Introduced in 2010, the Square app was invented by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and is available for iOS and Android. In addition to the added convenience, this application will prove extremely useful for Romney as he continues on the campaign trail, mingles with the retired and kisses babies for further endorsement. On the other side of the fence, President Obama and his re-election team have also signed on to the Square app with the hope of creating a unique Obama Square app. This technology will allow both campaigns to target fundraisers and unofficial volunteers who, after purchasing the square card reader at the local Best Buy for only $10 (just over £6), can canvas door-to-door. Although as an added spiff, the Obama team has announced recently that they will be providing Square readers to campaign offices across the US.

It has been estimated that there are now 313 million people living in the US, according to the US census estimates for the end of last year. In 2008, just under half of the current population voted in the election. With recent reports that more than 90% of Americans use mobile phones for purchases, the introduction of an app for fundraising is definitely a step in the right direction. Ironically, US politicians, both at a national and local level, have been rather slow to embrace social media compared to their counterparts across the pond in the UK. However, Obama will always be known in history as the first presidential nominee to successfully utilise social media during his campaign. Through the use of an iPhone app, YouTube chats and the latest Google+ video conference, President Obama has been very effective reaching the people of America and voters will probably recognise this in 2012. Romney might have previous experience as a Republican hopeful, but he has much to learn from Obama in terms of engagement.

Having said that, both Romney and Obama will need to adjust their mentalities and strategies to include mobile users, to ensure they reach all levels of the technology-advanced. According to a MSNBC article, over the Christmas season, online shopping saw a staggering increase of 16.4% from 2010. The report from IBM also highlighted the increase of purchases on smartphones and tablets. For 2011, analysts have found that mobile purchases on these two items have increased by more than 80% from last year – m-commerce reached an unbelievable $5.3 billion!

Not many with their eye on the Oval Office seat can afford to miss out on the billion dollar pie (except perhaps Mitt Romney who earned more than $20 million in 2011). The truth is m-commerce should be on the agenda of most brands and companies, or at least those who want to reach consumers and accurately gauge multi-channel behaviour.

While Romney the man has won the votes of those in Florida and other states across the US, Romney the brand has work to do before August, when the Republican nominee is announced, if he has any chance of beating Obama (who has a distinct advantage as the incumbent) and any hope of winning over the millions who will probably vote via mobile.

How will the Square app play a part in the future of m-commerce? Let me know below or on Twitter – @YorkshireTexan

(Photos: Politico and PC Mag)

For example, if I’m on the train reading my Twitter stream, and I see an interesting link, I’ll often favourite the tweet to read later. My phone isn’t the ideal device to read an article and poor reception can mean it takes ages to load.

Another example: if you take a picture on Instagram but only want to post it to Flickr rather than Facebook. Whilst the iPhone app does have those options, you might want to filter them based on a hashtag in your comments, or if they are taken at a certain time.

This is where ifttt.com steps in. Short for “If This Then That”, it allows you to connect social networks, bookmarking sites, geotagging services, etc. If you do one thing then the website will do something else.

The possibilities are endless, although luckily there are already a lot of suggestions from users as to the things you can do.

So in my first example, I have set up ifttt.com to automatically search my favourited tweets for a URL, then add that URL to my reading list on Readability, a bookmarking and article-reading network.

ifttt.com allows users to create recipes from the 40 or so social networks. They can be based on RSS feeds, timed events, or when you get an email from a certain person. If you want a way to automatically update your Linkedin status every Monday morning, you can do it. When you check in on Foursquare with a photo, you can send a photo post to your Tumblr blog. How about adding an article to your ‘Read Later’ list in Readability when you star an item in Google Reader? No problem.

My favourite though is the SMS to Phone Call recipe. Do you need to escape a dull meeting or boring colleague? Text ifttt.com with an SMS tagged with #ifttt and it will call you back, creating the perfect opportunity to make your excuses and leave.

Have you used ifttt.com? What’s your favourite recipe? Let me know on Twitter @chris5marsh

We’re all bombarded with messages and advertising, and it’s hard to get your message to stick. It’s well documented that marketers need to use even more sophisticated ways of reaching their target audience. Some commentators explain that tomorrow’s successful marketers are going to be data analysts, finding patterns in terabytes of data to make sure that they’re targeting the right audience with the right messages at the right time.

The whole point of the online world is that people find communities of people who are interested in the same things as them (folding picture of Ross Kemp or zombie crochet). People follow other people who they want to hear from, people that they trust to be entertaining, honest and interesting. So when your favourite celebrity seems to change their personality, and then you find out that someone has paid them to do it, you could be forgiven for feeling lied to. And that’s the trap that social advertisers need to avoid. It’s far too easy to make the same mistakes as marketers have traditionally made in the offline world – bombarding people with irrelevant, annoying, interrupting noise.

The background to all of this is a PR stunt in which celebrities including Ian Botham, Amir Khan, Rio Ferdinand, Cher Lloyd and Katie Price were paid to tweet on unfamiliar issues (Ferdinand on knitting and Price on global politics) before eating a Snickers and returning to ‘normal’. The campaign got a reaction from people for many reasons: including commentators saying that the tweets suggested that eating Snickers turns you into an idiot. But the fierce heat might be yet to come, with the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) investigating undeclared celebrity endorsements and Office of Fair Trading (OFT) expressing concern over the matter. Consumer protection regulations launched in 2008 mean that the OFT can seek a court order, potentially leading to a criminal prosecution and an unlimited fine if celebrities aren’t clear to their audience when they are being  paid to promote products in the form of advertising. It might be the first Twitter campaign to be banned by the ASA who are launching an investigation that could set a new benchmark in social advertising.

It’s no surprise that many of these celebrities’ followers took exception to being advertised to on Twitter. As the number of social advertising channels is growing, with G+ bringing social recommendations into search results pages and Facebook launching sponsored stories, marketers need to remind themselves of the mistakes that have been made in offline advertising before launching themselves into people’s social worlds.

What are your thoughts? Do you feel like you are being bombarded by adverts on Twitter? @tominleeds

With regards to how London plan to keep everything under wraps, they have decided to place tight restrictions over the how the 70,000+ volunteers can use social media. The guidelines put in place will stop the volunteers giving away their location including posting pictures, what they are doing or any news they hear about athletes. This is in contrast to the athletes themselves who will still be able to tweet and post Facebook updates.

Bolt improving his world record time at the 2009 World Championship (Photo: BBC)

These restrictions won’t be too much of a surprise as the last Olympics was held in Beijing in 2008, with China permanently blocking some of the largest social media sites including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

However some believe by restricting volunteers’ use of social media, it will lessen the hype surrounding the Olympics.

Do you think it is a mistake to implement these restrictions? Could it even be detrimental for London’s economy? -JamesWalker88

A useful technique in all retail environments is to try and look at your offering from a customer’s point of view. This is no different when considering your PPC campaigns. Your advert is an opportunity to not only say what you have to offer, but also attempt to remove any barriers between the customer and the sale.

So let’s run a scenario of when a message could help get the click and make the sale. We’ll go for the most obvious retail event on the calendar – Christmas. From the beginning of November, impressions for “Christmas Gift” searches begin to rise quite sharply. But what messages do we want to use and when, or put another way, what do users want to see and when?

Pre-December

It is highly probably that a lot of people will be searching for Christmas gifts early on in the research stage of the buying cycle. So perhaps the important message may be related to the range of the products you offer?

Early December

In December, users are more likely to have done some research and have a better idea about what they are looking for. I feel the price becomes more important as people have a better understanding of what they wish to spend and may have compared prices on other similar items.

Mid-December

The later in December we get, the more panic sets in and the important question becomes “will it be delivered in time?”

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of variations to consider when writing your adverts, and a lot of content to include in there which could prove useful. However, you do have limited space so the ability to think about the right message at the right time could really set you apart from your competitors.

There are many more events in the calendar which affect sales. How have you adapted? Please leave a comment! -@Nastino

For those of you that don’t know about the story, find out more here.

Whilst the public and the paparazzi are in a frenzy to get hold of pictures of Blue Ivy Carter, the search marketing experts amongst us see this as an opportunity.

The search volumes around terms such as ‘Beyoncé’s baby pictures’ are huge at the moment. A quick search on Facebook for ‘Blue Ivy Carter’ confirms there are already way more groups then I can fit into a screenshot:

Facebook advertisers that are up to date with the latest news trends can potentially exploit the huge interest to expand their current campaigns. Here’s how:

1. Keep an eye on a news feed, scanning it regularly for potential stories big enough to have an impact on your Facebook campaign.

2. Work out if your target market corresponds to the latest search trend. For example, people looking for stories on Antony Worral Thompson stealing some cheese might not fall into one particular category. We can be fairly certain that people searching for pictures of Blue Ivy Carter are female and interested in both pop music and celebrities.

3. Armed with this knowledge, you can expand your Facebook target demographic to include people with an interest in the news story. E.g. if you were selling a subscription to a celebrity magazine, the Blue Ivy Carter story would be perfect.

4. Test performance- not every story will add huge volumes to your campaign like the Blue Ivy Carter one will, but testing out each opportunity is the best way to ensure your campaign never goes stale.

N. B.

This blog post is a perfect example of the power of current trends, with such huge search volumes around “Beyonce” terms; this blog post received roughly 10x more traffic than other posts published in January.

- @matt_buckley

Your blog probably isn’t as big as Jezebel or Gizmodo, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t strive for the same great content and get a heap of links out of it. It’s not going to be a quick fix, but with this handy guide you should see a rise in links month on month.

Publish fresh news as it happens

Following news in your niche is something that you’re probably already doing, but it’s likely you’re getting a lot of it second-hand from other blogs. If you want people to link to you, you’re going to have to leap onto news as soon as it’s published. Set up Google Alerts so that it updates you as and when a story is released so you can act as soon as possible. Sign up to newsletters and RSS feeds of industry leaders in your field and consider signing up to press release distribution channels to be the first to know about new developments.

Put a spin on recent news

If you don’t catch the latest news, then don’t worry, you can still get some great links from putting your own personal spin on developments. Consider writing a ‘top x things you need to know about [news subject]’. Constructing news, especially if it’s complex, into an easy-to-digest format can make people link to your post as an alternative to the original source of the story. You can also post your own opinion on the matter, but note that a controversial opinion is one that’s more likely to be linked to than if you go with popular opinion.

Install social media counters

Most bloggers have social media buttons already installed, but adding a counter to each button will help you track your most shared posts, giving you an indication of what kind of posts are popular with readers. This means that follow-ups and similar posts will likely be well-received and likely gain some links. These counters are relatively easy to install, especially if you’re using WordPress or Blogger.

Interview figures in your niche

Not only will interviews with prominent figures garner interest but they will also add more authority to your blog. You might not think you’re able to get an interview, but you would be surprised. People are always looking for free publicity and taking ten minutes out of their day to do an interview is well worth their time. However, if you’re going to conduct an interview, make sure your questions are interesting. Research interviews that have been carried out in the past with that person and think about questions that haven’t been asked yet. Always try to extract an exclusive out of them. If you don’t ask, you won’t receive and a juicy bit of information is powerful link bait.

Post every blog update on all your social channels

If you’re only uploading blog posts and leaving them sitting there, you’re wasting potential link bait opportunities. Post each update on all your social channels, so Twitter, Facebook and Google+. If you’re only on one or two of these networks, get on the others. The more networks you’re on the higher the probability that your post will be amplified through a Like, Re-tweet or a Share, and the more likely it is that someone that sees it will want to link to is.

Please leave your thoughts below or on Twitter - @scottmalt

However one club is leading in the use of social media and is actively encouraging the use of it – Man City.

Below are the highlights of some of the social media initiatives Man City have put into place:

Follow The Captain

Last week Man City captain Vincent Kompany joined Twitter, but he didn’t just join randomly to see what Twitter was about as a number of celebrities have done. To announce his arrival, Vincent asked City fans to tweet him their motivational team talks ahead of last weekend’s FA Cup match against cross city rivals Manchester United using the hashtag #followthecaptain. The most inspirational tweet chosen by Kompany received his match day shirt, captain’s armband and a poster of their speech signed by the captain.

Considering he was sent off after 11 minutes, not the greatest of competitions!

Twitter Live Chats

Man City have held a number of Twitter live chat events with the players. A player is selected and a hashtag is then created which users can use to tweet the player. Fans who participate will hopefully have their question answered with a video of the player answering them added to the Man City YouTube channel. The last one of these live chats was with Nigel De Jong #asknigel

Big Screen Tweets

One of the latest innovative trials by Man City was to show the tweets of fans on the big screen before and after the games against Norwich City and Newcastle United at the Etihad Stadium. Tweets were shown between 1pm and 2:30pm and then from 5:15pm until 6pm. All tweets using the hashtag #blueview were moderated by the Man City web team and if deemed acceptable, posted onto the big screen for all the fans in the ground to see.

Training Session Video Stream

Open training sessions for the fans to watch their idols train is nothing new in the football world. But back in August 2010, City offered their growing fan base outside of Manchester, who couldn’t make it to the stadium, the opportunity to watch the training session on Facebook. Following the partnership between Facebook and Ustream, live streaming has been available through a tab on Facebook Pages.

YouTube

Back in October, City became the first Premier League club to sign a content deal with YouTube, which allowed the club to control its rights-owned and club-created YouTube videos whilst also allowing them to manage the advertising featured around their content. City are heavy users of YouTube and have an in-house production team that create more than 100 videos per month for the channel. The goal is to allow fans to gain a greater insight into the club than previously possible. This is a great way of growing their worldwide fan base, and allows fans to be more engaged and feel more involved with the club.

I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise that this hasn’t all happened by chance. Man City have invested heavily in digital, with a department headed up by Richard Ayers whose efforts were rewarded at the 2011 DADI Awards with the DADI Individual of the Year award. Did we mention that we won Best Use of Organic Search at the same awards ceremony?!

Are there any other initiatives that I’ve missed out? Do you know of any other sports teams taking a similar approach to City? Leave your thought below or on Twitter @andrewlowdon.

Using a fictional character call Adam Barak, the campaign cleverly uses the Timeline to show a year of his life with and without drugs. The left side of the timeline shows his life deteriorating with drug use and the right side shows his happy life without drug use.

I like this campaign because it is simple but gets its point across very effectively. However, as it uses a fake profile, it is in violation of Facebook’s rules so I’m not sure how long it will be there.

https://www.facebook.com/Antidrugstimeline

What do you think of this campaign? @rlparker81

Previously Twitter has allowed selected brands to take advantage of Twitter’s commercial opportunities. However now all brands can take advantage of these opportunities by using the self-service tool. They will be able to run campaigns targeted to keywords and interests.

Promoted Tweets

Promoted Tweets are used to strengthen an advertiser’s message whilst targeting the right people, in the right place at the right time. Targeting methods include:

• Promoted Tweets in search: reach users when they are searching for their interests. For example when I search for ‘Samsung’ I am presented with:

• Promoted Tweets in timelines: these appear near the top of a user’s timeline when they log in; they are used to target an advertiser’s followers or like their followers, for example:

• Geographic Targeting: target an advertiser’s message to a particular geography.  Currently these can be targeted at the country level or at the U.S regional level.

• Political Campaigns: promoted tweets can be used during the election season.

As Promoted Tweets are priced on a Cost-per-Engagement (CPE) basis you only pay when someone retweets, replies to, clicks or favourities your promoted tweet. The cost effectiveness of your campaign is increased by the free impressions on retweets extending the reach of your campaign. Promoted Tweets that engage users will appear more frequently.

Promoted Trends

In addition Promoted Trends can be used to capture a user’s attention by driving conversations and interest around an advertiser’s brand or product. Promoted Trends will appear in a prominent position at the top of a user’s timeline.

Promoted Accounts

Promoted accounts can be used to quickly build a strong base of followers and expand an advertiser’s presence. For example increasing the engagement of followers before a new product is released. Promoted Accounts are featured in the Who to Follow section; they appear on users pages that have been identified as having similar interests to an advertiser’s account.

Every Promoted Account comes with a Dashboard that enables advertisers to gain insight into their campaign’s performance. This enables them to track impressions, retweets, clicks, replies, and follows. It also enables them to see timelines of the activity and followers’ interests, geography, gender and engagement.

Will Twitter’s Self-Serve Ad Platform reach the scale of Google Adwords? Let me know your thoughts.

Here’s an apparent self-filmed video of Guez changing his name to Mark Zuckerberg (and seemingly struggling to justify his name change to officials).

As well as selling ‘Likes’, Guez also created multiple fake accounts on Facebook – also a breach of the ToS. A part of a series of legal tos and fros between both parties,  Guez’ latest move was to change his name to Mark Zuckerberg.

Aside from the opportunity to create articles and blogs with absurd titles (such as this one), this case has highlighted that social platform providers such as Facebook won’t tolerate third parties breaching their ToS by selling ‘Likes’ and other actions/features of their service that should only be actioned by valid users – and not simply bought en masse.

With social media having an increased effect on visitor numbers and even search engine results, it will be interesting to see whether search engines, such as Google, start to spend more time investigating bought ‘votes’, and penalising those who use such black hat techniques.

Could $40 for 100 Google +1 votes really be worth risking being de-listed completely from Google? I think not.

What are your thoughts? - @MeniroDev

While it’s never an easy thing to spend money in order to satisfy such a diverse and somewhat magnificent squad, we nonetheless responded to this call-to-arms by our glorious benefactors; the copywriting team and I used our specialisation to challenge colleagues over several word-based challenges. Hampers would go to both teams and individuals for three specific tasks.

(Pretention Alert) I’ve long been a fan of short poetry, given its ability to really show a person’s personality. Anyone who’s graced the hallowed halls of Epiphany will know that our company is as proud of the people who work there as much as it’s happy with the work they do, so I created the Epiphany Solutions Haiku Challenge. We wouldn’t be disappointed with the turnout over the month, either.

For those not familiar with the Japanese art of haiku, each short poem should follow a 5-7-5 syllable structure over three lines. Nearly 100 entries were submitted, including multiple entries from people within the company who I’m currently trying to poach from SEO, PPC and Links to add yet more talent to the copywriting department (don’t tell my boss). Here’s what they managed:

Recent addition to the company marketing director Tom Salmon was the first to submit his entry:

Epiphany ode.
A creative search focus.
Nice people also.

Meanwhile, graduate recruit Lucy Callaghan flexed her poetic muscles with a couple of pieces about her friends on the Links team:

Sometimes Jodie squeals
She giggles and goes bright red
Reasons unexplained.

James Hale is pensive.
He sits and he strokes his beard
Just another day.

Resident American Nicole Barbosa was happy to comment on her long-standing experience of Leeds:

All these funny accents
Make this Texan outnumbered
Across the large pond.

Meanwhile, managing director Rob Shaw was keen to relay the words of one of our clients:

At Epiphany,
Binary switches turn on.
Magic surges forth.

Music is a major facet of the workplace, as we use the likes of Spotify to create communal playlists. Steve Baker (I) and Steve Baker (II) respectively and fortuitously joined forces to explain this one:

Speakers cast their spell
Conjured music enchants ears
The eighties return.

Music selection
Webbo asked for driving rock
Clearly no taste here.

Another one of our highly talented graduates, Heather Millar, has recently gotten involved with the number one Epiphany sport: table football. She was particularly keen to explain one Mr Paratusic’s reaction to a recent match against a lady:

Lost table football
To a girl. “Must be a shark,”
Emir accuses

Ryan Jones, a recent addition to our brilliant PPC team, was also on hand to grapple one of the issues facing his role:

Haikus are just like
Adwords ads, in that you will
often run out of

We’re on the home straight – don’t worry. Jim Whittaker, one of our strongest performers throughout the copywriting Ministry of Fun tasks, used his accountancy background to knock out this ditty:

My cash flow statement
Could not be made to balance
PPC’d me off

The top three came from a diverse background of roles at Epiphany. Shane Quigley, our chief executive officer, fired a warning shot to his fellow founders with some sick rhymes:

The best director,
With speed of wit like Lecter,
Chief brand protector.

Account manager Rich Terry penned “An Ode to Wee Sales Wizard” in his spare time, referencing fellow hard-working business development director Tom Bagnall in his offering that referenced his cowboy boots (which I believe are not as good as my own, by the way):

Them shoes! Four-inch heels
Tom Bagnall brings in the deals
Height equals sales skills

However, the tireless efforts of James Dawson would bring home the gold. Combining the structure with elements of our natural world and the five senses – much like haikus should – he was able to communicate the usual goings-on of lunchtimes at the end of the week while keeping pretention to a minimum:

The room fills with scent.
Salt and vinegar kisses.
Fish and chip Friday.

Congratulations to James, who – as a manly man – selected a hamper of Farmison.com meaty goodies as a treat. Meanwhile, the PPC team – led by Steve Baker (I) – would triumph in the team stakes and claim a fabulous Cadbury hamper with the following:

An advert calls out
The searcher cannot refuse
Adwords has been tamed

Hopefully, we’ll run a few more of these kinds of things in the future to give you more of an insight into the people who grace the Leeds and London offices. Have you got any haikus about our industry? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter - @matthewgardner

Photo: British Haiku Society

If you’re not familiar with Facebook Sponsored Stories, here’s an intro blog I wrote at the beginning of this year which will hopefully serve as a helpful overview.

Speaking to ClickZ.com, Facebook spokesperson Annie Ta said:

You will never see a post from a page you are not a fan of, or from people who are not your friends. We want to be really thoughtful about this, so we’ll have a lot of rate limits in place. We hope to show people no more than one Sponsored Story in their News Feeds per day and we’ll clearly label the story. They’ll also be of the same size and treatment as other stories in News Feed.

At present, Sponsored Story ad units tend to show on the top-right hand side of Facebook and are clearly labelled as being a ‘Sponsored Story’.

As you can see from the image above, this resembles a typical news feed post you have come to expect from any pages you ‘like’ on Facebook, with the only difference being the inclusion of the ‘Sponsored’ text. The above type of Sponsored Story is one that would be shown to you if you already like that particular page. In effect, what Ben & Jerry’s have done, if we use this particular example, is to ensure that a post they have made stays visible to all their fans throughout the day, rather than over a brief period before being lost amongst the general ‘noise’ of the Facebook newsfeed.

It will be interesting to see how Sponsored Stories look when they detail actions your friends have taken interacting with Facebook pages you don’t currently like. For example, let’s say that your friend John Smith likes the Facebook page for Carlsberg. You don’t currently ‘like’ the Carlsberg Facebook page, but in your newsfeed for a day, you begin to see details of this action. From Facebook’s perspective, the hope would be that this in turn causes you to also want to like Carlsberg page. There is every chance this could happen, but I suppose there’s also every chance it could irritate you if you don’t deem Carlsberg relevant to your interests!

Why has Facebook made this change?

Sponsored Story adverts are nothing new – as mentioned above, they have existed on the right-hand side of the Facebook layout for the majority of this year. Moving them centrally into the news feed is however a new move, and an interesting one by Facebook.

I have a couple of theories why this may be. The first is that users are naturally quite wary of advertising on Facebook and may have begun to consciously or sub-consciously ignore adverts on the right-hand side. Many users do still interact with the adverts on Facebook – I see this from my own existing campaigns. However, for Facebook to generate even more revenue, greater interaction may well be needed.

Moving Sponsored Stories into the news feed may, in effect, cause users to drop their guard regarding adverts. I think we can all agree that whilst the adverts say ‘Sponsored’, the use of a light grey font doesn’t make this particularly obvious that they are adverts. As such, this may cause more people to engage.

My second theory comes down purely to idea of prime real-estate on a page. I have no doubt that users’ eyes on Facebook are drawn more towards the news feed than they are to the right-hand side of the page.

Facebook will have conducted numerous eye-tracking/mouse-trail studies to assess just where its users look and interact with when on the site. Quite simply, if adverts are moved into the news feed, it is highly likely that they will stand a greater chance of being seen in the first place.

What are the potential implications of this change?

This is a risky move by Facebook, and one they may have to adopt quite cautiously to begin with. Firstly, any increase in advertising never tends to go down too well in these types of situations and angry outbursts will likely follow. That said, any changes on Facebook are never really well received to begin with (the new Timeline being another..), but are soon adopted and accepted as the norm in no time.

I think it’s wise that Facebook will only look to serve one Sponsored Story advert per day in a user’s feed. The last thing Facebook will want is for users to begin losing their faith and trust in the information they’re seeing in their feeds. If they suspect that the majority are all paid for, their natural interest in returning to check could decrease, which would be disastrous.

Brands will also need to be wary of using these types of adverts, particularly if they follow the example detailed above for Ben & Jerry’s. Using Sponsored Stories to push content to your existing fan-base and keep it at the top of the feed may well have a positive impact by gaining increased exposure, but it could equally have a detrimental impact too.

I know from my own personal experience on Facebook, that if I see a page I have liked sending out numerous updates over a short period of time that begin cluttering up my newsfeed, I’m inclined to want to hide them in the future or even ‘unlike’ their page. If a Sponsored Story message stays visible for a whole day, it could run the risk of forcing your current fans to want to unlike your page or hide any future posts from their feeds.

It’s a bold move from Facebook that’s for sure. Will this be the start of greater advertising being seen in user’s news feeds in general, not just Sponsored Stories? Time will tell.

So what will the news feed format of the Sponsored Story look like? -@PeterGould83

The tree is actually an 11 meter tall art installation in Clarke Quay, Singapore, and is made up of 48 LCD screens. To add a message to the tree, you need to go to their Facebook App where you can select your message and tag up to 16 friends. There is also a choice of animation to display your message.

There are also going to be events including a ‘virtual tree choir’ where 20 singers from all over the world will come together via the tree to sing Christmas carols. There is a booth next to the tree where people can take pictures of themselves to become a human tree ornament and there will be a range of music and light shows shown on the tree as well.

It’s not every day you can get a Christmas tree to wish your friends and family a Happy Christmas! The tree will be active from the 17 to 26 December and you can add your message here.

The making of the social Christmas tree:

Usually when a new web service comes out, I jump at the chance to use it. Most of them I use once or twice and decide it’s not for me, and others I use daily. One thing that ties them all together is my online identity. Unless you’re a very early participant or you have an unusual name, you’re unlikely to get an easy to remember username.

Many people therefore use an online identity – a username that is specific to them- and is unusual enough not to be taken as soon as a new service is launched. This username can become something of a social media identifier, which links together all your different usernames across the web.

A related example, and one that works the other way, is when an online identity isn’t what you expect it to be. Recently Remy Sharp, a web developer from Brighton, was inundated with tweets unrelated to him. It was the day the band REM broke up, and Remy’s Twitter username is, you guessed it, @rem. The official REM Twitter account is @remhq, but people assumed that a band as big as REM would have the Twitter name @rem and sent hundreds of messages to him.

So setting up your online identity is very useful: it allows you to find colleagues, friends and relate to someone’s identity on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Spotify and any other social network. As someone who works on the web, I like being able to show people what I have worked on across a range of media. But does this have negative implications as well as positive?

Identity theft is an increasing concern, and if your online presences are connected, it means if one is hacked, it is easier for the thief to take over the rest too. This can be especially dangerous when children are concerned.

For example, if you go to http://pipl.com and enter your name, you may well be able to find a profile of you that draws in information from all over the web. It can be surprising how much is shared, and if you and your friends can keep track of your identity, who else can?

The important thing is to keep it secure. By changing your password regularly, and making sure you sign in regularly to check there’s no unauthorised activity on your account, you can keep tabs on all of your online profiles.

Let me know on Twitter what you think -@chris5marsh.

This is the time when we all assess the events of the past year. What have I achieved? What were the high points? What were the low points? Also, what was the best link that was shared with or forwarded to me?

Personally for me it is the following video:

Why does this work for me? I don’t really know but I am obsessed with it.  It makes my day ever time I watch it which is quite regularly. I am not even sure who shared it with me. It is also quite old (so I am hardly on the cutting edge with this piece), but all these points are irrelevant. It is a piece of content which I return to with a inexplicably high frequency and content that I share with other people over Facebook and Twitter. This, for me, is something we strive for when we are producing engaging content for our clients. I just need one happy enough to align their brand with He-Man.

What is your favourite link from this year? I am interested in building up a list of the irrelevant and bizarre. Please leave your comments below or on Twitter - @iamgaz

Happy Christmas!

Top 5 Twitter Accounts to follow:

@GarrettFrench – a fountain of link building knowledge can be found via Garrett’s Twitter account. His wealth of knowledge on link building can be measured by his contributions on Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch, as well as his creation of Ontolo and the later mentioned Citation Labs toolset.

@debramastaler – Debra is a tweeter and re-tweeter of very useful link building information. Worth following if you want to hear from a veteran linkbuilder.

@wilreynolds – Wil doesn’t regularly tweet about link building, but when he does, it’s always great information. I started following him based on an excellent presentation at LinkLove. He apparently “LOVES building links”.

@stuntdubl – I’ve only just started following Todd Malicoat but he has made the list based on the fact that he is considered one of the top link building experts around.

@randfish – despite the fact he tweets about everything SEO and not just link building, every link builder needs to follow Rand. Many consider him to be one of the most influential people in SEO.

Top 5 Blogs to read:

Wiep.net – Wiep Knol is a link marketing consultant from the Netherlands and blogs about a wide range of link building techniques. The very best thing about his blog is the work he puts into creating “link building this month” – which is a list of the top link building posts of a particular month.

Ross Hudgens – You’ll find Ross actually features several times in this guide because he produces some great link building posts. I haven’t been following his blog for long but what I’ve seen so far has been very useful.

Ontolo – As a link building tools company, you’d expect them to produce some useful link building posts. They do produce some great guides. The only downside is a lot of their guides are focused around their own tools (as you’d expect).

The Link Spiel – Although the posts aren’t regular every month, Deborah Mastaler is a veteran in the link building world and writes some excellent posts about all areas of link building. The posts are a lot more personal and approachable than most major SEO websites. I particularly enjoyed Is an image worth a thousand words?

Seargh Engine Land – I wasn’t sure whether to include this in the list or not because to view all the posts you must be a premium member. However, the blog is regularly updated with useful information for both new starters and veterans.

Did I miss any that you’d like to add? Please leave me a comment below or on Twitter - @jakeyrainbow

James Ellington has a personal best time of 20.53 seconds for the 200m but is the only top sprinter without a sponsor. Years of injury have meant that he has slipped down the rankings which means he has been passed over by the major sponsors. However he is having his best ever season and has run 200m in the fastest time by a British athlete this year.

This could provide a unique advertising opportunity for someone as he has promised he “will wear the sponsor’s branded kit at every possible opportunity where appropriate, including at training and press events, until after the 2012 Games”.

So if you fancy a sprinter for Christmas, are seeking a new advertising opportunity or are just feeling particularly philanthropic, he has a reserve price of £30,000.

Happy Bidding!

-@rlparker81

As Twitter and social media in general are becoming more mainstream as marketing communication tools, we are seeing more and more of these social media faux pas. Below are some examples of poorly executed and managed tweets by brands.

1. Habitat

Furniture store Habitat created a ‘social media strategy’ which involved using trending topic hashtags at the start of their tweets. Habitat decided this would be a good way to make the brand more visible without considering the fact that their tweets were completely irrelevant to the topic. The final straw for Twitter users was using hashtags for the election in Iran and the political unrest around this topic.

2. Kenneth Cole

US fashion retailer Kenneth Cole took a similar line to Habitat earlier this year. During the Arab Spring uprising, Cole tweeted about their sale and linked it to the hashtag #Cairo, which was trending worldwide at the time.

One of the dangers with managing social media campaigns is allowing someone aligned with your brand to misrepresent the voice of the brand. However, in this case it looks as though the rogue tweet came from Mr Cole himself as indicated by the KC at the end of the tweet.

3. Chrysler

Another good example of giving a third party the authority to tweet on your behalf is American car company Chrysler. Earlier this year the Chrysler account tweeted “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f*****g drive.” The tweet was quickly deleted and the blame placed on a now ex-employee of Chrysler’s now former social media agency.

4. American Red Cross

The American Red Cross got involved in the action when their social media specialist managed to accidentally send out a tweet intended for her personal account, which was blamed on her inability to use Hootsuite.

However, unlike most brands who can put their head in the sand and hope the storm blows over, the American Red Cross made light of the tweet later tweeting that the rogue tweet had been deleted and ensured that ‘the Red Cross was sober’. A great example for brands in how to counteract an embarrassing situation with humility and humour.

5. Chase Bank

Technically not a Twitter fail, but when the Chase Bank website crashed, there was a failure to communicate the issue effectively to customers. It took Chase nearly two days to inform customers that the site was down, by which time customers had already been venting their frustrations on Twitter. Not only were customers frustrated at not being able to use the site, but were also concerned that the site had been hacked and their money was in danger. A simple tweet from a Chase Twitter account could have quickly alleviated these concerns and helped customers become aware of the issues at hand.

These are just a few examples of social media mishaps by big brands. Are there any that you think should be on the list? Drop me a message below or on Twitter @andrewlowdon if you know of any more.

How many times have we checked who’s tweeted us to find a spammy link with a poorly written, generic message?

“Hey, look at this cool link I found!”

 “Make $$$ with your blog”

Or even (and this is my personal favourite):

“Get 50% Discount on Viagra by clicking this link:”

As riveting as these messages may be (and however much I might want to replenish my Viagra supply at a whopping 50 per cent discount), it’s an unquestionably poor attempt at Twitter marketing.

(N.B – I did actually suggest to my colleague @PeterGould83 about coining the word ‘Marktwitting’ for this context. He told me it sounded like someone saying ‘marketing’ with a lisp…)

The golden rule for Twitter outreach is not to spam. It’s lazy and ineffective. We’re always far too tempted to just Ctrl+C our way through Twitter campaigns – it is easy to forget that the beauty of Twitter really is the art of conversation, and an art that shouldn’t be lost. Where else on the web can you join in conversations with millions of others by the correct use of a hash-tag?

It’s not just the tendency to copy and paste that will have you branded a ‘spammer’. If you’re telling people what they already know, or just plain stating the obvious, your tweet is likely to be ignored.

The main risks of succumbing to spam-bot tactics can probably be summarised in the following three points:

1. You negate any digital authority you’ve built within your niche

2. You’ll lose followers

3. It’s a waste of time (and time, as we know, is money!)

Corporate outreach through Twitter should be personalised, relevant and precisely targeted for maximum efficiency. The only thing that should ever be copied into a tweet is a link or an email address you want them to see.

Don’t be afraid to put a bit of yourself on your Twitter account – after all, it is a social network! Unless you have an ardent desire to tweet about your deepest darkest secrets, don’t have separate personal and professional accounts. Allow your digital profile to reflect you as a person. We relate better to individuals when we know that they’re not regurgitating corporate robots.

It’s also a good idea to develop your bio to reflect your personal and professional persona and use those 140 characters wisely. Remember, it’s the first thing people are going to look at when they check out your profile.

Now, with old-school email outreach, any spelling and grammar discrepancies are a real faux-pas.  Naturally, the rules can be slightly bent for Twitter outreach, as users are limited to only 140 characters per tweet.  Abbreviations are often necessary, but it is important make sure you stick to the common abbreviations and to not misspell them. Use full words whenever possible – the aim is to be clear and concise.

And finally, a message to Oxford University Press: if you feel compelled to include ‘marktwitting’ in the dictionary – tweet me! (Just make sure it’s not spam…)

What are your White Hat Rules for Twitter outreach? Tweet me @amybyard

‘Designing for Digital’ saw a number of  leading designers and Creative Directors (I don’t include myself in this list) from some of the top Leeds agencies (but I do include Epiphany in this list) , web teams and freelancers. The panel participated in an open discussion on various points about designing for all type of digital environments with encouraged engagement from the audience.

It was a very interesting discussion and good to hear a number of differing view points on the issues surrounding the concept of designing for digital. The panel covered a number of areas from the impact of responsive design to using new technology in our designs.

However, as the discussion moved around the panel, there appeared to be one recurring theme – what is the role of a designer? It was a question we never really got to answer due to time constraints and it was never really put as plainly as that for the panel to answer.

It is something that has been rattling around in my head since the event. What should a designer be doing? What should their role provide?

During the discussion, we covered whether or not a designer should code CSS and Markup. I commented that as we move towards more rapid development techniques and away from designing in Photoshop first, the requirement for a designer to be comfortable with editing and writing code becomes more apparent. So yes, a designer should be able to code.

However, as time has passed, I feel like I want to retract my position. If I think about all the projects I have worked on in my 12 years in this role, all the successful projects I have been involved in has seen a clear specialisation of roles. It is simple: coders code, developers build systems, and designers design.

This, in my experience, is what produces the best results. It is how you bring all these groups together that produces winning websites. A designers role in the delivery of a website should be to provide the best user experience and to help bring brand values through expressive design. They should be tasked with focusing on this area and not get bogged down in the details of the build. Sure there should be an appreciation of the codebase and the development constraints, but this is something which is learned through experience and effective working groups.

But ultimately, a designer should design. However, my worry is that as the roles of front end developer and designer start to blur, we will start to see the reduction in sites with personality and creative flair. The potential for designers to fall back on ideological  code bases and agreed library sets, rather than having the freedom to expire new ideas and methods of engagements, is there.

What are your thoughts on this? Please leave a comment below or on Twitter - @iamgaz

In their report, Mayur Patel and Michele McLellan discuss the need for websites to act in an entrepreneurial manner in order to succeed, stressing the need for engagement as part of this. This is in no way a new concept, but too often when a group of writers or journalists get together to launch a site providing news or content, they may concentrate too much on what they want to write about and not on the audience they are targeting. Sustainment issues are therefore swept under the carpet as there is no long-term plan.

The report lays out three essentials that a non-profit site must have to make it sustainable:

1. A business development strategy and the capacity to execute it

2. A high level of audience focus and innovative approaches to build community engagement

3. Technological capacity to support and track engagement

It may come as a surprise to learn that news sites that are not part of big publishing groups often rely on the generosity of their readers in order to survive in the first instance. The report states that it is important for news sites to grow the input from those initial donations and to develop sustenance through memberships, subscriptions and sponsorships. In order to do this, a high level of audience focus and innovation is required because the site needs to appeal to readers in order to persuade them to contribute. Like buskers, they are reliant on impressing their audience and making their offering seem worthwhile. Community engagement helps with this by developing both the brand of the site directing the focus of its writing. This can in turn lead to raising revenue through attracting advertising or developing events such as conferences, which the established audience will find appealing. The ability to track support and engagement and the development through these processes is essential to hone the model.

If a site is successful in developing a business model in this way, the question of whether the site then remains non-profit or chooses to embrace the model and push it as far as it can may then emerge. It is interesting to track these developments first-hand; one good example of a UK site that relies in part on philanthropy is Fleetstreetblues. This is a site for new journalists that discusses industry issues, gives tips on getting a job and – perhaps most importantly for engagement purposes – features job advertisements. I used to visit the site quite regularly when I first left university a few years ago and as it did then, it still features a request for donations. The current plea for funds fits neatly in with the issues we are considering:

“OK, so it’s hardly a business model to rely on for the future of journalism, but it would be nice if this labour of love earned us a little beer money. Think of it like busking. There’s no charge for reading – but if you like it, tip some change into our hat.”

I would say that on a personal level, the site now appears to feature more advertisements than it did in the past. If my suspicions are true, this may show some development of a business model on the part of those who run the site, but it clearly still depends on some level on donations.

As Patel and McLellan conclude in their report, it is no longer good enough to just provide quality content online. In part – referring to one of my earlier blogs (here)  – you need your content to be rated, appreciated and known if you want it to find an audience.

I would struggle to put it as simply as they themselves do when they state: “There are many unknowns in the emerging field of non-profit news organisations. But it is clear that successful ventures will aspire well beyond producing high-quality journalistic content.

“Entrepreneurial revenue development, audience focus and a mission of engagement, and technology to support that mission, are essential components of a sustainable not-for-profit news venture.”

What are your thoughts? Please leave them below or on Twitter - @fayBerg

Businesses in the US and around the world have discovered the benefit of these updated barcodes and have found unique ways to present them to their customers. Companies like American Airlines, who brought out their Mobile Boarding Pass in July 2010, recognised the demand for this type of technology at the right time, and as a result, now offer apps for iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Phone users. This is a winning deal for both American and its passengers: happier travellers means a rise in frequency of travel and a satisfaction that you are flying with the best and most innovative.

As of yesterday, eBay opened a shop in London, designed to operate around customers purchasing via QR codes. For five days from 1 December, the shop will be open and without the facility of tills, shoppers will be encouraged to scan a product’s code using a scanner on their smartphone. This will then direct shoppers to the eBay payment site. According to a survey conducted last month of 1,500 UK consumers, 50 % of those polled had either scanned a QR code or were aware of the technology. This is slightly higher than the 36% in the US who could identify a QR code.

Department store giant JC Penney hopes to increase the awareness of QR codes with its new concept for shoppers called ‘Santa Tag’ that personally targets mobile users. With each purchase this Christmas, shoppers will receive a sticker with an individual QR code that can be scanned by the recipient that plays a recorded voice message. Once received, the recipient can scan the code to hear the message. Here is an instructional video that shows the concept:

While this may be limited to only those with QR code readers, this is a great step forward for JC Penney. Still recovering from its slap on the wrist from Google in February for using ‘black hat’ optimisation, this will be the publicity the department store needs to bounce back, especially during the festive season. But why is it important for businesses and brands, like American Airlines and JC Penney’s, to use QR codes?

For small businesses, this might seem like a daunting first step to encourage customers to engage with your brand. To piggy back off JC Penney’s marketing campaign, promotions and offers are a good place to start. If your business has a new product, invest the time and design a QR code that you can promote to customers both online and in the store. But like any marketing campaign, make sure you define the overall purpose of the campaign and determine the takeaways. The chances of a customer engaging with the QR code are indeed higher if you identify the purpose and takeaways prior to the initial launch. It is also vital that you identify whether a QR code is appropriate for both your business and customers.

The importance of using a QR code, especially for smaller businesses, is definitely the opportunity to increase brand awareness. While bigger brands like Coca-Cola and Starbucks have the weight of being a blue chip client behind each campaign, do not let this diminish the idea behind a new and innovative way to reach your customers.

Like all offers, a customer is more likely to participate if the offer is genuine i.e. explain the incentive properly and follow through on your promise. This will also ensure further trust in your brand and the campaign. Promoting the QR code on Twitter and Facebook can guarantee additional sharing amongst other customers and will generate a further buzz on your social network pages. Think of the potential a tweet can have if it is in front of your hundreds or thousands of followers! Also, shy away from using the traditional QR code and try using a more creative design like the BBC did below:

This adds uniqueness to your QR code and will also increase further brand awareness.

One of the most important factors to consider before signing on to the QR code channel is the landing page that it will be hosted on. If at present you do not have a mobile-friendly website, you will need to sort that out before launching the QR code. This is vital to your campaign as it could potentially prevent users from a quality user experience.

Also keep in mind the location of your QR code. Do you want it to be displayed in the store, online, or both? Keep in mind that your customers will probably spend the majority of their time walking around the store and at the till. These are both great places to showcase the QR code and will encourage your customers to stay in the store longer and visit more frequently, resulting in higher ROI and amount of transactions.

Once your QR code has been on display for a week or so, it is time to measure its performance. By using Facebook and Twitter, the number of comments and tweets should give you a good idea of how often it is being shared and talked about. However, how do you measure the actual scans? You should measure the number of scans but also the time of customer engagement. A few minutes means your customers are engaging properly with your QR code and can underline a successful campaign. However, a low number of scans does not necessarily deem a project a failure unless it is over a span of a month. To ensure your campaign does not fall short of your expectations, test your QR code thoroughly before launching.

My suggestion would be to test a QR code on your customers first before making it the centre point of your new brand line campaign. These 2D codes can offer your business a great deal and allow a greater user experience for your customers.

Want to test it for yourself? Have a go with Google’s URL shortener: http://goo.gl/

1. Paste your URL in the box and hit shorten.
2. Then select details and at the top of the refreshed page, you have your QR code.
3. Have fun and good luck!

Google has always been good at adding a bit of fun to their users otherwise humdrum day, and it is not just for fun either. It is a really good way of keeping your users talking about you.

Most people are looking for a moment of delight in their day and some companies are really good at providing these moments with their products or services.

I’ll never forget the first time, during a commute home, I was listening  to music on my iPhone, and received an incoming call. I was amazed when the music faded out when my call came in, and then faded back in when the call ended. That was a revelation! I simply didn’t expect a phone to work like that.

It is things like this that define your product and are a great way to encourage users to talk about your brand.  Googles Doodles are an unexpected distraction to your otherwise goal-orientated search. Similarly, the bottom of an Innocent smoothie carton is not where you expect to find a cheeky message.

By focusing less on the basic design needs of the user, and more on the higher level functions that aim to make the user happy by doing something unexpected, you can best demonstrate those intangible brand values that a traditional approach to brand building can not reach.

My favourite Easter egg of late has been from fashion site www.wakakuu.com. Try typing the following when on the site : ↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → BA and see what happens.

What are your favourite unexpected features that brands offer? -@iamgaz

Apparently so…

Back in May, Adobe released a product called SocialAnaltyics. This tool aggregated activity from all social networks and online communities, and identified how that activity impacted brand perception and other key business metrics. However, there wasn’t a monetary value associated with the activity.

This is where Facebook enters. A recent collaboration between Facebook and Adobe has resulted in Facebook providing Adobe with their API. This will allow marketers to measure metrics such as the specific monetary value of each click of the Like button against specific content. Marketers can also analyse the impact of brand awareness by determining which fans of the brand are the biggest influencers to others and have driven the most revenue to the company.

As a result, this collaboration enables marketers to assess the business value of social media campaigns.  The SocialAnalytics tool also has the ability to measure the influence of other platforms like Twitter and WordPress.

Currently businesses use social dashboards to identify trends; however, these do not identify how consumers make a purchase decision. This collaboration will now provide marketers with a ‘causation’ metric rather than correlation.

A best practice guide, produced by Facebook and Adobe, will help marketers measure and optimise the Facebook Like button on their brand pages. This guide will also provide guidance on where the optimum place for the button should be placed and how to measure the ROI from the consumers clicking on the button.

Contrary to the above efforts, a recent report from TNS identified 61% of Britons do not even want to engage with brands via social media.

What are your thoughts on businesses engaging with customers through the Facebook Like button? Let me know your thoughts below!

Want to know the common denominator of learning here? These questionable historical facts are highlighted and commemorated by Google’s Doodles. They aren’t short of their branding-based campaigns, either; if you’ve ever decided that you’re feeling lucky and simply click the famous Google button without considering a search term, you’re taken straight to the Google Logos page, emphasising just how much the company prides itself on how it responds to “key” events.

This approach has been seen in two different lights by separate camps. You have the side that goes “that’s pretty cool”, as well as the other that says “that’s just utterly ridiculous. Sort it out, Google”. It’s hard to blame either for their statements, though it does beg the question: what forces Google to make its Doodle decisions?

Google webmaster Dennis Hwang makes it quite clear why the company’s Doodles are used. “How far we work in advance depends. Sometimes, we react really quickly to current events,” he explains. “Some logos are created in less than 24 hours, such as the Mars Rover landing doodle. For different countries across the globe, if there’s a special day and we think it’s in line with the Google brand, we want to commemorate it.”

In light of the somewhat questionable ice cream sundae escapade, it seems clear that Hwang wants to emphasise one thing: “Google is kooky”. It’s something that they do to get people searching for something they may never have read up about beforehand, or maybe it’s just to raise a smile about something good-natured. To other people, however, it’s a simple blip in service. More extreme folk will say they’re attacking America or offending all manner of “regular” people around the globe. People with extreme views tend to exist in every social circle, though, so it’s best to shrug some of these off.

Either way, we can expect that upcoming Doodles will celebrate the Queen’s diamond jubilee, mark the start of the 2012 Olympic Games, and – in its usual about-face, kooky, and somewhat strange soon-after-death birthday celebrations – celebrate the 60th birthday of Steve Jobs in 2015. If that last prediction comes true, I do believe I’m entitled to become a king or emperor of some sort. Don’t go hi-fiving too much, though; it’s just something that Google would be likely to do to generate a bit of exposure.

What has been your favourite Google Doodle? Let me know below or on Twitter - @matthewgardner

Search engines love new, unique content and by adding review functionality to your site, customers are providing this for you. Customers are also likely to describe your product in unique ways, which can help attract new rankings and more long tail traffic.

Sounds like a great idea, right? But how do you encourage users to actually engage with your site and review your products online? Here are a few pointers…

Ask Them

It sounds simple, but many customers may just require some gentle encouragement to write reviews. If you have just added user review functionality to your site, send an email to your recent customer database to ask if they would review their purchases.

Make sure that you include the review link at all touch points and remind customers that their feedback is very welcome:

-      Customer newsletters

-      Thank you / confirmation emails

-      Documentation sent out with the product

-      Post-delivery follow up email

-      Offline locations (for example, a card with URL given to customers after eating in a restaurant)

Reach out to key influencers

Do some research to identify the top influencers who are already talking about you online (in blogs, forums and social media). Then contact them (using a bit of flattery) to ask them to be the first to review products on your website.

Give people a reason to comment

A fundamental business aim is to ensure products have USPs and meet customer expectations. It is important to ensure that your products are worth talking about before asking customers to leave comments.

Additionally, people may be more likely to leave reviews if they know their feedback is valued. Tell customers how their feedback is used, particularly if it is considered during new product development.

Reviews can also be used to benefit the customer directly. Amazon use customer reviews to inform their ‘recommended products’ listings which are targeted at individuals.

Incentives

Many sites offer rewards to customers who leave reviews like money off their next purchase. While this is likely to encourage more users to leave comments, it can result in more ‘spam’ reviews and so need to be closely monitored. Additionally, it is important to ensure that you reward both positive and negative reviews equally. This may raise concerns for companies who are worried about the effect of negative reviews. However, consumers expect to see some negative reviews and 100% positive reviews across a site may raise concerns about their reliability and actually reduce brand trust.

Incentives do not have to be money based. Many sites reward regular contributors with a ‘top contributor’ badge, listing or moderator positions. Again, Amazon’s review scheme is a fantastic example of this, with a table of top reviewers based on the number of reviews they have submitted and how helpful these reviews are to other users. Reviewers are encouraged to continue to review products to retain their top positions or rise up in the ranks.

Testing panel

Think about setting up a ‘testing panel’ for your products and invite a group of key influencers and loyal customers to join. If possible, give away products, samples or free trials to the panel for them to try out and, in return, ask that they provide reviews online. This is particularly influential if you can give away samples of products before their official launch.

Don’t put people off ­­writing future reviews

While user-generated content does need a certain amount of moderation to ensure it meets editorial standards, does not contain offensive content and possibly to correct spelling and grammar, it is crucial that you do not over moderate your user-generated content. If users see that you are editing their reviews, it can lead to distrust, damage to your brand, and, in some cases, legal consequences. Even if customers do buy from you in the future, they would be unlikely to leave another review.

How do you encourage users to leave comments on your e-commerce site? What encourages you to leave comments as a customer? I’d love to hear your comments below.

(Photo: Reputation Online)

Do marketers put any effort into their advertising? Do they struggle to find good imagery for their adverts, or do people just not realise how terrible their campaigns are?

To find out, I created a new Facebook profile with no history. Surely no one would target their campaigns so broadly that my new profile with nothing more than an age and a gender would receive adverts?

I was served adverts and they were bad. In fact, they were probably the worst adverts I have ever seen on Facebook.

It’s almost laughable how much effort these advertisers put in. Here are just a few of the gems I was shown:

What are these adverts trying to sell? I have no idea what Ariantalk might be or what exactly platinum protection is. The final one even appears to have used a photo of a computer screen taken with a phone.

After having set my location to London, I was immediately shown a few more ‘highly relevant’ ads:

The first ad seems to have no point at all, the second one is using a picture of a man with his hands down his pants and the third one is just terrible. Whilst marginally better than the first lot of adverts I got, this combination of shoddy imagery and odd messages aren’t going to be attracting clicks either.

Taking another step deeper into the territory of the scammer, I included “working from home” in my Facebook profile interest section.

Here is what I got:

Their advert’s landing page:

And the homepage of the company:

This is typical of a lot of these adverts. They just scream spam, and everybody knows it.

So what can potential Facebook advertisers learn from this?

It’s incredibly hard to catch a user’s attention and setting up a Facebook campaign is not something that advertisers should take lightly. However, while it may seem easy to start a campaign, it’s just not worth spending a single penny if you aren’t prepared. You need to have quality imagery, a snappy title and a compelling call to action. I am not going to click on a picture of a girl sitting on a red Mercedes that offers me 500£/2h. Similarly, I’m not interested in an advert that displays an unreadable poster with a headline ‘Arientalk’ and I doubt anyone else is either.

The general public is aware of the adverts they see each day. If your ads fall below the high standard set by the rest of the industry, people will ignore them. Creating a quality advert is probably the single most important thing you will do when setting up a Facebook campaign and its certainly the thing you should spend most of your time on.

Need help setting up your first Facebook campaign? Please leave me a note below or on Twitter - @matt_buckley

The ‘Twitter fail’ list has become a big talking point over the last few years with major companies, political groups, celebrities and even just the average person posting tweets they wish they hadn’t.

Here are some of those embarrassing tweets over the years:

1. The Westboro Baptist Church is infamous for their irrational and prejudice protests and they don’t fail to disappoint with their Twitter account either. With the recent passing of ex Apple CEO Steve Jobs, they saw an opportunity to display how small-minded they really are.

However, you don’t expect people to give you a hard time on the internet for something that transpired at said party, especially when they’re at the other end of the country. Such was my quandary this weekend after a party in Newcastle led to my social demise via Facebook and its “wonderful” recent updates – you know, the ones that are splitting people down the middle. The only one that applies to me, really, is the integration of the very excellent Spotify – proof, if proof were necessary, that buying music really still is the way forward in society.

As you can see from the image below, my list of music was going pretty well until it was hijacked by young Geordies looking to ruin the flow of hard-and-fast funk, soul, ska and classic rock:

It was later rescued in favour of dependable hip-hop from the likes of the Sugarhill Gang, but no – it was there for all to see. My account had played four Aqua songs in a row, starting with ‘Doctor Jones’, the band’s second number one from 1998. Lollipop (Candyman) was second to go on. I was distraught enough on the night, but the next morning I woke up to find that Spotify and Facebook had colluded against me – a music-loving citizen – to give my friends the following chances to have a pop at me:

I felt like blaming Spotify, but it’s impossible to complain about it. Facebook was my second target but, well, why should I complain about it? The social networking giant has been for me what it is for countless millions of others – a way to keep in touch, have a laugh and, at worst, act as a great place to kill time (second only, perhaps, to Reddit).

There was a whole new study on Facebook’s new changes that was published on 17 October by USA Today. In it, they interviewed a whopping 2,000 people about what they thought about the new features, as well as the privacy issue that comes with them. The findings? The same as you’d expect, really; people don’t like the new changes and often don’t notice they’re there. The ones who do are quite vocal about their distaste for them, as you’d expect. I’m sure that if you’re a Facebook user, chances are you’ve seen one of many stupidly ironic anti-Facebook/Zuckerberg chain status updates, or one of the many Groups that Facebook refuses to listen to – as per usual.

The thing is, people can’t complain about Facebook’s changes. People get up in arms and cry their eyes out about how their News Feed is full of stuff they don’t care for, or that they’re indifferent to new features such as Timelines. They aren’t paying for it, and neither are you or I. Put up or shut up. Even if it wasn’t my fault Aqua was playing at that party – seriously, it wasn’t, I promise – it was my fault for putting myself in that position by using my Spotify Premium account to rid my good friends of terrible adverts. Facebook just wants to get more involved with your digital habits, and you can turn them off if you wish.

If you use Facebook, stop whining about these enhancements. Nine times out of ten, they work out for the better. If you think you’re being spied on by corporate executives, think about what you send on there and why you joined in the first place. If you hate the way they work, quit Facebook. See how long you last without it.

Seriously, though, I didn’t put Aqua on at that party.

-@matthewgardner