Blog

Facebook Introduces Product Ads

The numero uno social networking site is giving the numero uno search engine a run for its money. Case in point is the latest launch of Facebook “Product Ads” which will compete directly with Google “Product Listing Ads”. The Facebook Product Ads was created specifically to help businesses sell their products on the platform.

With this new feature from Facebook, advertisers can now target people who visited their website or app courtesy of Custom Audiences. They can also target people based on their interests or location. Businesses can promote single product or their entire line of products catalogue across the desktop and mobile platform as single or multi-product ad units.

There are various ways in which advertisers can deploy ads like manually uploading their product catalogs or create campaigns that target a specific audience with certain products. Alternately, they may use the Facebook Custom Audience so as to automatically deliver the most relevant products to the target group.

Brands that have already used the new ad feature from Facebook are quite excited about the benefits that it offers. Retail giant Target has recorded 20 percent rise in conversions with Product Ads over other Facebook ads. With this new feature Facebook is slowly but surely making the transition towards becoming a publisher too as opposed to merely being a social network.

Content is a big part of Facebook’s offerings going forward as it tries to create ‘full-funnel’ media experiences. The social media behemoth would like to convert content into community and community into commerce.

Let us know what you think about the Facebook Product Ads.

Contact Position² to get 360° visibility for your brand on the social media!

February 20, 2015
Locale Adaptive Web-pages now Get Support from Google
Google recently introduced the Googlebot Crawl configurations for local-aware pages and provided insights on how locale adaptive web pages are crawled and indexed.

What are Locale-Adaptive pages?

Web-pages which dynamically change content depending on the user’s origin country or language settings are called locale-adaptive pages.

Barry Schwartz says Google will now be able to handle such content by sending Googlebot from different IPs across the world, as well as let it set language settings.

Google will use two methods of crawling and indexing:
1. Geo-distributed crawling: When Googlebot uses IP addresses coming from outside the USA in addition to the current IP addresses Googlebot uses that appear to be from the USA.
2. Language-dependent crawling: When Googlebot starts to crawl with an Accept-Language HTTP header in the request.
It is important to understand how Googlebot currently recognizes whether a website has locale-specific content and uses different crawl settings.

There are 3 approaches:
1. Serving different content on the same URL—based on the user’s perceived country (geolocation)
2. Serving different content on the same URL—based on the Accept-Language field set by the user’s browser in the HTTP request header
3. Completely blocking access to requests from specific countries
This update from Google solves the problem that Google crawlers have understanding sites that have utilized locale-adaptive techniques. On Webmaster support Google said that “new crawling configurations are enabled automatically for pages we detect to be locale-adaptive, you may notice changes in how we crawl and show your site in Google search results without you altering your CMS or server settings”.

What does this mean to Webmasters?
- Usage of different URLs or TLDs is important for sites having content specific for different countries or languages.
- Usage of ‘rel=”alternate” hreflang’ annotations with separate URLs needs to be continued
- Verification of Googlebot geo-distributed crawls can be done using reverse DNS lookup
- Robot exclusion protocol needs to be consistent across the site; robots meta-tags and the robots.txt file should specify the same directives in each locale.
Conclusion

With the latest announcement by Google on support to locale-specific pages, it now becomes easier to get these dynamically changing content pages indexed on Search.

Be ready to witness changes in crawl rates and appearances of web-pages on SERP’s over the next few weeks. Contact Position² to deploy locale-adaptive techniques for your website now!
February 18, 2015
Pinterest Bans Affiliate Links

Pinterest announced some bad news for Bloggers and active power pinners who drive leads and earn revenue via affiliate marketing. Pinterest is set to ban affiliate networks on their site. Currently, affiliates are able to monetize pins by using a trackable link. These affiliates earn commissions from pins that produce conversions and/or drive traffic to their retail partners’ sites.

Why is this happening now? Pinterest does not earn any revenue from these affiliate links even though it has become a platform to facilitate them. The social network has not confirmed this, but the writing has been on the wall that Pinterest wants to leverage their network of pinners for their own monetization plans. First there was their “promoted pins”, and then partnership announcements with Apple and Stripe.

This really should not come as too much of a shock to the affiliate networks. Pinterest has banned affiliates before. Back in 2012, Pinterest cracked down on Amazon affiliate programs by removing the tracking tag from links directed to Amazon’s site. At the time, there were hundreds of other affiliates, but Pinterest selectively picked their battles instead of taking on the futile task of going after every affiliate network. Now, Pinterest will still be picking battles by going after larger networks, but the announcement has made it official, stating that they will “automatically remove all affiliate links, redirects and trackers on Pins.”

So Pinterest power users partnered with affiliate networks, you have been warned. Although as per Pinterest, the ban will not be a drastic rollout. Pinterest stated, “…all your past Pins will show up normally and still be clickable.” Sounds like a kind and gentle transition to being cut off, but forget about being able to track those pins. Pinterest also stated that affiliates are still welcome to get paid by curating boards or by working on paid social media marketing for their network partners.

Let us know how you feel about this latest Pinterest development.

Contact Position² to discuss how to kick off a social media B2B strategy.

February 17, 2015

Best of the Week | UI and UX Trends in 2015, and much more…

This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

From the Position² Blog This Week:

UI and UX Trends in 2015
Today mobile has eclipsed desktop as the most important form factor for browsing the Internet. This calls for newer types of user experiences and user interfaces to meet the user requirements. Read this blog to find out what is trending in this space in 2015.

tips on how to structure your content better for SEO.

Best of the Week Video
Watch this Whiteboard Friday video hosted by Rand Fishkin, where he gives tips on how to structure your content better for SEO.

White Paper: Increase Visibility for Your Content by 4x

Today’s traditional SEO is inadequate: Ignite your search results by accelerating visibility in more places than ever before.Download this White Paper and learn:

SEO, why the way we know it is not enough
Introducing and implementing Enterprise Visibility Accelerator (EVA)
Using multi-channel tracking tools for effective monitoring
How EVA benefits businesses.

Download the complimentary EVA White Paper now

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February 13, 2015

Twitter Buys a Creative ‘Niche’ Company

On February 11, 2015, Twitter acquired Niche. Twitter believes in giving its users the widest variety of tools to create, distribute and manage compelling content on the web. Thus it sees value in Niche as a way of feeding the use of its online services. It can also boost Twitter’s bottom-line since there are a lot of synergies between its own Vine platform and Niche.

‘Niche’ with a tagline of ‘all the world’s creators, in one place’, was founded in the fall of 2013. It is a video sharing platform that helps creators, artists and social media influencers to connect with advertisers online.

Niche today boasts of a community of more than 6000 creative personalities like comedians, photographers, artists, foodies and fashionistas that have an unfair share of fans across the globe. These are the next generation of Picassos and Steven Spielbergs that are creating a lot of buzz across the visual social media. Niche helps these super creative minds to connect with brands and monetize. Brands like Gap, Warner Bros, American Eagle & NFL have leveraged the creative magic and popularity of these stars.

Niche has taken great care to position itself not as a talent agency but as a technology provider that connects with creators on a campaign-by-campaign basis. Niche offers free, cross-platform analytics to help social media creators to know exactly what is and what isn’t working.

Nash Grier, a Vine super genius making branded videos for MTV, Virgin Mobile, et al is pulling in $4,166 per second not far behind Robert Downey Jr. raking in $5,827 per second on the sets of ‘The Avengers’, the highest for any actor in the world!

With the Niche acquisition, Twitter can now scour for talent on the web with its vast reach and deep pockets. This would also appeal to advertisers on Twitter who are looking to reach out to a younger demographic.

Contact us to give wings to your creative aspirations on the World Wide Web now!

February 13, 2015
UI and UX Trends in 2015

Digital marketing has been trending for a couple of years, and now it’s in constant flux. In 2014, we saw changes in mobile, HTML 5, scrolling, micro UX, flat UI and all time design principles.

What’s likely in 2015?

Responsive Design:

According to comScore Report, smartphones and tablets account for 60% of all online transactions. Mobile devices and mobile apps currently drive 50% of traffic, and Cisco Systems forecasts that by 2018 the number will rise to more than 75% of traffic.

In recent months, there has been an increase in the number of sites designed with mobile app-like navigation, this as opposed to the traditional desktop navigation bars with several drop-down menus that are toggled when rendered on small screen devices.

Today there is a need to design for the mobile form factor and your desktop version should be mobile friendly as well. Mobile ubiquity is the new mantra, not mobile-first. Designing for the mobile platform forces designers to streamline their web content according to user needs. Mobile was the platform that made digital marketers first listen to the users, and now the market has responded with “give me that for the desktop, too!”

In 2015 and beyond, the mobile ubiquitous trend will continue to grow. Navigation will continue to simplify with fixed headers and minimalist design reducing clicks and clutter. Visitors are attracted to easy-to-use sites that allow them to quickly find what they’re looking. But don’t give up on visual appeal! Users still want to be dazzled by stunning visual elements.

Long Scroll

Scrolling is still predicted to dominate clicking in the future – simply because it works best in the mobile environment. It is easy and intuitive to use. It improves user experience. It limits the load time of the page with more interactive kinds of experience that users can have with the website.

Flat Design

No more patterns, shadows, gradients or bubbles. Now’s the time to embrace the simplicity of the flat design. It channels the key trend in recent web design – invincible minimalism. Perfect for all kinds of hand held devices, flat user interfaces provide a smooth and uncluttered page structure. Google engineered their future on mobile with a flat design or material design based on metaphors, bold graphics and meaningful motion. This could easily become a new trend in the already prominent flat design.

Videos

Users are looking to be entertained and large blocks of text are not the best way to do that. Video is easier, cost effective to produce and a great way to quickly deliver a message. There’s a science behind it. Our brain processes visuals more rapidly than other forms of information. By using video, even as a background element, you can highlight your core strengths and services to make an impact in a matter of seconds.

Personalization of UX

Showing users relevant content will improve their overall experience with your website. That’s why we all use cookies. But the ways in which we do it will change in 2015 to create a sense of continuity. Brands will use the recently read or visited functionality to render their websites more familiar and relevant. Knowing the user’s activity on your website, you can also try to propose some new content for his or her consideration, and cookies can help you do it.

These are some of the trends that can be expected in 2015 — that render to UI & UX.

Get in touch with us to get your website optimized based on UI & UX now!

February 11, 2015
The State of Marketing Technology

Today technology is used in every facet of marketing. Marketing as a discipline is changing and marketers need to adapt to the changing technology landscape. IDC predicts, spends on marketing technology will reach $32.3 billion by 2018. According to credible sources, 65% of senior marketing executives plan to increase marketing technology spends.

With so much marketing technology around, marketers at times can get overwhelmed. There are so many companies selling marketing technology that there is too much gratuitous stuff out there. Due to this most marketers till now have steered clear of marketing technology and this is the reason why its adoption and implementation is abysmally low.

Now this is clearly a wasted opportunity since most marketers who have adopted marketing technology have reported rapid and significant improvements in ROI. In order to help marketers make the most of this technology we provide a set of programs that every company needs to give a serious thought, in an effort to scale leads, opportunities and ultimately revenues.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine is one of the most important avenues through which users arrive at your website. Search engine marketing helps you to get more qualified leads through both search engine optimization and pay per click advertising. Your landing page becomes all the more crucial if you have to convert your leads to conversions. You have to give your users what they are seeking in a simple yet effective manner. There might be a need to test different landing pages depending on who you are targeting. Technology can help you do this in a dynamic and cost effective way. There are specialized tools for programmatic buying, attribution systems, tracking systems, consumer insights, conversion optimizers, campaign management, reporting and dashboards.

Remarketing

Remarketing is a very effective use of technology in order to follow your website visitors to other resources on the internet. You can target people with specific offers who have shown interest in particular product or service of your company. The conversion rate is high in this type of targeting since you already know what people are looking for. You can easily set up the technology needed to implement this in your digital marketing campaigns.

Conversion Optimization

When a visitor finally lands on your website it is expected that you convert the users into what you want them to do. This could be filling out a form or at least collecting their email addresses. But for that you need to have the right strategy in place like an outstanding offer or a marketing app that can do the trick for you. Conversion optimization technology can help you do this with minimum human intervention.

Analytics

Analytics helps you understand where your marketing dollars are going and how effective it is in improving your company’s revenue. There are many tools available today that can measure the performance of your ads, offers, digital channels and technologies. This way you can only pursue the campaigns that makes sense to you and scale down or end those campaigns that don’t.

Google Analytics is the most widely used analytics tool. You can analyze your return on marketing investment or ROMI, using the marketing intelligence platform MiDash.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation is a class of software that automates, streamlines and measures marketing tasks and workflows. All this helps companies to increase operational efficiencies and scale revenues faster. Marketing automation can be thought of as the technology that brings it all together. It includes among other things, analytics, tracking, and online forms. You get a clear picture of what people are doing once they land on your website. This way you can personalize your website content, create better email campaigns and bridge the gap between sales and marketing. You can send automated alerts to customers, nurture lead scoring using information from your CRM tools and third party sources.

This is the state of marketing technology today and things can only get better! Let us have your views on marketing technology and its various benefits!

Contact us to deploy marketing technology for your business now!

February 9, 2015
Now Promote Your Tweets Faster
Twitter has launched its new feature called ‘quick promote’ which is a fast and easy way to promote your tweets. It gives you the power to amplify your best performing tweets directly from the Twitter Activity Dashboard. All you need to do is follow a few simple steps and your tweet will be automatically targeted to users having similar interests to your followers. This way you can make an impact on the minds of people who are most likely to respond to your message.

If you want to promote a new product, service or blog then Promoted Tweets can drive you measurable business results. This service is specifically targeted towards small and medium enterprises to help them get their best content in front of more viewers on Twitter.

To promote you tweet all you need to do is
- Go to your tweet activity dashboard
- Click on the tweet that you want to promote
- On the left sidebar you will have an option to promote that tweet
Though this feature lacks advanced targeting options at present, it is a good initiative. It has been found that users who see a relevant promoted tweet are 32% more likely to visit that business. The ability to promote a tweet directly from your Twitter Activity Dashboard is hugely beneficial for all the small and medium businesses that are active on the micro-blogging site. It assists one in quickly pinpointing content that performs and then targeting people who are naturally inclined to view such content. This way you can effectively expand your audience and augment your message.

Do share your views on Twitter’s ‘Quick Promote’ with us.

Contact us for your brand’s integrated social media marketing!
February 6, 2015

Best of the Week | Personalized search, and much more…

This week’s hot news, events and videos from the online marketing and social media world.

From the Position² Blog This Week:

Personalized Search
Personalized search provides results beyond the individual’s search query incorporating information about the individual. This way search experiences are tailored specifically to an individual’s interest. Read this blog to find out more.

A Universal SEO Strategy Audit in 5 Steps - Whiteboard Friday

Best of the Week Video
Watch this Whiteboard Friday video hosted by Rand Fishkin where he talks about the five things we should be looking into when formulating an SEO strategy.

Persona-based Lead Scoring: The Mystery and the Method

Download this White Paper and learn:

Classify leads based on behavior and demographic details
Develop a consistent methodology to proffer quality leads to sales
Employ data integrity and tracking
Deploy marketing automation to improve efficiency and cut costs

Download the complimentary Lead Scoring White Paper now

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February 6, 2015

Personalized Search

A personalized search reaches beyond the user’s initial query by incorporating information gleaned from his digital history of interests. There are at least two ways in which personalized search can be delivered: modifying the search query, and re-ranking the search results.

The search engines of yore catered to all users in the same way. Not so today. The search engine learns about the user profile from the individual’s search history. This profile is then mapped to a set of categories that the search engine accesses to make sense of the query. In effect, the search engine disambiguates keywords in order to serve up what the searcher is actually looking for. With this level of personalization, search engines provide different results for different searchers.

Google first introduced personalized search in 2004 and began actively implementing it in 2005 in the Google search results. Various factors come into play when personalizing a user’s search results, like the location of the user, the search language and the user web history.

Search engines today want to reach beyond what you type in the search box. They seek to understand what your intent might be in order to give you exactly what you want. Or, what they think you want. To do this they use information you have provided, either wittingly or unwittingly, to create user profiles, or personas. The search engine then utilizes the persona to target information in a way that best serves your perceived interest.

The more often you visit a certain web page, the more Google believes that you like that page. Your behavior is duly noted and used to optimize future search results. The next time you search, a page which you have been previously visiting with regularity is likely to be shown more prominently. Herein lays both advantages and disadvantages of just such a likelihood.

Finding new information becomes a major disadvantage of personalized search. You will be repeatedly shown the same results because that is what you always click on. It’s in your history. This naturally narrows your information exploration on the web. The problem is called ‘filter bubble’ and it means that people are letting search engines decide what the users want to see and what they don’t want to see. In the extreme case the user becomes confined to his own ‘filter bubble’ and is cordoned off from the rest of the information out there on the Internet.

Extrapolate this to a community level, and the consequences become troubling. As certain search results are bumped up and more and more people view them, the favored results become more prominent, and the ones not so favored are removed from the listed search results. When this happens collectively the society as a whole will likely have a skewed perspective of a particular topic. It gets Orwellian without much effort. He who controls the search engine controls information.

Google uses Google News to personalize your search. The first few results for a specific news query would likely be the same to all viewers. But as you scroll down, the results begin to differ. Google takes your past searches into account and your location and gives you local news that may matter more to you. This could be useful. But the potential disadvantage is missing what may be important news from farther afield.

The average person’s attention span is 8 seconds, so personalized search helps to quickly sift through the blocks of data that search engines throw up. Personalization saves time and significantly improves the quality of the search. It can also help search engines display highly targeted (“personalized”) advertising — the best deals, offers and discounts, depending on an individual’s interests – the idea being that the consumer finds what he is looking for faster and with all the relevant information displayed more prominently.

Contact us to deploy personalized advertising campaigns!

February 4, 2015

Blog

What are Locale-Adaptive pages?

What does this mean to Webmasters?

Conclusion

What’s likely in 2015?

Responsive Design:

Long Scroll

Flat Design

Videos

Personalization of UX

Search Engine Marketing

Remarketing

Conversion Optimization

Analytics

Marketing Automation