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Provoke's Online Marketing Insight, What Would You Like To Know About?

Promoted Tweets From A New Marketing Bluebird!

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Latest news that Twitter looks set to launch its promoted tweets and trends service in the UK in October seems to be a further sign of the increasing convergence between social and business on a networking site where marketing has been trying to gain a meaningful foothold. But will the micro blogging site start to look more like a Google SERPS page even as Google+ seeks to take the search engine further into social territory? Is social marketing coming of age?

Or is it the same old, same old? Site owners have been constantly befuddled by social media and the ROI question since networking sites first made their appearance around five years ago. Today, there is still a significant percentage of both eCommerce and service based site owners who are yet to be convinced that ‘social’ currency can sufficiently influence hard cash sales to be worth the effort of devoting increased time and resources to social content provision.
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Search And Social Security Fears Block Staff Use!

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The great search and social divide! Once again news surfaces highlighting a hardening of attitude adopted by some companies towards their employees using social media. In the aftermath of the recent high profile hacking of major brands and global organisations, security fears have led to a 10 per cent increase in banning staff from accessing social network sites.

Social paranoia appears to have gripped the business world as newly published figures show over two thirds of companies monitor staff activity on the web and more than half are blocked from accessing a number of social media sites. Security concerns are overriding the very real benefits that social media content sharing and networking bring to establishing a holistic perception and trust in a brand identity across today’s multi channel and platform environment.
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Google To Kick The Click And Roll With The Scroll?

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Recent observations of Google testing a new design concept for its’ search results page could replace the ‘Google No.1’ mentality, which has constantly obsessed eCommerce site owners, mostly to the exclusion of all else in the last twenty years. In the age of the smartphone and tablet, it’s the scroll and the flick-thru’ rather than the clunky click that gets the speedy search result. Seems Google, mindful of search and social remodelling the landscape around itself, is going scrolling…

In other words … Google is testing the idea of an infinite scroll of web search results. It appears that the top search box, navigation bar and the left-hand side panel will be retained while the user scrolls through results, producing a page sequence matching the current Google experience. While a click is still needed to go to the next page to see more results, the possibility for infinite scrolling in web search results, as deployed in Google Image Search, could be a real boost to future online marketing campaigns and improved traffic performance from selected SEO keywords.
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Does Your Business Tweet And Greet Or Fail To Meet Completely?

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Twittering on the edge? Or just getting on your tweets? Scrolling through the endless stream of marketing messages can make you fed up to the back tweet when looking for a reply to your query, a solution to your problem. You thought that social sites were like forums, a community where individuals, groups and businesses try to connect and engage by offering help and insight.

Er – no! All you seem to see are businesses just looking for clicks, social point scoring with Google, ramping up their ranking …

Is anyone actually having a conversation? When individuals ask questions directed at Twitter users who have set their feeds for specific topics, is anyone actually answering? While the more savvy of eCommerce ‘get it’ and understand how to use Twitter as an effective customer service channel, it appears that an overwhelming number of users are just going about their daily online marketing business.
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SME Marketing Strategies Survey Reveals Same Old Same Old!

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According to a new survey of UK small businesses, nearly two thirds have no current set marketing budget, yet over two thirds understand the need to invest in their website as opposed to print marketing and some 10 per cent only would consider social media due to lack of time and resources. Sound familiar?

It’s the same old, same old! Where have these business owners been while the online marketing terrain has been dramatically shifting in recent years? It appears that many are just now waking up to the realities of the web as they see the diminishing returns of just physical print advertising by itself.
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Bing Sings Out With New Search And Social Tools!

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The thing with Bing is it’s really getting its’ thing together, like …. like with Facebook’s “Like”, for example. Stepping up to that proverbial plate to mix it with the social networking sites, the search engine has just introduced a wizzy array of new search and social features beyond the basic “like” to open up the conversation of shared content.

It’s the latest move by a search engine to go social. With Google’s Plus One soon to go live, rival Bing is chasing fans on Facebook and making eCommerce even more a community decision making process – like going shopping with friends on the high street! In other words, online search for sites, products, service and content is becoming a more shared experience and even less a solo pursuit.
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Microsoft Skype Mobile Marketing Strategies

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As news of the £5.2bn Skype buyout by Microsoft hit the headlines, a new survey from high tech analysts, Canalys, shows that the smartphone market grew by over 80 per cent in the first 3 months of 2011, with Android at number one and Samsung outselling the Windows phone by more than a million units. In the year of the mobile, it’s not only Microsoft who need to capture some of the realtime action.

The attempt by Microsoft to sidle up alongside the likes of Apple, Android, Symbian and Google in the current mobile internet, voice and video revolution is another sure sign of the way onDemand, realtime communications is reshaping marketing strategies in response to web user behaviours. With market share having fallen to a half, Nokia replaced Symbian in February with the Windows Phone 7, which is not due until the end of 2011.
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Social Mcommerce Changes High Street Universe

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The Easter Sales are here! Or rather, Permanent Reductions morphing from Spring Sales just before Summer Sizzler Specials and Falling Autumn Prices! It’s Bank Holiday Bonanzas all year round for the High Street as they struggle to survive against the mass migration of shoppers to internet and mobile. Are website owners ready for the new breed of super savvy, search and social shopper?

Figures from the latest reports indicate that online retail purchasing in the UK is currently experiencing growth accelerating six times faster than high street sales. Running in tandem with the explosion in mobile app and smartphone, ‘going online’ to buy is predicted to grow by over 60 per cent or £14 billion to exceed a staggering £37 billion by 2014!
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Social Savvy Bunnies Create The Golden Eggs

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Religiously embracing the ‘social’ holy trinity of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter seems to be the hallowed credo of the business community. From global brand to local SME, all are increasingly zealous to be sanctified by seen bathing in the pure light of socially immersive altruism by their followers and friends, according to the latest surveys reported by web analysts and media watchers.

In fact, there is some surprise being shown at just how advanced social media activity is with small to medium businesses, who appear to have so successfully overcome many of the objections made by the more reluctant naysayers to embracing ‘search and social’ marketing strategies.
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Spotify Specifies Subscription Wise!

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When ‘Content is King’, tribute must be paid! So the gathering changes around the web appear to confirm. Not only have search engines, Google and Blekko, recently flexed their algorithm muscles to bump low quality link farms down the rankings, last week Spotify announced they will be halving free access listening time – in other words, streamlining their streaming music service!

Spotify’s original credo was to “make music on-demand available to all”, but like many marketing strategies by online services, including the Press, which suffers millions of pounds of revenue loss year-on-year, the original business model apparently, can no longer be sustained. Of their 10 million worldwide users, only 1 million currently pay for Spotify on subscription.
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Customer Support Expects More From Email Disconnects!

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The endless taking of the email marketing pulse to discover if this veteran messaging organ is “ dead or alive” received another batch of adrenalin-enhancing stats this week with the announcement by an European survey that “ emailing reach is generally up to 40% higher than reported by mail programmes”. Yet, a different study, investigating certain types of online services also reported that “almost half of all email enquires went unanswered”.

The first study suggests that while newsletters do get clicked and ‘non-openers’ read emails, nearly a third of email opener clicks were not measured as a result of a type of email service provider (ESP) software, called a “tracking pixel”.
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Google +1 Invite To Search And Social

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Recently launched Google +1 is the search engine’s answer to the global success of Facebook ‘like’ and Twitter “retweet”, and a clear signal that search and social is where today’s smart consumer action is being played.

Google have been here before, of course, with Google Wave and Google Buzz. This latest attempt by the veteran search engine to go more social is a sign that they are feeling pressure from the networker sites.
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