Our Blog...

Political Digital Strategies

The Observer ran a nice analysis of the political parties digital strategies last week. It was very insightful and used a nice clean structure against which it could audit each party:

• Web Site
• Email
• Social media - twitter, facebook etc
• Online advertising - banners and viral
• Video
• Campaign tools - crm and lead management
• Search - adwords and seo
• Crowdsourcing - engagement programs

Surprisingly all parties have really woken up to Web 2.0 for this election and there's been some good examples of usage in all areas. Voter apathy is the biggest enemy of any democracy and parties have to use every means possible to get people engaged in the election process however they might vote. To keep it in context though the numbers are still quite small with facebook fans for the main politicians only in the thousands while 12 million people watched the first leaders debate on ITV.

10,9,8,7,6,5...

When we started talking about the concept of landing pages it was on the back of stats around attention times and bounce rates which started appearing and transformed a lot of our thinking about the way web sites worked. The first number that struck a chord was 8 seconds, if you're page did not make an impression in that time you were rejected by the web-savvy browsing punter.

I now read that it's down to 5 seconds! No surprise that this number has gone down over the years but it's interesting to think that average internet speeds have probably quadrupled in that time, so actually browser's attention span has probably gone up in reality. There are many factors which influence this as well as speed of access, such as relevance, improved search results, optimised graphics, cleaner code and the increased experience of the browsing public.

On that basis check out this interesting new service: fivesecondtest.com. 

On fivesecondtest.com, you can post a screen shot of your landing page. Visitors who go to that testing site get five seconds to perform a test. Currently, fivesecondtest.com offers two kinds of tests:

• Memory test. The visitor gets five seconds and then has to type what he can remember.
• Click test. The visitor gets five seconds to click on areas of interest, and then must describe them.

You get a limited number of free responses. If you pay a small amount of money ($5 to $15), you get more responses and greater ability to customize your test. The downside is that the people who respond will not necessarily be in your target demographic, so if your business is a very, very specialized one, this tool may not help you. On the other hand, it costs no money and almost no time. It is a wonderful way to start getting feedback on your site.

Vooks are the new Books...

The latest reinvention of traditional book publishing comes from California-based start-up Vook, which integrates text, video and social networking to deliver a new entertainment experience.

Available both online and as a mobile application, “vooks” are book-video hybrids that feature short video clips—produced exclusively for each title—interspersed throughout the digital text. The videos are designed to enhance the story, advance the plot in fiction titles and add depth to practical information offered by non-fiction publications, offering visual how-to’s such as cooking demonstrations. The online Vook Reader allows readers to interact with each other via inbuilt social media functions.

Vook launched in October with four debut titles, published in partnership with Simon and Schuster. They have since formed additional publishing relationships with Hachette Filipacchi Media and HarperCollins, and now offer twenty-five Vooks.

And guess who's in there at the start, yep, our old friend Seth Godin!

Advertising on Facebook...

I've been running some test pay-per-click campaigns on facebook using their advert campaign manager with some interesting results. There isn't anywhere else where you can display adverts based on quite detailed profiles, the ads appear on the right hand side of people's profile pages once they are logged in. It was an obvious move on facebook's part but it's one which gives advertisers some fantastic opportunities.

I tested some simple ads which have been proven to work on Google previously with the added bonus of being able to add an image too, the image is again one which has proven successful in small banner ad positions previously. The ads were pointing to an established landing page so I had a pretty good foundation for the test.

Continue Reading »

I Twitter, We Tweet, You Twat...

You can follow David Coe's tweets @davidc99 - but don't worry - we'll be setting up a cleverologist account as soon as possible!

Just to make sure you're not subjected to David's automated tweets from Nike+ and are really bored by his training run information for the Liverpool Half Marathon...

Cleverologists - Thats a funny name...

It took us at least 2 phone calls to decide on the name "cleverologists" - so you can tell that it's a carefully chosen brand position...

Here at the cleverologists' website (and blog) you'll find clever ideas - but we won't use lots of long words to boost our egos and make you feel like you don't know anything.

We're here to help you look and feel good - not to make us look good!

• Previous
• 1
• 2