Paul Gustafson says, “Dan Miller, a professor of material culture at University College London, caused quite a stir at the end of 2013 when he said Facebook was “basically dead and buried” for 16-18-year-olds in the UK. So when we recently facilitated a series of focus groups in the US with 16-30-year-old males on the topic of their social media habits, we were interested to see how they would respond to “Is Facebook still cool?” Almost universally, participants responded with a “No.” But does Facebook need to be cool to be valuable to marketers? And if... [...]

Kevin Webster says, “Knowing the source of your web traffic — organic search, paid search, social media, direct — is important. But taking a look at what your visitors are actually doing and accomplishing on your website is also key. Studying traffic flow can indicate a few potential problems in website navigation or marketing messages, as well as point out what your website is doing well. Google Analytics provides a tool in the Behavior section that can help you visualize the intent of your web visitors, and determine where visitors are dropping out of your goal funnels”. Google Analytics:... [...]

Mike Barrette says, “Dan Miller, a professor of material culture at University College London, caused quite a stir at the end of 2013 when he said Facebook was “basically dead and buried” for 16-18-year-olds in the UK. So when we recently facilitated a series of focus groups in the US with 16-30-year-old males on the topic of their social media habits, we were interested to see how they would respond to “Is Facebook still cool?” Almost universally, participants responded with a “No.” But does Facebook need to be cool to be valuable to marketers? And if... [...]

Lauren Orsini says, “Never underestimate the miniscule, $35 Raspberry Pi. Although it’s marketed as an experimental machine aimed at helping you learn to code, there’s nothing entry-level about its capabilities. In a pinch, you can even use your Raspberry Pi as a Web server. You can host a simple site or store files in the cloud so you can access them at any time—no monthly hosting fees, limited templates, or other barriers to your creativity. Why do you need a server? The trend has been against running your own hardware and instead storing files and running programs in what’s called... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Nearly three-quarters (73%) of advertising and marketing executives in the United States say their organizations plan to maintain their current staffing levels in the second half of 2014, according to a recent report from The Creative Group. Some 12% plan to expand their teams in 2H14, and 12% foresee hiring freezes, the survey of 200 marketing executives and 200 advertising executives found. Only 3% of respondents say they will have to reduce the size of their staffs before the end of the year. Midsize ad agencies (50-99 employees) expect the most hiring activity, with... [...]

Matt Asay says, “The machines have taken over; the future of the Internet of Things is already here. Across a dizzying array of applications, machines are generating copious quantities of data, most of it being pushed to the cloud for storage, processing and analysis. As Amazon CTO Werner Vogels told attendees at the MongoDB World conference, however, we may not always like the consequences of the Big Data that we’re producing. Big Data? Big Deal Data today is very big, but not because it resides on mammoth mainframes or resides on huge, centralized databases. Nor is it big because any... [...]

Martin Beck says, “Social media analytics firm Socialbakers today weighed into the Facebook organic reachdebate with some counterintuitive data. Analyst Phillip Ross wrote: The conversation that seems to be dominating the Facebook marketing community is all about how algorithmic changes to Facebook’s News Feed are hurting organic reach. Our numbers say the opposite; brands have never had a better opportunity to have their best content placed in front of so many people. Let’s be clear. There’s no denying that organic reach is down on Facebook Pages overall. Facebook has confirmed... [...]

Jason Nelson says, “Want to improve the performance of your AdWords search ads? In this article, we’ll provide useful tips and information to do just that. You’ll learn how you can set up, group, and create different versions of your ads; optimize your ad text and keyword selection; and improve your bidding strategy, location targeting, and ad extensions. Google AdWords is a relatively complex advertising interface. It’s less than intuitive for the average user, with dozens of options perplexing for the inexperienced. To make it easier on small business owners to get their... [...]

Melih Oztalay says, “In “Using LinkedIn Company Pages for your Local Business,” my article last week, I explained how to create and update a LinkedIn company page, which is the first step to using LinkedIn’s sponsored updates and other advertising services. As I noted in “Using LinkedIn to Attract Consumers, Prospects,” LinkedIn is the world’s largest business network with roughly 300 million members in more than 200 countries. LinkedIn’s overall audience is small compared to Google. But, unlike Google, it allows businesses to achieve precise targeting, including industry,... [...]

Brian Massey says, “In medieval London, pirates were often punished by chaining them to a wall near the Thames River (you pronounce it “ˈriv-ər”) at low tide. For most rivers, this wouldn’t be a problem. The pirate would simply get wet. However, the Thames, being an estuary, rises 15 feet, 20 feet or more at high tide. These pirates didn’t just get wet. They got dead. You might say that the judges of London used the tides for their work, but the pirates lived and died by these tides”. Ride The Tides Of Your Website To Make More Money With A/B Split Testing Marketing Land  [...]