Yet another online retailer has announced its intentions to expand into content marketing, with high-end baby products retailer Mamas and Papas partnering with advice site Greatvine. </p> <p>Retailer to offer expert advice</p> <p>The parenting advice market online is very competitive, with sites such as Bounty, Mumsnet and Netmums combining expert advice and opinion with busy message boards where people can share experiences. However, Mamas and Papas clearly feel that there is appetite in the market for another provider, and indeed are taking a somewhat different angle. </p> <p>Whilst they don’t rule out offering forums in the future, the focus to begin with will be on expert advice supplied by Greatvine, in the form of specialist editorial written content and videos, with users also able to get live advice or send in email questions. </p> <p>Content needs to generate trust</p> <p>It seems a natural extension for a well-established baby product retailer, but of course the key hurdles will be ones of awareness and trust; why should either expectant or established parents trust content from the brand? The quality of the advice and experience will be paramount, so Mamas and Papas is putting a lot of trust into its content provider, which is why it’s steering clear of forums right now we suspect; whilst forums can provide great content, they can also be unpredictable and require expensive moderation. </p> <p>A content based strategy will also be key to expanding the brand’s market; such advice should reach couples that are pre-pregnancy, who are unlikely to have really experienced the brand yet. It remains to be seen how effectively they can differentiate the service.<br />

Creating interesting, original online content for your own website and other relevant sites isn’t just a great idea from an SEO point of view. An interview on Search Engine Watch shows how one small company used their guest blogging strategy to help grow their user base to 100,000 over just nine months. </p> <p>BufferApp founder focused on guest blogging</p> <p>The company in question is a small, recent start-up called BufferApp, which allows busy social media users, such as other small businesses, to have regularly spaced out updates posted automatically – users fill up their Buffer with content, such as pictures, video and comments, and the app will post them out at the required intervals.</p> <p>In order to get the word out about the new business, founder Leo Widrich embarked on a major campaign of guest blogging – writing interesting, unique posts for other relevant blogs, where his target audience would be likely to see them, thus generating interest in him and his application.</p> <p>Metrics included traffic and sales</p> <p>Success was measured in a number of ways; firstly, of course, in terms of how traffic to the BufferApp site increased and where from, with the intention of generating 100 visitors from each post. These, on average, converted to two paying users, or $450 of income per post. For a few months, guest blogging was all Widrich did, and the company is now reaping the benefits.</p> <p>Of course, not every company can spare someone to guest blog full time. However, given the benefits – increased traffic, credibility, and great relationships within the relevant blogger community – that guest blogging can drive as well as SEO, isn’t it worth a look?<br />

As the official launch of the 2012 Olympics approached, sponsors such as Adidas and Coca Cola ramped up their online and offline marketing efforts. However, their efforts are not without issues; new data from ICM on behalf of Third City suggest that over half of the UK population cannot confidently name an official sponsor of the games.</p> <p>Most UK consumers can’t name Olympic sponsors</p> <p>Despite the millions of pounds that key sponsors have already spent on marketing and advertising, the survey suggested that 24% of Britons couldn’t name a sponsor, and another 33% would guess at one but wouldn’t be sure. Londoners are slightly more knowledgeable, with some 20% able to name one or two sponsors – although given there are 14 sponsors that is still not a great hit rate. One of them, BMW, has already suggested that it would be “unlikely” to continue being an Olympic sponsor for 2016, having spent around £50 million in sponsoring London 2012. </p> <p>Nike indulges in ambush marketing</p> <p>One reason for this confusion may be the sports related marketing being conducted by other, non-sponsor brands such as Nike, sometimes known as “ambush marketing”. The sportswear brand has just revealed a global campaign featuring amateur athletes from other places that are called London, around the world. The television ad is due to debut on UK television on the official Olympic Opening Day, Friday 27th July, with the strapline “Find Your Greatness”. The official Olympic sportswear sponsor is actually Adidas, but how many UK consumers could state that, we wonder?<br />

Bucking the trend of loss making online newspaper sites, the Daily Mail and General Trust has announced that it’s operation Mail Online has now reached profitability on a “run rate” basis. </p> <p>Daily Mail site largest online newspaper site</p> <p>The online publication, which operates as the internet version of the popular tabloid newspapers The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, became the internet’s largest “newspaper” site back in December 2011. ComScore statistics for the month suggested that the site had 45.35 million readers in the month, just pipping the previous largest site, The New York Times, that attracted 44.79 million. The Mail Online content – which focuses heavily on gossip and celebrity news - is entirely free, whereas the New York Times introduced a metered subscription service in early 2011.</p> <p>Online revenues to hit £30m </p> <p>According to the site’s owners, the overall group’s revenue increased 3% to £509 million in the second quarter of 2012. The newspaper division reported a 1% increase in revenues year on year to £210m, reversing a 4% decline in revenues over the previous quarter, claiming a 4% increase in circulation. Digital revenues from Mail Online are expected to reach between £25m and £30 million over the year, with profitability being reached every month. </p> <p>Contributing to this profitability was digital advertising, which increased 69% in the quarter, with June specifically being a major month, contributing more than 150% of the income it did the previous years. With many online content sites struggling to make ends meet and contemplating introducing reader charges, the news that one, at least, is making money will be heartening to the content industry.<br />

Brands with websites have been urged for some time now to encourage users to give their URLs a Facebook “Like” or a Google +1, the thinking being that these social search signals improve the site’s search rankings. Now, digital agency Stickyeyes have examined the actual influence these approval metrics have.</p> <p>Report examines 7000 URLs</p> <p>Stickyeyes looked at the influence on search results of both the +1s and Facebook Likes using an in-house tool which analyses over 100 million ranking signals each month. The data covered over 7,000 URLs across a number of sectors, URLs that appear in the top 20 search results for those sectors, and correlated their search positions with their +1 and Like counts. Overall, Google use more than 200 core ranking signals in their constantly tweaked search algorithm. </p> <p>Google measure has more positive effect</p> <p>Overall, their conclusion was that the Google measure had the biggest impact on natural search position. According to the data, getting 23 or more Google +1s for a URL would put the URL in the top third ranking URLs, and getting 63 would push the URL into the top 20%. When it comes to Facebook, 35 Facebook Likes are needed to put the URL into the top third, with 155 needed to get into the top 20%. </p> <p>Of course, the suggestion is not to do one to the exclusion of the other, and it may not raise too many eyebrows that Google +1s turns out to be better at boosting search positions than Facebook likes, but it does serve to confirm that social signals are now being taken very seriously by the search engines.<br />

The giant Ferris wheel the London Eye dominates the Capital’s skyline, and is now set to play a major part in the Olympics, despite no actual events taking place in its vicinity. It has been announced that Twitter users will be able to directly (or at least, en masse) influence the appearance of one of London’s most iconic modern landmarks. </p> <p>Wheel to be illuminated each night</p> <p>The EDF Energy sponsored wheel is to display a “social media driven light show” throughout the two week duration of the Olympics, with the lights supposedly reflecting the mood of the UK about the Games over the previous 24 hours.</p> <p>EDF Energy has commissioned Sosolimited, who describe themselves as an “art and technology group specializing in interactive environments and multisensory design”, to create a light show that will run every evening at 9 p.m. until the 12th August.</p> <p>Tweet sentiment level to be analysed daily</p> <p>Twitter sentiment about the Olympics – analysed using an algorithm that examines all relevant Tweets (those made using the hashtag #Energy2012, so a self-selecting subset of all commentary, it should be noted) published in the previous 24 hours – will be displayed showing purple for the percentage of negative commentary, green for neutral, and yellow for positive. Those who can’t make it to London to see the show for real can watch the live stream on EDFs website. </p> <p>Additionally, top-sporting moments from that day at the Olympics will be projected using different lights. Should be a colourful addition to the 2012 madness that will be Central London!<br />

An article recently posted on Search Engine Watch makes some good points about the changing strategies required for writing for search engine optimisation (SEO) now Google’s Panda changes (aimed at filtering out poor “content farm” content) have settled in. </p> <p>Good content meets multiple goals</p> <p>Clearly, content has always been important, but now it’s more vital than ever that any content you publish is high quality, relevant and original. The Google algorithm rewards content that is deemed to be of high value to relevant audiences, measured by a number of metrics including clicks, links, bounce rates and social media signals such as Google+ links. The article suggests three important uses for good content: for creating links (by giving others interesting articles to link to), for use within social media, and finally of course simply to provide excellent resources for visitors. Of course, many pieces of content will serve all three (or more) purposes. </p> <p>Keep key goals in mind when creating</p> <p>The article also makes some good points about key things to remember whenever you start writing content. These include confirming that the content fits your brand or company image; checking that the creation of the content is the best use of your resources; making sure the content really is unique and will appeal to your target audience; and sorting out a deployment and measurement strategy for it – where are you going to publish it? </p> <p>Creating good content for your site has many positive effects, better SEO ranking being just one of them - do you know what they are for your site?<br />

Remember Cadbury’s icon television ads featuring drumming Gorillas, daring Milk Tray man, and the smooth talking Caramel bunny? Well, such individual (and no doubt expensive) TV splashes may be a thing of the past for the famous confectionary brand, as they signal a move towards social rather than traditional media. </p> <p>Dairy Milk brand manager emphasises social media</p> <p>Speaking at the Facebook Marketing 2012 conference organised by Our Social Times and Chinwag, brand manager for Dairy Milk, Sarah Lindley said that Cadbury’s new Joyville marketing activities would concentrate on seeding and feeding social media content in order to create and build buzz about its products online, before investing in more traditional television and print media.</p> <p>Cadburys has already experimented with the social media content world in several forms, including launching its Bitsa Wispa and Bubbly bar products across Facebook and Google+.<br /> Giant chocolate sculpture gains fans</p> <p>The brand has a million Facebook fans, but only 16% ever saw content the brand posted. A recent experiment to see what online fans wanted to engage with saw the creation of an enormous Facebook “Like” sign – the thumbs up – in Dairy Milk, with teaser ads placed on its Facebook page with a counter suggesting that something special was coming to celebrate hitting a million Facebook fans. The unveiling was streamed live, with one fan invited to complete the sculpture with the last piece of Dairy Milk. Overall, the campaign gained the brand 40,000 fans, with more than 350,000 actively involved at some point, creating a brand community that, “Cadbury can now tap into for future marketing activities” according to Lindley.<br />

According to the BBC, many of them could be. A report from the broadcaster claims that a high proportion of ‘likes’ could be from users not in the least bit interested in your product.</p> <p>BBC cites false Facebook “likes” </p> <p>Of course this begs the question – why did they ‘like’ you in the first place? To understand what is going on here, we need to take a look at what exactly the BBC is talking about. The research cited was two sources of information, one being a marketing consultant’s experiences in running Facebook ads for small businesses, and the second a BBC experiment in which they set up their own page for a fake company.</p> <p>According to the consultant, a number of his clients were getting ‘likes’ through ad clicks from fans who “were 13 to 17 years old”, with suspicious names and details. After targeting internationally the BBC experiment found a similar result, with the Philippines and Egypt heavily over-represented. </p> <p>Untargeted ads bound to fail</p> <p>Well, the first thing that this suggests is not that Facebook ads don’t work, but that actually the targeting was all wrong – if young consumers aren’t the target audience, why are they seeing the ad in the first place? The BBC campaign sent out a scattergun ad, with no targeting – is it any wonder that the ‘likes’ that resulted weren’t valuable? Facebook allows very niche targeting of users by age and demographics; ads that don’t take advantage of these deserve to fail. </p> <p>The more reasonable conclusion would be that untargeted ads don’t work – which applies to any media, online or off, and shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone.<br />

Following stats released earlier this month indicating that most papers had suffered a decline in circulation in June despite it being a news-filled month there is now some better news. The Guardian has released some financial results that suggest its new digital first strategy is working.</p> <p>Digital revenue reaches almost £46 million</p> <p>At a briefing to staff, the editor in chief of The Guardian and Observer, Alan Rushbridger, stated that The Guardian has managed to increase its online audience by 38% over the last year, to slightly fewer than 68 million unique browsers. Digital revenue has grown just over 16% to £45.7 million in the financial year to April 1st 2012. The combined 5.8 million digital and print reach of the title is now higher than any other UK newspaper, the nearest competitor being The Times and Sunday Times at around 5.5 million.</p> <p>Increased digital investment contributes to overall losses</p> <p>According to Rushbridger, the additional digital revenue has almost offset the decline in print revenues; print advertising alone has fallen 4% to £43.7 million, although other financial information about sales and other print products was not disclosed. Overall, the company raised just over £196 million in revenue, slightly up from £198 million in the year before, though overall it made a loss of £44 million largely due to it’s increased investment in digital content and products such as tablet apps as part of its “digital first” transformation strategy. </p> <p>The title hopes to halt its losses through redundancy as well as doubling digital revenue to almost £100 million over the next three years. </p> <p>