We are currently looking for a number of graduates to join us at Absorb.  Our work covers all areas of online marketing and we are looking for people who can assist us across a number of disciplines before specialising.  This is a great opportunity for a graduate to start their career in marketing and gain exposure to a wide range of cutting edge digital marketing techniques.

We are specifically looking for maths or computer science graduates, 2.1 or above.  Previous marketing experience is always a bonus but not essential.  If you’re interested in applying for this role please email Greg — greg@absorbing.com — with a cover letter and your CV.

We look forward to hearing from you!

One that I have found to be particularly helpful of late is HiveMind.  This networking tool helps you seek out new Twitter users who potentially share similar interests to you, or those who you may be interested in even if what they cover/offer isn’t necessarily related to your use of Twitter.  After selecting a few people you’re interested in, HiveMind analyses their followers to see, for example, if they are all following someone who you currently are not – therefore highlighting areas you may be missing out on or users you really should be following.  Importantly, this enables you to efficiently reach out and network with other Twitter users by highlighting connections and users who may have otherwise have passed you by.

If you’re more interested in Twitter trends – perhaps a particular trend important to you or your brand – then Squawq will be very useful.  After entering a few keywords which you want to track, Squawq will analyse Twitter activity and is able to feed back a lot of relevant information.  This ‘making sense of the noise’ tool helps users see how many people are tweeting about a certain topic, in what context they are discussing a brand and even where they are linking to!  There are a limited number of long-term tracking codes available at the moment – although immediate real-time search can be done without a code – so get in quick.

There will no doubt be a dose of new applications come this time next month, but the above cope well in fulfilling two strong themes which underlie a great deal of users’ motivations.  Firstly, the desire to use Twitter to push beyond certain networking barriers (such as on Facebook) and actively seek out new contacts.  And secondly, to track real time data.

In a recent interview Amit Singhal of Google disclosed how Google apportions rankings to these real-time search results.

In short, you need lots of followers.  And similar to rankings for webpages, high value followers will offer more value to the Tweet being followed.

Amit stated:

“One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation,” Singhal says. “As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.”

Google will need to determine the value of each user. However, this is unlikely to be too difficult for the likes of Google.

However, for a big brand, Facebook can and probably should be used a lot more cleverly. Since opening up to allow the creation of bespoke pages, the platform offers brands a huge number of possibilities.  This means companies have the potential to offer their fans a far richer fan page/group, keeping members more interested and engaged.

Why should brands care?  Well, Facebook is a captive audience.  From my experience, once you’ve successfully attracted a fan to your page the drop-off rate over time is actually very low.  If you’re a brand and people take the time to become your fan then you have to do something pretty bad for people to actually take the choose to leave.  So once attracted to your page, you have the opportunity to engage your fans with branded content and product initiatives.  In terms of generating new sales, this will depend on your company and strategy, however, it may well be that positive interaction on the page sways the individual to your product at point of sale.

Of course, there’s also the advantage of the price… free!  So the next time you pay for an ad campaign which lasts 2 weeks, and then costs the same again next month, just think if you had converted these people into fans of your Facebook page instead – free outreach to many engaged advocates from then on.  Which brands do well?  Here are a few examples;

adidas Originals

Overall the use of the adidas Originals page is very good, one part in particular is brilliant — the Your Area tab.  This tab is geographically created, meaning that people in England see adidas products and events targeted to them, and people in Japan see different products and events targeted to them and so on.  A great tool, enabling adidas to keep its fan group integrated, whilst at the same time tailoring the experience to its global fan base.

Red Bull

Red Bull is one of the most innovative players when it comes to their Facebook offerings.  They link up with all their sporting activity, enhancing the association of their product with sport, and in particular the more extreme sports.  Their Facebook activity varies, at the moment they have a snowboard game embedded on the site, a ‘twitterfall’ tab showing tweets from all the sports people they sponsor, and the Red Bull Stash tab – a bespoke page for a pan-USA treasure hunt for Red Bull. Great fan interaction and user generated content.

Attracted to a seasonal marketplace that promises year-high consumer spend, these smaller players come in their masses and combine to push up CPCs, meaning you now need to spend more for your ads to achieve to same position.

Take your eye off the ball and you might find that your ads have been swamped by these ‘Six-Weekers’ (so-called because they only advertise over the six weeks of Christmas and New Year) and you are now so far down the listings that you’re losing significant traffic and sales.

Another thing to keep your eye on this Christmas is budget…

With huge spikes in Google traffic over Christmas and New Year – and basket values at their highest – you really don’t want to be maxing out on your daily budget.

In the same way that it would be madness for a shop on Oxford Street to close its doors at 3pm with hordes of people wanting to get in and spend their money, it would be equally crazy for you to run out of budget (and therefore stop showing ads) at a time when masses of internet users are searching for the products and services that you sell.

So make an exception at Christmas and set your daily limit at a level that’s artificially high – that way you’ll never miss a single bumper sized sale.

One Friday night back in October I was sat in my local having a pint with my old workmate Dave. I’d hardly eaten all day and my priorities swung from liquids to food.

‘I might order something to eat in a minute if you fancy something too?’I said.

‘Nah, I’m not hungry,’ Dave replied. ‘I had a big plate of Beef Welly for lunch.’

Dave works for Google and as he wandered off to the bar, I thought to myself that his casual mention of Beef Wellington was the surest sign yet that the Google juggernaut is back in first gear.

I left Google in September 2008 after nearly four years at the company, and I’m only half joking when I say that the sudden disappearance of Beef Wellington from the completely free staff cafeteria four months earlier played a part in my decision to quit.

‘Well, it’s just not the same company anymore,’ I confided to a colleague. ‘It’s just all getting too corporate – it’s not so much fun these days and I haven’t had a plate of Beef Welly since May.’

During these four months, the Google stock price had gone into freefall, dropping from about $580 a unit to $440. But even worse was to follow: the figure slumped to below $300 before the year was out.

The last time a figure of $300 had been seen was in the first half of 2005 – but this was during Google’s steepest growth period; an era when ‘up-and-to-right’ became the unofficial company motto and huge week-on-week gains were as predictable as a big portion of Beef Wellington come Friday lunchtime.

Why all this talk of Beef Wellington? Because it’s the glamour dish on the Google menu – the meal Googlers get most excited about and the costliest dish for the company to provide.

I know this because I’d often bump into the head chef, a larger-than-life Liverpudlian, puffing on a cigarette around the back of the office building. He loved talking food and his lust for the Beef Wellington was hard to hide.

‘Get yourself up to the canteen early today lad,’ he told me once with a wink. ‘We’ve got a cracking bit of Beef Welly for your lot today – best tasting thing on the whole menu; most expensive thing for me to buy too.’

So why did the Beef Wellington disappear without trace after May 2008? Well, a recession affects everybody in some way and Google is no different – and in hindsight, its disappearance a full four months before the world economic crisis exploded can be read as an early indicator of the difficulties to follow.

So the Beef Wellington was first to go. Next to get the boot were a couple of dozen temporary staff. Then a hiring freeze was put in place, and then staff days out were downgraded from champagne at the races to a game of softball and a picnic in the park.

Compared to what was going on in the rest of the world of course, this was the equivalent of Roman Abramovich ordering the skipper of his superyacht to stop serving guests the Beluga caviar and sack a couple of deck-hands.  A recession affects everybody in some way.

But now, happily for Dave and the other eight hundred Google UK workers, Beef Wellington has made a return to the luxury staff cafe. And guess what? Google has just started hiring again and the Google stock price is trending up-and-to-the-right and doing a scarily good impression of its behaviour during the days of unprecedented growth.

So if you fancy making some serious money trading on Google stock, forget new product releases, buy-out rumours and speculation about moves into new markets – just find yourself a contact in the Google kitchen and track how often they dish up the Beef Wellington.

There are many guides and lists of tips on how to maximise your use of Twitter.  I want to focus on a few things out there which can really work for you.

Twitter – Followers

Increasing your number of followers is high up on the agenda of most users.  If this is important to you it’s likely you are a small to medium business, blogger or an individual covering a niche area.  As big advertising budget is probably not available, a good way to increase your followers lies in participation within the Twitter-sphere.  For example, finding and following others who share your interests is an excellent option – since they are likely follow you back (no really, they are).

Here’s a few key ways to approach this;

• Use ‘Twitter – Find People’ to search for keywords that relate to your business, for example, ‘media’- this search will show you everybody who mentions ‘media’ in their bio/username
• Find large existing players in your industry and follow their followers
• Use a product like TweetAdder to help automate the process of finding relevant people and adding them – the demo is free and it’ll significantly cut down on the time it takes to follow people

If you’re a larger player in your field and have a large audience, perhaps through website traffic or email distribution numbers, then this enables you to be less granular in your approach.  Instead you can take advantage of a (your) large audience by adding a ‘Follow Me’ message on your;

• Website – a prominent position is necessary
• Email send out – go for more than just a non-descript line in your signature to see strong results
• Facebook page
• LinkedIn Profile/Group – new to LinkedIn
• When you leave a comment on a blog
• Etc

This will allow you to reach a significant percentage of your potential target audience, enough to gain you a great number of followers.  Even if you don’t have a large existing ‘fan-base’ advertising your Twitter feed in this way is still very much advisable.

Twitter – Tweets

The viral nature of Twitter offers more potential for increasing follower numbers, so facilitating this is always a good idea – i.e. writing your tweets in a way which encourages retweets.

• Incorporate photos, by using apps such as TwitPic or for mobile uploads use Tweetie or Twitterific.  Photos are often heavily retweeted and people can comment on them
• If you have an event coming up make sure you hash tag the name of the event.  Hash tags work by creating trending topics, so this approach may give you additional exposure in the trending topics list on the homepage
• Tweeting passwords or offer codes is great for maximising retweet potential

Increasing your exposure on Twitter involves a concerted effort and there are many thoughts on best practise.  Try the tips above for an immediate impact, after that it’s all about engaging, regular tweets… and remember, encouraging engagement is the key to success.

When I worked at Google as a PPC specialist, Account Managers at planning agencies representing heavyweight brands constantly telephoned me to ask if I could make their ads better. Often, they used the word ‘sexy’.

‘Paul, Nokia have just spoken to us and they don’t think their ads are sexy enough to get lots of clicks – can your write new ones please, make them a bit sexier?’

Or:

‘Can you sex-up the ads a bit on the Norwich Union account, our CTR isn’t great and we think we need sexier ads.’

My reply was always the same:

‘You don’t need sexier ads, you need better planning.’

If you’re constantly worrying about ways to improve your ads then I’d be willing to bet good money that you’ve got your approach wrong.

I’d also wager on the fact that you’ve damaged your brand’s reputation.

In your quest to improve your ads you might have:

• Used puns: ‘Cheep bird cages’ – Puns are patronising.
• Used rhyming: ‘The best Parrot cages delivered on time/Discounts today when you shop online – Rhyming is very patronising.
• Used excessive punctuation! – If in doubt throw an exclamation mark at it! Right?! Wrong.
• Been overly creative and tried something daring; something experimentally off-piste – PPC ads and high creative concepts mix like oil and water.

What do all of the above devices have in common? They alienate you from your audience. Bad ads damage your brand because your target audience stops believing that you can give them what they want – even worse; your target audience is embarrassed by you.

Never resort to using any of the above devices. Instead, think like a Google user thinks and picture the kind of ads you click on when you search for things you want to buy on Google.

The best ads are practical. The best ads give users exactly what they’re looking for at the precise moment in time they’ve asked to see it.

That’s why if you’re constantly rewriting your ads to make them clever or sexy then you need to have a rethink.

Forget the ads for a minute and ask yourself why you’re always rewriting them. Usually, it’s because you’re not happy with your CTR.

But your CTR is only ever going to improve significantly if you make your ads more relevant to your audience – not more sexy.  Put your ads in front of more people you know want to see them and more people will click on them – it’s that simple.

The only way to make your ads more relevant is to change the structure of your campaigns. Get your structure right and your ads will more or less write themselves.

Let me give you an example:

An Account Manager at a large central London agency once contacted me in a panic because her most important client – one of the biggest mobile network operators in the UK – was underperforming and there was a danger her agency might lose the account.

The agency needed to take action quickly in order to bring the mobile network operator’s performance up to the same level as its competitors.

One of the things the Account Manager asked me was if I could write new ads.

‘I think we need new ads, ‘she said.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because our CTR is just so bad.’

‘I think you need a complete restructure,’ I said. ‘It won’t take me very long and once it’s finished I promise you that CTR will rocket.’

I was able to make this promise as I’d already taken a look at the campaigns and seen that the agency had set them up so badly that some basic strategic changes would make a huge difference.

After the restructure went live, performance improved overnight – the client was happy and the agency kept the account.

This is how simple it was to boost performance:

There were four campaigns: (1) Generic Terms (2) Contract Terms (3) Pay-As-You-Go-Terms (4) Brand Terms.

Each campaign contained just two ad groups: (1) A-M (2) N-Z. There were at least a thousand keywords in each ad group.

In other words, thousands of keywords had been dropped into each campaign and split into one of two ad groups depending on what letter of the alphabet the keyword term started with.

No amount of trying to write sexy ads would have made a difference to CTR because with such a broad theme of keywords all in one place it was impossible to give Google users the highly targeted ads that they’d grown accustomed to from savvier advertisers.

The solution? Look for themes within the large alphabetical ad groups and create lots of smaller ad groups based on actual Google search patterns.

To illustrate further, here are the new ad groups I created for the Generic Terms campaign:

mobile phones – generic

cheap phones

latest phones

retro phones

best phones

cool phones

bling phones

designer phone

pink phones

gold phones

music phones

flip phones

slide phones

email phones

fm radio phones

touch screen phones

bluetooth phones

thin phones

tri band phones

quad band phones

Now, try writing an ad against any of the above ad groups and you’re limited in what you can say – this is what I meant about ads that write themselves.

Being limited in what you can say is actually to your advantage. For example, the headline for the ‘touch screen’ ad group has to mention touch screen phones. So how about:

Touch Screen Phone Deals

As for the rest of your ad, you really should mention touch screen phones again – what else can you include in your ad copy when the theme of the keywords you’re targeting is so narrowly focussed? So:

Touch Screen Phone Deals

20% off touch screen phones when

you order online – Buy now

So, whenever a Google user enters a ‘touch screen’ related keyword term they trigger a highly targeted ad that gives them exactly what they’ve asked to see.

Now write similar ads for the other ad groups…

When you’re finished you’re left with dozens of different ads, all of which target a tightly themed set of keywords.

Or, looking at it from a different angle: No matter what mobile phone related keyword term out of a pool of thousands a Google user searches for, that user will be shown an ad that’s a very close match to what they’ve asked to see.

All of this adds up to stacks more relevance in the relationship between your ads and your audience – and more relevance equals a higher CTR and better performance.

So forget about sexy ads and instead think about your structure – get your structure right and by the time you sit down to write your ads the hard work has already been done.

The layout of key pages on your site, particularly your homepage, must facilitate and promote this dynamic content ensuring a fresh experience for users, giving them a reason to regularly come back to your site.  Good content and an accommodating design makes Google happy – as it crawls fresh content – but it needn’t stop there.  Syndicating your content across social bookmarking sites is a great way to maximise its potential positive impact on your site.

Putting your post onto top Social Bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, hi5, Fark and Newsvine etc allows a far wider audience to interact with your content.  The key here is engaging copy.  Keyword stuffing, heavy ‘SEO copy’ and overt brand promotion won’t work well – bite sized and interesting themes will, as will good photos (in your blog post). Other channels such as Twitter and Facebook can help in similar ways, and don’t forget YouTube for your videos.

All this helps to increase your overall exposure on the web.  Instead of just one location, your profile/brand reaches across numerous channels.  Remember to include a link back to your site where possible and you can greatly increase your traffic – simply by getting your content out there, as opposed to keeping it ‘siloed’ on your site.

‘Will it Blend’ stands out as the only direct brand penetrating this top 100 (discounting Rick Ashley) and is also noticeable for its linear production values. Traditional preoccupations about quality and detail are almost without exception turned on its head here (this is down to many factors which I will address in a future blog post) but ultimately its obvious brands have to think differently on digital on video.

Replicating the magic of mishaps is just one of the challenges for online video producers – and then you have to make sure your brand is in the background when it happens! The way we film for TV clearly has to be different when we film for a fraction of the screen real estate.

For the time being, don’t be paralysed by the need to get content going viral – by its definition very few videos push through to this hallowed ground – be rational in your projections and scope and most importantly understand who you are targeting.  By all means use the online tools available, seed the clip wherever relevant and link whenever possible but don’t be unrealistic – KPI’s that don’t hit disappoint – which is no good for anybody.

Video sharing is ultimately a democratic process – if it’s good it will grab attention, be passed on and gain in popularity. If its crap it will be lost – the next candidate is only one email away.