What’s changed?

To some the shift from quantity in content to quality in design may have been easy to overlook – after all, social media has been around for a few years now and the content approach was innovative and exciting for all kinds of users. Despite this, the rapid increase of technology and choice has inevitably created the shift and it is now certain that the trend is less about content and more about creativity.

The way that users communicate via social media has changed due to the advancements in their device capabilities. To users with first generation mobiles, blue skies were simply nice weather and a delicious lunch was just a great meal (hardly worth telling your friends about) but now with the technology advancing at its rapid rate, nearly every mobile user is an amateur photographer or reporter. With documentation becoming so easy, why not post it on any of the social media pages that are around today – we’re certainly spoilt for choice!

So what does this mean for digital marketing?

The shift in digital trends means that in order to keep your brand image current and relatable, you need to make sure that all content being published is in alignment with this development. Start by stripping things back and go back to the basics! Keep things minimal, clean and creative! An innovative and interactive design that shows users you’re at the top of the list, is more helpful then content that tells them. Users are becoming more time-poor and distraction sensitive that you can no longer risk to bombard them with information, whether it be quality or not!

Using social media for your brand

Not all variations of visual social media are usable to a brand, but there is sure to be at least one platform you could use! So once you find that platform based on your brand and users, why not become a photographer, reporter or blogger to communicate with your audience? Social media is a means of developing relationships, increasing awareness and making a statement, and when used properly, the story you tell could be imperative to your image in 2013!

Is there really a need to change approach this year?

In today’s modern society it is considered normal (and at times overwhelming ) for us to use our devices simultaneously as if we’re going to miss out on something if we don’t – ironically though, we are! We are never focusing on the one thing; we’re missing advertising messages on the television while we’re using the mobile to chat to a friend, who is only receiving half of our attention as we’re scrolling down our newsfeed on a tablet! It is complete mayhem and without the call for interaction and correlation between devices, brands are more likely to get lost in the digital world this year.

Since 2008 use of non-screen media has decreased by 22% whilst use of screen media has increased by 1.2 hours per day, and amongst the 7-8 hours spent using screen media, 1-2 hours of that is spent multitasking. You know that users are aimlessly multitasking by nature, so try to lead them in your direction and leave a digital trail behind for others to follow.

When developing a multiscreen strategy, remember…

• It is important to know which devices your users are multi-tasking with. Don’t send them on a wild goose chase from television to tablet applications that they cannot access through their laptop.
• Keep things personal – develop trusting relationships and appeal to users specific interests to encourage loyalty.
• Allow for user control by offering interaction amongst 3-4 screens

Twitter – something that later resulted in the dating site advertising on the Taxi Lovin’ tour!

Taxi Lovin’ Social Media Campaign

eight&four was tasked with developing a campaign to support the launch of BrightMove Media’s exciting new digital taxi advertising service that is set to transform the London landscape. The campaign was focused on generating brand awareness by linking a social media campaign with the advertising functionality of the taxis on Valentine’s day.

Londoners were invited  to submit their Valentine’s Day messages  through a  tab on the Brightmove Media Facebook page. This was built by our development team to link with Brightmove Media’s website, in order to collect entries via a remote form. This ensured that every loved up message would appear at the right time and location in the day. 

eight&four & eHarmony

The campaign was promoted via the BrightMove Media Facebook and Twitter pages, which involved a full partnership outreach and community building strategy. This is how we garnered the attention of eHarmony, who liked the campaign so much that they advertised on the Taxi Lovin’ tour throughout the day!

The leading  online dating site was contacted by our team on Twitter and they immediately expressed support for the idea. This later resulted in them joining us on our mission to broadcast romance, as they were given space to advertise their own Valentine’s messaging. No part of London was left untouched and the TaxiCast taxi made appearances everywhere from Camden and Soho to London Zoo.

The success confirmed to us that social media can be a very powerful way to develop relationships and build brand awareness. However, this requires a strong concept to be executed in the right way.

Take a Look at Taxi Lovin’…

For  photos from the day, please visit the BrightMove Media Facebook page and enjoy all the loved-up taxi messages!

Taxi Lovin’ for TaxiCast 

The promotion is set to support the launch of TaxiCast – the innovative technology behind BrightMove Media’s exclusive offering. The service marks the future for taxi advertising and presents a unique opportunity for brands to connect with Londoners through real time, geo targeted campaigns. LED screen advertisements will broadcast bold, bright brand messaging on the roofs of London black cabs.  Ads can be scheduled to display in specific areas of London at selected times of day, in order to maximise campaign efficiency.   

Show Some Love…

Taxi Lovin’ messages can be submitted for free, with a location and time that specifies where it should be ideally broadcast. We’re hoping to inject an extra bit of love this Valentine’s day and maybe even encourage some marriage proposals!

To send some Taxi Lovin’, simply submit your message or picture to the BrightMove Media Facebook page. Our social media team will be tweeting live pictures from the TaxiCast tour on Valentine’s Day, so stay tuned for our updates.

Traditionally, mobile is an overlooked area of SEO, with many businesses still under the impression that classic optimisation strategies extend to mobile searches. Interestingly, last week’s #digi2013 conference exposed that only 40% of the top 100 advertisers have optimised mobile sites – a shocking stat considering predictions that the majority of searches will be delivered from mobile devices in 2013.

So why is a mobile SEO strategy important? Here’s the proof….

Desktop Results vs. Mobile Results

There’s no guarantee that desktop rankings will transfer to mobile and tablet searches. Inconsistencies are becoming increasingly apparent thanks to the continued development of search features like knowledge graph, location searches and advertisements, which make securing visibility in the top positions much harder – a factor that can greatly affect visits.

In fact, Google itself  stated that a listing below fourth position can see a CTR drop off over 90%.

The difference in desktop and mobile listing visibility for ‘london restaurants’ can be seen below:

 User Intent & Keywords

The search intent can differ greatly between devices, meaning you’re potentially losing out on the value of mobile-specific keywords and behaviour patterns. Keyword influencers, such as autocomplete (see below), should all be taken into consideration when forming an Mobile SEO strategy, in order to identify the most beneficial keywords for a site.

For example, mobile searches often occur on the move and can be swayed by predictive search tools – this can make a broad, short tail approach a more valuable strategy.

 User Behaviour & Perception

Mobile and tablet users need to be served content in different ways. This covers everything from site design, to the layout of your copy. Essentially, if you don’t offer users good mobile experience, you are drastically limiting the value of your website. So, whether your website is mobile responsive ( as Google recommends), or you have a parallel mobile site, analysis of bounce rates and engagement should be central to understanding how you can get the most out of your mobile visitors.

Social Sharing

Maximising  mobile SEO can improve social shares of your site’s content. Last year, over 60 percent of Twitter users accessed the social network via mobile, meaning content is more likely to be viewed on a mobile device screen. Social signals are also a key indicator of relevance and authority in Google’s algorithm and creating mobile-friendly content is likely to improve the generation of those valuable social shares!

If you’d like to talk to us more about Mobile SEO, please get in touch with the eight&four team on 020 7087 1284.

Eight&four are in the process of rebranding, which means that in the foreseeable future we’ll be completely rebuilding a new and responsive company website to incorporate the new brand as well as our evolving development techniques.  In the meantime we’ve created eight&four mobile to make it easy for our handheld friends to find out about us as a company.

The design and development process for the mobile website was different to our usual approach to mobile friendly websites.  The design was completely mobile oriented rather than responsive, meaning that it was designed for mobile devices only.  Some considerations for mobile users that were made included:

• Touchscreen gestures and usability
• Differing screen resolutions
• Mobile internet speed

The design took inspiration from mobile application design featuring a fixed header navigation which took into consideration the fact that a touch is not a click.  To understand this, you only have to look at the size of a finger compared to a mouse pointer.  Fingers are bigger and less precise than pointers and this must be kept in mind when designing for touchscreen devices.  So with this logic, the three navigation links we designed to be 50 pixels in height and no less than 106px on a 3^rd generation iPhone based on a percentage width of the screen.  Ample room for everyone and not just skinny fingered pianists!  Using percentages for widths on all page elements means that the page content scales automatically for the smorgasbord of mobile screen resolutions and for both portrait and landscape orientation of mobile devices.

Touchscreens are also unique from computer mice in that they interact with users and screen content differently.  We wanted to create a mobile site that was really well suited to touchscreen gestures and so for the client gallery we included swiping functionality to allow mobile users to browse the gallery intuitively using a finger swipe to move back and forth between images.

To optimise the website for mobile users completely, page data needed to be light and quick to download.  We approached this by loading page content discretely between the header and footer of the page when navigating between pages on the website.  Using AJAX, different page content can be pulled into the page without unnecessarily reloading the header and footer content every time.  This minimises the amount of data loaded with each page request and in turn, speeds up the browsing experience for mobiles users on slower internet connections.

So that’s all there is to it really.  If you’re keen to take a look just visit eight&four on your phone and you’ll be redirected to the mobile site.  If you’re really impatient you can view it here.

Take Lynx’s image release for when naked photos of Prince Harry emerged online, shown right. A brilliant tongue in cheek drawing of attention to the Lynx brand, right in the middle of the social media storm surrounding the story.

Or the video release from Bodyform this week in reaction to a User’s comment on their Facebook page on 8th October, which said:

‘Hi, as a man I must ask why you have lied to us for all these years. As a child I watched your advertisements with interest as to how at this wonderful time of the month that the female gets to enjoy so many things, I felt a little jealous. I mean bike riding, rollercoasters, dancing, parachuting, why couldn’t I get to enjoy this time of joy and ‘blue water’ and wings!! Dam my penis!! Then I got a girlfriend, was so happy and couldn’t wait for this joyous adventurous time of the month to happen …..you lied !! There was no joy, no extreme sports, no blue water spilling over wings and no rocking soundtrack oh no no no. Instead I had to fight against every male urge I had to resist screaming wooaaahhhhh bodddyyyyyyfooorrrmmm bodyformed for youuuuuuu as my lady changed from the loving, gentle, normal skin coloured lady to the little girl from the exorcist with added venom and extra 360 degree head spin. Thanks for setting me up for a fall bodyform, you crafty b@gger’

Whether the comment was real or planted, the reaction from Bodyform and their advertising agency Carat was exquisite, and shown below.

Both examples show social media at its best; responding quickly, capturing the cultural mood. This meant highly sharable content, meaning big time brand exposure.

Digital offers brands the opportunities to interact and engage with individuals and communities in ways that couldn’t have been imagined 10 years ago. It doesn’t have to expensive, it doesn’t have to be resource intensive – it can be cheap, quick and dirty. But still hugely effective.

eight&four are experimenting with all sorts in digital at the moment, and below are just a few we think you should be taking a look at for your brand:

QR codes

They’re fiddly, they’re being resolutely ignored by half the population – but we think that’s part of their charm. Download a decent QR reader (we recommend ‘Scan’), and you’ll suddenly be seeing QR codes everywhere.

As a brand, you can then start having some real fun with them… stitch them into employee’s uniforms, print on your receipts… they’re a piece of cake once you get the hang of it…

Augmented Reality

Long touted, long discussed, however the technology hasn’t quite caught up yet. Expect that to start changing very soon (hello Google Glass). Some of the coolest uses we’ve seen of it for brands is through something as simple as the humble business card…

Makes you want to hang onto a business card a little longer doesn’t it….

Using Twitter Creatively

How creative have you gotten with Twitter recently? It’s not just about posting tweets, retweeting, DM’ing contacts… there’s plenty more fun to be had than that.

We sponsored the Wirehive 100 Awards last week, and ran an ‘Alternative Twitter Awards’ campaign on Twitter all evening, alongside the Awards ceremony. The audience got right behind it, and by the end of the night we had worthy winners for categories #beststagetakeover, #bestoutfit and #drunkesttable.

Great branding exercise, great target market engagement – and really good fun. If you’ve got an event coming up, we’d advise you have a think about opportunities for a parallel Twitter event.

Enjoy your digital playtime, and if you want an agency to play with, then you know who to call…

The eight&four team

The teams are tasked each alternative Friday with presenting to their opposing team about the latest, greatest, COOLEST things going on in digital right now. The objective is to keep the whole of eight&four up to date with the lightning speed evolution of digital technology – and ensure that long term we become one of the UK’s core digital innovation agencies.

Team Eight were the first to present last week, (Team Four will be presenting to us all in just a couple of hours), and here is what they wanted to talk about….

eight&four are currently undergoing a rebrand (to be unveiled in the next few weeks), and we are all loving these new augmented reality business cards – so we we talked about the technology around that, and how we could do it for our new brand collateral, which led us onto ideas for developing our very own eight&four app – the idea for which is now being developed further!

During our research we also stumbled across the French digital design studio veins-la.com – who have come up with www.followmotion.com. This is a simple and effective way to animate and interact with images on the web. Essentially the people in the images on their site move as your mouse cursor moves. We liked it so much we did some research and within minutes our developer Stuart had built this rough eight&four version – http://eightandfourtesting.com/mousemove/

The techy bits if you’re interested… Using JavaScript and jQuery, the co-ordinates of the mouse pointer within the box are read into a function. The function evaluates the coordinates of the pointer relative to the four corners of the box.  Each corner is linked to a specific sprite image which is set as a background image of the box.  So when you hover over the top right corner for instance, the background shows a pair of eyes looking upwards and to its left.

Pretty cool, eh? We’re now thinking of ways to implement this cool bit of tech into our own website which is currently being redesigned.

These are just some of the things we talked about…. and we’ll look forward to updating you on Round 2 in a couple of hours.

The Drum’s annual list celebrates female achievement in the digital industry, and takes the form of an online vote by industry players across the UK. In total over 600 women this year were nominated, and the Top 30 women with the most votes then made the final List.

Congratulations to Kate for her placement, and you can take a look at the full list here – http://bit.ly/PE220m