Marta Kagan, managing director of the full service marketing agency ‘Espresso’ has published a very useful checklist which is an invaluable reference when planning any social media activity.

View the list

Japan’s Akishima Laboratories have come up with a method of branding the most abundant substance on our planet – water.  The device, named AMOEBA (Advanced Multiple Organized Experimental Basin) was originally created to test the design of ship hulls until a student discovered that symbols and letters could be formed. Could this be the next step in ambient media…?

Today, almost every conceivable marketing channel is saturated with advertisements. This is leading businesses to use more innovative methods of attracting attention. Have Swissair taken things too far?

More innovative advertising ideas here

An interesting summary of Twitter users is shown below. As with most communications tools, a small number of users do the majority of the work.

We’ve added one of the Sony Bravia paint ad to the hall of fame. No computer generated images were used during production…see below for the proof!

The Glasgow tower block the day after filming

We’ve updated our purchase funnel article to include a critique of some of the other customer decision models out there. To view the article, please click below:

Purchase funnel article

The Honda Accord ‘Cog’ ad has won over 37 awards and is the most awarded commercial in history – we think it’s superb. It took 606 shots to get the sequence right, and the parts came from several real Accords. It’s still generating attension now although the ad was first aired in 2003. The production cost about £1 million and was directed by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet. If you’d like more information on the ad, there’s a fairly good Wikipedia article here, but obviously take it with a pinch of salt.

See more superb ads in our online gallery

Introduction

Google’s mission is to dish out relevant websites according to what people type are searching for. They do this by understanding the content of pretty much every web-page in existence, then determining which of these is most relevant to the user according to a number of complex criteria. It’s a colossal task which they do very well, but there are certain things you can do to help Google realise your site should be dished out near the top of the list.

Criteria which Google uses to determine site relevance include:

• Meta tags
• Page titles
• Text content
• Image content

Google also takes into account a variety of other factors:

• Is the site recommended and linked to by other respected websites?
• Is the site accessible?
• Is the site on a reliable server?
• Is the site updated regularly?
• Does the site conform to global website standards?
• Is the spelling correct and has care been taken?
• Is the site trying to cheat the system?

…and more

Things you can do

• Ensure your website adheres to global website standards set by The World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3.org)
• Think about the market you are trying to tap into very carefully – for example your location, your unique selling points, and then consider what people would search for to find you – these are your ‘key words’ so make sure you use them where appropriate in site meta data, content, titles, image ‘alt tags’, and links.
• Ensure your website link appears on relevant sites. This means business directories and sites with similar content, and anyone else who is respectable. Google counts each link as a sort of electronic vote, but not all votes are equal. Respected pages will provide more impact, so a link on a dodgy ‘link farm’ will do you no good at all. Encourage everyone you can to link to you, and provide links back to them if necessary, but go for the big fish if you can – the most well respected and popular sites in your field.
• If you have a physical site, ensure you are listed in Google maps and other business directories, and make sure your url appears in the listing.
• Write and publish articles using the multitude of free article websites on the internet, and make sure your url is part of the author bio.
• Post to forums and blogs, making sure your url is listed as part of your signature.
• Update your site regularly and submit a site map to via Google Webmaster Tools.
• Use social media sites to promote your pages – consider a Twitter and Facebook page and update them regularly

Linking tips

Google examines the phrases used within the link to your site so:

For advice on Google optimisation, click here

… is no way near as effective as…

Click here for advice on Google optimisation

Things not to do:

• Post your URL on ‘link farms’ – these are sites which exist purely as a list of unstructured links to other sites. You can recognise a link farm as they are often poorly designed and will accept links from absolutely everyone.
• Repeatedly submit your URL to search engines – this is considered spam, instead let them find you

Be patient

Google has over a billion websites under its belt so it can take time for your site to be indexed or for changes to update in their index. Three months is the rule of thumb for updates so try and be patient.

Don’t try and cheat!

Google employs some of the top brains in the world and is known for headhunting staff from NASA. They are smarter than almost everyone, and cheating their system is not worth the risk – Google will penalize or even remove sites which are trying to exploit quick methods of artificially increasing their ranking. Don’t believe websites promising a quick fix.

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