26 Aug 2013, by Calum Shepherd
I was fortunate enough to attend the Turing Festival in Edinburgh on the 24th and 25th of August, 2013. The festival took place over two days, towards the tail end of the Edinburgh Festival, meaning the city was still buzzing with energy. The talks were diverse and captivating, with many speakers using technology as a foundation, rather than the subject itself. This approach made the festival feel more dynamic, engaging, and thought-provoking than your typical event.
What talks did I attend?
Five Startups Go Mad in Edinburgh
Future of Money
Digital Distribution
Digital Marketing & Growth Hacking
Festival Keynote by Neal Stephenson
Future of Music
Future of money highlights
- Sandra Alzetta from Visa delivered a grounded speech focusing on mobile payments via smartphones and contactless plastic cards. She emphasized that the future of payments is both mobile and plastic, with each playing an essential role in Visa’s vision
- Mike Hearn from Bitcoin (and previously Google) gave a fascinating talk that was one of the highlights of the festival. His presentation was wide-ranging, discussing everything from Google’s driverless cars to the future of work. He painted a picture of a future dominated by autonomous agents in a TradeNet system, where machines run their own businesses, competing for human business. He also touched on Bitcoin but this was overshadowed by the broader, thought-provoking concepts he introduced
Social reviews don’t make that much sense, says Mike Hearn of Google. Lots of spam and strangers #turingfest — Andrew Girdwood (@AndrewGirdwood) - August 23, 2013
The future of money by Visa Europe. Trust. Completely agree. Money doesn’t do public betas #turingfest @NJones — Calum Shepherd (@calumshepherd) - August 23, 2013
Visa Europe forecast 50% of their transactions by 2020 will be mobile #turingfest — Calum Shepherd (@calumshepherd) - August 23, 2013
Digital distribution highlights
The standout session in digital distribution came from DJ Powers from Valve. He gave insight into the Steam eco-system and their recent developments in community contribution. Team Fortress 2 is one of their most recent success stories, seeing a marketplace built out around digital products and official community updates - launched for the entire player base. A success story included a hat seller (for in-game characters) who achieved 6 digit profits for his creations.
Team Fortress Community Update biggest grossing hour for them after launch. Awesome #turingfest — Calum Shepherd (@calumshepherd) - August 23, 2013
Digital marketing and growth hacking
- Brian Doll from GitHub kicked off this session, reinforcing the need for great marketing based on a simple philosophy:
“Build Something, Tell People”
This concept sparked some debate, particularly regarding its application in large-scale organizations. Nonetheless, it’s an ideal that everyone should aspire to, and Brian’s use of an animated GIF across his presentations was a hit!
- JP Rangaswami from Salesforce delivered an inspiring presentation. While I didn’t take notes, I was thoroughly impressed by his storytelling ability and how he guided the audience through the ever-evolving landscape of technology.
“Living infographics”. Steven Drost from Stipso explains how text can become more than a sum of its parts #turingfest — Calum Shepherd (@calumshepherd) - August 24, 2013
Focus on tribes. Focus on communities that already exist’s Brian Doll from @github - Calum Shepherd (@calumshepherd) - August 24, 2013
If you’d like to learn more about the event, check out the official Turing Festival website.
24 Jul 2013, by Calum Shepherd
Some good news! Although a little late in highlighting, the digital team at VisitScotland were shortlisted for an E-Consultancy #TheDigitals Travel and Tourism award, back in May 2013.
Our campaign, which revolved around Shetland ponies in cardigans, was a collaborative effort that saw strong work from our PR team and impressive content production. The results were excellent: high-quality search rankings for related terms, TV features in the US, and ongoing engagement on social media. Even now, we continue to see a steady stream of traffic to our blog post about the ponies. It remains the most successful single page we’ve ever published on our .com site.
The Shetland ponies were a fresh, creative idea and a perfect example of cross-team collaboration.
Here’s the US TV spot from CNN:
Although we didn’t win that night, it was still a fantastic outcome for the team and the company.
You can check out the original Shetland ponies blog post over at the VisitScotland blog.
22 Apr 2012, by Calum Shepherd
A colleague of mine Ross suggested an interesting idea for increasing social sharing on informational websites. By placing social sharing buttons alongside key content, rather than at the top or bottom of a page, it highlights specific sections of a page that are likely to be shared. This approach could potentially boost the rate at which users interact with social sharing buttons, especially the Facebook Like button, ultimately expanding visibility and followers on Facebook.
I wanted to explore how this could work and understand its potential benefits—this took a bit more digging
While it’s common for e-commerce websites to boost Like button clicks using Facebook Open Graph mark-up (e.g., declaring products as objects and placing share buttons alongside), this method is tailored to single-product pages. A great example of this is ASOS where products are shared easily through social media.
However, the question arose: How does this work on informational sites, where you’re not sharing a product but rather specific sections of a page without compromising the message of the page as a whole? This was the aspect that intrigued me, and I wanted to understand how sites were pulling this off—and if there were any potential SEO implications.
Let’s explore an example Ross shared with me: Britain Magazine.
Britain Magazine boosts Facebook Like button clicks by adding the ability to share individual quotes on a page. The challenge, however, is that only one set of Open Graph mark-up can be applied to a page. This means that the entire page would need to be focused on a single quote, despite containing other valuable content.
How do they achieve this?
It’s quite simple! They use one Like button for the homepage and then link to unique URLs for each quote. These URLs feature their own relevant Open Graph mark-up.
This method ensures that every quote has its own unique URL. The visitor is not technically sharing the quote itself, but the unique URL for that quote—something the typical user won’t notice. The actual URL being shared can be seen within the iFrame.
The user journey
A great idea with wider implications*
- SEO Benefits: Google will crawl these unique URLs, meaning each quote could be indexed as a separate page.
- Improved User Experience: When shared, users land on a page with just the quote and navigation, rather than the original section of the homepage.
- Increased Engagement: This method likely increases Like button clicks across the site, helping boost overall engagement with your content.
Essentially, this strategy provides an effective way to increase Like button clicks, improve visibility, and enhance brand interaction. While it may offer minimal SEO value and potential indexing issues (unless spider controls like noindex are used), it’s still a clever and creative way to encourage social sharing and engagement.
03 Jan 2012, by Calum Shepherd
(This post was originally published in December 2011 as part of an SEO Advent Calendar series. It has since been updated and reposted here for greater reach. To view the original post, visit the LBi blog.
‘Location, Location, Location’ was once a popular show on Channel 4, and now it’s the perfect description for the importance of local SEO for physical store locations.
Local stores often struggle with low online visibility, which can be overlooked by digital marketing managers. This is especially important for online/offline hybrid retailers who operate brick-and-mortar stores. Retail stores typically offer a smaller range of products compared to their online counterparts, which means the web serves as a “best of breed” solution for the retailer’s entire portfolio.
When approaching local SEO for stores, it’s crucial to think about the location first, followed by the services or products that the location offers. Loyal customers may visit your store if they have time-sensitive needs or simply prefer shopping in person. However, if information about your store is not available online, customers may struggle to find it, show up when it’s closed, or even go elsewhere.
Shopping last-minute is a common occurrence, especially during the Christmas season. People often search for details about local stores online in several situations:
- The standard delivery window for mail order has expired
- They discover that only expensive ‘next day delivery’ options are available.
- Risk of weather related delivery delays.
Identifying the customer journey from online to offline is essential for generating revenue. Ensure that your store locations and how to find them are easily visible on your site.
- Promote from the homepage
- Provide within your standard navigation, be it a footer or sub-navigation
Individual store pages
Each store should have its own dedicated page with up-to-date information. This allows for quick updates as changes occur.
- Make sure all individual store pages provide accurate, current information
If stores are independently operated or franchised with separate social profiles, consider integrating their social feeds or real-time updates
- Customer reviews specific to each location are common online—consider including them.
- Use easy-to-remember URLs for individual store pages
- To take it further, promote each store’s landing page from within the store itself. This can help create customer loyalty that many online retailers can’t match
Offsite promotion is also crucial. Location-based platforms like Google+ Local, Here Places (Nokia), Bing Places, and Yelp can significantly increase traffic to your location pages.
- Stay organised and maintain a list of all your locations
- Claim existing listings on third-party platforms and close or amend outdated entries
- Continuously build new listings and update information as needed
- Use link tracking to measure the impact and prove that it works
- Maintaining accurate profiles and information on third-party websites ensures customers won’t end up at stores that have moved or no longer exist. These third-party profiles should be closely integrated with the store pages on your website
In summary
Get ready for Christmas by updating your store pages to accurately reflect their offerings. Promote these pages on your site to make them a viable option for customers. Finally, ensure all your third-party profiles are up-to-date. Not every suggestion in this post may apply, but implementing even a few of these ideas can lead to great results!
Merry Christmas!