Nothing in the world of SEO or Social Media Marketing ever stays still for long… a challenge that keeps all of us digital marketers running like Olympic sprinters trying to keep up with the latest winners and losers!  For those of you who are still running laps of the course or haven’t made it out of the starting blocks yet, the following update will give you an overview of one of the latest budding relationships that has been a big talking point of late in the digital sphere:

Facebook & Bing Jump into Bed Together and Give Google the Cold Shoulder!

For some time it has been rumoured that social media giant Facebook has been gearing up to give Google, the giant of the search engine world a run for its money!  This much anticipated event has seen Facebook team up with a rival search engine, Bing to create its own new offspring, a new search facility which has been christened ‘Graph Search.’  So how did this all happen?

Miss Bing Thought it was Time to get Noticed!

Formerly shy Bing has been the subject of much gossip and speculation over the last year as a search experiment on the quality of her search results aimed to turn the phrase ‘Perception is Reality’ on its head.  Blind test experiments revealed that a large volume of internet users who participated in an experiment to compare search results, rated the quality of the results returned from Bing as being better than those of her much bolder love rival, Google.  This has started ripples in the search world that Google is perhaps not the Goddess we should all be worshipping after all.  In fact, she is perhaps just ‘mutton dressed as lamb!’

Miss Bing Got Her Man!

Bing has boldly announced that she is proud of her new strong and confident partner, Facebook and is ready to show him off to all her friends in the coming months, in fact Bing’s search results are set to contain five times more content from Facebook than previously – everything from links and comments to status updates.  For those social savvy marketers, this will come as no surprise as Bing has been flirting with Facebook for a while, gradually featuring Facebook more prominently in her search results.  From now on, we’ll be seeing a lot more of Facebook in Bing's news feed! 

Things Moved Fast and They Had a Baby

Their young ‘un, Graph Search is now on a mission to help us find everything we need through our Facebook friends and connections – everything from searches for friends who share our passion for a specific sport, films our friends recommend, restaurants they’ve been to in Belfast.... the possibilities are endless!  To quote Facebook, “With Graph Search, you can look up anything shared with you on Facebook, and others can find stuff you've shared with them, including content set to Public. That means different people see different results.”  Tailored content unique to the user is what marketing gurus have been talking about for years.

What Does The Future Hold for Facebook, Bing, Graph Search and Google?

As always, how successful Graph Search will be remains to be seen but already the pros and cons are being heavily debated.  Some people fear that it will expose them to greater risk of phishing attacks, and privacy concerns have arisen in light of the fact that status updates and activity may appear in the organic search results but as businesses, we are look for the benefits.  Graph Search could prove to be a useful research tool to aid our understanding of things our target audiences like, enabling us to use these insights to target our fans with content that will interest them.  Facebook and its new offspring may also encourage fans to spend even longer than they already do in their company, which further cements Facebook as one of the leading channels that businesses need to utilise to strengthen engagement with their target audiences. Google will have to stay on top of her game in the coming months.

Social & Search’s Marriage is Strong

We’ve been chatting for some time about the growing strength of the relationship between Social & Search.  Events over the last few weeks indicate that Facebook’s relationship status isn’t likely to change to ‘single’ anytime soon and Bing’s heart isn’t going to get broken before the upcoming romantic occasion that is Valentine’s Day.  But what may change for those of us who are friends of the leading lights of Social & Search is how the latest developments affect our own relationships with them.  For some of us Google may no longer be our 'BFF' and Bing may be in with a chance of becoming our ‘New Best Friend’ in the future…. at least for a time until something better comes along!

Keep a close eye on your status updates, images, friends' comments and links to more juicy gossip in the coming months to find out exactly what is going on….. and if you are too busy, don’t worry, we’ll do our best to make sure you don’t miss out on any hot gossip!  Just sign up to our blog alerts to make sure you don’t miss out!

The digital landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace and in many different ways. Staying abreast of it can be bewildering, particularly if you don’t know your Responsive Web Design from your vertical scrolling. Though, if you’ve got a good web design team you shouldn’t need to.

We like to start with our clients’ needs and tailor the technology to their brand, working to optimise usability and accessibility, all wrapped up in the kind of deceptively simple design that makes it stand out in the crowd.  An efficiently designed and user-friendly website says so much about how you value your business and how confident you are about your product or service, instilling the same confidence and sense of value in your customers.  So make it good, get it out there and be seen – keeping it vibrant and on trend is an investment you can’t afford not to make.

With that in mind, we’ve taken some time to think about and to identify the trends that we’ll be recommending and implementing for our clients in 2013, whether they’re targeting consumers in Northern Ireland or the Northern Territories.

2013’s Top Web Design Trends

It’s all about what you do and how you look... the trend is all about joining the dots, from offline to online and beyond:

1.    Responsive Web Design

With the surge in mobile and tablets predicted to outstrip laptop sales over the Christmas period and into 2013 your site needs to be ready for every format. Responsive Web Design eliminates the costly process of designing and developing on a device by device basis - a single design works perfectly from desktop to tablet. It’s an easy trend to predict because it’s an absolute essential – miss this one and you’re missing out big time!

2.    The Year of Typography

Typography, and not just by virtue of the very many fonts available, has never been bigger.  The right typography goes a long way to positioning your brand and says so much about how up-to-date you are – any designer worth their salt will advise on getting it right on your site. 

3.    Vertical Scrolling

Mobile channels are here to stay – being there for your customers means being in their pocket, right when they need you.  Lots of websites are already both vertical and horizontal scrollable but the big trend for 2013 is vertical – straight up! It’s user-friendly, convenient and makes for easy navigation. Add the trend for vertical scrolling of menus and buttons and you make it even easier for users to shop and tweet, sharing your offer or innovation, as those buttons remain on screen and so easily accessible.

4.    Parallax Scrolling

It’s been around for a while, associated mainly with video games, but it’s becoming popular as a way for designers to control the depth of design objects on your site. Put simply – it makes for a more engaging browsing experience, enhancing your site’s stickiness and keeping your customers immersed in your site for longer.

5.    Big Buttons

Big has always been beautiful – but now it’s practical too! Big buttons not only look good but make touching and tapping even easier. There’s one drawback – big graphics can slow things down. To keep this trend trending, designers will have to find a way to speed things up. The trend to go big will also apply to images and backgrounds – an easy way to maximise impact!

6.    Keep It Simple

Easier said than done, but that’s all down to how good your design and development team is. Don’t be afraid of white space – your viewers will thank you for it. Too much information can be intimidating, immediately turning your audience off. 

7.    Brand It

And we’re back where we started – building your online presence around you. Branding is the big topic in 2013. Because there’s no point sacrificing your recognition to stay on trend - the two things must work together, complementing each other and building your brand online. As the real and virtual worlds converge even more in 2013, a good designer will have both the tools and know-how to bring your brand properly to life in the online space, joining the dots and making your business look slick wherever your customers find you.  

If you want to talk about getting the website you need to grow your business in 2013 – give us a shout! Call The Web Bureau on 028 9073 1190 or email info@thewebbureau.com

Content Marketing

The reality is customers don’t care about you, your products, or your services. Sorry! What they really care about is themselves, their wants and their needs. 

Content marketing is about creating interesting information your customers are passionate about, appealing to their wants and needs. It is the creation and distribution of relevant, valuable and engaging content with the purpose of increasing brand recognition and engagement. Great content marketing strikes a fine balance of communicating with your customers without selling products or services.

Content Marketing Is Set To Be Huge In 2013

But why is it going to be so important this upcoming year? For starters, the increasing amount of time that people are spending online and searching for information has placed more emphasis on the importance of content marketing, especially as search engines look to provide their users with the highest quality results. A recent survey conducted by Econsultancy states that more than 90% of survey respondents believe content marketing will become more important over the next 12 months. In addition, nearly three quarters (73%) of digital marketers agree that ‘brands are becoming publishers’.

Source: Content Marketing Survey Report By Econsultancy, October 2012

How to Write Great Content

Content marketing essentially takes the form of written, visual and audio format. And although there are many variations, written content is by far the most popular method currently used. Everything from social posts and email newsletters to feature articles and press releases require great written content. Here’s how to do it:

•    Before creating content, you need to prepare. Think about your tone, style and general outline of content.
•    Do something new. What is topical and relevant to your company? For instance, you could write a comprehensive article on an area that is very current in your industry.
•    Great content needs personality. It’s also good to add humour or take a provocative stance. Consider the popularity of your views and whether they will attract media coverage. Ideally, your opinions should be bold and popular.
•    What does your audience want? Most likely valuable information, so give them what they want. Content marketing needs to offer practical advice that people can use.
•    Content marketing is about mastering the art of storytelling therefore captivate your audience with characters that they truly connect with. Telling a story that will provoke ideas and conversations.
•    Great content should be persuasive. Do this by providing informative, well research content that generates interest. Include statistics to add credibility and have a clear call to action.
•    And don’t forget the KILLER headline to spark interest.

Ideally, you want your readers to engage with your content whether that is to comment, share, Tweet or Like… simply because it’s amazing!

When words are no longer enough

Add visuals! Content is no longer entirely text focused, great content marketing should be multi-faceted using videos, infographics and internet memes. 

2013 is set to be the year of visuals with growing popularity of visual social media channel such as Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram and SlideShare. Visual appeal will rule content creation and curation. To create maximum engagement, include creative graphics, photos, and videos in your written content to capture imagination and encourage social shares.

Images:
40% of people respond better to visual information than plain text (Source: Zabisco) therefore powerful online imagery will capture attention, spark imagination and drive engagement.

Video:
Great video content should aim to provoke, inspire or excite. It lends itself to social sharing and not only tells a story and conveys information, but can also trigger an emotional response.

How do I apply SEO?

Content Marketing may well be the new buzz word of the moment but it’s important not to forget about correctly optimising your content for Google’s search engines. Google is always thirsty for more content and you can take advantage of this by following these simple Search Engine Optimisation tactics when publishing content online;

•    Frequently uploading new, topical content not only keeps your customer interested in your site but it keeps Google interested! If Google sees a site that has become stagnant with no new content, it will stop feeding it into its search engine results pages. Adding a blog/news section to your website can help with this. Even if it is only updated once every 2 weeks, your site will still reach the approval of Google! 
•    Google’s Webmaster Guidelines recommend publishing content of a high quality stating the following ‘Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single-most important thing to do’. Recent Algorithm updates by Google penalises worthless content and rewards highly relevant, meaningful and trustworthy content.
•    Ensure the content is original! Not a copy and paste job from some other source on the internet. Duplicate content is penalised heavily by Google search engines and Google is putting immense pressure on producing original, high quality content.
•    Make Google’s job easier! Don’t neglect the SEO basics - Complete meta descriptions, title tags, and image alt tags. All of these help Google read and process your content with ease. This in turn will be rewarded in the search rankings.
•    Write naturally sounding content targeted to humans and not search engines. And forget the old SEO tactics of keyword stuffing.
•    Increase web traffic by directing any external content back to your website and ensure that your website content is worth reading when they get there!

Content Marketing at The Web Bureau

For more information on content marketing, get in touch with The Web Bureau. We can help with content creation and online distribution. All content produced by our award winning team is original, engaging and fully optimised for search engine visibility, maximising the chances of being found by new customers.

Are you considering content marketing for 2013? Please contact Denise Cowan, Digital Marketing Manager at The Web Bureau on 028 9073 1190 or email denise@thewebbureau.com