or brand is maximising social media for lead generation, you need a dedicated social media team or group who can plan, create, monitor and measure on a daily basis to ensure your social media presence is timely and relevant to the ta...
Marketers Guide to Facebook Timeline for Brands
Within the next month, everything you know about Facebook Fan Pages will change. Facebook Timeline for Brands is now being rolled out, and will be the default by March 30. It’s different to what you’re used to, with the demise of popular features including the famed default landing tab, but with all new layout, marketing and administration features to take advantage of. Read on to discover the new changes, and best marketing practises for brands transitioning to the new fan page format. LAYOUT: COVER PHOTO AND CHRONOLOGICAL TIMELINE Facebook Timeline for Brands is similar to Timeline for personal profiles, focusing on the past as much as the present. This feature presents an opportunity for brands to emphasize chapters in their history that are relevant and interesting to fans. Did you know American Express began as a courier service in the late 19th century? Or that Coca Cola was invented as a treatment for headaches? Sharing a brand’s back story - right back to it’s humble beginnings - stimulates conversation, and helps humanise a faceless business. Go through your company’s history and mark milestones (business founded, product launched, store openings, new staff) to construct a narrative for your audience. Accompany your milestones with images for full effect. For example, Ben & Jerry marked the introduction of "More Fantastic Flavours" as a milestone in 1999. When users navigate via the timeline sidebar, they can view key events throughout t...
Google Social Search: Time to Rethink Your Strategy
If you thought Google Plus was going to fail, think again. Google has made a big move into the social space with Google Search Plus Your World, which transforms Google “into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships”. This is the Googleverse, after all. But what does this change mean for your social and SEO strategy? Read on to find out. What is Search Plus Your World? Google Search Plus Your World is the integration of Google Plus with Google Search. When you’re logged into Google Plus, the new social search algorithm returns “more relevant” results by aggregating data from your network - such as people in your circles and the pages they have recommended - and bumping these personalised results to the top of the search results page. Google calls this access “your web”, because “you should be able to f...
Social SEO, Integrating Social Media and Search
To stay relevant in 2012, we’re moving toward a more focused and cohesive approach to social media; one that intersects social media marketing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to create Social SEO. In a nutshell, it involves optimizing your social presence for search engines, effectively killing two birds with one stone. But how are they related? The social web and search engines are becoming increasingly linked, as Bing and Google’s search algorithms advance with how we use the Web. Social networks, in particular, produce an immense amount of data. In this way, linking to and from social networks is influencing a URL’s ranking in search results. Therefore, any digital content shared on social networks is an opportunity for optimizing your visibility in search engines. Take Blendtec for example. The brand’s “Will It Blend” YouTube series has attracted thousands of links on Facebook and Twitter, resulting in a top ten ranking on Google for the word ‘blender’. ...
Top 5 Ways to Increase Website Traffic
Increasing traffic to your website is a challenge, given the “If you build it they will come” mentality no longer applies in the crowded online marketplace. The issue isn’t your website design or development; the issue is you’re not investing time in earning visitation. That’s right - If you want to attract more qualified traffic, you need to find your users first. Read on for our top five ways to increase your online visibility. Submit your website to search engines Ultimately, your website will be visited because it is visible in search engine results, not because it’s nice to look at. Yet, contrary to popular belief, you have to tell Google that you exist. For inclusion in organic online searches, the trick is to get a competitive rank...
SMM vs. SMO, What's the Difference?
Social networks are growing exponentially, carrying millions of conversations and social interactions and presenting a huge opportunity to increase your brand or business’ exposure. But, this growth means that the online realm is becoming more saturated with media messages and more complex to navigate. Newfangled approaches like gamification, QR Codes and NFC technology are springing up to capture user interest, but often the best approach is to pare your strategy back to the basics - findability and content (which have never been more important). These two concepts are reflected in Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Social Media Optimisation (SMO), two terms used interchangeably to describe marketing through social media. However, SMM and SMO do not mean the same thing, ...
Top 5 Productivity iPad Apps for Web Designers
We all know that iPad apps can be a major distraction. But, believe it or not, there are thousands of apps that will help, not hinder your productivity. So we’ve undertaken the mammoth task of sifting through Apple’s catalogue of apps to bring you our top five applications for the web design and development niche that inspire, boost productivity and organise ideas. These apps are guaranteed to help you get the job done. iMockups The must-have mobile wireframing and mockupp app for your web, iPhone and iPad projects. Draft wireframes in one easy-to-use interface with intuitive functionality and a multitude of colour options, text styles, borders and backgrounds. Better still, iMockup allows you to export your work via email. Adobe Ideas 1.0 This app will become your digital sketchbook, allowing you to capture and explore your inspiration on the go with vector-based drawing tools, zoom control, brushes and layers. The ideal companion for the Adobe desktop suite, the app allows you to save your files as PDF, vector or raster file formats to edit in Illustrator or Photoshop later. Air Display Wish your scre...
QR Codes Decoded: What is a QR Code and Do I need it?
At Vivo Group, we've noticed a distinct technology trend emerging this year, one that is blurring the lines between our physical and online worlds, and evident in gamification, face recognition and NFC technology. It's called Augmented Reality, which describes how our real world is being enriched with the virtual; where the use of technology provides knowledge and tools to enhance the capacity of people to perform ‘real world’ tasks. One of the most widely used forms of augmented reality is evident in QR codes - which are connecting users to digital content when they’re away from their PC (but still have access to a smart phone). What is a QR code? A Quick Response (QR) code is a two-dimensional matrix code, designed to be read by a QR Reader application on an iPhone, Android or other camera-enabled smart phone. Once the image has been scanned, the software deciphers the encrypted information to activate a response in your device, such as opening email, sending an SMS or initia...
#Geekish 4: What is NFC Technology?
As the number of smart phone users continues to grow at an incredible rate (Telstra reported that almost one in two Australians mobile phone users has a smart phone), a new challenge emerges: how can we use smart phone technologies to effectively connect and engage with consumers? With NFC technology, that’s how. In this version of Geekish, we give you an overview of NFC technology and how it’s changing the way mobile phone users interact with the real world. What is NFC? It stands for Near Field Communications technology, and is premised on short-range wireless connectivity technology. NFC allows users with NFC-enabled devices to collect data from another device or “smart tag” (an integrated circuit containing data) at close range. By tapping, waving or holding the mobile phone in close proximity to an NFC tag or device, the p...
