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Top Marketing Tips – November 2012

1. Instagram Web ProfileInstagram is about to launch a web based profile for its users. This will allow Instagram users to directly edit and create pictures through their PC and laptops rather than through a mobile phone. Instagram released an official statement through their blog post on Monday: “You’ve asked for Instagram on the web and we’ve listened, over the next few days, we’ll be rolling out Instagram profiles on the web.”
The Web based profile is set to look similar to the current Facebook profiles; however, one of the major differences is the design layout. Instagram’s web profile will also allow you to use more than just one picture as your cover photo; it also updates itself on a regular basis, once you have taken a picture and uploaded it through your mobile it will automatically be updated on the web profile. To set up your web profile click here http://instagram.com/

 

2. GIMP – The GNU Image Manipulation Program
Want to edit images but don’t want the expense of Adobe Photoshop? GIMP is an open source (
and therefore free) image management program. It is great for tasks like:

  • Photo retouching
  • Image composition
  • Image authoring
  • To find out more and to download it, click here.

3. LinkedIn Company Profiles
LinkedIn have finally listened to users about the social media site’s company page feature. For so long, users have been unable to make their company’s profile page more attractive. LinkedIn have finally rectified this with the addition of functionality that allows you to add a cover photo to a company page. If you haven’t updated yours, take a look today athttp://www.linkedin.com/

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#MarketingTitbits – Tagging On Instagram, Tips From Obama’s Marketing Team & YouTube 8 Years On

Instagram introduces taggingIf you are a Facebook user, you’ll be familiar with tagging. Social media picture sharing app Instagram has now introduced the feature to its platform, which enables users to tag anything or anyone that has an Instagram username, in an image.

This includes people, places, companies and brands.

The new feature potentially opens up the opportunity of free advertising for companies and brands; who will no doubt be keen to tap into this new tool to build awareness and loyalty.

For those of you unfamiliar with Instagram, find out more here. The social media app’s engagement statistic make a compelling argument for taking it seriously – every second over 8,500 photos are liked and over 1,000 comments are posted on Instagram.

 

10 marketing lessons from Barak Obama’s CTO

When Barack Obama secured his 2nd term as US President, many commentators pointed to his team’s mastery of the digital marketing arena, as a key foundation for his success.

At the recent DMA Technology Summit in London, Harper Reed, Chief Technology Officer for Obama’s 2012 campaign, outlined the winning strategy and techniques that helped Obama to extend his presidency into a 2nd term. These have been distilled into 10 key points byMarketing magazine’s Nicola Kemp, including:

1. Building a great team

2. Embracing diversity

3. Focusing on user experience

4. Facilitating community

To find out more about each point and see the full list, click here.

 

YouTube 8 Years on

On April 23rd this year, YouTube turned 8 years old. It is hard to believe even its founders foresaw its impact on society across the globe. The statistics are mind blowing:

  • In excess of  1 billion unique users each month
  • Over 4 billion hours of video viewed every month
  • 72 hours of video uploaded every minute
  • YouTube is localized in 53 countries and across 61 languages

The first, somewhat uninspiring, video uploaded to YouTube was entitled ‘Me at the zoo’ and was posted by YouTube founder Jawed Karim.

The current most viewed video in YouTube history, with an incredible 1.5 billion + views, is South Korean pop sensation Psy’s Gangnam Style video. Who knows how long it will be before Psy is knocked off top spot, what is certain is that it will happen and the video in question will make its owner a very wealthy individual!

 

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#MarketingTitbits – Videos on Instgram, Kanye’s Marketing Lessons and free fonts

Instagram gets videos
For those of you that use Instagram, you’ll be interested to know that the photo sharing platform launched its new video feature on Friday. Surely prompted by the recent success of Vine, users now have the ability to create a video of 3-15 seconds in length and upload it to their Instagram page. Predictably, the majority have taken to uploading the usual videos of themselves and their surroundings; however, some brands have uploaded videos that reveal just how intuitive and beautiful the new video feature can be.  Here are our favourites:


Kanye West – a 21st century marketing guru?

We laughed when we saw this last week. Fresh from achieving his first no.1 album in the UK since 2007 and becoming a father, Kanye West still had time to pass on some key marketing and business advice to anyone that was listening. The US rapper has never been short on confidence and his interview with the New York Times did nothing to suggest fatherhood has humbled him. Take his statement: “I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means.” Whilst he might have some way to go before his impact on society reaches the global levels Jobs’ has, there were a number of marketing and business lessons that Kanye passed on that SMEs could take on board:

  1. Authenticity and consistency
  2. Emulate titans, but don’t compare yourself to them
  3. Are you the top performer in your field? The rules might be different

To read the full article click here.


Free Fonts

For the design-minded of you out there, do you ever get board of the same old fonts? If, like us, you are always on the lookout for some interesting new fonts to liven up your marketing communications, you might be interested in the following sites, where you can download fonts for free. Here are 4 to check out:

We look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with.

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#MarketingTitbits – Google+, Instavid, Guinness

Google+-Instagram-Guinness-smaller1. The beginners guide to Google+
When Google+ first launched in 2011 they had 10s of millions of users sign up within the first few months. Despite constant scepticism since, the platform has been growing steadily and now boasts in excess of 235 million users. Because of the lack of understanding of what Google + actually is, many people and businesses have refrained from becoming a Google+ user. However, we have always felt that if you want to succeed with SEO on Google you need to play by Google’s rules. It is likely that Google + is central to one of these rules. If you are not already active on Google +, we think it would be a good idea for you to have a look at this beginners guide to Google+. To read the article, click here.

2. 10 of the most shared brands on Instagram

About three months ago, in an attempt to keep up with Vine, Instagram released an update that allows users to upload videos as well as photos. The majority of videos uploaded are from regular Instgram users, but 40% of the 1,000 most shared Instagram videos (Instavids) last month came from brands. The videos uploaded are a maximum of 15 seconds long and are already giving the 6 second long video app, Vine, competition. This week, we saw an article from econsultancy highlighting 10 of the most shared brands on Instavid, to have a look click here.

3. Guinness / Jonathan Ross advert #RoundUpYourMates backfires

On Saturday October 26th, Guinness aired three adverts during the break between The Jonathan Ross Show. The advert asked viewers to join in on Twitter with the hashtag #RoundUpYourMates. Unfortunately for Guinness, the campaign backfired and was heavily criticised, being called “painful” and “sexist” amongst other things.  Some of the #RoundUpYourMates tweets included:

Lee McEwan ‏@leemcewan 27 Oct
Interrupting a TV show with a worse version of the same TV show devalued the TV show itself #roundupyourmates

Paul Connolly ‏@PaulConnolly10 26 Oct
#RoundUpYourMates the grand tradition of great Guinness adverts died tonight

Mark Gordon ‏@markjgordon 26 Oct
The @GuinnessGB marketing team must be praying for that hurricane on Monday to take the spotlight off them. #roundupyourmates

To read more from Marketing Week click here.

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