Posted: 13 April 2010 in News advertising, promoted tweets, tweets, twitter by Paul
Following Twitter’s recent announcement that they will be monetising their website using ‘Promoted Tweets’, we have been asking ourselves how successful this move is really likely to prove to be. The idea behind their promoted tweets is that companies will pay Twitter to show their tweets first whenever a search is made for relevant content. Initially starting with a handful of advertisers, this is due to go live imminently onto Twitter.
As yet we are undecided as to whether this approach will prove to be successful or not. There are two main arguments in our eyes: firstly, how many users use Twitter as a search tool for terms that are typically bid on in Google? Therefore, how successful can these companies possibly be, and furthermore what is the advantage over having users search for your brand and follow your account directly? On the other hand, if you have a genuine interest in the world of coffee, then why would you look any further than the information provided by coffee superbrand Starbucks, especially if their Tweets are right up there at the top of the list? Either way, you have to ask how long it will be before Twitter decide to push ‘relevant’ content from their chosen advertisers directly into your Twitter home screen.
What is clear in all this is that these companies will need to ensure that the ROI for this advertising is thoroughly tracked, mainly through tagging links from their tweets to their main websites. The real argument will be won at this stage, with these advertisers deciding very quickly whether their Twitter investments are really worth the price they are paying….
As for Twitter themselves, I’m sure they’ll be closely monitoring their user volumes and related tweets with interest.
Posted: 3 March 2010 in News, Press by Paul
Yard Associates are delighted to announce that we have become the first UK agency to meet the SiteTagger authorisation criteria, allowing us to call ourselves authorised SiteTagger consultants. As SiteTagger partners, we are now able to provide support and maintenance on the SiteTagger solution, as well as offer configuration consultancy to our mutual clients.
Yard Associates have been working with the SiteTagger tool for well over a year now and look forward to being able to introduce this technology to some of our clients in the near future.
Posted: 18 February 2010 in News SiteTagger, website tagging by Paul
One of our partner companies, SiteTagger, announced recently the availability of a FREE version of their popular website tagging solution to small customers. Available for any company with annual page views of up to 100,000, the SiteTagger Free product is now available and can be signed up to online from the SiteTagger website. The Free version is effectively the full product, with SiteTagger Free customers able to deploy all of the tags within the main SiteTagger library; only the custom scripting functions are not available, and require users to sign up for the SiteTagger OnDemand product, which itself is very reasonably priced.
The SiteTagger product has been a God-send for us at Yard Associates, simplifying the process for getting complex web analytics, marketing and other Javascript tags live into websites at a fraction of the usual cost.
If you would like to implement SiteTagger to simplify your website tagging, why not contact us at Yard Associates and we can facilitate a demonstration, as well as provide implementation and configuration support for your company.
Posted: 17 February 2010 in News buzz, Google, google buzz, social network, social networking by Paul
Following the launch of the Google Buzz service, a number of privacy concerns have been raised about the way the service has been rolled out by Google. Notably, Buzz is ‘forced’ upon you as a Gmail user, and the solution was able to utilise your address book full of contacts to generate lists of Buzz users, lists which were available to other Buzz users and followers. So how have Google allowed themselves to get caught up in a row that should surely have been avoided, following the historic string of privacy concerns of Facebook users regarding their personal information use?
It appears that the answer is in the rushed attempt to turn a popular email service into a social network capable of competing with the likes of Facebook and Twitter. As an industry controlling data from millions of web users, the social network industry was too big for Google to miss out on; however, you can’t help but think that the opportunity may have been missed in this case. Unless…
What is currently true of Google is that the company now commands an impressive set of products which focus around search and communication. Therefore, it is easy to imagine a future iteration of Buzz, which, building on its current form, improves on its integration of Blogger, Calendar, Docs, Picasa, Google Mail, Google Maps, Google Search…and so on to provide a solution that can not only compete with Facebook, but surpasses it in its functionality and availability, and, more importantly, usability. The super user experience, if you will, all held online by Google. Now there’s a strategy for you!
