#UnitedWelcome – Manchester United’s Social Faux Pas

With news of Sir Alex Ferguson retiring on Tuesday we were shown social media at its most powerful with reports of David Moyes taking over. To our surprise on Thursday we managed to find a link that was to a tab on the Manchester United Facebook page and the text read – ‘#UnitedWelcome – Send your personal welcome to our new manager David Moyes’. This was up on the site before any confirmation of the appointment of David Moyes and news confirming the reports didn’t come for a couple of hours after this was leaked. The leak was caused by United’s only official Twitter (@Manutd_PO).

The power of social media strikes again, showing how sometimes preparation for announcements can go wrong and lead to the unveiling of a whole campaign before its actually live. The app is still yet to be published on the Facebook page, so our guesses are… Who did they fire for leaking the information too early? After they spent so long searching for a Social Media Campaign Manager in December. 

Tuesday’s announcement led to unprecedented interest in Sir Alex Ferguson and his retirement, the Guardian via Twitter said they received the biggest ever day of traffic, even bigger than the Pope’s retirement!

The power of football. Biggest day ever for traffic on @guardian website yesterday (bigger than the Pope)

— Daniel Taylor (@DTguardian) May 9, 2013

YouTube Trends 

This week YouTube launched its Trends Map, which provides a statistical breakdown of the different kinds of content that are popular in the United States. The dashboard allows you to view statistics based on shares, views, city region, gender, and age. Lets hope they make this a worldwide feature at some point soon!

Solaborate – Social Network for Tech Professionals

This week saw a new social platform being released into beta, targeted at tech professional to interact with other tech professionals. Based on the early previews and videos/pictures we can see it allows professionals to share documents and presentations, publish questions, conference, chat, video and best practices.

Solaborate even allows for collaboration on the other social platforms such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn.

If you’re interested in signing up to Solaborate you can request a Beta Invite here.

Viber Desktop

Viber is to challenge Skype’s dominance by launching a desktop app which would enable calls, texts and video calls.

Dubbed Viber 3.0 the desktop release is coinciding with major updates for Android, iOS and Blackberry versions.

Viber chief executive  Talmon Marco said;

People spend a substantial amount of time on their smartphones. However, a lot of that usage takes place at home or in the office, where they have laptops or desktops close by.

Bing using Klout as ranking factor

Klout has expanded its partnership with Microsoft by bringing its search results to the top of bing.

Questions that are put on Bing that have long been unanswered will be answered by ‘experts’ who are appointed by Klout ‘influencers’.

CEO of Klout Joe Fernandez said

People are starting to be interested not only in finding information, but also knowing where that information is coming from. When getting advice on how to take care of your garden, for instance, you’d probably much rather get advice from an influencer in the subject rather than someone who was just getting started gardening.

We know what questions people are asking, so we’ve curated the best questions and tied them back to the topics where people are influential.

Users could then +K with the answer if the answer was useful, adding to the experts Klout score.

SAScon

The keynote speakers for the upcoming SAScon have been announced. They are Clancy Childs and John Veichmanis.

Clancy Childs is a Google Analytics’ product manager and is in the know regarding the most crucial tool for marketers. John Veichmanis is Expedia’s VP for Global Paid Search.

SAScon co-founder Simon Wharton said

SAScon is about the accountable modern marketer, digital is at the heart of any modern organisation. Bringing together speakers not only of this notoriety but of this extreme calibre in such a high level conference. It is a real statement of intent from SAScon. 

SAScon is the perfect conference for both the client side agent and the in house marketer.

SAScon takes place on the 6th/7^th of June 2013 and tickets can be bought here.

That’s the end of the roundUP this week we will leave you with this funny VIne that we saw.  You can see more here

The post Digital RoundUP 13/05/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

• Average shopping cart abandonment across all devices is 72%.
• Most delivery problems originate from a poorly optimised checkout.
• 50% of customers will not shop with you again if you do not deliver on time.

Our top ten essential tips will all be revealed at 5pm on the 16th of May as PushON will be hosting a Webinar with Postcode Anywhere where we will be discussing 10 Essential Tips To Improve Your Checkout.

The webinar will feature Postcode Anywhere’s Senior Account Manager, Tom Gurney and PushON’s Digital Director, Sam Rutley.

Registration for the webinar is free and can be found here.

We hope you can join us for what will be a highly informative webinar!

The post Sign up for our free webinar – ’10 Essential Tips To Improve Your Checkout’ appeared first on PushON Ltd.

This month we’re beginning a new series of posts that we’re calling FocusON. Each month we’ll focus our posts on a different aspect of digital marketing, and we’re kicking off by talking about Pay Per Click advertising.

To celebrate the launch of FocusON, we’re giving away a Google Chromebook to one lucky reader. Simply visit the PushON Prizes app over at the PushON Facebook page and follow the three simple steps to be in with a chance of winning. HINT: You may want to read FocusON: An Introduction to PPC Marketing first!

Keep your eyes peeled on Facebook and Twitter for updates throughout the month, and don’t forget to share this great opportunity to be in with a chance of winning a Google Chromebook with your social chums!

The post Win A Google Chromebook with #PushONPrizes appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Engage 2013

Engage 2013 took place this week in London at the Hilton London Metropole hotel.

If you were lucky enough to attend or watch on the live stream, social updates were being published using the hashtag #Engage2013.

This social event included top speakers from companies such as Twitter, Nestlé, KLM, SAB Miller and Adobe.

Here are a few of the top talks we enjoyed in the PushON office:

Jan Rezab, CEO of social media analytics company Socialbakers. Jan talks about how social media has evolved in the last few years and where will be heading in the future.

Lionel Lassalle, Social Marketing & Co-Branding Manager at KLM, explained the successful social strategies that have proven invaluable for KLM. Lassalle also demonstrates the social tools used and future innovations with software and campaigns used to combine social with the flying experience.

‘Happy staff = better service = happy customers’. #Engage2013

Jeremy Waite, head of social strategy at Adobe, talks about The “Like-Cycle” in social media. The “Like-Cycle” encourages 5 social media challenges, Insight, Content, Loyalty, ROI and Media, with an emphasis on a solid social strategy. The slides can be found here.

Mozilla PENALISED by google

Mozilla the company behind most notably Firefox internet explorer, Thunderbird and other apps were penalised by Google.

The reason, according to a penalty notification:

“Google has detected user-generated spam on your site. Typically, this kind of spam is found on forum pages, guestbook pages, or in user profiles.

As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to your site.”

Spam in this instance resulted from spammers abusing the blog section for the Mozilla.org site. John Mueller of Google suggested a need for spam filtering and comments being monitored before they go online. Mozilla had 12 megabytes of spam from 21,169 different comments, Matt Cutts (Google celebrity) said those spam comment pages ‘cause users to complain to us about’ and thus ‘action’ was required. 

Although Mozilla got fined by Google, they were never told which page was causing the offence which seems like an incredibly frustrating policy if the offending site has many pages. This is yet another example of Google flexing its muscles in its fight against spam!

UK Government passes Instagram Act – Now All your pics belong to everyone

As of this week, millions of amateur and professional photographers that upload their work on the Internet will be stripped of their rights to their images. The new Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act passed by the UK government amends the copyright law to allow commercial exploitation of images that contain no information identifying the owner. Most digital images floating around on the Internet today contain no metadata, making them ‘orphan-works’, meaning they can now be exploited for commercial use so long as the user performs a ‘diligent search’.

To keep from being ripped off, photographers will have to either remove their work from the Internet, or register it, a costly and time-consuming activity.

Will this new Act make you think twice before uploading photos to social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter?

Tweetdeck apps closing may 7th

This week, we heard news that Tweetdeck mobile app’s are officially closing on the 7th of May and disappear from the Google Play store, according a blog post from the TweetDeck team. Along with this the twitter team will also remove Facebook integration from the apps.

That’s the end of our RoundUP for this week - we will leave you with exciting news for May! Keep your eyes peeled for our competition this month:

Please tweet us @pushonltd or write a comment below, see you next week!

The post Digital RoundUP 29/04/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Twitter Music

We were given a glimpse of Twitter music over the weekend but only via the site – http://music.twitter.com. On Friday, rumours were going around about the launch of the new Twitter Music app, with Wiz Khalifa, Black Shelton, Soft Reeds, Pete Yorn, The Glitch Mob and Ryan Seacrest all saying how good the new Twitter music app is. The launch was expected to be on Friday, however, updates suggested that the weekend was the target, to be launched with the on-going Coachella festival.

If you now try to log into the site, you can grant access to your account but then the site will take you back to the original page.

What will the Twitter music app look like? Will it spell the end for Spotify? Only time will tell, we can’t answer any of these questions until Twitter release some more information about the App.

Blab - Social Media Conversation Predictor

News broke this week about an exciting new tool called Blab that can be used to predict social conversations that would emerge within 24,48 and 72 hours of them happening.

Blab can also track real-time conversations in any language and allows you to see what content, images and videos are being shared most within your social audience.

Using this information, Blab can improve key areas that your brand can benefit from, including Consumer Insights, Content Marketing, Pre-emptive Brand Protection and Search Engine Optimisation.

We look forward to testing this tool out, and predicting the social trends for the PushON social audience.

At Blab we’re mapping the conversation canvas to give you the most up-to-the-minute understanding of your brand’s audience—who they are, where they are and what they are talking about. Then in 24, 48, and 72 hour time frames, we’re accurately predicting how those conversations will grow and where they will migrate.

Foursquare 6.0

The latest update from Foursquare (6.0) adds an ‘Explore nearby’ search box and map to the main page of the app. This works perfectly to help find out what your friends are doing and shows what’s going on within the local area.

The update also allows for more accurate check-ins and trending popular locations while recommendations and further away goings-on are shown in a separate section.

Universal Analytics

Online marketing and off-line marketing collides. LovesData have hosted hack day using the Google Universal Analytics beta. The applications they have demonstrated strongly suggest that ‘big data’ will rule the roost in not just online, but also offline marketing very shortly.

Google – Map Maker

Google expanded its Map Maker edit tools to cover the UK this past week.

The software allows users to add details to specific sections of Google maps such as information about buildings, national parks and other details that may be of interest to its users.

Any suggestions or amendments are reviewed by other users and Google itself before they are accepted.

Map Maker users can edit and add four types of content:

• Places – such as a restaurant, gym, cinema
• Roads, Rivers and Railways – such as bicycle routes
• Building outlines – use of 3D images for houses, monuments
• Natural features and Political Boundaries – lakes, parks and natural structures

Another feature called Map Maker pulse allows users to see real time updates and displays submissions made by other users. The more users are active they get more ‘confidence’ which means future submissions will be subject to less inspections. 

This is another example of how crowd sourcing has cut costs to map areas by its own users rather than paying to get it done from a company.

That’s the end of the RoundUP for this week, we will leave you with this – GOOGLE STREET VIEW Hyperlapse: This tool allows you to creates a warp-speed Street View back and forth between a pair of points on a map. Give it a try!

The post Digital RoundUP 15/04/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Here are some of our top tools and webpages that we recommend:

SocialBro

SocialBro is a great tool to analyse Twitter followers and monitor performance.

To get started, you can simply use the tool in the Google Chrome browser. Once installed as a browser tool from the Chrome web store, create an account and link the Twitter profile to the account. This will then synchronize your current audience but results will not be seen fully for a long period of time (as shown below):

.

SocialBro has a setting that allows you to see when your top 100 followers are most active on Twitter via a chart telling you the optimum time to tweet during the week. Using these times, you can then enter this data into tools such as HootSuite or Buffer to publish tweets at these times:

SocialBro is also useful for finding out who has unfollowed you, in order to keep your Twitter followers/following ratio down.

TweetDeck / HootSuite

As we all know, Twitter announced a few weeks ago that it will be discontinuing three of its TweetDeck apps for iPhone, Android and Air. However you can still use it on Chrome appstore and in other web browsers.

TweetDeck allows you to follow a live stream of tweets from your followers. Another benefit is that you can monitor hashtags and keywords, this  allows you to be able to get involved in and strike up a conversation with the publisher. You can also keep track of more than one account on TweetDeck which is great for businesses with more than one account or client. Many agencies use this to post across platforms, for example to post one article across Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but from my experience, this looks like a lazy technique to be social.

Hootsuite is a great tool for allowing you to monitor all of your business’ social platforms in the one place. As you can see from the image below, it allows Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, YouTube and Foursquare to name a few. But the same problem arises where you get the duplicate content being pushed across plaforms, with tweets being published on Facebook and Google + with hashtags and mentions being included which can be a put off for many of the readers.

As with TweetDeck you can monitor tweets and hashtags, the only negative we can find with Hootsuite is the layout and text side being annoying, with no way of making the text any bigger in the same way that TweetDeck does it.

FollowerWonk

Followerwonk lets you search Twitter bios to find keywords that you are looking at targeting. You can enter keywords and then ask it to search particular locations. Another useful tool within Followerwonk, is the Analyze followers section. We use this to look at the people following competitors and then we can contact them or reach out to them via Twitter or personal website.

Twellow and Just Tweet It

These are directories that improve the popularity of your twitter profile and can help gain followers.

Twitter Counter

Twitter Counter is a tool that helps show a visual overview and graph of your Twitter stats. Twitter Counter tracks statistics for over 80 million users. It helps you set targets for followers and predicts how many you will have over a particular period of time.

Buffer

Buffer makes it easy to share any page you’re reading throughout the day. You can keep your Buffer topped up with at least 10 tweets and they will then be automatically share posts for you throughout the day. More Tweets can be scheduled if the retail version is purchased.

Bit.ly

Bit.ly is a link shortening tool that allows you to keep track of the clicks and data fromcontent that is being published across all social platforms. This data can be used to show where the audience is engaging from, whether it is Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter and the country where these clicks are coming from.

Google Reader + News / Flipboard / Feedly

Currently we use Google reader to keep up to date with the latest blogs and relevant content being published online. This helps to find content to publish on our own twitter and Facebook with updates that can involve engagement and opinions from the audience. With these interactions, others will see and this helps to gain followers in the long run.

However, with the news that Google Reader, one of the most popular RSS feed readers, is shutting down on July 1, 2013, we have been looking for alternatives to keep us up to speed with all the news in the digital world.

Google News is also useful for finding the latest articles that are not published by blogs. My monitoring activity on Google news you can be one of the first to update your audience with any breaking news or important information that’s worth sharing.

Flipboard

Flipboard is currently only set up as an app for Tablets and smart phones. It uses RSS feeds to present you with a simple news feed, by ‘flipping’ between the news stories the layout is much like a magazine. Flipboard presents your information in a simple and interactive way, making it a nice app to use, while on the go. The main drawback of Flipboard is the missing desktop version, but the app makes up for it with its beautifully crafted design and user interface.

Feedly

After the announcement of Google Reader’s retirement most users were worried about exporting their Google Reader feeds. Feedly makes this process seamless you can simply import your list and it is that simple. The layout is very user friendly and in many ways it is better than Google Reader which is no mean feat.

Klout

Klout measures your influence based on your ability to drive action on social networks. They crunch your social data to give you insights into how influential you are and what you are influential about on your social platforms.

Lets us know what you think and if there are any tools or sites we missed out that you find useful for your Twitter social.

Tweet us your thoughts at @PushONltd

The post Twitter Tools to Help Improve your Business’ Social Presence appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Top 5 April Fool Digital Jokes

1. Bing

This is what happened when you searched for ‘Google’ on Bing:

2. YouTube – ‘YouTube’s ready to select a winner’

YouTube released a video saying the service would be coming to an end and they will be picking the “best video”:

3. Google

Google were to introduce a search-by-smell feature called Google “nose”

4. Google Treasure Map

Google added a new feature onto the Google Maps page, allowing for the World to be viewed in a ‘Treasure Map’ format.

5. Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic launches a glass-bottomed plane

Mashable created a list of the 2013 pranks, which can be found here:

The Ultimate Roundup of 2013′s Biggest April Fools’ Day Pranks

Facebook updates

Facebook’s messenger app has added VOIP which has now become available in the UK, following on from the US and Canada.

The option appears on active Messenger users’ profile page as ‘Free call’. I have checked this and it has not arrived on my screen yet but I imagine it will be rolled out soon. The call will be placed via WiFi or 3G.

Although the idea is great in theory in practice it will take a while before it takes off, why would you use an app to call and text when there are plenty already out there?

Will you be using it?

Facebook Phone

Screenshots of a phone rumoured to be announced by Facebook has been leaked ahead of an event on Thursday.

 The hardware will be produced by Android and have dedicated ‘Facebook’ style graphics and homepage.

The post Digital RoundUP 02/04/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Facebook Layout Update

Facebook are at it again, once we get used to their changes on the website, they bring out another one and it takes some getting used to.

The post Digital RoundUP 11/03/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Welcome to a new feature from the PushON team, every Monday we will be putting our Digital RoundUP blog online. This is your chance to catch up on the news from the last 7 days within the digital sector.

Mailbox Email App Release 

To start the week off, we were given the opportunity to test out the latest Mailbox app to be released on the iPhone.

After reading the article in Mashable we signed up for the app using the reservation system they initially set up. Once the app was released onto the app store we were up and running within 24 hours in the queue, starting at 6,000 with 600,000+ people behind, all waiting to see what the hype around the app was about. Due to this long drawn out process we heard mixed opinions from people about having to wait this long to use an app, with Arj in the office starting at around 950,000 and only just passing 600,000 today (some 7 days later).

The app is great for Gmail users as it instantly encourages you to tidy up your inbox, sorting through all the archived emails and spam in one go. When starting up, I was prompted with the information that I had 1,500 unread emails (I’m blaming the iPhone Mail app for this). After a few hours sorting through all the emails, I was informed that within ‘Settings‘ you could change the ‘Badge Count‘ to ‘Show 1 for new messages‘, a quick fix for those who don’t have the time to trawl through the 100′s of unread emails that have been archived through the iPhones original ’Mail‘ app.

Another useful tool built into the ‘Settings‘, is the Snoozes option, where you can Start your day at say 8:00 AM, Start the weekend at 10:00 AM and End your day at 6:00 PM to ensure that you are not overrun with constant notifications once you are out of work hours.

Overall, the app is the perfect alternative to the iPhone’s built in Mail app and provides some stiff competition and potential features for iPhone to mull over if they want to improve their services. The ease of swiping right to save or delete and swiping left to archive or remind yourself at a later date is a real dream to use and it will have you swiping from right to left all day.

We give this app a 4 out of 5, if you didn’t have to wait to use it then we would give it 5 out of 5.

Download Mailbox here and get to the back of the queue!

Lego forces management to sit social exams

Lego’s director of social media Lars Silberbauer said that “everyone in a company needs to get what it is to be social”.

Anyone who uses social media at Lego were already subjected to a development programme. Participants undertake a day-long course which culminates in a theoretical and practical exam.

Silberbauer emphasised the value of social media;

“We have four ways of creating value out of creating engagement,” he said. “Increasing sales, becoming more efficient in our marketing, building brand affinity and protecting our brand via social media.”

Yandex passes Bing to become 4^th Largest Search Engine

Yandex (the Russian search engine) surpasses Microsoft’s Bing on the number of monthly search queries worldwide. Bing did 4.477 billion queries and Yandex did 4.844 billion, although both were eclipsed by Google with 114.73 billion queries and a 65.2% market share.

In third place was the Chinese search engine Baidu, so what does this all mean?

Put simply, the audience growth in Russia is on an upward trajectory whereas in the Western markets it has somewhat stagnated. 2013 could prove to be Bing’s toughest year.

The post Digital RoundUP 18/02/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

We would like to welcome all of the new recruits to the office. Here is a quick overview to introduce them:

Jonny – Junior SEO

Jonny joined PushON towards the end of 2012 to join the expanding SEO team; working on on-site and off-site SEO activities, and keyword and competitor research for clients across a number of industries.

Read more about Jonny here.

James – Junior SEO Consultant

James joined PushON in 2013, working part-time as a Junior SEO whilst he finishes his degree in International Consumer Marketing at MMU. After completing his exams in May, James will join the team full-time in a work placement working on SEO and online marketing.

Read more about James here.

Arj - Search and Social Strategist

Arj joined PushON in 2013 working on search and social media strategies for clients whilst helping to maintain PushON’s social media channels. This feeds into Arj’s passion for social media.

Read more about Arj here.

Gio – PPC Specialist

Giovanni (call him Gio, it’s easier!), is a PPC specialist at PushON. He has worked in Sales and Marketing for over three years, both agency and publisher-side; and across PPC campaign management, affiliate management and account management.

Read more about Gio here. 

Dean - Web Designer

Dean is a web designer and front-end developer, graphic designer and recent Design for Digital Media graduate at the University of Salford.

Read more about Dean here.

Pedrom - Social Media Content Strategist

Pedrom joined PushON in 2012 working as a Social Media and Content Strategist. He provides efficient social skills and knowledge that can be applied to clients to help improve brand awareness.

Read more about Pedrom here.

Matt - Senior SEO Consultant

Matt Davies is a seasoned SEO professional, having workedin the online marketing sector since graduating from Manchester University in 2005 with a degree in Media and and Business Management. He’s worked at some of the Northwest’s best known specialist digital agencies, and is now proud to count PushON amongst them.

Read more about Matt here.

Daniel – Search Marketing Consultant

Daniel moved to the growing digital city of Manchester mid-2012, soon finding a home within the marketing team of PushOn.  Having worked for an agency in Brighton previously Daniel has brought with him a wealth of experience in offsite optimisation and outreach work. As an SEO consultant he currently works on providing clients with up to date insights in various blogging niches as well undertaking outreach work within those niches.

Read more about Dan here.

The post Welcome PushON New Recruits! appeared first on PushON Ltd.