This blog post is the thoughts and opinions of one very cynical, grumpy, sweary, company director and does not in any way reflect the opinions and values of PushON as a whole. We appologise in advance if any of the swearing offends. If you are offended easily you may want to look away now.

I was fairly late to the #party with Twitter, dismissing it as a time wasting excuse for avoiding work and a self-promoting bag of bollocks. It was in May 2007 I bit the 140 character bullet and created an account but initially it’s fair to say I wasn’t enamoured.

Here’s my first tweet:

Signing up to twitter to see what it’s all about and attempting to display within a blog template May 22, 2007

If you’re interested (I doubt you are) here’s all my tweets on one page.

Since then I’ve become a regularly user of twitter for a mix of both social and professional reasons. It was slow going to start and looking back I’ve certainly changed and adapted the way I use the medium as time has gone on.

Initial inane tweets during the formative years of 2007, good examples of which are:

So this should be a twitter by mobile phone. May 22, 2007

Haha what a douche bag ‘a twitter’, it’s a tweet you dumb fuck!

Sat in dukes Jun 04, 2007

Everyone needed to know that, right? I think this pre-dates FourSquare, which I’ve never been bothered to sign up to, although I did try generating interest in an alternative during 2010 with a series (actually just 2) of #PoorSquare tweets,

I just unlocked the cheap clothing badge at clothing isle in Tesco on #PoorSQUARE Apr 22, 2010

Just unlocked the “Fine Dining” badge at McDonalds on #Poorsquare Apr 28, 2010

No one else got on board with that though surprisingly.

My only tweet from the following year (I’d fully decided that Twitter was a self-promoting pile of shite at this point),

Using Twitter for the first time in a year because it’s most immediate way to take the piss out of business parnetner prior to his vasectomy May 21, 2008

Ignoring my mis-spelling of ‘partner’, this was obviously a pivotal moment of the year. Simon @psychobel was fully immersed in all things twitter at this point, so much so, that he was live tweeting his snip.

I remember some fairly heated debates that year with Simon championing the social media platform and me repeatedly pointing out that few people outside of our industry were engaging on it. That’s still true to some degree (from a personal perspective certainly), however I’m prepared to admit that it’s more valuable and useful than I’d first foreseen (Queue Wharton singing, “I told you so”) and my use of twitter has increased steadily since early 2010.

That said there are some uses of twitter that frankly get right on my tits and it’s time to get them off said tits. I’m aware this might ruffle some feathers (clearly people I follow do this or why would they annoy me) and I’m aware that I’m guilty on times of some of the things I’m going to list.

So here they are; the top 5 things people do on twitter that get on my tits.

Number 5: Use Instagram

I’m not an Instagram user, I can’t see your photo in the twitter stream and I’m not going to click on the link to open Instagram just because you’ve taken a photo of a nice sunset and applied a shitty filter.

NUMBER 4: Holiday Tweets

It’s 27c here, the beer is cold and the babes are hot

I’m in Manchester, it’s pissing it down and I’m working, go f*%&$ ya self.

The view here is absolutely stunning, spot of lunch and a snooze by the pool later I think [Instagram photo link]

How about putting your phone away and making the most of it before you’re back at work, back on twitter and banging on about the shit UK weather wishing you were somewhere else.

Number 3: Parents tweeting about their kids

I don’t have kids, I might at some point and maybe then I’ll convince myself that everyone should know when they’ve stuck a biscuit in the Blu-ray drive and how we all laughed.

I remember the embarrassment as a child of my parents showing photos from the photo album to family, friends, neighbours and visitors, I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a child of today and have your parents broadcast your childhood to the world.

Don’t get me started on parents creating Twitter accounts for their children and worse still, the little darlings yet to be born.

“@benjmurf: Never leave a 2-year-old child and a tub of sudocrem alone in a room together! pic.twitter.com/4zw2vnrUUb” – Actually that one is pretty funny

Number 2: #Foodporn

Where to start with this one? Well first off it’s the self-congratulating, boasting nature that nearly all my top 5 have at heart but in most instances it’s less #Foodporn and more like #StandardFood

Here’s some examples (I had to break my Instagram rule on some of these),

http://instagram.com/p/YZ-wpFH1Wh - That’s not #Foodporn that a fucking toasted cheese sandwich.

https://twitter.com/JohanHakon/status/326366802504466432/photo/1 - #Foodporn? small dishes of custardy looking shit more like.

http://instagram.com/p/YXYWYLKhLU - Oh dear @nedpoulter, sorry buddy that’s just a sausage sandwich, you know this shit won’t wash with me.

Small dishes of custardy looking shit

Number 1: Self congratulating retweets

This really is my number one twitter pet hate and frankly I can forgive all others over this one. These are instance where someone has said something positive about someone else over twitter and then the recipient of that praise chooses to retweet that praise to highlight how fucking wonderful they are.

Have some humility people. Do you replicate this amplified back slapping away from twitter? If I walked across a room to you and said “Thanks for helping you were great today”, would you then open the window and shout to everyone passing “@roywilding says THANKS FOR HELPING I WAS FUCKING GREAT TODAY”? I doubt it.

So unless you’re the sort of idiot who refers to themselves in the 3rd person, take the compliment and say, ‘thank you’ but don’t retweet it thinking everyone else wants to see how great you are.

Look, I’m fucking amazing, someone said so!

So that’s it, my top 5 twitter hates. I’m really not a very nice person so don’t be expecting a ‘top 5 twitter loves’ anytime soon, but please do feel free to share your thoughts on what really yanks your chain about twitter or tell me I’m a cynical, boring old twat that can stick my opinions where the sun doesn’t shine.

I’m just off to promote my own blog post and tell everyone how amazing it is on Google+.

The post Top 5 Things People Do On Twitter That Get On My Tits appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Check out that TV baby! They don’t make them like that any more.

In those 5 years we’ve grown, burst into the office space next door and we’re now bursting out onto the street. Whilst the majority are happy we don’t have enough space for our MD to sit at a desk it’s time for us to say our goodbyes and move onto bigger space.

Office for Sale or Let (Lease) in Castlefield, Manchester

Onwards and upwards as they say, which means we’re looking for someone to buy or lease our small but perfectly formed office space in the Castlefield area of Manchester. I won’t bore you with all the boring details but you can download a PDF with full details attached and you’re more than welcome to come and have a nosey around if you want.

Wa wa wee wa, it’s bigger than you think missus, or is it?

The Important Stuff

• It’s near some quality bars, those being Banyan Tree, Dukes 92, Cask and Knott bar.
• There’s space for about 8/10 people to work comfortably.
• We believe Fibre has just become available as an option for t’Internet although it’s been a bit shite up to now so we had Metronet installed to give us decent access.
• It’s a nice bright office with windows all down one side.
• The natives are fairly friendly.

Another photo, from another angle

If you’re interested by all means get in touch with us directly (not estate agents, we have that covered thanks) and by all means pop in for a look about if you’re passing. Whistle stop tours take about 2 minutes.

This is where we’re moving to but we’re hoping to have at least swept the floor before we move in early 2013.

Our New Office Space

Contact Details:

The post Bye! Buy? 217 The Box Works appeared first on PushON Ltd.

It was a timely tweet as it’s something that’s been bugging me about Google+ for a while. I just can’t understand why it’s not standard to all commenting systems, social networks and/or blog platforms because for me anything other than threaded comments makes no sense.

When we’re in social situations we don’t queue up one after the other to make a comment. Conversations are organic and they jump about. People want to comment on the originating statement; others want to comment on comments and conversations fragment and spin off and wonderful things happen.

Socially Conversations Fragment and Naturally Thread

Having a linear commenting system just doesn’t represent real life social situations and conversations get stunted and/or disjointed so anyone joining the conversation at any point other than within the first few comments has a very difficult time joining in and probably doesn’t bother.

Here’s a good example on Google+ of a post where a good amount of people buy into the subject and start a conversation https://plus.google.com/100535338638690515335/posts/6f4muBXyGPe

Google+ Comments – Using usernames to attempt to join up the conversation

Louis Gray sparks a conversation up about a new Acer Chromebook and people begin to comment. There are various issues discussed within the comments made including price point, the OS and battery life but it’s hard to follow because it’s fragmented. There are people attempting to thread the conversation by responding directly to comments with users Google+ names but the conversation still becomes a jigsaw puzzle of some complexity for anyone arriving late.

Visually, threaded commenting can be difficult to represent but it’s a key area that social networks should put in effort. If topics from break off threads within conversations can be identified and made clear then I believe conversations will go on longer and more users will join the discussion.

Does anyone have any examples where they think threaded comments is working particularly well due to the functionality and/or way they’re visually represented?

The post Threaded Comments – The only way to go for effective commenting and engagement in my opinion appeared first on PushON Ltd.

They don't like it up 'em!

You may or may not be aware that the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) have an EU-mandate “Cookie Law” which comes into force on Sunday May 27th

The law applies to any website in the EU that uses cookies and/or similar technologies for storing information on the end users equipment (computer or mobile device) when visiting said website.

Don’t panic Captain Mainwaring, we’ll tell you everything you need to know and how you go about becoming compliant to avoid the wrath of the ICO.

What is a Cookie?

Well apart from the obvious biscuit based answer and without getting into too much technical jargon they are small files which are placed on a visitors computer when visiting a website that contain data specific to the user visiting. For example, web browser type, operating system and personal details such as names.

Who needs to comply with the new EU mandate?

The new mandate is applicable to owners of any website operating within the EU and outside if your target customer/audience is in the EU.

How do you comply?

Well it’s not entirely clear I’m afraid with many people even doubting whether the ICO themselves have a truly clear understanding of what is expected.

The only truly clear part of the mandate is that users of the site need to be informed if cookies are being used on the site. Our understanding is that there’s no clear directive on how that should be done and whether users need to opt in (consent) to the use of cookies or whether after informing users of cookies being used consent can be implied from use of the site.

The BBC for example seems to have chosen to assume consent. Initially it points users to a page informing users of the cookies they use and allows users to disable the various cookie types. By default the cookies are enabled and simply moving off that page saves those settings. With many developers and digital companies using the BBC site as a benchmark we’ll probably see assumed consent become the norm.

*UPDATE – 28/05/2012*

In a last minute change to the guidelines the ICO made a crucial change to the wording which suggests that implied/assumed content is allowed.

“Implied consent has always been a reasonable proposition in the context of data protection law and privacy regulation and it remains so in the context of storage of information or access to information using cookies and similar devices.”

What if you don’t comply?
It’s not entirely clear what sort of punishment can be expected for sites found not to be complying and to what degree website owners need to comply by the 27th

“We don’t expect all organisations not compliant on the 27th to have some evidence of taking action to be compliant.” – David Evans, ICO

This article on The Register suggests the ICO will use a light touch initially with as few as 50 of the UKs largest websites found not complying receiving a letter telling them they’re being naughty and then waiting for complaints from the public before acting further.

What does seem clear however is that ignorance won’t be a valid excuse and that being able to show that at least some action has been undertaken to understand and comply is expected.

Here’s some links to further information to help you decide on how you’d like to interpret the mandate;

1. The ICO website – Visit the ICO Website
2. The ICO guidance on new cookie regulations – Download the ICO Guide
3. Econsultancy reviewing two approaches from large newspapers – Read the Econsultancy review of the Daily Mirror and FT.com approach
4. The Register – The Registers latest take on the mandate

What do we suggest you do?

Well it’s entirely up to you and your own legal department to decide the best course of action for your website but here’s a checklist to help you on your way.

1. Ensure your legal department is informed and seek their advice on solutions
2. Complete a cookie audit on your site to help make a judgement on what is acceptable – The very helpful Chrome plugin from Attacat will help with that
3. Decide on how you’re going to inform users about the cookies you’ll continue to use
4. Decide if user opt in (consent) is required or will be assumed
5. Make the necessary changes to your site

What has PushON chosen to do?

We’ve chosen to implement a small javascript plugin called “cookie Control” which requests users consent to use cookies (but assumes consent for users that choose to ignore it) and links to our privacy policy which outlines further details of what we use cookies for.

If you’re a customer of PushON with a valid security and maintenance package we’ll happily implement that for you gratis.

If you’re a customer of PushON without a valid security and maintenance package we can still implement the plugin but we’ll need to charge an appropriate fee. The implementation fee should only be a small nominal admin fee to cover time spent but each site will need to be reviewed first before we can agree a definite cost.

If you’d like the plugin implemented please call us to discuss or complete the form on the contact page of our site.

The post The EU Cookie Law – Don’t Panic Captain Mainwaring! appeared first on PushON Ltd.

There have been a couple of Google announcements recently that have ruffled some feathers within the search marketing community.

Encryption of organic keyword search data for logged in users which Google is proclaiming as a move to protect user privacy.

The first announcement has come as quite a blow to the search engine optimisers amongst us. The net result of the announcement is that anyone logged in to a Google account when searching won’t pass any keyword information to analytics programs because the data will be encrypted. They’ll still show as a hit but the all-important info of what they searched for to arrive won’t be made known and will instead just show as “not provided”. Google suggests that it’ll account for about 9.9% of organic search data although that number is likely to increase if we see Google+ become the social network of choice over Facebook.

Apart from the obvious blow to the online marketing world from a reporting perspective, I mean it’s already difficult to justify the value of good on-going SEO work without losing a big chunk of supporting data right?, there’s a couple of other issues with Google justification of this change that has got peoples backs up.

1. Awords users will still be able to see this data. So not so much in the interest of user privacy but more like a pay-per-view model.
2. Users not logged won’t have that same encryption. So the privacy of non-Google account holders doesn’t seem to matter.

There’s all sorts of theories being thrown around about what they’re up to (perhaps there’s genuinely nothing more to it than they suggest) like this epiphany from +Jenn Mathews where she considers it might just be Google trying to track the referrals to its own Google+ asset (I’m not convinced). It also appears to have caused some unusual affects as reported by @AlexMoss from Pleer.

My own take on it is I’m predicting that reporting on encrypted keyword searches will become a feature of the Google Analytics Premium service.

The Google Analytics free version has become the analytics program of choice for many search marketers and for the majority of sites being tracked there seems to be little reason to start paying for the premium version. Perhaps this would be a reason for people to start paying? They’ve handed out their samples of meth to us in the form of a free Analytics account and now we’ve become dependent they want us to pay for our Skanté (sorry that’s the Breaking Bad thing again).

There’s a petition to show the volume of dissatisfaction over this change available to sign at http://keywordtransparency.com/ which has been put together by @searchmartin if you feel strongly about this.

Introduction of usage limits for the Google Maps API

This more recent announcement has also rubbed a few people up the wrong way. As of October 1^st Google announce that they will impose a usage limit on calls to the Google Maps API and sites exceeding those limits will need to either pay for the excess usage or purchase a Maps API Premier License.

For most users the usage limits will be more than enough I suspect with only high volume for-profit sites being affected but is it another indicator that Google is moving its previously free services to a pay to play model?

What next?

Will we see more Google free services move to a premium model now users are dependants?

Will we see Blogger offer an improved paid version? There have certainly been some interesting announcements there like Google+ integration and Dynamic Views that has encouraged a few people to switch back from WordPress.

The post Google got us hooked on Crack Codecaine and now it’s gonna make us pay appeared first on PushON Ltd.

So here’s how it works……

From 10am to 5pm on Thursday 7th July 2011 we will be releasing questions on the hour, every hour through twitter @pushonltd, Facebook and on our sparkly new website. You will have 50 minutes to enter through the website and we’ll pick a winner from the correct answers. You can enter as many questions as you like but only once per question.

Find out the answers in whatever way you feel you need to. Ask people on twitter, call your friends, run over to their office, ask our staff… anything goes, no rules. Except Ned, you can’t enter. I’ve told you this.

Use the hashtag #PushONPrizes if you like.

As John Andersson would say:

Are…

You…

Ready?

GO!

The post #PushONPrizes! appeared first on PushON Ltd.

The website, built by our very own internal design and development team is built on the well known publishing platform, WordPress. Pushon.co.uk makes use of the latest version and uses its new features such as custom menus. From an SEO point of view, We’ve brought the blog from a sub domain (blog.pushon.co.uk) to a sub-directory (pushon.co.uk/blog) which should increase domain authority. Our development team have also been busy searching out and testing the best plug-ins to manage SEO on pushon.co.uk.

It uses a custom template that we’ve built from scratch giving us a chance to update the PushON brand to give a cleaner look and feel.

One of the main features of the design is to allow for better use of the screen space. The old design was quite narrow compared to the new one. This reflects an increase in the typical screen that people are now using.

It was also was a good opportunity to include a full list of services that we provide. Some people think of us just as a search marketing agency, but we’re much more than that.

Take a look around, we hope you like it.

The post We've Finally Launched a New Website! appeared first on PushON Ltd.

About a 50/50 split between agency and client side in the room today.

Lewis Lensenn (DC Storm) will kick off proceedings with a short talk about attribution and a bit beyond.

“The devil is very much in the detail” but there are a number of higher level value points that we will cover today. Lewis has a history in travel, search and also has experience in social media and online PR.

What is attribution?

• Is about understanding where the consumer is interacting with your site and attributing this to which business unit was responsible for this sale
• “Actions are rarely driven by a single visit” – we must consider multiple marketing channels
• Map out the customer journey (yes, we’re going back to textbook stuff…) and see at what points your marketing activity, or the customer’s actions have lead up to a transaction

One attribution model does not fit all

• “Flexible allocation of sales across all or a subset of the visits”
• How far back do you look to find out what attributed to the sale? – This will vary depending on the product, CDs = short, holidays = long
• Discover your rules for ‘weighting’: channel weighting, brand weighting, chain position weighting (where in the customer journey is most important for you?). Also consider it specifics in your marketing activity – is your email marketing particularly successful? etc
• “visit related to a brand is quite different than a product or service search”
• “Directly attributing sale value can be very misleading” – consider the margins involved in individual sales

Attributed Sales, unanswered questions:

• Length of path to conversion?
• How many sales did a channel or keyword contribute to?
• Where in the path to conversion does a channel contribute?
• When does a channel or keyword contribute in the path to conversion?
• Are there any combinations of channels at work?

“There is huge value in developing an attribution model” – But it must be specific to your brand

It’s not all about sales, think about engagement attribution

Adrian Hands (Tagman) is now going to dig a little deeper into ‘tagging’ on websites

• “Allows you to see everything from when a user comes into your site, what they’re doing there and when/where they are leaving it”
• TagMan tracks over £1bn in conversions every month
• Most people are only awarding on their paid terms, nothing is being considered for earned media (social, branding and PR activity)
• Try to avoid duplication in awarding affiliates, TagMan saved 15% for brands like Laura Ashley and Boden using this
• Very important to report the sale in realtime, to avoid de-duplication at a later time

Assisted Conversion – Tracks everything that happens in the channel that drives a conversion

Last Click – Amount converting on the final click

Attributed Conversion – The assisted conversion across all the channels, helps you see more than what has happened simply at last click (this can be misleading)

Now Conversion Rate Experts are taking over to wrap things up…

• How much of the pertinent information is in the clickstream?
• “To grow your business, you need to know what’s working & amplify it”
• Use the ‘other’ field in your favour – but force the user to input a reason, avoid selecting from a drop down – the data is often meaningless

DO research to…

• Identify your persuasive assets – It’s REALLY easy
• Understand the highly persuasive elements your prospects never saw (often not on your landing page…
• Create a wish list of persuasive elements that you need to acquire

Good Tip: Use Wordle to see the most used words in your customer feedback

Q & A’s:

The post SAScon 2011: Credit Where Credit's Due – Conversion Attribution appeared first on PushON Ltd.

You might already know this… or not: The Big Chip Awards are the biggest digital awards outside London. They are judged by the industry for the industry. They are judged by people who know what they are doing. So these awards are about more than just selling tables; The Big Chips are about quality.

PushON are involved in four short-listed projects. This delights us enormously.

First of all (and closest to our hearts), we have been short-listed for “The Best Use of Search” for the second year running.

Our client is The Little Greene. They make paint so good it’s used by English Heritage. We’ve massively increased traffic to their website and the proportion of visitors who purchase from them.

We also helped out Axon Garside with our mutual client, K3SCS. The Episodic Mockumentary based around the Factory has delivered significant new business for them. It’s shortlisted in 2 categories:

Best Online Brand Development and Best Digital Marketing Campaign

And finally,

The marvelous AHD 168 is shortlisted for best use of animation. We didn’t make it, but along with SKV Communications we made sure that plenty of people knew about it by distributing the campaign online.

The awards are on the 18th of June at the Palace hotel in Manchester. There are still tickets available. If you are involved in digital in any way, you really need to be there.

To try and bring us some good karma for our award shortlisting, we’re offering a free website analysis to you or anyone else you know who trades online. Do you know someone who could use some help with their online marketing from a quality agency? You know what to do.

The post PushON Gorging on Chips! appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Our entry this year is for our online marketing work for The Little Greene Paint Company purveyors of fine paint and wallpaper based in Openshaw, Manchester.

We’ll be keeping our fingers crossed but always end up enjoying the evening regardless of whether we win or lose.

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