Launched back in March 2010, Pinterest is a social bookmarking site that allows users to create an online pin board of all the things they like, that can then be organised and shared. In the run up to Christmas a number of large apparel brands saw Pinterest appear in their 5 five social referrers in their analytics.
We’ve been subjected to waves of Facebook updates over the past couple of weeks but they have been more user focused, such as the fixed top nav, the chat box, the activity ticker and most importantly Timeline. After the F8 conference on the 22nd of September we felt that not much was mentioned about Pages, but we’ve noticed a few small changes and if pages get the same updates as the profiles we are in for some significant changes.
The term F-Commerce, or Facebook-Commerce, gained some real traction in 2011, with Facebook making it a focus for their future developments in an attempt to further monetise their website. Although Facebook are trying to introduce methods and mechanics to support online transactions for brands within Facebook, many companies are now exploring ways that they can turn their fan base into commerce through social media and Facebook enhanced retail.
In t’olden days, brands used to promote phone numbers on their above-the-line marketing materials. This gradually gave way to a website URL and over the last couple of years it has become increasingly common for brands to promote a Facebook page or twitter URL on TV or print advertising. The idea of providing community hubs for consumers with a vested interest in your brand is a good one.
I was thinking the other day, (Friday), how the search landscape, specifically Google, has changed during these last few years of austerity. While countless companies have seen marketing budgets cut, the search giant has developed at a rate not seen since the early 2000’s, what with algorithm changes, results page architecture changes, an increased focus on Local Search, Real Time, Video and Images, not to mention the recent G+. It got me thinking as to how many businesses are aware of this continually changing environment and what they are doing to address it?
