Interesting Reading This Week

If you follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Google+ then you’ve probably already seen us sharing the following posts. If not (where have you been!), here’s a quick update on some of the posts we read and found interesting this week:

Contently posted this article explaining the benefits of using various methods of getting brands, products or services out there. While 83% of all content exposure is visual-based, the remaining 17% of branding strategies should be seen as a golden opportunity to experiment with appealing to consumer's other senses, for instance, sound. Sound branding can become a way for people to recognise your brand; sound is a strong memory trigger. Some famous and successful brand sound examples include the Facebook chat chime and Intel's start-up jingle. Give this article a read if you want some tips on creating a great brand sound that your audience will love and remember.

This Contently article examines paid distribution based solely on pageviews and clicks. As is stated in the article, "If it's dumb to measure the success of your content based on pageviews, it's even dumber to pay for those pageviews." Most brands/products use paid distribution platforms in order to create an initial audience for their content, and all of that traffic is bought and sold based on impressions (CPM) and clicks (CPC). This article asks why paid content distribution isn't being sold based on the time people spend looking at the content after they've clicked. Have a look at this one to understand how you should be using paid distribution.

In this SEOBOOK discussion, Wall, Sinkwitz and Boykin tackle the most recent Google Penguin (link filter that can cause penalities) update to understand what Google has changed in terms of rankings and search traffic. There have been 5 Penguin updates since 2012, and the most recent one occured 10 months after the previous. One theory for the lack of timely updates is that perhaps Google wants those already with an algorithmic penalty to feel the pain for longer than the usual 6 month update period. This certinaly seems viable; have a read of this discussion to see why, and to understand some of the changes Google Penguin has made with the recent update.

HubSpot posted their comparison of handling inbound marketing yourself vs. hiring an agency. This article provides clear pros and cons for both decisions, and while the outcome is entirely based on you and your company, know that both options are available to you, both are rewarding in different ways, and both will produce the marketing results you are looking for. So, definitely check out this article if you're having trouble deciding the best way to go about inbound.

Advertising Age explores the future of advertising in their recent post about personalised advertising; retargeting and predictive advertising. While retargeting is based on the past - ads about products and services reach us after we have bought what we need or started to act on our needs - predictive advertising, however, is about the future - imagine seeing ads about products and services that we don't yet know we need. Check out this article to see how predictive advertising is already being used and developed by some companies including Google.

We hope you enjoy reading these!