Digerati Magazine June 2016 Issue by DIGERATI

IDEO’s Owen Rogers wants you to understand

DESIGN THINKING Content Discovery: Is Paid Virality Cheating? Linking Internally & Externally from Your Site Deploying Social Listening in the Organization Ad Blocking, The $22 Billion Advertising Problem Tom Eslinger Talks China, Mobility and ‘Niching’ How Ancestry.com Won The Tagging Race

EXPERT OPINION: Content Discovery 101 Winning the Tag race

CONTENTS

> CONTENTS Digerati is the world’s first ‘digital’ marketing magazine created specifically to provide a 360 degree view of the digital sector. Each issue covers digital innovation, content marketing, mobile, social, search, data and more. Click here to suggest a topic or submit a question.

Marketers, we have a $500,000,000,000 problem!

IDEO’s Owen Rogers on Building Ideas With Long Tales

INNOVATION: IDEO’s Owen Rogers shares his thoughts on the value of Design Thinking

CONTENT: Outbrain offer some insight on content discovery & the path to (paid) virality

16 2

WORKING LIFE: Competitive advantage in the year 2020 via disaggregated teams and mobility

SOCIAL: Digimind outline key considerations for deploying social listening across the business

32 INFLUENCER MARKETING: Jules

10 Lund has his say on why brands need to take IM seriously

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LOCATION MARKETING: Asif Khan

18 shares the first ingredients of the

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3 Layer Location Cake

EDITOR’S LETTER:

INNOVATION:

DISPLAY:

Ad Blocking - The $22 Billion Advertising Problem

INTERVIEW:

Scott Brinker, author of Hacking Marketing

ADVOCACY:

Jules Lund on Citizen Influencers: A Question of Real Influence

MOBILE:

Tom Eslinger Talks China, Mobility and ‘Niching’

EXPERT OPINION:

Content Discovery: Is Paid Virality Cheating?

VIDEO:

The 5 Myths of Viral Video (Plus the Obligatory Cat Photo)

LOCATION MARKETING: LBMA share a Slice of Their 3-Layer Location Cake

WORKING LIFE:

Working Life 2020 – Virtual & Disaggregated Teams

SOCIAL MEDIA:

Deploying Social Listening in the Organization

EMAIL:

HubSpot’s Top Five Tips for Email Marketing Success

ECOMMERCE:

Thoughts on Online Shopping & The Future of Cyber CX

CASE STUDY:

How Ancestry.com Won The Tagging Race

CONTENT:

Why Hybrid Content Creation Makes Marketing Sense

SEARCH:

Linking Internally and Externally from Your Site - Rand Fishkin

BIG DATA:

The Four Horsemen of the Data Apocalypse

OPINION

> EDITOR’S LETTER

t’s no secret that digital technology has made the marketer’s life more complicated. Long gone are the days when marketers could rely on a 30 second TV or radio spot to do the heavy lifting in a campaign. Today, global spend on advertising and marketing exceeds half a trillion dollars, of which over a third is allocated to digital channels like display, search, social and mobile. Underpinning this sizeable investment are over 3,500 technologies that marketers have at their disposal. The challenge for today’s marketer has become how best to find and filter the relevant technologies for their needs from amongst this vast technology cornucopia.

Fact is, keeping pace with technology is the biggest challenge marketers’ face today, and being tech savvy is the new competitive advantage. To complicate matters further, today’s marketer doesn’t just need to be tech savvy, they also need to be: customer centric; making decisions informed by analytics; able to respond in real time to challenges that arise; and most importantly, focused on achieving the highest ROI from all their marketing efforts.

marketing insight is everywhere, but difficult to filter.’ But most telling of all was confirming that the #1 marketing challenge was lack of time. In summary: marketers want to be more innovative, but they’re often too time poor to spend the time learning how to be. These findings have guided us in shaping Digerati. Digerati is designed for industry by industry to answer your questions and connect you with the leading minds and thought leaders from across the digital sector. Our aim is to deliver Actionable Insight that you can put to use immediately. There are countless publications and websites designed to help you know more about key areas of digital – search, social, mobile etc. – but Digerati is the first publication to deliver thought leadership from across the breadth of the digital sector. Our aim is to achieve Rand Fishkin’s dream of making marketers ‘T Shaped’, giving you a wider knowledge base to extend your existing subject matter expertise. Media has become so fragmented these days - the digital sector even more so - because digital underpins and amplifies every other media like never before. So we promise to do our best to bring you answers to the questions you have, as well as provide insight into the questions you haven’t yet had time to ask.

Earlier this year we conducted a Global Digital Insights Survey to better understand the abovementioned challenges. We specifically asked marketers around the world what areas of digital were most interesting, what technology or digital channels they had prioritized, and what questions they wanted answers to. 80% of survey respondents stated that Digital Innovation was an area they needed to learn more about. 60% agreed with the statement ‘Digital

Christopher Edwards Editor in Chief, Digerati

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INNOVATION

Building Ideas

with Long Tales Owen Rogers, IDEO DESIGN THINKING is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success. —Tim Brown, president and CEO, IDEO

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INNOVATION

IDEO is an award-winning global design firm that takes a human-centered, design-based approach to helping organizations in the public and private sectors innovate and grow. They have contributed to the development of many well-known innovations, including the first mouse for Apple; the world’s first laptop computer; interiors for Amtrak’s Acela high-speed train; insulin pens for Eli Lilly; the Palm V; and Crest’s Neat Squeeze stand-up toothpaste tube.

magine waking up one day and not being able to move your legs. This is where Cynthia Abrams found herself. Abrams, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and became paralyzed from the neck down, was unable to pay for more physical therapy. But while searching the internet for help, she came across a series of videos. The star of the videos, Karen Cheng, documented herself learning to dance over the course of a year—one day at a time. Inspired, Cynthia wrote to Karen, asking for some advice. I tell this story often. For me it captures how selfless acts of creativity, done without forethought, can end up having a profound, unpredictable effect on others. What are the conditions that made Karen’s videos so inspiring to others? It turns out there are common attributes that connect these accidental movements. Much ink has been spilled about the long tail of a company’s product, service, or offer—that you make up volume and value over time. But can ideas have

long tails, too? Can something that resonates with people in the short term, with a few key ingredients, inspire people over the long term, thereby increasing the idea’s impact? Individual examples of transformation, done in the right way, can activate change in larger systems, organizations and cultures. How? By building creative confidence and applying design thinking to everyday problems. Though she lacked expertise when she started filming her video series, Karen Cheng had no shortage of creative confidence. She focused on a very human desire—to become a great dancer, bravely documented her learning process day-by-day, and iterated over time to master her art. By applying those principles, she created something new to the world. For those new to these ideas, design thinking is the process of matching people’s needs with what is both technologically feasible and also viable as a business. It is a proven and repeatable problemsolving process that businesses can employ to tackle the unknown.

Creative confidence is a byproduct of design thinking—it comes when you tap into your creative potential to solve problems. There’s a quote on the children’s creativity museum website that perfectly captures these principles: “Having the freedom and courage to fail/take creative risks and the knowledge that all of the ideas you create have value.” I first saw the combined power of design thinking and creative confidence in the Human-Centered Design Toolkit we designed for the Gates Foundation. The kit was created to help international staff and volunteers understand a community’s needs, find innovative solutions to meet those needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind. We decided to give it away for free. It has now been downloaded over 150,000 times. Seven years on, it’s helping tens of thousands achieve their goals. On the hcdconnect.org website you can track examples of how people are using it and the impact they are having in the world, including everything from “Using HCD to help foster

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INNOVATION

kids beat the odds”, a program to create a workforce development program for foster kids in Boston, to a woman named Onur Oktem who is using the toolkit to create UnJammed, a dance and body movement that addresses poverty in New Zealand. When Peruvian businessman Carlos Rodriguez-Pastor wanted to improve his country, he knew education was the key. He had been working with Jorge Yzusqui Chessman, who had built a school and had grown it from 130 to 500 students, all in just a few years. Carlos knew that he needed a way to scale what Jorge had built. So, in 2011 he turned to IDEO to help him create the next generation of Peruvian schools. He brought together the creativity of Jorge and the design thinking process to help him realize a new kind of school that would be widely affordable, and called it Innova. To date, Innova has opened 29 schools, with more than 20,000 students enrolled in grades K-11. Most students come from families that make $1,200 per month. Innova may not have a long tale just yet, but the potential for how education can change the destiny of Peru’s emerging middle class is limitless. There’s an opportunity to have impact at scale—turning an entire generation of children into creatively confident, problem-

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solving individuals who can take on the challenges of a rapidly shifting world.

While Nikola Tesla was an amazing inventor—coming up with components of radio, X-ray, and remote control—not even he could dream up a future in which he’d become the namesake for a luxury electric car. But one of his most influential creations was the AC motor, and it was this invention that inspired Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning to create the most exciting car company to have appeared in this era, Tesla. As with our Human-Centered Design Toolkit, Tesla recently made their proprietary battery technology open source in order to inspire more people to build upon it. The move was strategic, said current CEO Elon Musk, meant to, “include attracting and motivating talented employees, as well as to accelerate the mass market advancement of electric cars for sustainable transport.” It’s an unusually proactive way of thinking about the long-term goals and sustainability of one’s company and the industry it plays in. All of these stories are good for business, but they’re also compelling human stories that engage the crowd and become

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movements. Bold acts of creativity move from the individual to the collective good, bolstering creative confidence in people and generating a cascade of new ideas. It’s a positive feedback loop. No one could have foreseen the impact these projects and initiatives would have over the long term—the “long tales” they’d start to tell of how they impacted people’s lives. But if you use the process and underlying principles of design thinking to achieve creative confidence, you will be able to do more than you ever imagined possible. The 100-days project, brilliantly conceived and marketed by Cheng, has now scaled digitally to bring creative confidence to millions. Her effort has effected people she had no idea she would be able to touch. By inspiring me to write this story, she has now touched you, too. So, I leave you with one simple ask. Take that next project you were about to kick off and approach it differently. Give yourself and your teams the opportunity to take a designer’s approach—identifying a human need, prototyping a solution, then building upon it over time until it’s right. Think about the problem in new ways, open yourself up to disruptive ideas, and create things that will make for a great—and long—tale to tell.

DISPLAY

Ad Blocking -

The $22 Billion Advertising Problem - Matt Hunt, CEO at Geronimo

Quick definition check in what is an ad blocker? An ad blocker is a program that will remove different kinds of advertising from a Web user’s experience online. These programs target certain kinds of ads, such as pop-ups, banner ads and other common forms of online advertisement, allowing a user to surf the Web ad-free. The argument for ad blocking The advocates for ad blocking say that media owners are using military grade technologies to profile and track people and that behavioral targeting is out of control. Ad blocking companies also argue that ads slow down page load speeds and increase data costs for consumers. The argument against ad blocking The advocates against ad blocking believe that relevant advertising enhances the user experience and that advertising is the cornerstone of the media economy. Without advertising, media owners would go out of business and content quality and quantity would be reduced at an unprecedented scale. Media owners argue that there is an implied contract between

a publisher and a consumer that readers must be exposed to ads because content is funded by paid for advertising. Under this argument, publishers argue that ad blocking is equivalent to stealing. What’s not being said While ad blocking companies are vocal in talking up fear in the industry, evidence is emerging that ad blocking is being used as a tactic by the ad blocking companies to generate revenue by managing which sites are blocked and which are not. It will be interesting to see the ad blocking business model evolve in the next 12 months.

Ad blocking software use grew 42%last year, with ad blocking estimated to cost advertisers $22 billion in 2015.” What techniques are being used to navigate ad blocking We are seeing proactive mobile and media companies beginning to roll out products that are specifically designed to either navigate ad blocking software or simply improve the advertising

user experience. Look for native (in-feed) advertising options, in app advertising options and even companies who are focused on developing new users experiences for the mobile device. From a publisher standpoint, the Trinity Mirror and Daily Mail have taken a hard line approach to ad blocking by preventing people with installed ad blockers from viewing content until they disable the ad blocker or white list the site. Not all doom and gloom While ad blocking makes for good headlines many ad professionals envisage a more moderate future. A new line is being drawn between “bad advertising practices” (intrusive, insecure, big impact on page download speed) and “decent advertising practices” (relevant, elegant, low impact on user experience) and as always, there will be winners and losers. I predict that a generational shift will change the way we value our personal data and that we will accept advertising that delivers value and avoid advertising that annoys us. Consumers will have greater control, but companies will continue to influence our purchasing decisions. WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

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INTERVIEW

Interview with

Scott Brinker

Author of Hacking Marketing

igerati sat down with Scott Brinker, creator of the now famous Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic, and author of Hacking Marketing: Agile Practices to Make Marketing Smarter, Faster, and More Innovative to hear his views on how marketing is changing as a result of technology.

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(software), interactive content (software), mobile apps (software), and so on. Software has eaten the world - and marketing too. My goal in writing this book is to help marketers at all levels - even those with no technical background or inclination - adapt marketing management to the wild whirlwind of a world dominated by software.

Your book provides a novel way of rethinking marketing management, what is it?

Your daunting technology landscape infographic sums up the modern marketer’s dilemma; there’s so much technology available it can be hard to stay across it all…

Marketing is becoming more and more entangled in software as everything becomes more and more digital. Marketers are now paddling water up to their chins in websites (software), analytics (software), social media (software), marketing automation

You’re exactly right. Marketers are facing a huge challenge and it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier. Maybe one day it might, but it’s not on the immediate horizon. Every marketer I know is facing some aspect of the unknown and is

INTERVIEW

trying to figure it out. The flip side of that is that it is a great time for context. Marketers need help figuring out and wrestling with all of these changes.

What do you see as the most pressing challenge for marketers today?

I think it’s this incredible disruption in the channels and touchpoints that marketers have with their audience, their prospects and their customers. This isn’t even about marketing technology per say, it is about these innovations coming up, the Internet of Things and how this is going to change the nature of communications between marketers and their audiences. Right now there’s this explosion of chat bots and bots and using messenger interfaces as a way to interact with audiences, and when you have this constant stream of innovations and disruptions it creates tremendous opportunities for new products which then makes the landscape even more complex for marketers.

marketers can take to this which is to divide ones marketing capabilities, technology stack and operations into two fields: “the Core” and “the Edge”.

be able to allocate a portion of budget, talent and resources to experimentation on the Edge - driven by specific customer opportunities.

The Core are the fundamental operations which we know for a fact provide relationships for customers today and generate business today - that should be where the majority of investment should go, say 70%. In the Core, you are best served by using the smallest number of technologies that are effective in achieving what you want to achieve.

You want to look at technologies in the Edge through the lens of the customer - what new technologies and channels are consumers starting to experiment with - and to be able to allocate enough resources so that that your marketing team can run experiments.

Frankly, the idea is that most of these experiments won’t work out, you don’t want to over think, you don’t want capital investment, the intention is to create a lab like mentality that allows marketers to continually stay abreast of some portion of that innovative field. If you have selected your experiments well, a subset of them will hopefully prove to be worthy candidates to eventually move into the Core operations over a 12, 18, 24 month period.

Every marketer I know is facing some aspect of the unknown and is trying to figure it out…

How do you suggest marketers navigate this technology maelstrom?

In my book I briefly describe one approach that most

You want to simplify and get really good at leveraging these capabilities to the fullest. At the same time, you can’t deny that there is this tremendous disruption and innovation taking place in the market, and it would be ill advised for brands to ignore it. So ideally, you should also

The important thing is to do both of these things in parallel. The key in the Core, for keeping the management of the marketing technology stack as rational as possible, is to SIMPLIFY the technologies. In the Edge - don’t worry about the number of technologies in that space.

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INFLUENCER MARKETING

Citizen Influencers: A Question of Real Influence by staff writers

key fact many marketers forget is that today’s ‘consumer’ is someone fundamentally inured to advertising and marketing messages. They’re people like you and I who don’t want to be ‘marketed at’, whilst paradoxically being the very same people who’re happy to trust product recommendations from friends, family and their favorite personalities on social media. Influencer marketing – a form of marketing in which focus is placed on specific key individuals rather than the target market as a whole

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– has emerged as the next big thing in advertising principally because it taps into this emerging trend. So given this reality, why aren’t more brands engaging in Influencer Marketing? The simple fact is, influencer marketing is still an emerging discipline and many marketers are hesitant to let loose the reigns. To better understand this emerging sector, we reached out to former TV host Jules Lund, founder of influencer marketing tech company TRIBE, to discuss the ins and outs of IM and get some insights to guide brands looking to tap into this trend.

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Let’s start at the beginning, what’s driving the IM space? It’s frustration and technology. As consumers we’ve grown savvy. We all know ads are designed to persuade us to buy something and we don’t want to be sold at. We’d rather trust the opinion of someone just like us - who’s really used the product - to tell us whether the product works or not. Then there’s the explosion in social media, search and smart phones which have handed us all the power to compare prices, complain loudly, and share opinions like never before. These two factors combined

INFLUENCER MARKETING

give consumers the ability to take control and focus on what matters to them.

What’s changed between previous versions of IM and today’s IM? Previous incarnations of IM tended to focus on the Tier 1 influencers, the top 1% of high profile celebrity’s with 500k+ followers. Today, IM has evolved to the point that “the power middle” influencers now play a significant role in influencer marketing campaigns. We call them Citizen Influencers. There are literally hundreds of thousands of ‘Citizen Influencers’ out there. These are people who’ve built smaller tribes around a particular passion or expertise that they are now able to commercialize in an authentic way that adds value to themselves and their follower base.

According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising.”

Is there a shift in thinking brands need to make before moving into IM? There is. Many marketers have been too focused on “collecting” instead of “connecting.” In other words, brands are caught up in collecting social media fans but

they’re forgetting to actually connect with them. Having 100 really passionate fans that love your brand or product is exponentially more effective than having 10,000 “fans” who signed up just to win a free iPad from you. Brands need to shift their thinking to appreciate the needs and interests of their social audience. Brands that put mobile at the center of marketing, who listen to their audience, create and test content that resonates, and then empower their followers to be a part of their brand by leveraging user generated content will have an advantage over those that don’t.

solutions in this emerging category has increased dramatically. This is all good news. I think we’ll start seeing brands effectively combining tier 1 and Citizen Influencers, which is a good strategy because it’s scalable and will reach more people with the same resources. One thing I think we’ll see less of is bikini model selfies with vulgar product placements. This maturing of the sector will embolden brands to enter into a word of mouth marketing eco-system that’s becoming more authentic, effective and measurable than ever before.

What are your predictions for Influencer Marketing in 2016?

Rumor is Influencer Marketing has a metrics problem, care to elaborate?

The first thing is IM isn’t going to fade away anytime soon. According to Schlesinger, 84% of marketing professionals worldwide have plans to start influencer marketing in 2016, and those who are already doing it have plans to prioritize it. Interestingly, there has been a 76% increase in Google searches for “influencer marketing” since April 2013 showing that the demand for

I don’t agree. Influencer Marketing is simply “a 3.0 version of what we used to call word of mouth,” which any marketer who’s ever run a social campaign should be more than comfortable tracking and measuring. IM is subject to the same metrics scrutiny as any traditional social campaign, so campaigns should be measured on reach, shares, likes and engagement.

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MOBILE

Small World -

Tom Eslinger Talks China,

Mobility and ‘Niching’ 12

But if Eslinger’s experience of the world’s most populous country is anything to go by, the world is actually getting smaller. The massive proliferation of mobile devices and rollout of faster mobile networks has seen China’s >

marketing to them, are unencumbered by the legacy systems – and attitudes – that help define developed markets like Australia, Europe and the US.

om Eslinger’s frequent flyer miles are proof he understands better than most what a big world we live in. The former global head of digital and social for Saatchi and Saatchi is based in New York, but travels frequently to China and throughout Asia where the global giant is looking to expand its footprint and influence in the green-fields markets of the Orient.

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Eslinger feels, therefore that China has become a clean testing ground for ecommerce and mobile app development.

newly minted middle classes leapfrog their counterparts in the developed world when it comes to ecommerce. At the same time, China’s consumers, and the people

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“There’s not as much legacy of going to Walmart or shopping around malls, even heading out to the auto yard on the weekend to buy the new family car.“ The Chinese are comfortable doing and buying anything online and with their phones.” Australians, Americans and Europeans are getting there, but

MOBILE

the rates of adoption in China offer clues as to just how disruptive this trend is yet to become for consumers and marketers in mature economies. One of the biggest trends is so-called individual or 1:1 marketing. With so many people now carrying fast mini-computers in their pockets connected over high-speed networks, digital marketers have the opportunity to develop content and campaigns that address individual tastes and desires. It is this so-called ‘niching’, as Eslinger describes it, which is fast becoming the guiding principle for marketing and advertising agencies as they try to unlock the potential of mobile for their clients. The emergence of analytics-driven, targeted advertising on chat apps like Weechat is clear evidence of this trend. Then there’s the growing number of apps aimed at only very narrow groups of people. For example, Eslinger notes there’s a fashion app for American women looking to buy clothes priced only between $US25 and $US100, with many more like them across multiple industries, in existence or in development. And increasingly they are providing creative tools enabling things like uploading and editing of photo / video content, allowing for higher levels of personalization and customization. If the developers are smart, they take the user data to further refine targeted user content and improve the user experience. “There’s a market for apps and brand developers to get into really specific markets.” Delta Airlines in the US is often cited for its approach to

harnessing mobile for better user experiences. For instance, frequent flyer members receive personal notifications at check-in regarding the status of their points. “Delta is very good at iterating their mobile experience to communicate very specific things about me,” Eslinger says. Naturally, this trend of personalization is causing ripples amongst creative agencies as they seek ways to cut and dice video and other content according to increasingly specific audiences. Car companies are well advanced on this path in China, Eslinger adds, as are many casino operators, which are distributing high-quality, yet personalized video content to convey experiences to potential customers.

The good news is that simplicity is the key. For all the impressive digital and data smarts being developed and deployed, Eslinger insists there are essentially only two things people do with mobile phones: “Waste time or save time”. Clearly, the quest to waste as much of people’s time as possible via mobile devices has proved a pretty lucrative one. Think Angry Birds, Candy Crush and any number of gaming apps bleeping away on trains, buses and the back of university lecture theatres. But the ability to save people time is proving the truly disruptive driver for mobile commerce. And knowing exactly who people are, what they want and how they behave is critical to achieving this. 13

The Chinese are comfortable doing and buying anything online and with their phones. In his book, Mobile Magic, Eslinger points out the average American spends 83 minutes a day doing something other than talking on their mobile phones. And while for many organizations, tapping into that potential seems complicated and intimidating, they really have no choice.

In fact, it’s increasingly becoming the driving factor for all commerce and communications, with mobility undoubtedly the most important piece of the puzzle. So important, Eslinger believes, we won’t even need to talk about it. “Talking about mobility is as redundant as talking about digital.” WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

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CONTENT MARKETING

EXPERT OPINION 14

Content Discovery: Is Paid Virality Cheating? “Build it and they will come” no longer holds true for content creators Recognising that traditional forms of internet advertising weren’t performing as well as they had in the halcyon days of the internet, a little Israeli start-up set out to reinvent the way brands captured consumers’ attention by developing a unique content discovery platform. Ten years later, Outbrain has become one of the most disruptive companies in the rapidly expanding content sector. Outbrain’s platform has become one

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of the world’s leading mechanisms for driving readers from one story to the next on premium content and news sites, effectively shaping the way online audiences read and experience the web. Digerati sat down with Ayal Steiner, Managing Director APAC at Outbrain, to find out why he thinks brands involved in content marketing need to widen their focus and start planning for content distribution.

Q A

So what exactly is Outbrain trying to do?

Human beings are passionate about reading. There’s this magical moment when you flip through a magazine and discover an amazing new story. As a company we try and replicate this experience on websites by recommending to the reader the stories we believe they’ll find most interesting. Much the same way that Google is trying to serve the best search results based on a search query and reader’s location and history, we try and predict algorithmically what

CONTENT MARKETING

could be the best pieces of content you might be interested in reading next. Publishers like NewsCorp, The Guardian, Time Inc. and global broadcast brands like CNN, BBC and Sky News all use our platform to engage their audience. This, in turn, helps them drive new revenue streams from native promoted content appearing as ‘FROM AROUND THE WEB” recommendations on their sites.

How does this fit into the content marketing space?

We’re seeing many of the world’s leading brands starting to produce longer form content and videos, they’re making this shift because they’re recognising the value of longer form content when it comes to telling better and more engaging stories. But creating this content isn’t cheap, so the challenge for these brands quickly shifts to finding the right audience to engage with the content produced. That’s where we come in. We help brands promote their content across our wide publisher network, where links to that content are amplified, for instance, by labelling them on premium sites as ‘from around the web’. It’s like Social Sharing, but on a much wider scale.

But if the content is good enough, wouldn’t it just go viral and eventually attract the right audience?

Many brands fall into the trap of adopting this view. There’s definitely this erroneous notion of “build it and they will come”. We regularly see brands that’ve heavily invested in producing

high quality content struggling to demonstrate ROI due to a lack of audience. The tragic truth is there’s millions of dollars’ worth of branded content just sitting in content hubs, corporate blogs and YouTube channels never getting the full exposure it could have.

Outbrain Haiku: if you wrote a blog and no one came to read it, did you write a blog?

I always talk about the need to carefully find the balance between content production and content discovery. One simply cannot live without the other.

What avenues are open to brands who want to invest in ‘content discovery’?

There are quite a few options, actually. We are seeing brands distributing branded content as sponsored posts, tweets, promoted search results and, through platforms like ours, as native promoted content from around the web. In this space, we’ve heard that Outbrain often drives a much stronger engagement after the click when compared to social channels or search results. It’s simply because we find consumers when they are already deeply engaged with content and we offer readers the next story in a very native and non-intrusive way.

Where does Outbrain sit in the content discovery space against the likes of Google?

The world is exploding with content that is all vying for consumers’ attention, so brands need to plan ahead and engineer a way to cut through all the noise to become visible. There’s certain levers brands can pull and a range of tactics they can adopt to get their content seen in a manner that’s respectful of online audiences. Dr Karen NelsonField from the SA Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science has conducted research showing that even the content we may think are shining examples of viral content are in fact actually being heavily distributed through paid channels. We have a Haiku in Outbrain: if you wrote a blog and no one came to read it, did you write a blog?”

The traditional content discovery playing field was one pretty much dominated by Google. Two to three years ago Google was the first point of call for people to search for what they needed to find, but this is changing fast. By way of comparison, it’s estimated that Google is serving 100 billion search results each month, whereas Outbrain is serving around 180 billion recommendations every month. One model sees consumers ‘leaning in’ to find what they’re looking for via search engines, whilst the other model has consumers discovering and engaging with content whilst they are ‘leaning back’. In my view, both have a role to play.

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VIDEO

ast year, Cisco released a study estimating online video will be responsible for 80% of the world’s internet traffic by 2019. This dramatic shift is putting marketers and agencies under increasing pressure to work harder to create content that stands out amongst all the noise. Today, the grand hope for marketers is that their video content will ‘go viral’, yet one of the very reasons why this doesn’t often happen - in the humble opinion of Lance Traore, MD of Unruly ANZ - is because there’s a huge amount of confusion about what underpins content virality. Digerati sat down with Lance to dig a little deeper on this subject.

Let’s start at the beginning, who are Unruly and what do you do? Unruly is an ad tech company that gets videos watched, tracked and shared across the Open Web. Basically we help brands create better video content that resonates with audiences online, and we distribute and amplify that video content. We use emotional audience data and non-interruptive, user friendly video formats to increase viewer engagement. We have the world’s largest data set on video sharing with over 2 trillion video views collected over 10 years, a full tech stack and some very clever algorithms that evaluate the shareability of content. We stand alone in the market because we guarantee 100% viewability to an audience of 1.44 billion unique users across mobile, tablet and desktop.

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The 5 Myths of Video Virality Talk me through your first myth that content has to be funny Humor is undoubtedly one of the most effective emotional triggers in social video advertising. The problem is too many brands try to be funny and fail. It’s hardly surprising. As any comedian will tell you, making someone laugh is the hardest job on the planet. Different people find different things funny, plus humor doesn’t always translate across borders. It’s

also the most overused emotional trigger, making it harder to stand out from the crowd. What we suggest is that brands think about emotions other than humor. Think about creating uplifting content, content that inspires, makes people joyful, happy or sad.

You mentioned the myth that size matters, that shorter is better… There’s a lot of talk about us being an ADD generation; that

VIDEO

It’s important to be able to predict what actually drives sharing in advance so brands can operationalize success

we can’t concentrate on one thing for more than a few seconds. Certainly, when you look at the rise in popularity of short-form platforms such as Instavideo and Vine it does look like less can sometime mean more. But good content is good content - and it comes in all shapes and sizes. If you’ve got great content, people will watch it. And there’s a lot of appetite for longer form content, if the content is genuinely engaging. The average duration of your typical top ten video is around two-and-a-half minutes.

Myth 3: Good content will rise to the surface There’s so much content in

our social feeds these days. With 300 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every minute, it’s hard to get noticed. This is why it’s more important than ever for brands to have a smart distribution strategy in place to make sure people are seeing their content. Your distribution strategy is just as important as your content strategy.

Myth 4: Big views equals big success Views are not the be-alland-end-all and gradually over time we have seen more and more brands come to recognize this. Increasingly advertisers are looking beyond the view when assessing the success of their video campaigns. Really a view is just a measure of media spend. And when you are looking at the success of a campaign, look very carefully at the KPIs. Shares, for example, is a very strong KPI for video campaigns because it shows that someone has really engaged with a piece of content and has become

an advocate for that brand with their peer group.

Myth 5: You can’t predict viral success There is a long held myth in the ad industry which says that virality is unpredictable; that’s just a cop-out. We have big data available to us now, allowing us to run regressional analysis across massive data sets. We also have volumes of academic research there that can help us identify robustly what those sharing metrics and variables are.

So we can absolutely predict a viral hit and, in fact, we are doing it here at Unruly with our Unruly ShareRank algorithm. We have 80% success in predicting virality on our global algorithm and 90% success on our local algorithms. It’s important to be able to predict what actually drives sharing in advance so brands can operationalize success. And not just have a one-off win and wonder why, but understand why their content has been successful and build on that for the next time around.

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LOCATION

PART 1: Investing In a 3-Layer Location Cake by Asif Khan, founder Location Based Marketing Association

etail innovation is today’s retail status quo. The days of traditional retail are long gone, and for the majority of retailers, only those willing and able to innovate, transform, change and reshape retail are going to be the players who make it out the other side. It used to be the retailers themselves changing the way retail was done — with deals and promotions, coupons and email blasts. Now it’s the retail marketing companies transforming how retailers retail by testing everything from beacons, targeted email promotions, and other technologies for engaging with customers on and offline.

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It’s estimated that location-based marketing which spans mobile advertising, billboards and display advertising - will be a $43.3 billion market by 2019. Driving this growth are a wide range of location based technologies that help retailers improve the customer experience by listening for behavior and purchase intent, then taking actions like sending the next best communication that’s going to help the customer down the path to purchase. Many retailers are so bogged down with the bottom line that they forget about what drives that bottom line: customers and customer experience. Retailers must go that extra mile to reach customers, otherwise another

LOCATION

brand will likely step in to snatch up their attention. At the Location Based Marketing Association (The LBMA), we believe that retailers need to invest in and develop a strategy for deploying these solutions. We call this strategy a 3-layer location cake. It’s important to recognize that location-based marketing is really about recognizing location as a data set that spans many technologies, devices and media types. We all want to get to that top layer, the one with the icing and whipped cream, the one that ultimately leads to transactions and revenue, but we can’t get there unless we drive the right customers to the store and create an experience that is engaging and rewarding.

Layer One – Driving Location-Based Traffic The first layer of the location cake is about getting customers into the store. This comprises a series of technologies that include social media, push messaging, geo-fencing and more. Geo-fencing is one of the most exciting new technologies available to digital marketers: it’s a location-based service that sends content, messaging and promotions to Smartphone or mobile device users who enter a certain geographic area. When Smartphone users enter a geo-fence, they can potentially receive targeted ads on websites or apps they visit on their mobile device. As mobile apps and advertising continue to grow in popularity, geo-fencing enables marketers to distribute locationspecific ads and promotions to customers on their mobile devices. Marketers who have a difficult time reaching millennials should

take note: 84% of Gen Y act on push notifications for location-based apps. According to a study from Retale, millennial men (86%) are more likely to respond to push notifications than their female counterparts (79%). In addition, the research shows that 94% of the coming-of-age generation is using location-based services—with 97% of iPhone owners and 93% of Android users partaking in such services. Retailers that share relevant material and are respectful of millennials’ time will ultimately increase the amount of content millennials will engage with. Here are a few examples of how to engage at this first layer of the cake.

When Smartphone users enter a geo-fence, they can potentially receive targeted ads on websites or apps they visit on their mobile device. Steal Share Dunkin’ Donuts used geo-fencing marketing to apply location technology around competitors’ locations, coupled with behavioral targeting, to deliver coupons on mobile devices. The results: 36% of those who clicked on the offer took a secondary action, 18% saved the coupon and 3.6% of secondary actions resulted in a redeemed coupon.

Grow sales, even if your store is closed Use geo-fencing to lead the way to new locations. Ashley Stewart, a West-coast clothing retailer, used geo-fencing around recently closed locations and redirected customers to new locations nearby. Become a timely reminder Remind customers of common tasks and purchases at just the right moment. The Walgreens app has adopted Apple’s Passbook feature, which uses geo-fencing to remind users to refill or pick up their prescriptions when they enter a Walgreens store.

Deploy the ultimate Limited-Time Offer Geo-fencing gives you the opportunity to offer very limited time offers with expiration dates of minutes instead of weeks. Edgy Guatemalan sneaker retailer Meat Pack used geo-fencing technology to detect when a former customer entered a competitor’s retail space. As soon as the customer entered a competitor’s location, a fun, highenergy promotion deployed, offering a 99% discount.

The discount percentage decreased one percent each second until the user entered a Meat Pack store. Meat Pack’s geo-fencing promotion drew more than 600 people from rival stores, and the fastest person to get there managed to receive an 89% discount. These are just a few examples of the ways geo-fencing is changing digital marketing. In the next issue of Digerati Magazine we will look at Layer Two – Driving Location-Based In-Store Engagement.

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WORKING LIFE

Workplace 2020:

Where Competitive Advantage Comes From Harnessing Disaggregated Workers and Mobility Technologies…

s far back as 2010, software company Intuit released a study that suggested that by 2020 more than 40% of the US workforce will be so-called ‘contingent workers’. That’s a really big number. The forces underpinning this shift are debatable, many and varied. Some argue that the rise of mobile technologies and ubiquitous internet access make the workplace commute redundant; why waste time in the car when you can work from home or your local coffee shop?

Then there’s the idea of the portfolio career, especially in the new media and creative sectors; why put all your eggs in one basket when working on multiple, smaller projects may be less demanding and more satisfying? Others take the macro view that this shift is a result of recent economic downturns and shifting workplace regulations alongside the globalization of readily accessible and affordable talent. Fact is, whichever

camp you choose to align with, the one inescapable truth is that this shift is happening, and happening fast. It makes sense then that the truly successful companies of the future will be the ones who embrace this shift, recognizing it as less a tug of war between companies and workers, and more so as a genuine opportunity to achieve the ultimate goal (PROFIT) by harnessing technology to deliver worker mobility that enables the end goal, whilst also maximizing employee productivity and well-being. So if we accept this as fact, what then are the first steps companies need to take to set off down this road less traveled? I’d suggest a great first step is to have a very clear picture of what it is that will be achieved by this move, and how much of the companies workflow and workforce will be impacted. Setting very clear boundaries – e.g. that contingent workforce’s will only work on X tasks – makes it far easier to realign or remove internal resources before

progressing on to step two. Step two is where the company creates common ground for their disaggregated or contingent workers. This is where they take the time to develop the Rules of Engagement for a wider working ecosystem that includes more places to work, with common processes for virtual workflows, communications and reporting in place, and with a central technology platform underpinning the entire process. It’s essentially a Venn diagram of rules, processes and technologies that overlap in the center to deliver employee mobility and company profitability without negatively impacting quality or time to market. Harnessing the power of virtual, borderless, contingent teams working across open platforms guided by common standards isn’t achieved overnight. Being able to align a distributed workforce with a core, onsite workforce requires as much planning upfront as it will require flexibility when it’s underway until a successful, flexible and robust common ground has been achieved. That’s why the point isn’t to try and get there tomorrow, the point is to start thinking about it today because 2020 is coming, and coming fast…

The Workforce 2020: The Looming Talent Crisis study by Oxford Economics

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SOCIAL LISTENING

analytics plan is key to aligning social listening with business objectives. By understanding what metrics to monitor for specific purposes, organizations can create informed strategies while avoiding the nightmare of data overload.

Deploying Social Listening in the Organization By Stephen Dale, General Manager APAC Digimind In recent years, social listening has come to play a crucial role in areas like content creation, public relations, and customer engagement. With the widespread use of social media changing the way we interact and share information online, the redistribution of data across new channels is inevitably shifting the face of market research and intelligence. Simply put, social intelligence is no longer a nice-to-have, but an essential part of an enterprise’s arsenal in a data driven age. As the rise of command centers and analyst hubs has shown, the ability to capture realtime information from online sources, not just social media platforms, presents unprecedented advantages beyond marketing and

communications With that said, monitoring unlimited sources on the web with today’s technology is only the first step towards digital transformation. Fully integrating social intelligence across departments requires not only the ability to track and filter one’s findings effectively, but also the shareability and actionability of these insights to create a seamless business strategy. To start, the sophistication of social listening tools should be matched with a clear analytics plan. For organizations, this means working backwards and defining the overall objective for deploying social intelligence. Whether it’s to predict market trends or identify potential areas for product development, a pre-defined

While social listening platforms evolve to make information more organized and accessible, it is essential for companies to create an ongoing culture of sharing and collaboration across departments. Fostering this internal social network, therefore, requires a good mix of branding and investment. Challenges lie in convincing other departments of social intelligence as a solutions provider to the organization in working towards specific goals. This is where relationships are vital. Influencers in the organization can leverage their clout to push for the integration of social listening with other operations and policies. Personalized newsletters and dashboards are another way of marketing data as relevant, appealing, and easily digestible to non-research departments.

Digital hubs like Intel have shown how investing in the space and technology needed for regional research centers can greatly enhance the visibility and dexterity of a social intelligence team. To be sure, the diversity of businesses and their needs means that there is no “one size fits all” strategy for deploying social listening at all levels. However, companies that commit time and resources to investing in the human side of intelligence will greatly benefit. After all, deploying social listening is about adapting both infrastructure and manpower to a new process of market research.

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EMAIL MARKETING

Email Marketi ng

he marketing technology ecosystem is an ever evolving beast with a seemingly never ending stream of new channels and technologies available to marketers, all promising to deliver better ROI, more efficient resource allocation, greater customer engagement etc. Yet amongst all this technology it’s actually one of digital marketing’s oldest mainstays – email marketing - that remains one of the best digital channels from a resource and ROI perspective Email can generate incredible levels of

This is a really great example of how having a really strong voice can allow the content to speak for itself, without spending hours on fancy design.

Product Hunt All of Product Hunt’s subscriber emails have a compelling, playful tone that emulates the voice of their community. They tend to keep their emails short, sweet and to the point, illustrating with emoji’s to drive home that playful tone. The design isn’t over-complicated but the email itself is still visually appealing. This is a really great example of how having a really strong voice can allow the content to speak for itself, without spending hours on fancy design.

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engagement and ROI for those marketers willing to take the time to understand their customers and then shape their marketing activities to suit. So why is it then - when most marketers know this - so many businesses still get it wrong? We’ve all been on the receiving end of bad email marketing, yawn, so what companies are leading the way when it comes to sending emails that delight their audiences? We asked the team at HubSpot for their Top 5 examples of great email marketing…

EMAIL MARKETING

Kit and Ace

Space NK We actually look forward to receiving Space NK’s birthday emails. If that’s not a sign of a great email, then we’re not sure what is. They delight their customers every time their birthday rolls around with a gift, redeemable in store or online, rather than with a double points offer (which -let’s be honest -- doesn’t ever feel like a real gift). Not only is the design simple, classy and totally reflective of the Space NK brand, but the CTAs couldn’t be clearer. They make sure you know exactly how to claim your birthday treat, leaving you an all-round happy customer.

Speaking of design, the clean cut, no-bells-or-whistles approach to this store launch invitation from technical cashmere brand Kit and Ace really caught our attention. Whilst the bulk of the email presented the launch details boldly, yet effectively, it was prefaced with a personal touch in the copy at the beginning. A great example of how personalization can work beyond just inserting the recipient’s name.

A great example of how personalization can work beyond just inserting the recipient’s name.

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EMAIL MARKETING

Canva

Canva’s emails get top marks for simplicity paired with usefulness. Canva is a design tool, and they let their subscribers know each time there’s updates to their templates with a quick, no-frills email encouraging them to check out what’s new. The tone couldn’t be less pushy, and it’s obvious that their whole email strategy is set-up around adding value to their users.

SEM Rush

The tone couldn’t be less pushy, and it’s obvious that their whole email strategy is set-up around adding value to their users.

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For companies that operate across multiple countries, as a consumer it can often feel like you’re lumped in with the masses. Rather than sending a generic update to let their customers know about region-specific changes to their software, SEM Rush makes sure their Australian audience knows that this one’s for them with this playful subject line. This tone continues in the body content, whilst providing clear information on technical updates to the product without being dull. A great example of b2b email done well. For more marketing tips, visit the HubSpot marketing blog

ECOMMERCE

Some Thoughts on Online Shopping & the Future of Cyber CX by Staff Writers

turn consumers off.

he experience of shopping has changed dramatically since the first online ecommerce transaction way back in 1994 when Dan Kohn, a 21-year-old entrepreneur, sold a CD of Sting’s Ten Summoner’s Tales album to a friend via his website NetMarket. The years following this paltry $12.48 transaction (excl. shipping costs) have seen a revolution in the way consumers and brands are able to utilise the WWW to buy and sell online. In 2015, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to circa $1.7 trillion U.S., with this figure expected to exceed $3 trillion by 2018. This growth will be the result of many factors, foremost of which will be consumers becoming increasingly comfortable transacting online as more retailers prioritise Customer eXperience by deploying technologies and go to market strategies that make their customer’s life easier. Tap & Go technologies make smaller financial transactions faster, robot sales and service staff (e.g. Amazon’s drone fleet) make delivery

more convenient, and cutting edge technologies like Facebook’s impending ‘chatbot’ – powered by unprecedented machine learning technology – promise to make virtual customer support seamless and engaging.

For example, common marketing automation initiatives like retargeting and the overuse of Personally Identifying Information in marketing can make consumers’ wary. Likewise, badly targeted ads and automated email campaign’s that choke consumers inboxes can also have a negative impact on brand sentiment and sales. The rapid growth of consumers utilising online ad blocking software is testament to the impact inappropriate use of technology can have.

All the above are win-win technologies from the consumer’s standpoint, but technology is only one piece of the customer experience mix. The value of human interaction in the retail space cannot be overstated; the numbers show it to be true that people still prefer to buy from people.

The challenge for retailers, then, is finding the appropriate balance of technology and human resources that, when combined, deliver a sustainable, profitable, and above all else, rewarding customer experience. Achieving the right balance between delivering human to human experiences - supported by appropriate and relevant technologies that lighten the load - needs to become the focal point for brands who hope to deliver a rewarding customer experience.

The inherent risk for brands operating in a marketing ecosystem of 3,500+ technologies is that it’s easy to go for the ‘quick fix’ solution and source a technology that engages their customer base, but this approach fails to consider our fundamental human need to connect with another human being if, and when, needed. Brands that over rely on technology to deliver faux ‘personal’ interactions – sans person – may actually achieve the opposite of what they intended, they could

By taking the time to understand where the Uncanny Valley begins for your brand – the point where technology and human effort combine seamlessly to delight, rather than dissuade your customers – brands can take an important step towards delivering an exceptional customer experience. It will be those brands that find the sweet spot between seamless online experiences and real-time customer contact who will be the ones that have a truly competitive advantage. WWW.DIGERATIMAG.COM

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TAGGING

Case Study

How Ancestry.com Entered (and Won) The Tag Race

ver the past 15 years, an array of digital tools have emerged to help marketing organizations deliver more relevant and personalized experiences for consumers. Each of these technologies amasses enormous amounts of data gathered via ‘tags’. Tags are the pieces of JavaScript flickering away in cyberspace, and are designed to capture information on consumers such as what they are doing, saying, buying, or not buying online. According to Steve Pardue, APAC and Japan VP of enterprise tag management

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firm, Tealium, these tags can number in the tens or even hundreds on individual websites, meaning that marketers and ad sales people face serious challenges managing them even before collecting the data and analyzing what it means. Industry reports indicate that there are approximately 3,500+ marketing technologies available to marketing organizations, Pardue notes. “There’s been an absolute explosion in the use and adoption of these tools.” Naturally, marketers and ad sales people are excited about this trend, especially the increased potential

TAGGING

Converting the galaxy of JavaScripts online into marketing intelligence requires proper management systems. to create real-time, targeted engagements. However, tensions are rising further between the marketing and IT departments, with the latter increasingly being called on to add, remove or tweak tags as the demands of the business change. Tealium, founded in 2008, is among the leading players in the emerging market for enterprise tag management and real-time unified marketing solutions. As Pardue explains, the company works with a number of high profile marketing technology vendors, organizations, and global agencies to develop workable frameworks for better managing tags and fully utilizing the market intelligence being extracted from them. Addressing the first part involves using a foundational tag management system with a simple to use UI (user interface), whereby marketers and ad salespeople can manage tags in minutes versus the hours, weeks or months it used to take when manually coded or added to their sites. “Once the foundational tag management system is set in place, the fun work of discovering what visitors are doing when they visit a site can begin,” Pardue notes. Marketers can use this

knowledge to dynamically segment visitors in real-time based on their behavior. Then the creative team gets busy developing targeted content to match those segments, sometimes referred to as audiences or personas. By engaging with visitors in real-time, using targeted content to improve conversions the promise of agile, flexible digital marketing comes to life. Marketers now have the ability to deliver a personalized user experience on a 1:1 basis while a visitor is engaged online with their brand, or immediately after they leave through retargeting. One example of where Tealium says its platform for, and approach to, foundational tag management has been especially powerful is in addressing the issue of abandoned online ‘shopping carts.’ Working with Ancestry.com, Tealium has helped the popular genealogy website realize a massive increase in the number of people who return to the site and subscribe after first abandoning their carts. This was when Tealium’s first-party, real-time influence DMP, AudienceStream, really came into its own. By carefully analysing the behavior of each individual, such as what they were about to buy and

when, as well as things like how long they spent on each section of the site and what content they read, Tealium was able to help Ancestry.com segment their visitors and re-engage or retarget those visitors in real-time. Ancestry.com used segment insights to create tailored pieces of content for immediate follow-up campaigns. The result is that 60% of abandoned carts are now being converted into subscriptions on ancestry.com, compared to just 5% previously. A key factor in achieving such an impressive result, Pardue stresses, is the timing.

“Initially, retargeting would occur between 24 and 48 hours after a visitor had left the site,” he says. But as Ancestry.com soon discovered, the closer they moved to real-time retargeting, settling in at three to four seconds, the better the conversion rate. “We realized the attention span of the average netizen is just seven seconds; one second less than a goldfish,” Pardue quips, “yet we can translate this into true business value for our customers. They can use the systems they already own, with the data they already have, to create exceptional, real-time engagements. Business impact is real and is now.”

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CONTENT MARKETING

Why hybrid content creation makes marketing sense by Rakhal Ebeli, Founder & CEO NewsModo

veryone loves content. Content is great. Content is king. Content will improve ROI and build customer loyalty. And it’s true. Content does do all those things. Content is the future of marketing. But in this discussion, one very important factor is often missed. The industry is so busy, so overwhelmed with enthusiasm that a crucial question is overlooked – how do you create content? Agencies and marketers do not need more reasons why they need content marketing.

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What they need is a formula for effective, efficient content creation. But as with anything, there are lots of formulas and strategies. Content creation depends on many factors – your brand’s needs, size and resources. And it will probably change in time in response to different technologies and trends. Here’s the good news – there is a way that works. It may not be a magic, one-size fits all formula but I see it as the closest thing to a Goldilocks solution. I call this hybrid content creation.

CONTENT MARKETING

What is hybrid content creation? Hybrid content creation combines the vision and direction of an internal marketing team with the scale and storytelling skills of an outsourced creative team. One side sets the brief, parameters and overall concept. The other researches, plans and executes the project. The basic premise is simple – nobody knows a brand better than a brand manager. And nobody knows how to write better than a professional writer. Today you often see marketing teams scrambling to write blogs, organise editorial calendars and think of new, interesting, creative article ideas. This puts a lot of pressure on the team. Not only do they have more work, they are being pushed out of their comfort zone and area of expertise. The idea behind hybrid content creation is to take advantage of people’s specific skills and expertise. In other words, don’t squeeze a brand manager into the role of a writer or editor. While it’s great to encourage people to diversify their skills, you don’t want them to feel their real talents are going to waste. I’m sure for instance Roger Federer is also really good at golf – but why would he train for a sport that is not his passion or does not make best use of his natural skills? The same applies to content creation. This is not to say that marketing managers shouldn’t write – it’s always good to have an insider’s perspective on the company – but that the onus and pressure of content delivery should be on writing professionals. Let marketers do what they do best and shift the focus on delivery to a trained outsourced team. This model is about balance. A wellcrafted piece of content is useless if it does not meet the brand objectives.

Hybrid content creation depends on the vision of the marketing manager to provide an understanding of the target audience, brand values and goals. The outsourced team then complement this with their understanding of writing tone, style and editorial nuance. If both sides do their part the result is effective, clean, on-brief content that engages the target audience and increases ROI. In this respect hybrid content creation is the best of both worlds – it’s the labradoodle of content creation, the goldilocks solution that balances brand virtues against outlander flexibility.

How does it work in practice? There are lots of ways to integrate hybrid content creation into a broader marketing strategy. The model is adaptable and nuanced. It allows you to choose a la carte what services your brand does and does not need. Think of it like modifying a car. You have the basic vehicle but depending on where you want to go, how far you want to travel and the difficulty of the journey, you might need some add-ons. In content creation, this could like one of following: Ideation: You’re embarking on a major, largescale project and you need ideas. More often than not – fast. The quantity and depth of research required is beyond your team. In this scenario, you can crowd-source ideas or use a third party to a get a diversity of ideas with different perspectives en masse.

The idea behind hybrid content creation is to take advantage of people’s specific skills and expertise. In other words, don’t squeeze a brand manager into the role of a writer or editor.

Content creation: You have your content marketing strategy. Now, you just need to implement

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CONTENT MARKETING

it. But you’re unsure whether your team is up to task. Not wanting to spend lots of time or money on revisions, up-skilling or hiring new people, you look to outside help via a professional editorial team. Content calendar: You are determined to make your brand a leader in content marketing. You want to make content the centre of your marketing strategy, what crystallizes and shapes all internal and external comms. But you need a plan. You want a detailed calendar that aligns content with current and future trends. It is a lot of work. It is the work of a magazine editor. You go straight to the source and save time on research and planning.

You are determined to make your brand a leader in content marketing.

Amplification: You have your content but it is not reaching your target market. You need help extending the reach of your content and making sure it has an impact. You look for a team with the technology and connections to widen the influence of your content. With hybrid content creation, you can supercharge your content car with any service or just add one or two elements to make it run smoother. The point is you don’t need to buy a whole new vehicle – just make the one you have more efficient.

The nuts and bolts For hybrid content creation to be effective there needs to be close collaboration between the in-house marketing team and the outsourced creatives. This is supported by: 1. The brief The more detailed the brief, the better equipped the outsourced team is

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to execute your creative vision. Specifics on the target market, brand tone of voice and the overall objectives of the campaign are crucial and can mean the difference between a writer ‘getting’ your brand or missing the point entirely. 2. Account management Contracting a team with an internal account manager and editor can smooth over the unpredictability of individual freelancers. While you might want to accept the odd individual pitch, it is important to work with an outsourced team that has the infrastructure and scale to deliver results – on time and without drama. At Newsmodo, I have seen first hand the effectiveness of hybrid content creation. Here are some highlights: ANZ’s bespoke platform BlueNotes mixes in-house and outsourced editorial content. This required the sourcing of articles from freelancers based in Japan and Hong Kong to provide an inside view on financial trends in the Asian market. Suncorp teamed the talent of an in-house team of writers with the storytelling skills of freelance journalists. This hybrid approach balanced hard financial data with content that was accessible and engaging to readers. As a result, organic search visits to Suncorp’s home page surged 372 per cent. Levi’s Australian blog Untitled draws on the street sense and fashion insight of freelance journalists. With this method Levi’s was able to complement articles from staff writers with an insider’s understanding of local sub-culture – from quirky Melbourne sign-writers to underground motorcycle clubs in Sydney. Mention should also be made to AWOl, the youth travel website, run by Qantas and Junkee Media, and Love this City, the city guide by MasterCard and Skyword.

CONTENT MARKETING

business. Collaborating with writers and journalists who have specialty knowledge can bring depth and credibility to your content. This is especially important if you want to be a thought leader in your field. Flexibility: Because it is an a la carte model, you have the freedom to pick and choose what you need and for how long. If content marketing is new to your brand, hybrid content creation is a safe way to trial discrete content-based projects. This way you can test out different approaches and styles without overcompromising resources.

The selling points Hybrid content creation has many points in its favour. While it may not be suitable for every project or every brand, there are clear advantages. These include: Exclusivity: When you outsource, you benefit from what’s local, on the ground, and current in any respective topic. An in-house team for example, cannot tell you what’s happening in the Tokyo market or about the latest fashion trends in Milan. By drawing on the global nimbleness of a freelance team, you can differentiate your content from your competitor and ultimately provide your reader with more compelling stories. Expertise: For niche, speciality expertise, most times you have to look outside the

Scale: By outsourcing content creation, you save yourself the bureaucratic rigmarole of hiring new staff or up-skilling your current team. Big campaign, small campaign.

The question now is not if content marketing works but how it can be best integrated and executed.

Final round up Content marketing, digital publishing, brand storytelling – whatever you call it – it is here to stay. The question now is not if content marketing works but how it can be best integrated and executed. Finding the right answer means weighing up the pros and cons and thinking seriously about the most efficient use of your resources. Creating content in-house has its benefits, as do other models for content creation. But for a solution that finds a happy medium that’s not too big and not too small, hybrid content creation is just right.

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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

Linking Internally and Externally from Your Site Dangers, Opportunities, Risk and Reward –Rand Fishkin, Moz.com Navigating linking practices can be a treacherous process. Sometimes it feels like a penalty is lurking around every corner. Rand talks about the ins and outs of linking internally and externally, identifying pitfalls and opportunities.

ome of you probably have seen that April 11th, Google made this big move. They sent out a bunch of penalties to, well, a noticeably large number of websites — it was covered on a bunch of the SEO forums and in the SEO news — basically saying, this is Google sending out these warnings saying, “You are linking to unnatural looking sites or in unnatural patterns, and we’ve noticed and we think that those links shouldn’t be there. We may be penalizing your site, or we may not be passing PageRank or other types of link mechanisms, link value through your website anymore.”

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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

like to check you out. I might link to you.” Engadget might see my link and say, “Oh, you guys do a great job of that comparison stuff. Maybe we’ll link to one of those in a future blog post that we do.” Or Samsung might see our comparison and say, “Hey, that’s some pretty cool data you’ve got. Do you think we could partner with you on a future research project and maybe we’d link to you from that project?” Very cool things.

This isn’t the first time Google has done this. They’ve done it many, many times over the last 10, 15 years. We’ve seen plenty of this. This was just another explosion in that. It is also the case that we’ve seen some other cool things on the other side of the aisle, which is Google rewarding internal links in a way we had not seen previously. In fact, some cool experiments were done recently — hopefully they’ll be made public soon, and then we can link over to them — around internal links and the power that internal links still have. So we know that it still matters and it’s still important to consider who we link to and what we link to from our sites and pages. So I thought maybe we’d talk through a few of those scenarios. 1. When you’re linking to external sites and pages. Let’s say I’ve got my mobile phones compared website here. It is actually a very positive thing to link out to places like the official website of maybe Samsung’s S7, or to link out to the Engadget review if I’m collecting a bunch of reviews and aggregating that data there to give the reference point. This is positive.

However, if I’m linking, let’s say I’m getting some affiliate value or someone’s paid me to link, or I’m linking to the site because it turns out that I own it or someone connected to me owns it and I’m getting some benefit from it, this “mobile info 4 UR life,” maybe that could be a little suspicious. It is the case, it is true and we’ve seen plenty of evidence to support this. I think ever since Marshall Simmonds from Define came in here many years ago and Did A Whiteboard Friday about how The New York Times saw so much benefit from linking out, lots of folks have been investigating that and seen that benefit repeated over and over. So good external pointing links can give a boost to your site’s relevance, to how search engines consider you, and even to your rankings. Linking out is a positive thing. It’s also the case that sites and pages that link out tend to earn more links back in, which seems obvious. They’re more helpful and relevant to people, they can serve as better resources, and it’s also the case that often that’s a very direct correlation because linking out might drive traffic to other websites who then notice it and say, “Oh yeah, I’d

That said, manipulative linking is dangerous. This is sort of the inverse of what we classically think of as link penalties, where we’ve gotten links that have pushed us up in the rankings, and they are from bad places, linking out to bad places or to good places for bad reasons, bad reasons being manipulative reasons, someone’s paid you, you’re getting some benefit from it. Google recently, a few months ago, made this announcement around how if bloggers are receiving free items from companies, and then they’re linking back to those products, that could be penalized or could be perceived as violating FTC rules if there’s not an advertisement or advertorial sponsor message on there. So all kinds of things here.

2. Linking to internal pages or other sites you own or control. All right. Let’s move over to internal links. On internal links, we’ve got a little bit of the same story but with some caveats. So again, my mobile phones compared page is here. I could be linking off to my own review. I could be linking off to my video category, maybe if I’ve got a video at the bottom of this page. I’m providing navigation. I’m helping visitors go where they want to go. This is a very positive thing.

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Internal links that tend to perform the best, the ones that help the most tend to be the ones that drive real traffic, and they sort of continue a visitor’s journey. It cannot only help to get those pages indexed and crawled, it may also help them rank higher with a few caveats. So the right internal links, good ones, can have a large positive impact across a big website.

Internal links that tend to perform the best, the ones that help the most tend to be the ones that drive real traffic, and they sort of continue a visitor’s journey. They help people find what they’re looking for, and it’s also the case that the ones that don’t drive traffic, that aren’t perceived as helpful seem to have less of an impact on the pages they link to. Now, I will point this out. If you’re worried about like, “Oh, should I add one more link on here to another category page, or should I reference another page from here,” you generally don’t need to worry about

that. As long as you think that some small portion, even a small portion of your audience would be potentially interested in that and it makes sense from a usability perspective, you should go ahead and add the link. I don’t tend to worry at all about like, “Well, the difference between 52 links on a page and 53 links is those 52 links will get a little bit less PageRank or a little bit less link energy, whatever it is, voting power than the 53rd link.” I would not sweat that at all. Those days are long since gone. But it is true that internal links tend to have the largest impact on already authoritative sites. If you’ve already got a lot of authority on your site, you can help many of the pages deep in your site structure to get crawled and indexed and to rank better by linking to them. We’ve

seen this pretty substantially with some very big websites lately where they’ve gone through these redesigns and had remarkable results. That said, manipulative links, for example, let’s say I went through and I just wrote a little bot that crawled my entire website, found every instance of the word “LG,” the manufacturer, the phone manufacturer and linked to my LG page. It gets a little manipulative. There’s probably some places where it makes great sense, but every single time the word is mentioned — you’ve probably seen some websites like these, although fewer of them in the last three or four years than in the five years before that when this tactic was really prevalent and Google wasn’t penalizing for it. We’ve actually seen examples where people removed that, and they made it much more subtle. They only did it on the first instance of the word on a page, and they only did it on category-level pages or bloglevel pages, not deeply index pages or paginated versions of things, that kind of stuff. In fact, they saw their rankings rise. I love this. They saw their rankings rise like almost immediately. There was a really cool example a few years back. I think I might have done a Whiteboard Friday about that (correction: I didn’t do a WB Friday on this topic after all apologies!). So with manipulative internal links, especially ones that are stuffed

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35 into footers or jammed into every word instance or those kinds of things, Google tends to perceive that as manipulative, which in fact it really is. You’re not doing that for visitor’s benefit. You’re hoping that it helps you with your rankings, and in fact it’s probably doing the opposite.

Rule of thumb: if you can’t find any way to justify how something that you’re doing for seo also benefits a visitor, maybe you should reconsider it...

General rule of thumb: If you can’t find any way to justify how something that you’re doing for SEO also benefits a visitor, maybe you should reconsider it, with a few exceptions. XML sitemaps might be a reasonable one.

that tends to be the most dangerous places, but it’s not the only kind that gets penalized. In fact, it’s not even always bad.

It’s the case that oftentimes the ones that are in footers or in structured template areas of a website that tend not to get clicked by people, sometimes a sidebar can do it, sometimes top nav can do it, sometimes even in-content stuff that’s wrapped around can do it,

We’ve seen instances again on very big websites where they’ve done very significant footers and linked off to all their properties that the site or the company owns and controls. We’ve seen it where they use it to get greater indexation, and in fact it’s positive because the footer is well

done, because it tends to link to good places, because it’s clearly a highquality one, and it’s not anchor text stuff. Anchor text is again a big risk here with internal linking. So this is a very fine line, and it’s a fine meandering line. I can’t give you a clear-cut “never do this, always do this.” It’s a considered process. That’s true for internal linking, and it’s true, maybe a little less true for external linking.

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DATA

The Fo ur Horsemen

of the Data Apoca lypse

by Alice Almeida, Manager of Innovation & Insights, Hitwise

he value and importance of data has never changed. In truth, it’s akin to the emergence of the hipster trend – it’s always been there, but one day someone decided “this is cool” and then everyone jumped on the bandwagon. Everyone started talking data, but not just data, BIG data. Data was touted as the saving grace of the marketing world. Companies bragged about the size of their data. They raced to hire the best data scientists and data intelligence boffins. They talked the talk and walked the walk. Data was here and it was going to save the world…

The problem is, this level of excitement tends to be short-lived. Those left standing after the hard work has kicked in and all the money spent are the ones who took the time to think before they acted, taking the time to truly understand the benefits of data, its uses, and most importantly, its real value. The companies that went through the “it’s all too hard” or “it didn’t work” phase ended up there because they had some misconceptions about their data and what it could do. Here are the four most common misconceptions about data…

1. “I’m being watched” There’s a pervasive belief by online consumers that their online activities are being tracked and that they’re being ‘watched’, which in some small way is true. However, being able to align Personal Identifiable Information (PII) to online behaviours is not commonly used, nor relevant, for the purposes of market research or audience insights. In >

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layman’s terms, marketers don’t need to know your name and age to be able to deliver content that you’d like to see. Instead, behavioural data is used in an anonymous and aggregated format where those individuals with similar and non-personable identifiable demographics and characteristics can paint a representative picture about a particular segment. Knowing this only improves consumer’s experiences online as they’re only served advertising tailored specifically to their needs or requirements.

2. “I did research 12 months ago, I don’t need to do it again” A lot can happen in 12 months, so it’s vitally important that business decisions are being made with realtime data. It only takes one bad PR moment for a big consumer shift to happen, and if you’re not capturing data throughout these periods, then you’re missing prime opportunities for business growth. Consumers aren’t the brand loyalists they once were, so if you’re not understanding your consumer and delivering relevant content, then somebody else is. Having the most recent set of data at hand means you can always be on top of your consumers and industry.

3. “Data didn’t tell us what we wanted to hear” Having worked in research for a long time, I’m constantly amazed at this response when reporting negative findings. Defensiveness, denial and blame all come up. Truth is, sometimes data isn’t your friend. But you know what, that’s OK, because sometimes

ISSUE 1, JUNE 2016

your enemies are your best providers of feedback. Negative feedback is only bad if you ignore it. Take the negative feedback today, understand it, and then implement strategies to improve things tomorrow.

4. “We know who our customers are. We have for years.” “Have for years” is the part of the statement that concerns me here. Research even 5 years ago was conducted in a very different way. Back then, we relied heavily on offline surveys, whether it be by phone, door knocking, or even consumers keeping diaries. We did it this way because there wasn’t a better way. In 2016 we now have more data on our consumers than ever before. Through search and online behaviors we’re able to profile current and potential customers down to a life stage. Offline surveys tend to skew towards a certain type of person, whereas online data captures your true audience. Brands who rely on this old school method could be doing damage to their brand and marketing strategy as they don’t have the full picture of who their consumers are. Understanding your online audiences should be step #1 in any marketing strategy. At the risk of be accused of showing bias, I think data is pretty amazing simply because it can provide the most incredible insights into your company, consumer and industry. But it’s also somewhat like an unruly child, unless it’s nurtured and given direction it will tell you nothing or become an even bigger mess. But just like dealing with an unruly child, all it takes is some time and patience to start seeing positive results that will make your life easier. Hitwise, a Division of Connexity is one of the bigger marketing intelligence companies in Australia and we pride ourselves on knowing your audience and industry inside out. We provide insights to help you see through challenges and misconceptions.

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