Blogs
Considering how fast Google is at doing most things whether it’s indexing new pages or updating rankings for breaking news the whole process of merging Blogstorm into the Branded3 site has been an eye opening demonstration of just how slow a domain migration can be.
We migrated the content on blogstorm.co.uk into the Branded3 website with 301 redirects and a change of address notice in Google Webmaster Tools on 20th November 2012 and here we are almost 2 months later with 1200 pages still indexed according to a site:blogstorm.co.uk query and 687 according to Webmaster Tools.
Along with Branded3’s Head of Content Mark Bowering, I attended the #SocialBrands Conference in London last week, for what was an insightful day into the world of social media.
For those of you who were unable to attend, myself and Mark took away these shiny nuggets of social media gold with them for you your enjoyment:
The main issues associated with ROI in social media
How do we define ROI?
Despite what you might have heard, conversion rate optimisation is rarely about changing the colour of your checkout buttons. In most cases the way to improve conversion rates is by making sites more user friendly to remove customer pain points as well as figuring out potential reasons why customers might not buy a product from you and making sure that all those reasons are addressed on the site.
For example if a customer is worried that a product might not arrive in time for an occasion you would have a detailed delivery page explaining what options are available. If you offer free next day delivery that should stop anybody being worried about delivery speed – if you only offer delivery in 3-5 working days this will mean people who are in a hurry might go elsewhere. Continue reading »
Tickets are now on sale for our Digital Futures Seminar, a day of invaluable digital marketing tips and insights which will help delegates future-proof their SEO, Digital and Social Media strategies – and this time, we’re in London!
Offering an intimate alternative to big industry conferences, Branded3 Seminars bring together a small audience in front of a range of speakers from Branded3′s talented team, most of whom are reputable figures within the industry.
Taking place on Thursday 14th March at The Barbican in London, the Seminar boasts talks from Search expert Patrick Altoft, Branded3′s Head of Search Tim Grice, our Head of Creative & Social Andrew Machin and our new MD, Digital & Marketing specialist David Crawford.
This Seminar is a must-attend for any online marketers in all industries, with delegates receiving world-class advice for their Search, Social Media and Digital strategies.
Priced at only £95+VAT per attendee, a Digital Futures ticket includes all refreshments and lunch, providing incredible value for money with delegates taking plenty of tips and relevant insights away from the day.
You can take a look at the Digital Futures schedule here, where you can also book tickets. With the amount of actionable insights offered and the value for money, tickets tend to sell out fast for our Seminars so book you and your team a place now to avoid disappointment.
If you have any other questions about the day, you can email seminars@branded3.com where we’ll be sure to get back to you.
We’ve had some great news today, news we just had to share with the world: The @Branded_3 Twitter account is now officially verified!
At 2.20 today we received an email from the guys at Twitter HQ confirming the verification of the account and lo and behold Twitter’s idiosyncratic little blue tick appeared next to the title on our profile.
This news follows a similar win we had in August 2012 when we received word that our petition based Twitter utility Twitition had received the same treatment and was awarded this prestigious, social media accolade.
The Twitter help section describes the process taken in the decision of verification:
“We concentrate on highly sought users in music, acting, fashion, government, politics, religion, journalism, media, advertising, business, and other key interest areas.
“We verify business partners from time to time and individuals at high risk of impersonation”.
Given that Branded3 is not a famous musician and certainly not an actor, simply a brand who has used Twitter to its full potential, we could not be happier that Twitter have decided to present us with the honour of verification.
We’re delighted to announce the appointment of a new Managing Director, David Crawford, a highly-respected Digital & Marketing specialist within the industry.
David has an enviable reputation in digital with a background which boasts leading the Digital Consultancy at McCann Erickson, heading up the Digital offering at BJL and working alongside brands such as Bentley, HSBC, UPS and American Airlines.
As such, we’re thrilled he’s come on-board at Branded3!
Aligning with our growth ambitions which have already seen us launch a London base this year, David’s appointment will strengthen the management team, with David primarily focusing on growing our Digital and Social Media offering.
With David’s strong marketing and digital strategy experience, he will also be spearheading our holistic digital approach for our clients, a methodology which sees the integration of our services to deliver results on all levels.
Branded3′s CEO Vin Chinnaraja had this to say about David:
“He’s a well-respected figure within the digital industry and I’ve no doubt that with his experience and skillset, he’ll help us deliver our ambitious growth plans.
“With this appointment and the opening of our London office last month, we’re certain that 2013 will be a fantastic year for the agency.”
Vin’s excitement is shared by David, who commented on his new role:
“I have known Branded3, Vin and Patrick for some time and have watched the business develop and expand on the back of a very compelling offering. We have a strong, shared belief regarding the future and potential of digital channels and I am, therefore, very excited about the role, the proposition and the opportunity.”
‘Social Super Bowl’?
There is no bigger annual sporting event than the Super Bowl – and no better time for brands to get noticed.
In case you missed this year’s NFL showpiece between the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers because you were tucked up in bed late Sunday night and in the early hours of Monday, here’s a seven-sentence synopsis of what took place:
- Alicia Keys performed a painfully-slow version of the American national anthem – sorry, Alicia.
- Beyoncé and the other members of Destiny’s Child reunited for the half-time show.
- Jacoby Jones scored a record 108-yard touchdown in 11 seconds that needs to be seen to be believed.
- The floodlights went off in the second half due a partial power cut.
- The floodlights came back on again.
- The San Francisco 49ers threatened to pull off the greatest Super Bowl comeback ever.
- The Baltimore Ravens survived a late scare to give the legendry Ray Lewis a fairy-tale finish to his career.
That’s enough about what went on in the Superdome in New Orleans – it’s what happened online during the biggest annual sporting event that is just as interesting from a social media and content marketing point of view.
Last week social media giant Twitter launched Vine, a standalone app that allows for GIF-style video sharing on the platform.
The micro-blogging nature, characteristic of Twitter has not in the past leant itself massively to aesthetic value, especially in comparison to rising social stars such as Pinterest. In recent times, though, this seems to have evolved with more opportunity to exhibit images on your profile, as well as a far more structured format for image sharing.
That step further into video sharing sees the platform making the most of all avenues of content. With a twist on video, Twitter has produced Vine to make GIF style videos – a format so kitsch that it has now received a retro-style niche following. This is the same rise in popularity that we have seen with filter-based photography apps and platforms such as Instagram, which could attribute some of their success to the same roots.
Google has always made it hard to see link data. First they made the link: query intentionally vague and then when they showed link data in Webmaster Tools it only showed the first 1000 domains.
This was fine when we all just wanted to see our best links but when Google started to penalise sites for low quality links that they were not showing in Webmaster Tools because they were beyond the 1000 domain limit a lot of webmasters got pretty annoyed. It’s pretty hard to recover from a penalty if you are getting penalised for links that you can’t find anywhere.
How can you remove/disavow links you can’t see? Google, please can you show more than 1000 domains in WMT @mattcutts
— Tim Grice (@Tim_Grice) November 30, 2012
Luckily (assuming this isn’t a bug) Google has finally listened to our pleas and has just started offering us the ability to get way more than 1000 domains. We have had a few instances of 2500+ domains being returned via this method in the past couple of weeks. The interface has not changed and it does still say “1000 domains” but if you click the “Download latest links” button in the Traffic > Links to your site screen then you should see way more than 1000 unique domains. The other buttons still just return 1000.
Keep in mind you just get a raw list of links so you need to extract the domain in Excel, I use the “text to columns” function and split by a forward slash.
Thanks, Google!
In early December 2012, Branded3 received news that our social media efforts with foods of the world restaurant chain, Red Hot World Buffet had received a nomination for the prestigious Eat Out Awards.
The awards are held by foodie magazine Eat Out and honour restaurants who are outstanding in their field and continue to grow their businesses. Branded3 client Red Hot World Buffet was shortlisted for the Marketing Campaign of the Year, a category that honours businesses which have sustained a successful marketing or promotional campaign.
Last week we held our second Brunch with Branded3 Google+ Hangout, in which Search and online marketing enthusiasts could ask SEO experts Patrick Altoft and Tim Grice anything they liked.
Being the first month of a new year, questions mostly surrounded Search predictions and trends for the year ahead. Tim predicted, quite understandably, that 2013 will be the year of content, however he was keen to stress that it’s not enough to just create great content, you need to have the resource available to correctly promote it too.
Tim also commented on the fate of spam websites in 2013, predicting that sites with low quality links will continue to drop off the top rankings.
Both Tim and Patrick touched upon the fluctuation in rankings they’ve seen over the past couple of weeks, with Tim advising viewers that a decline in rankings shouldn’t necessarily be associated with the Panda update.
Patrick gave some essential advice to both agencies and clients, explaining how fundamental a communicative and transparent relationship is to the success of an online marketing campaign.
Watch the video below to see the Hangout in full and if you’d like to see a particular Digital topic covered in our next Hangout, feel free to email it over and we’ll see what we can do.
The first week of 2013 has been a busy one for Branded3; it’s brought a new office in London, a variety of exciting new projects and clients and for me, finally making use of a site I spend an increasing amount of time on – SlideShare.
A presentation I created on how to make great presentations, managed to receive a staggering 85,000 views and made it onto the SlideShare homepage for days after! Obviously I was thrilled with this, but how did I do it?
For those of you who don’t yet use the site, it’s particularly great if you’re more of a vocational learner with a style more suited to visual content. Not everybody can read a chunk of text in a blog post and take it in, but understanding learning styles and behaviours is a whole different blog post!
Latest from B3Labs
- Another milestone reached for Branded3 as it’s acquired by the
St Ives Group - The latest media consumer findings & what they mean for digital marketers
- Talk to Branded3 at @BuyYorkshire in Leeds next week!
Latest from Blogstorm
- Why your press releases are getting you penalised
- After five years, Google still doesn’t know how to rank images
- Tickets now on sale for the next #B3Seminar in London – book now!
