975,476 Facebook Members; 500,000 Downloads and a Fairytale Ending to a Year Dominated by Social Media
Yesterday Rage Against the Machine (RATM) become the first UK Christmas number one from downloads alone. The Facebook group “Rage against the machine for Christmas no.1” boasts 975,476 members and was the catalyst to the most exciting chart battle for years. The Facebook campaign directly challenged the X Factor’s dominance for the Christmas No 1 slot – X Factor winners have dominated Christmas number ones for the last four years.
Over the last ten years we have witnessed a communication revolution. The rise of online shopping, the blogging phenomenon, iPhones and smart phones and online advertising spend overtaking TV advertising. The rise of social media has shaken up the marketing and advertising industry by introducing new dynamics to communication.
Posted by Henry, 21 December 2009 , 8:39 pm
Making the Most of Google Personalised Search – Time to Review Your Meta Description
On Friday, Google rolled out personalised search for everyone; so even if you’re not signed in you’ll get results based on your search activity over the last 180 days.
Personalised search works by ranking results higher if a user has shown a tendency to click on them more often. So if I search for [news] every morning while I am drinking my coffee, and I choose the number-eight result www.thesun.co.uk each time then Google will assume that I probably want to see that site higher up the rankings and put it at the top for me in future.
Apart from during our daily checking-of-rankings routine, this might not be such a bad thing for SEOs: we just need to encourage users to click our results instead of our competitors and the next time we might be rewarded with a higher ranking. Frankly, that’s something we should be thinking about anyway, so how can we do it?
Posted by Brad, 8 December 2009 , 10:17 am
Christmas Online Shopping Made User-Friendly
The busiest online trading period of the year is now upon us, reaching its peak earlier than the high street, around the beginning or middle of December. Another important date for many online retailers is the 25th December when eager bargain hunters will be ready to make the most of the sales whilst high street shops stay closed.
Figures tell us that online spending is continuously growing despite the country’s economic slowdown. The trend seems to be that we may be spending less money on Christmas presents but more people will use the internet to purchase their gifts. With 76% of the adult population now using the internet and 64% of those users having made a purchase online (figures from Office for National Statistics), today’s e-commerce sites need to accommodate for a more diverse customer base within a very competitive marketplace.
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