In 2012, we will see a major convergence of social networking, location-based targeting, and mobile technologies. Search is also changing at breakneck speed, and we expect search and social media to collide (beyond Google). This fusion will challenge brands to organize and activate in new ways across audiences, websites, and devices. This year, to meet this challenge brands should develop long-range interactive strategies to touch audiences with the right content at the right time.

Here are the top digital trends that will impact brands in 2012. We’re ready to help your brand face these challenges. Call us at 202-654-0811 about your digital strategy.

Social signals in search – Search engines rely more than ever on social signals to determine content relevance and return highly personalized search results. Google is leading the way with Google+ and Google Search, plus Your World. For brands, building and maintaining credibility and authenticity in search and social media is critical. Smart brands in 2012 will have digital strategies to enhance their presence in search and social media, and truly engaging content should be at the heart of any long-term plan.

Cross-device brand strategy – Tablets like the iPad® are rapidly changing how we work, play, learn, order dinner, and even get healthcare. By 2013 eMarketer estimates that 54.8 million Americans will own tablets – a whopping 63% increase over 2011 (eMarketer). The explosion of tablets proves the importance of a solid cross-device online brand strategy. The development options can be overwhelming: mobile optimized sites, iPhone® and/or iPad apps, Android apps, and more. Even for companies that already have mobile sites or apps, 2012 is the year to develop a cohesive cross-device brand strategy.

Mobile-First Responsive Design – Many brands develop their first mobile sites based on their already-existing desktop websites. Because of the significant differences in screen sizes and functionality, adapting websites for mobile devices is challenging. In 2012, mobile-first responsive design will gain traction. In responsive design, sites are first designed for the smallest screens and then the design and functionality are adapted for progressively larger screens, including desktops.

Drupal has taken this efficient and holistic approach to heart with the release of Omega, an HTML5 and CSS3 theme based on a fluid grid that automatically resizes and rearranges content based on the user’s screen size. Omega’s focus is serving sites to mobile devices, but there’s plenty of support for the desktop, too. Companies planning for new or redesigned websites in 2012 should consider focusing on mobile first.

Voice recognition apps – In 2011, voice recognition technology took center stage, and not just on smartphones. Apple’s Siri app put sophisticated speech recognition in the palms of our hands. Vehicle manufacturers including Honda and Ford also applied speech recognition technology brilliantly and beyond just Bluetooth®. In 2012, we will witness an expansion of voice recognition mobile apps, including a much-anticipated app from Google. We will also see voice recognition technology integrated in more consumer products.

Voice recognition apps simplify search, even eliminating search engines from the process. For brands that want visibility with consumers, this can present a challenge. Would an app like Siri find your brand? Where geographically do you want to be found? What do you want to be known for? In 2012, brand leaders should consider the potential impact of voice recognition apps on awareness and conversions, and plan ahead.

Windows Phone 7.5 – As smartphone adoption increases, more brands are launching branded mobile apps. Companies must choose which of the major mobile operating systems to target – decisions that can have longer-term impact. Today, the Android and Apple’s iOS operating systems have the largest slices of market share in the U.S. (Nielsen), but watch out in 2012 for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.5 mobile operating system, called Mango, to gain ground. Analysts report that by 2015, market share of Windows 7-based devices could rank second only to Android, beating out iOS (PCWorld).

Mango includes Internet Explorer 9 as its Web browser, which is reportedly faster than the browsers that currently ship with Android devices and the iPhone. Microsoft is actively recruiting developers to build apps that run on Windows Phone 7.5, and we expect strong results. In 2012, brands should consider mobile apps on Windows 7 and other platforms in their long-range interactive strategies.

The IPO filing by Facebook on Wednesday didn’t just benefit the social networking company; many companies that have associations to the tech industry saw their stocks surge residually. On Thursday, Zynga’s stock rose 16.84 percent in trading and finished the day at $12.39 per share. This increase will only help Facebook in the long run as the company takes a 30 percent cut of all virtual goods sounds through Zynga games like Farmville and CityVille. Groupon, Netflix and Pandora also saw an increase in the price of their stock on Thursday.

The importance of search engines in the shopping and purchasing decisions amongst Americans is well-understood in today’s marketing, search and social industries. Facebook and other social media networks, however, are quickly gaining more influence over users who are shopping around. Brands take note: In a recent survey, 42 percent of participants said that they currently follow or have friended a brand on a social networking site. The study also showed that almost one in five individuals now look to Facebook to learn information about a brand or product.

Google France and Google Inc. have been ordered to pay $660,000 in damages to a French company called Bottin Cartographies after a commercial court found Google guilty of unfair competition. The cartography company protested against the free Google Maps service, saying the company does this to undercut competitors and to try to control the market. Bottin Cartographies offers a paid service that is very similar to Google Maps. Google has previously been fined in France for the search suggestions it proposes for certain keywords.

Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Google have teamed up to limit the number of suspicious, phishing emails that make it to your inbox. The companies created DMARC.org, also known as Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance, a technical specification that will provide consistent authentication results across the most popular email platforms. If successful, it would mean that those emails offering cheap medicine or free vacations won’t even make it to your inbox. Learn more about the initiative from Mashable Business.

We recently tweeted about New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s goal to learn how to code in 2012. He’s not alone, over 100,000 people signed up for Codecademy’s New Years resolution class and over 1 million people have used the service since it started. Now, Codecademy has launched a tool that allows any users to create coding classes that will be published on the site.

A few weeks ago, we shared that Google’s mobile ad revenue is expected to double in 2012. This week, Google released new data that reveals the growth of mobile search ads and formats. In the past two years, mobile search has grown five-fold. And since August of last year, the search engine company has seen more than a 50 percent increase in the number of AdWords advertisers with mobile optimized sites.

If you haven’t read enough about Facebook this week, All Facebook published 10 Things You Need to Know About Facebook Right Now. We know that Facebook is worth a lot of money, but how does it shape up against Internet competition? Not only does Facebook win 9 percent of all visits online, but it wins one of every five page views.

As social networks continue to gain users and prevalence in daily life, more people report logging on to sites like Twitter and Facebook from work. In 2011, there was a 300 percent increase in social networking on the job compared to the same period in late 2010.

This week, Google+ announced that the social networking service would now be open to teenagers 13 and over. Partnered with the announcement was the introduction of new privacy and security changes by Google+ to protect younger users.

Hootsuite has partnered with Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications to provide students with a 90-day program to boost their social media skills. The school was recently ranked the top journalism school in the country.

YouTube users are uploading about 60 hours of video to the site every minute, 12 more hours per minute than uploaded in May of 2011. Users only spend about 15 minutes each day on the site watching video, but worldwide that totals up to 4 billion videos each day – a 25 percent increase from May.

In 2011, Google acquired 79 companies (including Clever Sense, Katango and Apture) for a total of $1.9 billion, up nearly a billion dollars from their spending on acquisitions in 2010.

Ever wanted to be James Bond? Brookstone is now selling a set of silver cufflinks that serve as USB storage and can be plugged into a computer to create a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Want your tweets to be retweeted more frequently? A researcher recently studied the New York Times Twitter account for three months and determined several qualities that were common in highly-retweeted posts. For example, updates without links get 1.74 more retweets. For more of Nick Diakopoulos’ findings, read the full study.

Google announced a new algorithm tweak this week – one that will lower a website’s ranking if Google believes it is providing a bad user experience. This tweak is aimed especially at ads that fall “above the fold” on a website. The “Page Layout algorithmic improvement” will affect up to 1% of Google’s three billion daily searches.

For those who manage social media sites for brands with a global reach, one of the most difficult aspects can be monitoring sentiment across a variety of languages. Many professionals may be familiar with Google Alerts, but did you know that you can alter language settings to ensure you’re getting the most news? Over at Search Engine Watch, writer Christian Arno rounds up services and tips for monitoring online reputation in several languages. Though this has already been posted on the RepEquity Twitter feed, it’s certainly worth another look. One Microsoft developer evangelist, Martin Beeby, went out and researched the origins of the numerous web browsers in use today. For example, the name Opera was chosen because it is an internationally recognized word, it’s associated with quality and high standards, and it’s fun. Wondering where the name of your Web browser came from? Take a look at Beeby’s blog post.

Have you ever wondered how often people actually donate via text? It’s probably higher than you think. The Pew Research Center recently released a study it conducted based on the donations made to the Red Cross’ Relief Fund in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake. It showed that nearly one in 10 Americans have donated via text message. Of those who donated to Haiti, 73 percent donated on the day they heard about the Red Cross campaign and 76 percent did little research before making their donation.

There are roughly seven billion people in the world, and nearly one-seventh of them will be on Facebook by August. A digital marketing firm in London is predicting that Facebook will jump from its current membership total of 800 million to the one billion mark just in time for its IPO.

In the fall of this year, New York City will open its first software engineering high school, enrolling 400-500 ninth graders in its first year. Called the Software Engineering Academy, the school will be headed by Mike Zamansky, who previously taught computer coding at another New York high school. The school’s goal is to fill the void for computer software engineers in the United States’ workforce, one of the country’s fastest growing industries.

The battle for second place in the search world has been heating up in past months. According to recent statistics from comScore, the two are now tied for second with both holding 15 percent of the search market. By comparison, Google has a 64.5 percent market share.

Twitter awarded Wendy’s the 2011 “Golden Tweet” award, meaning the fast-food chain had the most retweeted message of the year. The tweets were part of the bigger Wendy’s Wonderful Kids program. See the winning message below – Did you retweet it?

Have you ever thought about who owns the content your read, watch and listen to every day? Due to huge consolidations in the past 28 years, just six companies control 90 percent of media we consume. Who? GE, News-Corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS.

A recent tweak to the layout of Google’s results pages had the Google +1 buttons disappear as a measure to clean up the display, as noted by Google Operating System. The button will appear when a user overs over a search engine entry.

If you could choose your seatmate on your next flight, would you? Air France KLM is hoping you would. Next year, the airline will launch a feature allowing customers to choose their seatmate based on friends or common interests using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. TechCrunch has more on the “meet & seat” social seating tool.

This week, Google released its 2011 Zeitgeist video detailing how the world searched in the past year. Prepare for awesome.

In 2010, we were proud to help Christy Turlington Burns create and launch Every Mother Counts, a campaign to increase education and support for maternal and child health. Coupled with her documentary, No Woman No Cry, the campaign is helping to create positive change around the world with better health clinics, medical supplies, transportation in remote areas, midwife training, and more.

This holiday season, help Every Mother Counts build a much-needed clinic for mothers in Indonesia. Donate through the Crowdrise Mozilla Firefox Challenge. The organization that raises the most wins $25,000 toward their cause!

You can also help by purchasing No Woman No Cry on DVD and hosting a viewing party to spread the word.
]]> http://www.repequityblog.com/2011/12/help-every-mother-counts-build-clinic-for-indonesian-mothers/feed/ 0 http://www.repequityblog.com/2011/12/friday-facts-from-repequity-18/ http://www.repequityblog.com/2011/12/friday-facts-from-repequity-18/#comments Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:06:08 +0000 Melissa http://www.repequityblog.com/?p=377

The government of India wants social media sites like Facebook to use employees, not technology, to screen user content that may be labeled as “disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory” and prevent it from going live. India currently has 38 million Facebook users, meaning the request made by India’s Acting Telecommunications minister Kapil Sibal is a tall, and unlikely, order for social media sites to fulfill.

Imagine you are sitting in a packed theater waiting for a show to begin and the person beside you pulls out a smartphone and begins to live Tweet the entire performance. You’d probably be pretty annoyed, right? Some theaters are welcoming the activity, as long as the “live Tweeter” is sitting in designated seating. So far, select theaters in Connecticut, Raleigh, Indiana and Ohio have set aside special seats for those wishing to live blog theater productions.

Last week we shared some of the most-searched-for terms from the past year. This week, a Hootsuite media company revealed the Top 10 Twitter trending topics for the year. The top five are: Justin Bieber, Soccer/Football, Lady Gaga, NBA and the Jonas Brothers. Mashable has an infographic detailing the Top 10.

Google has added graphing capabilities to search results. All one needs to do is type a mathematical function into the search bar and the search engine result page will feature a detailed graph of the function. Where was this in high school calculus class?!

For those wondering if it’s time to redesign your website, Smashing Magazine has an easy 5-step checklist to answer your question. And if it is time to redesign, take a look at some of our award-winning web design.

Despite its lack of self-service and hefty minimums, Twitter’s advertising business is growing extremely fast; in fact, they’ve increased the number of advertisers by 50 percent since last spring. Estimates show that Twitter will generate $140 million in revenue for 2011. While that’s significantly less than Facebook’s predicted $4.27 billion for the year, it shows that Twitter advertising is taking off and may be the advertising model to watch in 2012.

If 2011 was the year of social media adoption by small businesses, 2012 looks to be the year of mobile and social marketing for those same small businesses. A report by Ad-ology Research shows that 21.8 percent of small businesses plan to dedicate more resources to mobile marketing in the coming year, compared with just 12.6 percent last year.

In cool sports technology news this week, the Lightning (Tampa Bay’s NHL team) have given season ticketholders special jerseys embedded with microchips that will reward the wearer with discounts on arena concessions and merchandise. The jerseys also feature a “Season Ticket Members” patch and ticket holders are given the option of customizing the back of their jersey. The promotion grew ticket sales from 6,000 in 2010 to 11,000 this year.

Many professionals bemoan the prolific use of jargon in the marketing and technology industries especially. “I don’t see the buzzword craze stopping,” says Brett Good, an executive with staffing firm Robert Half International in a USA Today interview. “In some ways, it’s almost becoming filler, like ‘um’ or ‘ah.’… It’s something that’s just been built into the lexicon of American business.”

On the other hand, it’s important for any digital agency to understand the terms and phrases exclusive to a client’s industry. In an agency like RepEquity, client work can involve multiple industries, from other technology companies to health care to e-commerce. By taking the time to study each client’s arsenal of work terms, communication between the two firms will not only improve, but the digital agency can more accurately meet the client’s goals in a concise and effective manner.

At RepEquity, making sure our clients understand our processes every step of the way is important to us, and we certainly avoid confusing clients by using jargon with which they may not be familiar. One of our major practice areas, however, is search engine optimization, where we’ve found that the use of relevant lexicon can be surprisingly helpful.

For example, when optimizing a website for SEO, it’s important to consider the types of people who will be searching for the site. When appealing to a wide audience, it may be necessary to include the terms for which the average, casual searcher may query as well as those employed by the more tech-savvy searcher, whose search terms are more likely to be esoteric buzzwords or jargon.

Another important aspect in the relationship between jargon and SEO is the ever-changing algorithms of the three major search engines. One of the more recent developments, according to Steve Wanczyk, RepEquity’s Vice President of Search and Social Media, is the inclusion of a value judgement for specific words. As RepEquity monitors how this change manifests itself within the search engine’s more permanent algorithm, it’s possible that certain buzzwords will take on more weight within search engine results than others. Another technique we’re testing is getting a site to rank for a specific keyword without ever using that keyword in the site’s tags — it’s all about related terms and industry terminology! Below, we’ve included a few terms that we find are often confusing to clients or those new to the field of search engine optimization.

• Algorithm – A set of rules or processes employed by a search engine to determine which websites should be returned for specific search queries.

• Anchor Text – The clickable word or phrase that appears in a hyperlink; search engines use this word or phrase as an indicator of the content of the page to which it links.

• Black Hat – A method of search engine optimization that employs unethical methods; this often includes the creation of multiple spam page and link-buying.

• Canonical Issues – Also known as duplicate content, the canon refers to the original or official version of a block of content. Search engines will often penalize a site with duplicate content, but the issues can be resolved by using a no-index meta tag or 301 server redirects.

• Crawler – A program that searches the Internet by way of the link structure in order to create an index of data; also known as a spider or bot.

• Meta Tags – Elements of HTML or XHTML that are used to provide information about a website for use by search engines. The information about your site listed in the meta tags is the description that appears under your URL on search engine result pages, the first impression that visitors will have of your site.

• Natural (Organic) Search Results – Websites that appear on search engine result pages because of their high quality; is not a paid listing.

• Reciprocal Links – Formed when two sites link to each other; can be overlooked by search engines as low-level links because of the likelihood that the sites are related or maintained by the same person. An outlink (or outgoing link) is a link that goes from your site to another; an inbound link is a link to your page from another website.

• SEM – An umbrella term of sorts that is short for search engine marketing. It includes all the actions taken to promote a website for optimal viewership within search engine rankings, including SEO, paid listings, website analytics and more.

• SEO – Short for search engine optimization, or the practice of modifying websites to have them appear higher on a search engine’s result pages as a way to attract more visitors.

• SERP – An acronym for search engine results page, or the list of websites returned when a phrase or keyword is queried in a search engine like Google, Yahoo or Bing. It is unusual for someone to go past the first or second page of search engine results when looking for a website.

• Web 2.0 – A site that encourages interaction with the site or among visitors; often associated with social media.

• White Hat – SEO techniques that comply with industry best practice guidelines and do not unfairly manipulate search engine result pages.