• When Privacy Policies Go Bad and How to Fix Them

    Hot on the heels of yesterday’s post about the importance of carefully selecting your positive and negative keywords, I’ve some remarkable online test insights to share from ContentVerve.com’s Michael Aargaard. Michael wanted to find out what impact adding a privacy statement alongside a registration form would have on sign-up rates. I think you’ll agree, the…

  • 7 Steps To Turning Negative Keywords into Positives

    Search engine marketers know how important it is to think about the words that they don’t want their company or brands to be associated with. But few people apply the same keyword rigour when posting to social networks. In this post, I’ll explain why this is important and how you can turn negative keywords into…

  • How to Ask for Help On Twitter (Please Read This!)

    It’s well known that if you ask people to retweet something on Twitter they’re more likely to do so than if you don’t ask. But exactly how much more likely has never been quantified before. Step forward Hubspot’s Dan Zarella, author of The Science of Marketing, and a huge dataset from social update scheduler Buffer.…

  • Who Needs a Social Command Centre Anyway?

    The Social Command Centre—a kind of NASA Ground Control for social media hub teams in organisations—is an increasingly common sight these days inside large organisations. Here’s a snap of Microsoft’s latest prototype, which I saw running on a visit this week to their UK Campus: The big idea behind command centres like this is to…

  • Myth-busting: Calls-to-action Must Be Above The Fold

    The longer you work in any specialist field the more susceptible you become to placing trust in tried-and-tested rules and principles. Take the well-known fact that content placed on a website above the fold (that is in the top portion of the screen,  visible to all when the page loads) performs better than stuff below…

  • Cut-To-The-Chase Help When You Need It

    I’m occasionally asked if it’s possible to book a short consulting session with me to collect some quick answers or get help tackling urgent issues. This has always been difficult to arrange in the past but I’m pleased to announce a new way for you to get personal, cut-to-the-chase help from me over the phone.…

  • Colour and Brands Through The Ages

    (see what I did there?!) In the UK we call it ‘colour’ while our American cousins prefer ‘color’. However you write it, having an appreciation of how seeing different colours affects our mood is a great skill for every marketer. With a hat tip to my former Microsoft colleague Steve Clayton, here’s a delightful little…

  • 100km In The Dark for Macmillan Cancer Support

    In around seven weeks’ time I’ll be attempting to cycle 100km (62 miles) overnight around the cold, dark streets of London to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. My nan died last month after battling cancer for much of her life so this feels like a nice way to remember her and help others who…

  • The Worrying Truth About Cart Abandonment

    Cart abandonment, where an online shopper adds items to their basket but then fails to complete the checkout process, is one of the most common and frustrating issues facing ecommerce retailers. Carrying out a forensic investigation into why potential buyers leave before completing their transaction can yield valuable insights to streamline the shopping process and…

  • The Little Changes That Make All The Difference

    I’m indebted to ContentVerve.com for just publishing an outstanding collection of ten user interface design case studies that illustrate how the smallest changes can sometimes result in the biggest improvements. In one A/B test, simply changing one word on a call to action on a PPC landing page resulted in a 90% increase in conversion.…