We tracked down Silas Amos, Creative Director of leading UK packaging design agency Jones Knowles Ritchie and asked him if and how the packaging design industry has been affected by the prominence of the web and the rise of social media.
JKR have been doing what they know best for over 20 years now and have witnessed such design revolutions as the end of typesetting and the evolution of the Mac. They also have to their name the iconic Bodddingtons’ can design still in full swing today. If there have been any trends in packaging design thanks to the rise of the modern web these guys will know about it!
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recently read a fascinating article about how The New York Observer is incentivising its journos with bonuses for well read articles and the amount of Twitter followers (see it here) and felt compelled to write something on the matter.
Personally… it’s a fantastic idea, especially with all the tracking tools available today… why haven’t others thought about this?
Obviously a paper or magazine survives through its readership. The more readers the more sales and ad revenues – it’s a simple model… so incentivising its core knowledge sharers in this way makes absolute sense. Bonuses will help journos think outside of the box to get more followers (for the publication), embrace the trends around social media and online publishing fully and ultimately make for a more exciting reader experience. The only problem is (and has always been) – how do publishers make their money online in the future. Obviously The Times (UK) is launching their ‘paid for’ online subscription but from a personal perspective I really don’t hold out much hope for this model when you can get the same information elsewhere for free.
Ad revenues online will almost certainly increase along with the introduction of affiliate marketing techniques (which we are starting to see emerge), but I’m hearing that many publishers are petrified and rightly so. Perhaps the way forward therefore is to diversify away from publishing or perhaps develop a more exciting, value adding means of sharing their content… but that’s the million dollar question right!
Here’s how The New York Observer are measuring journos bonuses on:
• Pageviews
• Number of posts
• New Twitter followers
• Number of comments
• External pickups
The scheme is being trialed for three months with the first place receiving $500. The second place will receive $300. There is a $2500 cap per employee in total awards. This means that one employee can sweep each month; but also there is a caveat that the same employee cannot win in consecutive months. Finally, web only employees are not included!
I’ve got a feeling that Ney York’s SEO trainers are going to be having a bumper year if this takes off.
The importance of blogs within the Travel Industry is set to increase over the next few years. Changes in the way content is aggregated across search engines and social media will push companies towards placing blogs and social networking at the forefront of their online marketing strategies.
Whether you have a blog already or you’re thinking about integrating one, this article aims to give you crucial insights into using corporate blogging as an incredibly powerful marketing tool.
Here are our 7 essential tips to corporate blogging:
Step 1 - Choose your blog platform
There’s a wide variety of choice out there when it comes to blogging platforms. We recommend Wordpress, which offers many thousands of easy to use plugins for bespoke functionality. The blog should ideally be integrated into your website as a Sub Domain (e.g. http://www.mytravelagency.com/blog). Other blogging platforms to consider might be Drupal, Typepad or Expression Engine.
Step 2 - The Content Strategy
Many blogs fail because they have been insufficiently planned. A content strategy should essentially lists out; who is going to write editorial, how the blog will be promoted, principal topics, content ideas, regularity of content posting, which other blogs to align with, what keywords are to be targeted. Read on and this will make more sense!
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Whilst online shopping is growing at a faster rate in 2009 compared with 2008, Click And Buy have revealed some very interesting facts about consumer behaviour when it comes to actually completing the purchase online.
Here’s a summary of their findings:
• 50% of regular online shoppers don’t complete the transaction if preferred method of payment is not available
• 40% of adults surveyed would feel more comfortable with a retailer who offers a range of payment methods
• 36% of those surveyed will shop more online than on the High Street in 2009 than 2008
This means thousands of merchants are actually losing the opportunity to make more money online of course. The survey involved 2000 online British adults and was carried out by independent survey firm YouGov.
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