Digital Media News

As our lives become busier and hitting the high street seems more of a hassle than a pleasure, the lure of the Internet is hard to resist. Researching online before we buy is pretty imperative these days, and we head straight for our laptops, tablets and smartphones to get the lowdown on new products.

It’s nosurprise that savvy shoppers trust recommendations and reviews from their peer group far more than the “you’re worth it” spiel thrown at them by advertisers. And online shopping suits customers and retailers alike. The latter can showcase their goods with lower overheads and the worldwide web allows them to widen their reach. On top of this, online shoppersprovide brands with valuable data about their customers, and thisonline interaction allows for an ongoing relationship once the initial transaction has taken place.

There is an app for everything today – with a bit of help from technology, you can play games, monitor your heart rate and even spy on your husband.

According to a study carried out by analytics company Flurry, consumers spend an average of 2 hours 42 minutes on their mobile phones each day and 2 hours and 19 minutes of that is spent on apps. Companies have been quick to recognize a need to engage with their customers on this platform, which has led to an explosion in the mobile app market, in recent years. The challenge now is for brands to understand their customer’s needs and create relevant apps that foster engagement with the brand.

Here are some best practices that your company can employ to ensure that your app gets the attention it deserves.

Hashtags are everywhere these days. From billboards, to t-shirts;TV shows to Twitter, the humble hashtagis one of the most recognizable symbols in today’s digital world.

What are hashtags?

Hashtags are labels for content. Users label content by placing # in front of whatever keywords they’re using, to enable others to easily find and interact with content.Hashtags are clickable and direct users to a page that displays all of the messages and images that use the same hashtag. If used effectively, hashtagscan help you expand your content reach, amplify your brand and improve your SEO.

For a long time, Twitter's revenue stream has been made up almost entirely of advertising dollars, but last week, the social media company announced that it is diversifying, by taking a step into the world of e-commerce.

The social networking company is currently trialing a system that enables businesses to embed “buy now” buttons in their tweets, so customers can purchase products directlythrough the site. The button is being marketed as a fun way for users to shop and find deals on exclusive merchandise, but the new offering ultimately represents the company's latest bid to claw back revenue, following a decline in user growth.

The feature is initially being tested on a small group of brandsincluding, The Home Depot, Burberry and non-profit group (RED), but Twitter expects to roll the service out and increase the visibility of its e-commerce tweets, in the lead up to the holiday shopping season.

Mobile marketing has become a highly targeted environment in today’s interconnected world. What started as simple text messages to customers offering money-off coupons, has evolved into apersonalized, real-time content delivery system. 

As mobile phones become a more essential part of people’s daily lives, it is important for businesses to look at ways of delivering more effective and targeted mobile marketing. This is where geomarketing comes in.

What is geomarketing?

GeoMarketing (or location based marketing) uses geographic information to gain a better understanding of how people in a certain area act or spend their money. This method of marketing creates maps all around the world and within each map there is information specific to how consumers act in that that area.

While geomarketing’s definition is the association of data and maps in the traditional sense, the emergence of social media, mobile marketing and new technologies also make it an extremely powerful marketing tool in the digital arena.

Most people think that LinkedIn is just a digital repository for resumes, but the site, which now boasts over 300 million members, is slowly repositioning its business around content marketing, to make the site morebusiness-friendly and relevant for social media lead generation and B2B marketing.

As part of its strategy, the company launched two new products earlier this year, in an effort to assist businesses with their content marketing efforts.

Content Marketing Score (CMS)

The Content Marketing Score is an analytics tool that provides users with insight into the impact of both their paid and organic LinkedIn activity.

Content-marketing scores are calculated by dividing the number of LinkedIn users who've engaged with a brand's content (via sponsored updates, company pages, LinkedIn Groups, employee updates and influencer posts) in the past month by the target audience of users who have been active in that monthly period. The number is then multiplied by 1 million.

The Internet is often captivated by a craze and one such craze that’s taken off in recent years is that of the ‘selfie’. Named as Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year in 2013, many people thought that the selfie was a passing trend, but it seems to be here to stay.

Over the past two years, a growing number of companies have been leveraging the power of the selfie to benefit their marketing efforts. In January 2013, 13 brands used selfies in their Facebook campaigns and by December, that number had increased to 207. On Twitter, the number started at 252 and grew to more than 780.

Successful Selfie Campaigns

Some brands have seen great success with selfie campaigns, reporting increases in user engagement and sales.