Matt Owen – Search Engine Watch https://searchenginewatch.com Mon, 16 Mar 2020 17:59:51 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 Happy holidays from Search Engine Watch! https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/12/23/happy-holidays-from-search-engine-watch/ https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/12/23/happy-holidays-from-search-engine-watch/#respond Fri, 23 Dec 2016 13:41:16 +0000 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2016/12/23/happy-holidays-from-search-engine-watch/ As the year draws to a close and the Search Engine Watch team begin to sail perilously close to Health & Safety law by roasting chestnuts at their desks, all that’s left is to publish one final update before racing to the post office to send our letters to Santa*. 

All of us would like to say a huge thank you to all of you. Whether you are a reader (hi Steve), a contributor, a commenter or a malicious hacker, hell-bent on accessing our database in order to find out the secrets of my unpublished opus “4 and a bit ways to make images load a little bit quicker”, we genuinely appreciate you taking the time and energy to get involved. What can we say – without you we’re nothing.

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed our content this year (and if you’re the kind of Grinch who hasn’t, then let us know, we want to keep getting better at this), and we’re looking forward to a 2017 full of challenges, learning and general SEO-related hi-jinx.

Have a fantastic holiday season, we’ll see you cats in in the new year!

 

*We know our editor has had his heart set on this “Screaming Vase” for a while now. Unfortunately he’s on the naughty list. 

s-l300

Matt Owen manages global social media at Shell, and is a director at Atomise Marketing. He’s been talking about himself in the third person and filling in as editor for the far more handsome Christopher Ratcliff for the past week or two. Why not say hi on Twitter? 

]]> https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/12/23/happy-holidays-from-search-engine-watch/feed/ 0 How are beacons going to affect search marketing? https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/06/30/how-are-beacons-going-to-affect-search-marketing/ https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/06/30/how-are-beacons-going-to-affect-search-marketing/#respond Thu, 30 Jun 2016 13:27:44 +0000 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2016/06/30/how-are-beacons-going-to-affect-search-marketing/ Recently I’ve been reading a lot about the effects beacons and proximity marketing may have on search strategy.

For complete transparency, I do actually work for a company that makes beacons and management software, it’s not just because I’m boring. But, I’ve found little doubt that it will bring some very fundamental changes to the way we reach customers, and the type of targeting and data management we’ll need to master in order to do things properly.

Although perhaps not in the way you might think…

edgelands barbican

Improving proximity results

Search Engine Watch has spoken about beacons a lot in the past, but just in case you need a refresher, a beacon is a tiny device that can transmit a signal to any Bluetooth device in range – phones, fitness bracelets, headphones, smartwatches etc.

Usually this happens through an app (although Google in particular are taking steps to remove this friction and enable direct device communication), and before the privacy police wade in, it’s all completely opt-in.

It certainly has some obvious ramifications for local search.

beacon

In the past, we’ve largely been limited to areas defined by map coordinates for localisation. These are fine for locating buildings, but not so hot once people actually enter a space.

Beacons have a big advantage here because they get that location down to an area a couple of metres across, and they allow you to transmit and receive data in realtime. If I’m standing by the apples in your supermarket, you can fire me a coupon.

I’m using that example on purpose by the way, and I’ll explain why in a moment.

Beacons don’t need to be interruptive

For marketers, there seems to be an assumption that beacons are an interruptive marketing tool.

Retail couponing is the most obvious use-case after all, but just as early ecommerce sites learned, couponing is no way to build a successful business. And as the publishing industry is learning, interruptive marketing… just isn’t very good really. People don’t like it in most cases.

As I say though, this is only an assumption. The real value of beacons is actually almost the complete opposite of interruptive.

It is in contextual interactions, which usually rely on either an active request from a user, or passive scanning and data aggregation by the person deploying the beacons.

In other words, if I visit a museum, download it’s app and enable push notifications while I’m there, then I’m actively searching for information abut my location.

If not, then I can still be monitored as an anonymous device that is moving around the museum. Once this data is collected, there is a lot of potential value. Maybe it’s time to move that Rodin statue to a more prominent position (possibly next to the gift shop).

Search will need to become hyper-relevant in an open beacon marketplace

So what does this mean for search?

Currently, a lot of local search isn’t that great. There are plenty of fine examples, but there is certainly an adoption curve, particularly for small businesses.

Do a quick search for something like ‘Bike shop, Shrewsbury’ and you can usually see which businesses have a lot of low-hanging SEO fruit that they just aren’t optimising for.

This is a missed chance, but it is usually being missed because of a lack of familiarity and time. People who are busy running a hardware store don’t often have time or money to really concentrate on good SEO.

As beacon deployment becomes more widespread (and it is going to be), this situation is going to change for the user on the ground. App networks and beacons deployed as general infrastructure in more locations mean that local optimisation is opened up to more players, with more resources. Why should our local bike store be wasting time optimising when Raleigh can be doing it for them?

Local SEO will begin to be a wider concern not for the locations themselves, but for the companies that sell through those locations. And those companies have the resources and processes available to start doing a really good job.

There is however, still a place for the location itself in all this, and that is in adding contextual value, which may not come from purely commercial campaigns.

Recently I visited Edgelands at the Barbican in London, where one of our clients has deployed beacons that guide visitors around the interesting (and slightly confusing) internal space.

The interesting thing here is that it occurs through sound, so that visitors are able to view their surroundings, rather than keeping their eyes glued to their phone screens. It adds context while keeping the visitor engaged with the physical space, rather than having the two vie for attention.

With the rise of experience stores, this is going to become a more important point of differentiation over the next few years. Customers won’t want distracting alerts and pop-ups, they’ll want something that provides a richer experience.

From the marketing side, providing these will become a way to deepen brand affinity as much as increase immediate sales.

Search is about to leave its silos behind

This makes location a strange, mixed bag for search. On one side, brands providing advertising through app networks and beacon fleets owned by third parties (in my opinion, telcos are currently best placed to handle and benefit from large scale deployment, as they already have large data networks and physical locations).

In many cases, this will be about hyper-localised PPC campaigns. On the other, locations providing realtime SEO, with a shifting set of keywords based on whatever is currently happening in-store (or in-museum, or in-restaurant for instance).

It means that we’ll have to get better at aligning our data and working out which signals really matter, and we’re going to need to get insanely good at management and targeting.

I hate to use this word, but search will need to become more holistic, and even more aligned with marketing. There’s a huge opportunity here for search marketers, customer experience, data management and more.

]]> https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/06/30/how-are-beacons-going-to-affect-search-marketing/feed/ 0 Why are we so bad at social media customer service? https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/06/22/why-are-we-so-bad-at-social-media-customer-service/ https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/06/22/why-are-we-so-bad-at-social-media-customer-service/#respond Wed, 22 Jun 2016 14:16:08 +0000 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2016/06/22/why-are-we-so-bad-at-social-media-customer-service/ While social media marketing campaigns have always grabbed the lion’s share of the headlines, customer service is the area where the real battles for market dominance are being waged.

Providing good customer service is not just about differentiation, it is business-critical.

So… why is everyone so awful at it?

There are a lot of reasons customer service isn’t up to scratch. It’s a new discipline. In many cases it’s grown organically. A majority of businesses still file social under the marketing banner, rather than as a service department, which means that there are conflicting interests vying for channel space.

This means that the market is under-serviced in many cases. According to 2015 data, the majority of businesses using social media are only able to respond to two-thirds (66%) of the social media interactions they receive.

This issue is actually compounded in businesses where social customer service is part of the wider customer service function.

Channel expertise is at a premium, meaning there is often a lack of structure between the people running the Twitter account and the people on the phone. What should be a beautiful, frictionless experience for a customer becomes a hell of multiple calls, and explaining issues over and over again.

It’s worth remembering that by the time someone is complaining about your business online, it is probably because your other channels have already failed them. You are starting with a customer who is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore.

No amount of brand-building is going to counteract that. And just so we’re clear on the impact, 40% of US consumers have taken their business to a competitor brand based purely on superior customer service.

http://www.newvoicemedia.com/blog/the-multibillion-dollar-cost-of-poor-customer-service-infographic/

How do we start providing good service through social?

It would be remiss of me not to mention that I’ve recently finished writing an enormous social media customer service best practice guide on just this subject, which you can access through ClickZ Intelligence, but just like customer service, it would also be bad of me not to at least try to solve the issue in this post.

The most forward thinking organisations have begun to address these issues by creating posts that are designed to completely own customer experience. Rather than separating touchpoints by channel, a Chief Experience Officer or Chief Customer Officer is primarily charged with making sure that the customer has a good time, all of the time.

http://www.aspect.com/Documents/Papers/Aspect-NGCC-Forrester-WP.pdf

On the face of it this seems straightforward (It’s not), and there is definitely a school of thought that says it is as much about mindset and culture as it is systems and processes. The realisation that every department is on the same P&L is, perhaps surprisingly, not a common one in business.

Different channels, different metrics

I mentioned channel expertise earlier. The ability to understand how interactions occur on different platforms is key to successful implantation, because it will fundamentally affect how you measure success.

In the case of email or telephone, it was historically common practice to base reporting on ‘number of closed cases’. This obviously does not always motivate the service representative to supply customers with the best answer to an issue. Merely the quickest.

https://www.clickz.com/intelligence/report/a-marketers-guide-to-social-media-customer-service/
Retailer response times on Facebook

This is again compounded by social, where it is not a linear conversation. A phone call may take ten minutes to complete. A contact through Twitter may be answered immediately, but the customer may not respond for several hours. Time-to-resolution is not a fair or useful metric here.

Also, while it is strategically possible to remove customer satisfaction from channels, it is not as easy to separate it from departments. If your marketing team is providing customer service, then you can bet they’ll want that value reflected in their monthly reports.

The fact that at least a third of social media questions go unanswered is also an issue bought on by a failure to apply considered metrics to social customer service. Marketing has often been guilty in the past of ‘everything, everywhere’ approaches to social. We have to be on Snapchat and Pinterest and Twitter and YouTube and…

Hold your horses.

Success in any form of social media is dictated by the quality of service you can provide. Whether that’s an interesting Facebook page or a raft of multimedia omnichannel responses. If you cannot resource for these channels, then the most valuable thing a business can do is work out which channel is most used by their customer base, and concentrate on responding on that channel.

As businesses become more complex, so too does customer service. Monitoring tools are extremely advanced, but if they do not have a native language speaker setting up initial Boolean search terms, then they will miss a huge number of interactions (If you’d like to see this in action, try typing ‘SEO’ into search.twitter.com and see how many returns you get from Korea that have nothing to do with Search Marketing).

Although these systems are still developing, many use tracking and logging processes designed for traditional CRM. Where ‘traditional’ CRM provides a customer persona based on their interactions with a business by phone, email, through a website or in person. Social CRM data includes every interaction that customer makes with any business, so can be far more valuable if collected and utilised properly, but it requires a more comprehensive tracking and response process.

There is no simple way to provide great customer service through social, but it is achievable, and perhaps more importantly, it has clear commercial value. Forrester found that 45% of users will abandon an online purchase if they can’t quickly find answers to their questions.

The trick is to find out where that customer is online and be ready to provide that information.

]]> https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/06/22/why-are-we-so-bad-at-social-media-customer-service/feed/ 0 Is content marketing really working? Advice and insight from #ClickZChat https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/05/25/is-content-marketing-really-working-advice-and-insight-from-clickzchat/ https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/05/25/is-content-marketing-really-working-advice-and-insight-from-clickzchat/#respond Wed, 25 May 2016 14:11:26 +0000 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2016/05/25/is-content-marketing-really-working-advice-and-insight-from-clickzchat/ We talk a lot about content. How to make it, what makes it work, how to measure it’s effects, if there’s too much of it and more. The fact that we’re a good few years into the content marketing revolution but we’re still having these conversations is telling in itself.

Despite many, many assertions to the contrary, a number of people and organisations simply do not believe that content works.

We took to Twitter to find out why this myth persisted, and what we could do about it in this week’s #ClickZChat.

As always, we asked three questions in one hour. Here’s the insight and advice from our witter followers:

Q1: Do you think the C-Suite *really* believe in the value of content marketing Why or why not?

Many felt that we were still relatively early in the content marketing adoption cycle, and that this view would change given time (and proof of data)

However, when it came to companies already doing it, metrics were often a sticking point.

Last-click conversion was still being used in many cases, which made it harder to show genuine dollar value

It is worth mentioning that there are plenty of trackable numbers out there, some of which may not fall under the traditional ‘marketing’ banner. Search was a popular measure of success

And ultimately we may just need a little faith and patience. Not something we all have the luxury of unfortunately

So, how are marketers measuring ROI from content? Next up, we asked or followers for personal tips and examples…

Q2 How do YOU measure ROI from Content Marketing?

Starting with the basics. Having analytics in place, but also tracking human responses to content:

It’s also important to have clear goals to begin with. Success looks very different from company to company

Raj mentioned that simple actions could lead to larger results. It’s important to consider which action you are driving, and at what stage it sits in your sales funnel

With this in mind, it’s important to remember that it may not have to make ANY money. Content could reduce paid media costs, or work as a lead generation machine that does not convert directly

Q3: Which roles would you have as part of your content marketing dream team?

Initially, the focus was very much on creation, with lots of votes for key roles like designers, writers and editors:

As mentioned earlier though, once you have created something, you need to have it seen by the right people

it’s also worth pointing out that editorial and creative should have a strategic structure, rather than just concentrating on standalone pieces of content

And needs to know the brand and the audience intimately

And we received this remarkably thorough answer from Chris Lake which highlights the crossover between roles very nicely:

Overall it seems that marketers are convinced by the ability of content to go beyond push marketing and create measures like engagement which are more valuable over time, but currently many of us are lagging when it comes to proper planning and measurement techniques. Hopefully the continuing advance of digital transformation will see this change for the better.

If you’d like to know more about content marketing, check out this useful Content Marketing Strategy Documentation Map.

Thanks as always for all your fantastic answers. Join us over on twitter every Wednesday for the next #ClickZChat

Here’s a new content marketing strategy documentation map

]]> https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/05/25/is-content-marketing-really-working-advice-and-insight-from-clickzchat/feed/ 0 Local SEO: Key challenges and tips from #ClickZChat https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/05/09/local-seo-key-challenges-and-tips-from-clickzchat/ https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/05/09/local-seo-key-challenges-and-tips-from-clickzchat/#respond Mon, 09 May 2016 10:59:08 +0000 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2016/05/09/local-seo-key-challenges-and-tips-from-clickzchat/ In previous ClickZChat sessions we’ve largely covered content and platforms, but seeing as it’s a Twitter event held by both ClickZ AND Search Engine Watch, it seemed only right that we spend some time looking at search in more depth.

This week we took to Twitter for an hour to ask our followers for their local SEO challenges and solutions. Here’s everything we learned:

Question 1: What are the biggest challenges you face when optimizing for local search?

  • SPAM

Several users (including me) mentioned spam being a much bigger issue for local ranking, with maps being particularly open to abuse, and Search Engines slower to act on this than in other cases:

  • Citations

Many people also felt that citations were a hassle for a variety of reasons.

  • Resources

Indeed, the issue of keeping up to date was seen as a major challenge. Data is often fragmented and many organisations with several locations do not have the time or resources to roll out best practice – or even standard practice – to all location listings, with local stores and outlets being left to fend for themselves:

This issue is compounded when you consider the lack of SEO expertise on site. In many cases it simply isn’t considered an issue.

With that said, it was also felt that this state of affairs meant there were big opportunities for those businesses that are getting it right, with small changes making a big difference

Q2: What are the absolute essentials for a decent local SEO presence?

This is where those quick wins we mentioned really come into their own. As our own Graham Charlton mentioned, not enough businesses are taking time to claim their Google Business listings:

Of course, once you do start claiming listings, you need to have a consistent data structure in mind. Google will focus on listings that are formatted correctly in multiple locations:

Once you have your listings in order, there’s also a big case to be made for (you guessed it) content. While there’s no doubt that technical optimisation plays a huge part, it is worth remembering that with so many local searches taking place on mobile devices, user intent is the primary motivator.

  • Reviews

This of course brings us into the realm of reviews, a hugely important component for local business. Even if you lack the resources to optimise your listings properly, this can still make you stand out to a certain extent:

Finally our very own Andrew Warren-Payne mentioned this useful list from Moz, very helpful if you want to get organised:

Q3: What one local SEO tip has proven the most successful for you?

We had a rush of great suggestions to this question, so I’ve pulled them into a quick reference list of ‘Golden rules for Local SEO’ for you:

1: Build on your past success
Use existing product content. Marketing reaches across the isle to customer success. ‪#SEO improves ‪ via @colincrook
‬
‬2: Be as focused as you can on the needs of the local customer
We created separate web pages for each of the locations, with unique content & optimised them with local keywords – @anshikamails

3: Good local SEO takes time. Make time to maintain it
Build citations. An oldie but a goldie. – @Lexx2099

4: But just doing what you can will help
In some areas, just the basics of listings and data are enough if your competitors aren’t up to speed. ‪#ClickZChat – @gcharlton

5: Remember that Google services are linked together. Focus on the bigger picture
Google business page creation and posting in G+ page. – @shaileshk

Be sure to publish FROM Google+ TO OTHER platforms.. ‪#ClickZChat – @steveplunkett

6: Get your data in order
Site 1st with NAP for all locations, Category, Description, Social, reviews, schema & repeat in citations ‪#ClickZChat ‪#ClickZChat – @rajnijjer

7: And make sure you never stop learning
SEO changes so fast that it’s hard for anything to be easy! :p Best advice: stay aware & current on industry trends! – @hilph

8: Remember why people are searching in the first place

And of course, we can always rely on Search Engine Watch’s editor to chime in with some useful advice…

That’s it for this week. A huge thank you as always to everyone who took part. We’ll be holding another chat this Wednesday at 12 noon Eastern Time.

For more on Local SEO, check out Graham Charlton’s handy list of 30 quick and easy SEO tips for small businesses.

]]> https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/05/09/local-seo-key-challenges-and-tips-from-clickzchat/feed/ 0 How to optimise your page images to increase site speed https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/26/how-to-optimise-your-page-images-to-increase-site-speed/ https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/26/how-to-optimise-your-page-images-to-increase-site-speed/#respond Tue, 26 Apr 2016 10:54:51 +0000 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/26/how-to-optimise-your-page-images-to-increase-site-speed/ Google’s official slogan is “Don’t Be Evil”, but it’s long been rumoured that the company has a second, internal motto that they tend to keep under wraps:

“You’re either fast, or you’re f***ed.”

We’ve written about site-speed in the past, and there’s no doubt of its importance (if there is, stick around for the stats section of this post) but for content marketers, improving the speed of your website is often seen as a particularly arduous technical exercise that’s completely out of your control. Only a back-end full-stack engineer can speed things up significantly, right?

As it turns out, nothing could be further from the truth. As Tom Bennet from Builtvisible explained in his excellent recent talk at Brighton SEO. Here, I’ll run through some key points Tom addressed to show how and why you should concentrate on delivering a lightning-fast experience to users.

Why is site speed important?

Now, I mentioned stats didn’t I?

According to the official Google webmaster blog, site speed matters. Google itself spends an awful lot of time checking whether or not your site is keeping up with your competitors. If you are slower, then your place in the search results will suffer.

But that’s not the only important factor here. Site speed improves the overall User Experience. As a case in point, Tom mentioned this extraordinary stat from Firefox:

brighton-seo-site-speed-for-content-marketers

When Firefox increased average page load time by 2.2 seconds, form downloads increased by 15.4%. That equates to more than 10 million downloads per year.

Once you hear figures like that, the value starts to become clear. Tom also took time to quote Steve Souder, a pioneer of much modern web performance work:

brighton-seo-site-speed-for-content-marketers-Steve-Souders

So, we know we can do something about it. But where to concentrate our efforts?

What can we do about it?

To illustrate, Tom built a simple, fairly standard content page using bootstrap and jQuery. The content marketing industry churns out thousands of these every day, so it should be fairly relevant:

brighton-seo-site-speed-for-content-marketers

Next, we fire up the page and measure it using a combination of Yahoo’s Yslow and Google PageSpeed rulesets. Here are the initial results:

brighton-seo-site-speed-for-content-marketers

That F Grade is going to seriously hurt our credibility in Google’s eyes, and 3.9 seconds is going to seem like a grind for users. If you don’t believe me, count slowly to four. Would you be willing to wait that long for every page on a site to open?

But where should marketers focus their efforts to have the most impact?

On a typical page like this, images are by far the largest and most common element, so this is where we should be concentrating to start with.

brighton-seo-site-speed-for-content-marketers

Now, this isn’t just a case of opening up your images in Photoshop and making them smaller. Resolution does matter (we still want our pages to look beautiful), but only up to a certain point, so the first step is to check our image sizes:

brighton-seo-site-speed-for-content-marketers

As you can see from the page element, this image has been uploaded at 1024 x 683 pixels, but the user will only ever see it at a maximum of 420 x 289, less than half the upload size.

As always, it’s important to consider the User Experience, so let’s ask ourselves a few questions:

  • What formats should we be using for images? PNGs are great for images with fewer colours or transparencies, while PEGS are perfect for photos.
  • Dimensions: what is the maximum width and height at which the image will be displayed?
  • Finally, do you really need all of those images?

If you have text within an image, get rid of it and use an actual font instead, and use vector graphics or CSS for things like logos or shading on the page. As Tom put it

 “The fastest HTTP request is the one not made.”

Google has a range of guidelines and advice on this available which you should check out.

So, Tom resized, reformatted or replaced his images. How did this affect the overall site speed?

brighton-seo-site-speed-for-content-marketers

Being diligent with images was enough to shave a whopping 1.2 seconds – or 30% – off of the total page load time.

It’s still not rocketspeed at this point, but it’s much, much better. Tom detailed several other useful tips during his presentation which I will try to cover in the future as well, but for now – time to tighten up those images.

]]> https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/26/how-to-optimise-your-page-images-to-increase-site-speed/feed/ 0 Shift London: Are you ready to join the #Digirevolution? https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/21/shift-london-are-you-ready-to-join-the-digirevolution/ https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/21/shift-london-are-you-ready-to-join-the-digirevolution/#respond Thu, 21 Apr 2016 10:45:55 +0000 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/21/shift-london-are-you-ready-to-join-the-digirevolution/ What makes a digital influencer?

Is it follower numbers? The ability to find and create great content? Or just a genuine passion for transformation and digital change?

On May 24th and 25th, we’ll be hosting our new Shift event in London, and we want to find the biggest influencers online to be help us drive digital change.

The gurus and visionaries who are kindling conversation about digital leadership and the drive towards truly customer-centric business models. Senior marketers, digital gurus and business leaders tasked with implementing digital transformation and responsible for driving marketing strategy across data, digital, acquisition, search, customer experience, analytics, user experience and customer service. Anyone who wants to transform.

With this in mind, we’ve created #Digirevolution, and we want you to join us.

We’ve built a unique leaderboard that weighs up your social media credentials, examines the content you’ve been sharing and assigns you an influencer score. If you’re sharing content and using the #Digirevolution hashtag then we’ll feature you here on the blog every week until May 16th, when our top influencer will receive a free pair of tickets to the event.

Shift_Digital_Marketing_event_London

We’ll be sharing your #digitrevolution tweets and comments, so join the conversation and tweet your way to the top of our digital revolution leaderboard.

What are you waiting for? Get tweeting leaders!

Interested in digital transformation, leadership and customer experience? Discover more about Shift and the #digirevolution. 

]]> https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/21/shift-london-are-you-ready-to-join-the-digirevolution/feed/ 0 Insights on digital leadership & transformation from last week’s #ClickZChat https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/19/insights-on-digital-leadership-transformation-from-last-weeks-clickzchat/ https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/19/insights-on-digital-leadership-transformation-from-last-weeks-clickzchat/#respond Tue, 19 Apr 2016 11:26:04 +0000 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/19/insights-on-digital-leadership-transformation-from-last-weeks-clickzchat/ In past editions of ClickZChat we’ve focused on fairly targeted insights, but with our new event Shift fast approaching, the time seemed right to tackle some larger themes.

This week we took to Twitter to ask our followers how inspired leadership can drive transformation initiatives, and where people fit into the grand scheme of the ‘digitally ready company’.

Q1: What are the key characteristics of digital leaders?

A digital leader has to have something that sets them apart from others, and many of our followers felt that this was as much about mindset as it was experience.

Clearly, leadership in the digital world requires agility and a genuine curiosity about the possibilities of new channels and tech, but openness and a genuine desire to collaborate lies at the heart of what makes digital leaders different from their offline counterparts.

Q2: Should marketing be leading digital transformation?

These traits are often found in the marketing department, and it doesn’t seem unfair to suggest that marketing is where a lot of the talk (and action) around digital transformation exists. Is marketing responsible for driving organisational change?

Several people agreed with this, but felt that successful transformation very much relied on getting buy-in at board level

But this in itself required faith in the practitioners to implement effectively:

With so much resting on the people, how much does the technical side really matter?

What can we learn from this?

Several key themes arose during this week’s chat, but perhaps most important was the opinion that digital transformation is something that needs to be realised at a cultural level throughout the entire business, but it should be driven by members of the C-Suite who are open to new practices and technology.

Real success hinges on having a sense of genuine trust in staff, and the agility to deploy projects quickly.

We also heard from followers about good examples of transformation, such as General Electric and Maersk using content to redefine their brand and the conversation in the B2B sector, and again, this highlighted the need for real faith in the long-term results, and a shift away from immediate returns.

If you are interested in digital transformation and leadership, be sure to check out our Shift event series, where we’ll be taking a deep-dive into the practical realities of transformation projects.

Thanks again to everyone who took part this week – make sure you join us for our next regular #ClickZChat on Wednesday at noon EST.

]]> https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/19/insights-on-digital-leadership-transformation-from-last-weeks-clickzchat/feed/ 0 Is Twitter dying? Insight and opinion from #ClickZChat https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/12/is-twitter-dying-insight-and-opinion-from-clickzchat/ https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/12/is-twitter-dying-insight-and-opinion-from-clickzchat/#respond Tue, 12 Apr 2016 13:10:38 +0000 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/12/is-twitter-dying-insight-and-opinion-from-clickzchat/ It’s fair to say Twitter has had a fairly rough time of it in the recent past. The platform has struggled to grow its audience and, despite huge brand recognition, mainstream usage has proven elusive.

So, can Twitter survive, or is it set to join the likes of MySpace in social network purgatory?

We decided to take to (where else?) Twitter for this week’s #ClickZChat to ask our network of marketers for their thoughts.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room:

Q1: Is Twitter dying?

Lack of growth is often seen as big problem in the tech world. Does stalling = failing?

Many people thought that Twitter was plateauing, but did not see this as a cause for concern:

Maturation and evolution were clearly hot topics for users, with Twitters recent acquisition of NFL streaming rights showing that the business may be undergoing some fundamental changes, but shouldn’t be counted out:

The onboarding process was a point of concern however. Many of you felt that Twitter was not as immediately intuitive as other platforms.

An issue that had allowed SnapChat and Instagram to pull ahead in the media stakes, but Twitter may be able to keep this market share if it concentrates on it’s core value: Realtime social updates.

It was also interesting to consider how these newer platforms are often leveraged to drive Twitter by users. In many ways, Twitter has become a hub network for updates.

Q2: Is Twitter still valuable for marketers?

With all this extra noise however, it can be difficult to find an audience. With so many outlets simply pushing content rather than engaging, is Twitter still a viable (and valuable) marketing channel?

Opinion was quite clearly split here. From a publishing perspective it was clear that many had seen a drop in value, with more broadcast and less response from followers:

But felt that this simply required more time and thought behind content strategy on Twitter:

However, Twitter was still seen as one of the most useful ways to contact brands directly.

Indeed, recent figures show that around XX of brands reply to users on Twitter, compared to just XX% over on Facebook. Perhaps Twitter may ultimately have more value for businesses as a customer service channel than from content marketing?

Q3: How could Twitter improve?

Of course, it’s easy for us to criticise, but what can be done to improve Twitter for users?

1: Better search

A number of people thought that findability needed improvement. While Advanced Search is useful, it should be more integrated into the core experience:

2: More focus on pro user needs

Similarly, it was felt that core users and social media managers could be helped with a few simple tweaks:

3: Death to bots

Spam is a continuing issue for Twitter, and many users would like to see Twitter deal with this more effectively:

4: Being able to hide our spelling mistakes… 

And finally, one small change that users have been demanding for a long time:

Key takeaways

Overall it seems that there’s a long way to go before anyone can really say that twitter has ‘failed’, but businesses in particular need to get their acts together, with less push content and more focus on service. Oh, and if you’re running an auto-retweet bot of some kind, you’d make followers a lot happier by turning it off.

As always a huge thanks to everyone who took part. Our next #ClickZChat will take place at Noon EST of Wednesday 13th April – please do join us on Twitter.

Want to know more about Twitter’s wavering fortunes? Make sure you check out these 24 slightly depressing statistics about Twitter, and the 17 things Twitter could do to revive its fortunes.

]]> https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/12/is-twitter-dying-insight-and-opinion-from-clickzchat/feed/ 0 Have we reached peak content? Insights and issues highlighted by #ClickZChat https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/04/have-we-reached-peak-content-insights-and-issues-highlighted-by-clickzchat/ https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/04/have-we-reached-peak-content-insights-and-issues-highlighted-by-clickzchat/#respond Mon, 04 Apr 2016 14:13:26 +0000 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2016/04/04/have-we-reached-peak-content-insights-and-issues-highlighted-by-clickzchat/ We’ve spoken a lot about the problem of peak content recently.

With so many more businesses now adopting publishing models to reach their audience and focus on inbound, it is becoming harder for both users and distributors to cut through the noise and uncover the really useful information out there.

Of course, it’s fairly easy for us to spout opinion on this issue, but we wanted to know first hand how this is affecting marketers, so we decided to kick off our inaugural #ClickZChat on Twitter by asking our followers about the issues and possible solutions.

We decided to start by asking: is there really an issue here? Do you believe that we’ve reached (or are heading for) peak content? The point when there is so much information available that it becomes effectively useless?

Emma_SEO weighed in on this, asking if ‘peak content was simply part of the eternal marketing search for the most relevant customer channel

With so much happening, it can be difficult for businesses to gain attention. Is the focus now too heavily focused on broadcast and moving away from genuine interaction? CatalystSEM’s SEO Director Paul Shapiro agreed that we seem to be concentrating on volume rather than value:

This search for audience may have left marketers feeling the need to ‘be everywhere’ however, often spreading themselves too thin across multiple channels. Agency Director Kate Bogda summed the issue up nicely:

While Search Engine Watch’s own Christopher Ratcliff pointed out the need for publishing organisations – whether traditional or those adopting the ‘brands as publishers’ model – need to find new ways to reduce volume and provide insight:

Wayne Schilstra Team followed up here, pointing out that it wasn’t just about creating great content, but focusing on user intent. When and why do people need this content? Relevance almost always trumps volume:

Finally, with so much happening, can content still make waves? We wanted to know which creative examples had inspired you recently.

We had a huge range of examples here, from Denny’s personalised tweets, O2 urging us all to ‘be more dog’ and movie marketing that can still make an impact a decade after it was originally conceived:

To finish on a lighter note, I’m going to big myself up at this point as I think Netflix has been doing some excellent work over the past year… and this conversation resulted in a fully-functioning House of Cards PollyHop search site.

Nice to see that social interaction can still take us in unexpected directions and provide standout creative: https://twitter.com/themick79i/status/715470399706771457

Key takeaways:

Overall it seems that marketers believe that too much content is becoming an issue.

The key here is to focus on intent and extraordinary value, rather than desperately hunting for updates to fill every social channel, creating hub content and building spin-off micro-content by channel can be a far more effective method.

By cutting down on volume, content creators also free themselves up to spend more time creating something truly useful.

Thanks to everyone who participated in #ClickZChat. We’ll be holding our next session over on Twitter at noon EST on Wednesday, April 6th when we’ll be talking about social media and Twitter in particular.

Do you believe Twitter has a future? We’d love to hear your opinions so do join us then.

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