Archives for the Social Media category

Fresh off the back of criticism from Reuters for failing to entice brands to the platform, Google+ has fought back at I/O 2013 with a completely overhauled social network.

The changes went live at the conference, meaning that everyone can already get their hands on the new features.

Those new features include:

1. A Slick New Look

2. Redesigned responsive stream (1-3 columns)

3. Automatic Hashtags

4. Revamped Photos

5. Hangouts

Since launching nearly two years ago, Google+ has done little to set itself apart as a social platform, instead borrowing the more successful features from other networks. This hasn’t been enough to entice people away from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn – possibly because Google+ attempts to be all three at once.

By the end of 2012, Google claimed that they had 235 million active users (550 in total) but the general consensus is Google’s definition of ‘active’ differs somewhat to industry expectations. Many predict that if it wasn’t for Gmail, Android and the adoption of rel=author within the marketing industry (which you can learn about on our SEO courses) then Google+ would be something of a ghost town.

We’ve been testing Google+ out this morning to get used to the new features and the initial impression in the office is that Google has stepped up its game and finally done something to set it apart from other social networks. Let’s dive in…

1. Google+’s Slick New Look

The whole feel of the new design is that of a mobile app. It draws on its own iOS and Android app layouts, as well as those of other sites like Pinterest and, yes, Facebook.

Read the rest of "Google Grows Up – Google+’s Best New Features"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in News, Social Media on May 16th, 2013| No Comments »

It’s the latest social media craze that’s getting marketers excited – Vine, the 6-second video app. It’s done for video what Instagram did for photos, and like Instagram it has been bought by one of the biggest players in social – Twitter.

What we find absolutely brilliant about Vine (and similar apps) is that is gives marketers with limited budget and technical skill the chance to do something creative.

What you don’t need:

A massive marketing budget, full camera crew, expensive video editing software, the technical skill to operate camera equipment and software

What you do need:

A great idea, an iPhone or iPad (Vine isn’t on Android yet, but there are plenty of alternatives!)

You also need to be clued up on social media! Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as just posting some videos and watching the money roll in. Our social media courses will help you market your brand through social channels using tools such as Vine. Combined with content marketing training you will be ready to make the most of social video.

You may think that 6 seconds is restricting, but that restriction forces you to think – What can I fit in 6 seconds? Think of it as the video version of an elevator pitch.

A 6 second video is a viable way of getting your message across in today’s crowded social networks. It’s easier to convince a passer by to stop for 6 seconds than for 6 minutes. Read the rest of "Getting Creative with Video Marketing on Vine"

Posted by Craig Charley in Blogging & Content Marketing, Mobile, News, Social Media on April 26th, 2013| No Comments »

In 2013, most businesses realise the importance of content. That’s why so many SEO agencies are repositioning themselves as content agencies, or at least offering it as a primary product. Our Content Marketing courses used to attract mainly bloggers, but since the Panda and Penguin Google updates we have seen a large increase in SEOs wanting to learn about content.

Yet this mass conversion to content brings up some issues – there is too much noise. Most businesses are still stuck in an outdated content strategy – regular, mediocre quality blog posts with little intent. The content is happening, but is it working?

With content at the forefront of so many marketing strategies, it seems at first glance that big businesses have a massive advantage. Whole in-house marketing teams as well as high profile agencies on hand to craft incredible content. How does a small business compete against this with a 1-3 person marketing team?

Big Evergreen Content

The idea for this post was sparked by Hannah Smith‘s talk at BrightonSEO ‘Go Big or Go Home’ (excellent write up on State of Search), which prompted me to revisit Dr. Pete’s SEOmoz post at the end of last year ‘Why Big Content Is Worth the Risk’. Both Hannah and Dr. Pete explain why big content is necessary and how it can help your business stand out in a very crowded world of below par blog posts:

“We all want the low-hanging fruit, but let’s be honest – the low-hanging fruit is rotten, bruised, and covered with the grubby fingerprints of all the other spoiled brats pawing at it.”

The consensus of both the talk and the post is that big content takes around 40 hours to produce. Hannah compared this to an average 12 hours for ‘small content’ but I think that’s a huge overestimation for the majority of businesses. James Carson recently alerted Twitter to the existence of a job ad for an agency looking for a Marketing Executive who for £18,000 a year had to write 25 blog posts a day. That’s well over 6,000 articles a year on a range of topics, written by somebody with little knowledge about the subject and obviously no research.

With that much noise, it’s important to be different to break through, and that’s where big content comes in. But I’m going to go a step further and ask you to consider another element - sustainability. Another popular topic at BrightonSEO, and a common phrase in marketing blogs at the moment is Evergreen Content.

In the rest of this post I’m going to try and convince you why your content should be both big and evergreen for the holy grail of content marketing.

Read the rest of "Big Wins that Last – Why Big Evergreen Content is the Best Content Strategy"

Posted by Craig Charley in Blogging & Content Marketing, News, SEO, Social Media on April 22nd, 2013| No Comments »

Much has been said about the usefulness of Social Media within Project Management, but a topic that as yet seems to have been left untouched is how Project Management can help in Social Media Marketing campaigns.

Many of the principles and techniques that we teach in our Project Management Training, as well as on our PRINCE2 Course, can be applied to Social Marketing campaigns in order to improve their effectiveness and efficiency.

In this post we’ll be taking a look at some and how they should be enacted.

Initiating a Project

The ‘Initiating a Project‘ stage of PRINCE2 can certainly be applied to a Social Media campaign. This process effectively outlines the reasons for and initial format of a project.

With regard to a Social Media campaign, it would require an understanding of the goals you hope to achieve by engaging on this platform.

It would also set out the preliminary ideas as to how to go about enacting this, both from a strategic point of view (what sort of things will you post, who are you targeting) and from a logistical perspective (which networks will you use and how much.)

Read the rest of "How to Use Project Management to Run Better Social Media Campaigns"

Posted by Andy Trainer in News, Project Management, Social Media on April 8th, 2013| 2 Comments »

So here comes yet another bit of major news from Facebook HQ, following on from the recent announcements of Graph Search and a News Feed redesign (and rumours of them adopting hashtags).

With so many recent developments it can be hard to keep up. Luckily our 2 day Social Media Workshop is always kept up to date, so you can be sure you’ll be learning about the latest and most relevant topics, including all these updates from Facebook.

This time it’s the long awaited release of the Facebook phone (with a bit of a twist); a move which has been mooted for at least the last 18 months.

With the confirmation of its own device (called the HTC First) and ‘Home’ screen that can be added to most android devices, comes questions about the direction Facebook is headed. The potential for a whole new era of 24/7 connectivity is beginning to look more and more likely (if we’re not almost there already).

But what exactly does the phone (and Home) do and what makes it so intriguing?

Read the rest of "Facebook Phones ‘Home’ – Facebook App Takes Over Android"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Mobile, News, Social Media on April 5th, 2013| No Comments »

The latest news out of Facebook HQ (it seems like there’s something new every week at the moment!) is that the social giant is considering trialling the use of hashtags, the now ubiquitous topic grouping symbol popularised by rival Twitter.

If Facebook does go ahead with the idea, rumoured to be intended to work alongside the new graph search feature to make topics and conversations easier to find, it will join Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and its own sepia-soaked photosharer Instagram as a user of the device.

Bearing all that in mind, we thought it would be worth having a refresher in how best to use hashtags for marketing on all the major platforms. Of course to really get to grips with marketing on Twitter, Facebook and the like, our Social Media Workshop is ideal.

If you want to see hashtags in action, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest.

So how do we go about using hashtags for marketing? Well firstly we need to distinguish between two different ways they are used by businesses across social media:

1/ Using Existing Hashtags

One very simple and popular way to use hashtags for marketing businesses is to find trending hashtags related to your specific niche and use them in your posts.

If for example you write about Project Management, you could use the hashtags #pm #pmot to open up your posts to a wider audience who may be searching for content placed under that grouping.

Going down this route is generally seen to be the ‘safest’ option when using hashtags but you still need to be careful.

Read the rest of "Marketing With #Hashtags"

Posted by Jackson Rawlings in Marketing, News, Social Media on March 20th, 2013| 4 Comments »

With last week’s announcement of a redesign for Facebook’s news feed (which we discussed in detail in our post on Friday – Getting to Grips with Facebook’s Redesign) comes renewed questions about the advertising policies of the social giant.

Despite no mention of ads whatsoever in that announcement (although post-announcement Q&As revealed some detail), the media and public alike are intrigued as to what a revised news feed with more focus on images, but also choice in what is seen, will mean for advertisers – with many suggesting that it will only increase their prominence.

If Facebook ads aren’t your thing, why not try Google AdWords Training to give you an advantage on the biggest online advertising platform.

However, concern over Facebook ads is no new thing. Many users have become entirely disenchanted with the site’s ad policy, especially since the advent of sponsored and promoted posts in the news feed.

Add to this the need to make Facebook more profitable after its largely unsuccessful IPO and big advertisers like GM not seeing advertising on the site as a useful spend, and it’s obvious from a Facebook perspective why the redesign was as necessary from an ad point of view as it was from a usability and design one.

Prior to the revised news feed announcement, we here at Silicon Beach ran a survey to determine the public mood surrounding Facebook ads and thereby their effectiveness, particularly when it comes to small businesses.

Let’s take a look at what all this data means for those without the ad budget of McDonald’s or Coca-Cola!

Background

After engaging in an ad campaign to promote some of our blog posts, we received some negative feedback from an individual who happened to be a member of the anti-sponsored posts group “Say No to “Suggested Posts”".

At this point we felt that it was appropriate to suspend our ad campaign in order to first determine whether they were ineffective or even worse, actively putting people off our brand.

Read the rest of "Is Facebook Advertising Worthwhile for Small Businesses?"

Posted by Jackson Rawlings in News, Social Media on March 11th, 2013| 13 Comments »

More big news from Facebook HQ yesterday, coming just months after the announcement of the new Graph Search feature.

In order to provide a less cluttered and more organised user experience, Facebook will soon be rolling out a completely redesigned News Feed.

Initial promotional screenshots are quite revealing and give a clear indication as to the direction the company is taking. It’s obvious that the redesign has been made with the Graph Search in mind and so these two changes together signal one of the bigger shifts in the company’s history.

Luckily here at Silicon Beach, our 2-day Social Media Course is always up to date, so you’ll have no worries about getting left behind by these changes.

But what exactly is changing?

“Personalized Newspaper”

This is how Zuckerberg has described the intention behind the changes. Some are questioning the comparison but what is clear is that the redesign will bring about a more structured, delineated experience.

Read the rest of "Getting to Grips With Facebook’s News Feed Redesign"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in News, Social Media on March 8th, 2013| No Comments »