Archive for the ‘Social media’ Category

Google testing a redesigned search results page for US search users

May 7th, 2011

In the U.S. Google users are seeing a different look and feel to their search results page. This is the latest of several “tests” on Google.com – such as some users seeing “Google Voice Search” earlier this week.

New Google Search Result Test - May 2011

As seen above (click the image to see a full size version) – the search results page has more white space, a sort of muted colour tone, and PPC ads are not as obvious as before, since the colour of the PPC ads shaded much lighter.

Several users will notice the “cache” option has been removed from Google, much to the chagrin of SEO’s and users who want to check out a page before it loads in its entirety. However, they have replaced this from a visual standpoint, with “Google preview” – though this shows a page that one can hardly delve much information from.

Each result is also split by a dotted line, so that one can see where result one ends and two begins. And there is space between the result link and the snippet below. Overall, many people are guessing that this spacing below and above the title / link text may be a space for Google to later put their “+1″ button and various other social networking based aspects.

Last but not least, the results are not underlined anymore, which also has received mixed reactions. Unlike the recent layout changes on Google, this seems a bit more drastic. Several sites covered the story immediately with many users reacting to the change so shocked, that they thought it was a virus!

Let us know what you think.

Is Social Media Affecting Our ‘Real’ Lives?

March 25th, 2011

Often people moan a lot about the lack of privacy in our social media communication, particularly since Facebook and Twitter both make regular changes to their privacy settings. However, isn’t there’s another aspect that should be taken into account more often? That is, how those different platforms impact the lives we live away from the internet. As social media platforms have become more and more prevalent, there is almost peer pressure to join each and every one of the social platforms.

That peer pressure feels exactly the same as the one that typically gets us into trouble as children and leads to our mothers to say “If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?”. It feels almost as if we’re really disconnected if we’re not connected to the internet and checking in on Facebook, Twitter or Foursquare. The problem with all this connectivity is how vulnerable it leaves us ‘in real life’. We now have to moderate our behaviours on- and off-line to fit in with the image that we’re trying to portray to the world. The problems that this causes centre around the fact that we didn’t previously run the risk of baring ourselves and our lives to so many people at the same level.

Until the advent of social media, we’d have our close group of friends. Those are the friends we can tell almost everything to, the ones who attend our birthdays and console us after a breakup. Then we’d have acquaintances, the people that we go out for drinks with, invite along to house parties and see occasionally. There’s also the ‘work’ group that we socialise with at the pub on Fridays or see at company functions. Since the advent of social media, all these groups become equally privy to what’s going on in your life. Putting up a Facebook status that you’re hung-over after a night with your best friend won’t impress your boss, even if you’re at work that day.

An example is an acquaintance mentioning that no matter how much she wanted to share the photos of recent party she’d held, she couldn’t do it. The reason she held back was that there were friends on Facebook that hadn’t been invited due to one of those crowd dynamic issues that so often strike while planning a party. So in order to share the photos people wanted to see, she had to go through an entire process to only share photos with certain people so that no-one would get upset or offended at not being invited.  The emotional turmoil and feeling of dishonesty was overwhelming for them, and yet it wouldn’t have been present before social media.

Pre-social media, we could simply invite the people we wanted to see, and when photos were available, we’d simply take them with us and show those people who were interested. Now we have to sit and sweat about what we show people because all these different people have access to all of our activities. Facebook has introduced groups into which you can place people, but there is a need for better separation of the different groups into which everyone fits.

The easiest way to separate different groups is to either use different accounts or allocate different platforms to different groups. Typically the following allocation could be recommended:

Twitter: Acquaintances & Friends
Facebook: Close friends only, and potentially family
Linkedin: Anyone work relate, clients and colleagues alike

Horses for courses – or different social media for different sets of people.

Blog post by Juliette van Rooyen, Search Consultant at Reform

Being a top blog is no longer just about traffic

January 26th, 2011

This week, the British Beauty Blogger (www.britishbeautyblogger.com) ran a rant complaining that blog rankings had become worthless because they no longer relied solely on the number of unique visitors to an individual blog site. I beg to differ.

The Beauty Blogger leaves the distinct impression that the only thing that matters is the number of people that view his / her blog on a monthly basis. Fine – I understand that this is a measurable indicator of the success of a blog, but surely it is only one measure?

What are the real goals of a blog or indeed a blogger? Do they write what they write simply to ratchet up another reader on their site visitor log? Or do they try to impart words of wisdom, advice and opinion on matters that are dear to their heart? I would have thought that the latter is a more likely goal.

What is more valuable, a headline on the front page of the Guardian or a snippet on page seven of the Daily Mirror? Based on circulation numbers alone one would say the snippet in the Mirror, but I imagine that the headline in the Guardian would be much more influential. The journalist that wrote a front page story would, I am sure, be more pleased with a job well done.

In other words, it is not just the number of people that see something that makes it valuable, it is also the context within which it appears. So, if the objectives of a blog are not just objective, but subjective as well, then surely some subjectivity is required in measuring the success of the blog in question? If one was assessing the top ten news stories of the day, they would not all come from the newspaper with the biggest circulation.

Indeed within any one publication some articles are going to be more ‘influential’ than others. The level of influence will, in part, be determined by the content and the presentation. Equally, if not more importantly, the reaction of the reader to an article will determine its eventual ‘success’. So, if the purpose of an article or a blog is simply to broadcast information to a passive audience, then I concede that volume, content and appearance will be significant attributes in measuring its success.

However, if the intention of the article or blog is not just to inform, but to precipitate a reaction then the nature and strength of that reaction become very important metrics. In an offline world some degree of measurement is possible either at a personal level, or at a collective level if the reaction takes the form of active comment or activity. Indeed, the reaction itself may become newsworthy and a virtuous media storm could ensue.

In a digital environment the rules of engagement begin to change. Not only can third parties analyse the volume of reaction, but modern ‘social listening’ tools purport to also measure the sentiment expressed in the developing media streams. So, frankly, whether I am brand that wants to extend my reach or just a blogger that wants to make a difference, I think that the success of my strategy will be measured by much more than just the number of people whose eyes fall upon my prose.

Consequently, I would rather rank in a top ten list that incorporated some of the modern measurement attributes that are now available, rather than simply being hostage to the number of visitors.

Blog post by James Kilpatrick, non-executive director at Reform.

What are we excited about for 2011?

January 5th, 2011

Now that the holidays are quickly becoming a distant memory we wanted to take a look back at changes in TV, mobile and social media in 2010 and consider what exciting changes are in store for 2011.

In May Google announced that it had partnered with Sony and Logitech to bring a new product to our television screens. Called Google TV the idea is to allow “users access [to] all of their usual TV channels as well as a world of internet and cloud-based information and applications… all from the comfort of their own living room and with the same simplicity as browsing the web.”¹ Initially hailed as a major innovation in how we will interact with our TVs, Google TV has so far struggled to secure access to content from major US TV Networks and has received less than positive response to the initial software offering.  Despite these setbacks the ability for consumers to access web content via their TV will become a reality in the near future and could offer advertisers a unique opportunity to gain access to TV consumers in a new, distinctive and more trackable way in 2011.

Social media has also grown in influence amongst advertisers in 2010.  Although many major brands have had a presence on Facebook and You Tube for some time, the past year has seen a shift in how these sites are used by brands to interact with its consumers.  FMCG & retail brands in particular have begun to drive advertising toward their Facebook pages as a means of increasing the number of likes.  These pages can then be used to offer exclusive offers to customers that have already showed an active interest in the product. As we head into 2011 it is likely that advertisers will continue to embrace social media as a means of both reaching out to current customers as well as connecting with future shoppers not only via Facebook pages but also through advertising directly on Facebook via Ad Serving Units, the utilisation of in-application advertising and beyond.

It is often said that it is the first and last thing you interact with during your day but the mobile has come a long way since the days of simple calls and texts. Over the past year advertisers have begun to embrace the mobile by increasing their focus on building applications and mobile friendly websites for their customers.  Although this is a good start, the consumer is likely to demand that their smart phone enable them to do most, if not all, of the things their PC does in the near future.  With an estimated  $1.5 billion in sales worldwide made via the mobile on eBay alone in 2010 it is clear that businesses will not only need to have the capability to handle mobile e-commerce but also to ensure that their mobile advertising, including mobile search & display are a priority in 2011. ²

With so much innovation in the industry and so many new channels for advertisers to test and explore, 2011 is sure to be another busy year. Keeping up with changes in TV, mobile, & social media will be crutial to ensure continued customer retention & business growth.

1)    http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/20100520_googletv.html
2)    http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/ebay-shows-where-mobile-shopping-is-hot/

Blog post by Mike Jennings, Director at Reform

Getting your brand into the right frame of social

December 14th, 2010

Social, Smocial, Searchocial… we hear variants on the social theme from every corner of the marketing universe, whether client side or agency, the new marketing holy grail has arrived. Bringing brands to life online has never been more of a priority, and I for one am absolutely delighted to see that the ‘stinging nettle’ of brand and consumer in conversation is being (tentatively) grappled with, as a good indication of how advertising will never return to the strictly ‘shouty shouty’ model of yore…

Although the tone, medium and messages may have changed, the conundrum as to how we divine ‘which 20% of my social media (formerly advertising) budget is actually working?’ must be addressed more than ever in these times of austerity and accountability. Having recently read Jim Sterne’s excellent book on Social Media Metrics (Wiley, New Jersey, 2010), I have discovered that the metrics of social are as messy as they are vital in determining how a brand can develop competitive advantage, lower costs and increased customer satisfaction. One of the many factors we need to address is that turning customers into brand advocates, a favoured social media objective of many brands, is not as simple as it may sound. As a sales person of some repute, I know that persuading someone to buy from you, and then to independently recommend your product and services to others, is not a five minute pile ‘em high sell ‘em cheap story. Yes, the 5 P’s of People, Place, Promotion, Price and Product still all matter; but now you have to factor in metrics for a brands emotional resonance, identification of influencers, recognising sentiment, hearing the conversation and triggering the desired actions. These soft metrics are what makes social so powerful, yet they are also open to subjective analysis and the qualitative understanding of online phenomena, which can include the fact that people lie about their identities online, have hundreds of virtual friends, but live alone etc. This blurring of where the advertising ends and the personal begins, brings with it significant CSR implications, as well as the need for silos within brands organisations and local communities to work more closely together.

Brands need to become ‘consultative’ in both their messaging, their openness to feedback and the ways in which they reward brand advocates and ambassadors, as well as recognising that they when they start or engage with a community, they can’t just subsequently abandon it without consequences. Social media is not a one night stand – because if you treat it as such, your name will be mud all over Facebook in the morning… Social is about brands not over promising, it’s about flirting with permission, moving onto a face to face meeting when it feels right for both of you (and your mates if you’ve asked their opinions), and it’s about still remaining on good terms when the relationship is over and you’ve decided to move on…

Recognising the nuances of how brand building social media strategies can work, has led to Reform developing a new service for our clients, whereby we formulate communications and messaging strategies which utilise the power of social media metrics alongside the development of tactics and plans that enable its optimisation. Called Sway, it encompasses the soft with the hard, and is designed to produce powerful conversations that lead onto even more powerful relationships between brands and consumers. Please contact Amanda Davie on amanda@reformdigital.com or call 020 7874 1898 to discuss how Sway can help get your brand into the right frame of social.

Blog post by Mary Keane-Dawson, non-Executive Director of Reform

You’ll like this – not a lot – but you’ll like it

October 21st, 2010

Week two in the Strictly Come Dancing house. Hmmm, there’s a chance I’m mixing my reality TV show metaphors there, but the point is another week has gone by, and Strictly Come Dancing has lost a little bit of magic as Paul Daniels ‘danced’ his last dance on Saturday night. In this, the second installment of our Strictly Come Searching investigation, I’ve come across an interesting inverse correlation between search volume and social media coverage for the Strictly celebrities.

The chart below was put together by social media monitors Brandwatch, who are observing social media coverage of our Strictly Come Dancing stars this year. They have developed an index measuring not only the volume of conversations going on, but also the sentiment in those conversations, be it positive or negative.

The snapshot above, ranked by volume, shows that this week most people are talking about Anne Widdecombe, Goldie and Paul Daniels, with Tina O’Brien and Felicity Kendal way down at the bottom. However, we have put the chart below together from Bing search volume data, showing the number of searches performed over the last 7 days for the Strictly celebrity names. In terms of search volume, Tina O’Brien and Felicity Kendal are way ahead of the pack this week, and Goldie is at the bottom of the list.

This is a truly interesting insight into the online behaviour of Strictly Come Dancing fans! The celebrities that are being talked about the most on the web are not the ones that people are searching for the most.

Tina O’Brien’s position at the top in terms of search volume could be put down to people searching to see why she didn’t dance on Saturday night (chicken pox in case you weren’t one of the people searching). Also, the appearance of Paul Daniels and Goldie near the top in terms of social media coverage must be due to people dissecting their exits from the show. I’m sure that not many people would argue with the suggestion that Anne Widdecombe has been the real star of the show so far in this series, so the buzz around her name is also quite easily explained. It has been suggested by the water cooler here at Reform that more people might be searching for Felicity Kendal and Pamela Stephenson because they don’t know much about them as yet – a generation of people online that missed out on The Good Life. If that is the case, then it might also explain why not as many people are talking about them – they are the enigmas of the show, people are still searching for information about them.

As a final note for this week, I stuck my neck above the parapet in last week’s blog and suggested that Kara Tointon would win Strictly this year. This data only cements my opinion further as people are searching for her AND talking about her. Time will tell!

UPDATE: We were right in 2010, but lets see how 2011′s Strictly Come Searching challenge fares.

Blog post by Penny Anderson, Search Consultant at Reform

Digital snacking – the death of downtime?

August 13th, 2010

Next time you’re in the queue at Starbucks or Tesco, watch people.

If it doesn’t look like they’ll get served in the next few seconds, chances are they’ll start prodding at their phone. Which will be in their hand. Ready. There’s even a phrase “Blackberry jam” that has been coined to describe being stuck at tube station exits behind office workers slowing to a halt as they breathe in that fresh phone signal.  http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blackberry%20Jam.

Increasingly, people don’t do downtime. And this includes me. I’m not proud to admit it, but I find myself digitally snacking in the those oh-so-boring seconds in-between lift floors. Or waiting for the train to pull to a stop. Or while your colleague grabs a drink before a meeting. A watched kettle might never boil, but it’s definitely enough time to read the BBC headlines. I wager that checking facebook has replaced reading a tabloid as the nation’s favourite on the loo pastime (or is that a boy thing?).

I don’t say this is a good thing. It might even be a dreadful malaise, but it’s definitely real. And it’s getting worse/faster. Multi-tasking on iPhone 4.0 means – God forbid – that no longer do we need to stand by idly whilst the Spotify app hogs the foreground. Nope – we can start a track playing and check Twitter. Why has no-one updated anything in the last five minutes?

So what does this mean for marketers?
1. Recognise that mobile is not just a different screen size, but a different occasion, involving different mind states and needs.
2. Think little and often. It could be titbits of information, mini games or a decent facebook page; brands would do well to provide snacks.
3. Speed up. Marketing has always been about getting messages across efficiently, but boy, that really matters now. Halve your copy, and double its punch.
4. Social again comes to the fore. Opening up safari, then going to Google, typing a search and clicking on results is slowwwww. Just gimme the link or a Like button to press already.
5. Or provide alternatives. The world isn’t on its way to hell in a handcart. Downtime is good, and brands that help people to switch off will be more important than ever.

Guest blog: Carl Mesner Lyons is Marketing Director at toptable. He has been in marketing since the 90s and has worked on brands such as Guinness, the Guardian, lastminute.com and Capital Radio. Read more about his take on how brands can get famous and stay relevant at http://www.talkablelikeable.com/.

Who searches for who?

July 9th, 2010

In a world dominated by social media and the Facebook generation, brands are – naturally enough – focused on making sure they are in front of people.  Search techniques are sophisticated and complex.  Billions in revenue has flowed into Google.

Behind all this activity, however, lies a huge shift in how we use media.  Profound in its consequences, the shift from the broadcast age of ‘the big shout’ to the digitally enabled, always-on narrowcast ‘big conversation’ is with us.  Even a cursory consideration of what is going down points to huge changes in the way any brand needs to reach out to customers and encourage their purchasing behaviour.

Much search activity is driven by ‘big shout’ thinking: testosterone-fuelled, high energy masculine ‘make them buy this’ thinking.  But if we accept that we live in a world of a ‘big conversation’ where power is flowing to the savvy, demanding consumer then we must be ready to earn respect through how we behave as much as how we succeed in getting in front of people.  We must tell the story of our brand with passion and honesty.  We must allow our customers to participate, and listen to them with skill, attention and deep understanding.

As any author will tell you, good stories demand an innate, even intimate understanding of the audience.  Then the story can be told with passion and intrigue.  The audience can participate, question and feel that they are receiving special attention – that they are party to a little magic.  Brands have to learn this skill.  Rather than so much emphasis on the ‘shout’ perhaps we will see more time, energy and resource devoted to the ‘listen’ part of the conversation.  Who is saying what, to whom, and are they being listened to?  Who is influential, and who is merely shouting into a bucket?  Search can be used to answer these questions, too.

Might we see the telescope of traditional search being turned around?  Isn’t it about time the skills of effective search are harnessed by brands to listen to and interpret what is being said about them?  And wouldn’t that put a premium on intelligent search practitioners?

Blog post by Mary Keane-Dawson, non-Executive Director of Reform

The SEO community starts to test social media search optimisation strategies

July 2nd, 2010

When we think of search we think of external search i.e. search engines like Google that act as windows onto the web. From these windows we can find and access news, videos, social media forums, maps – as well as a wealth of branded content and information about businesses, products & services.

But of course people search elsewhere on the web. After email communication search is the primary web behaviour. And there is another kind of search engine: internal or enterprise search. In the US in March of 2010 Facebook’s internal search engine, for example, saw its usage soar by 48% to total 2.7% of all US searches carried out on the Web in that month. OK, so compared to Google’s 64% share of the US search market that might not seem to impressive. Still, that’s a whole lotta searching going on – and mostly for people’s names.

As brands and businesses start to saturate social media properties like Facebook, SEOs are already trying to fathom what the ranking factors are, so that they can lend their services to help brands become more visible in social media search. This article by Marty Weintraub entitled “Facebook SEO Ranking Factors, 2010 Study Results” suggests that criteria such as the Facebook Suggest Box, inserting generic keywords into name fields, population of the Interests field, encouraging as many Fans and “Likes”, might become the focus of SEO test strategies.

However, as Weintraub points out it’s early days in terms of cracking the social media search algorithms. But that won’t stop the more innovative and curious SEOs from having a go!

Blog post by Amanda Davie, Managing Director of Reform

Search Engines in 2009 & Predictions For 2010

December 22nd, 2009

It’s that time of the year again. End of year roundups and predictions for 2010. It’s been a busy year in search, well in fact its been a busy decade (but we won’t go there)! If 2009 was the year of Bing, Wolfram Alpha, Google Caffeine and expansion of AdWords usage, along with everyone’s attempts at Real-Time search integration, then what does 2010 have in store for the search industry?

From a user perspective, search engines were looking east. Taking from insights in the far eastern search markets, Bing and Google focused more on becoming a one stop destination hub. From the second you type your query into Google, suggestions are sent your way. In 2009 they upgraded the suggestions to include direct links and elements such as the latest weather reports, or even parcel tracking information, all before you even click “submit”.

Personalisation was a key objective for search engines too, as user data continues to get used to determine future results and trends. However, it met a lot of critique, from many who cited that personalisation may take away from independence (with less and less “new” perspectives given to users). Just like the improvements in audio/video searches and real time search though, 2010 looks to be a big year for the development of these technologies.

As far as traditional SEO and PPC goes, Google impacted these strategies too. Lines began to blur between the two, as Google integrated local results (map results) and expandable PPC ads (integrating PPC and Google Base results together) to include sitelinks and product prices / listings. From an SEO perspective, Google spent the latter part of 2009 emphasising the need for speed – advising that a sites load time may become a big factor for optimisation in 2010.

And Google didn’t stop there, continuing their foray into a vast range of things – some of which it has been working on for a few years, such as voice recognition search, along with working on more efficient translation tools and various apps for the Android operating system. And then there were the many mash-ups of their existing offerings, such as City Tours and Social Search.

It wasn’t all bright lights for Google though, as they continued to seem out of place when it came to other forms of media, including a much criticised attempt to push the Google Chrome browser on TV and print media ads. They also took what many people felt were a step back with a more traditional pricing on “paid placement” local listings, and YouTube ads, opting away from their cost per click rates – and instead going towards the old CPM rates in some cases.

At the same time though, marketers looked closer at the impact of TV on search. Going beyond slogans that say “search for (name of brand) on Google” – marketers looked at having the celebrity presence on their search listings too. Hilary Swank, Scarlett Johansson, Oprah Winfrey and Jessica Alba were celebrities used to endorse PPC ad copy in 2009.

The merger between Bing and Yahoo looms ever present for 2010, while Yahoo Search Submit Pro calls it a day. Yahoo site explorer is rumoured to be next in line, which was the source of many an online SEO tool that analysed links. When this will happen is unclear, but it does remind many of a search marketer of the times when the Yahoo / Overture keyword tool was silently put to sleep.

And of course, it wouldn’t be an end of year / new year posting without some predictions, so here goes. Among our predictions for search in 2010, are:

1. SEO will become the darling of marketing, as recession strapped companies look to get the most of their budgets

2. SEO’s will need to know how to communicate with designers and developers (and vice versa), as factors such as load time, script usage and site coding become key SEO factors

3. Data (advertiser and customer) debates will heat up over the year, as companies like Facebook, Google, Bing, etc tread the line between insight and privacy

4. Local and retail advertisers will see Google Maps and Google Base traffic volumes soar

5. Launched in 2009 – Scoopler.com will become one to watch in the “real-time search” race

6. Search becomes the marketing channel for geniuses (or genii), as from keyword research to semantic psychology – things are about to get really interesting!

7. International SEO and PPC strategies will evolve fast in 2010, as search engines such as Baidu spent late 2009 moving towards a more westernised search methodology in both paid and natural search listings

8. Real time search still needs a fair bit of work and will look vastly different this time next year

9. Mobile search will finally catch up to all the hype its received in the last few years

Drop us a line and let us know what you think is in store for search in 2010.

Blog post by Niall Madden, SEO Director of Reform

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