What type are you? -launched earlier in the year by Pentagram who wanted people to be able to understand that meaning properly and use it more consciously.

Researched over seven years with a team of 23 academics across Eastern Europe, ‘What Type Are You’ asks the four key character questions of our day, analyses your responses in exceptional detail and recommends one of 16 typefaces as a result.

Find out more here

Having the big idea is one thing, but making it happen is another task. The 99 Percent website has an abundance of tips, articles & videos about increasing productivity within creative organisations. I am looking forward to the 2010’s speakers including John Maeda & Stefan Sagmeister.

Some information about the day:
Pod1’s Mark Blenkinsop will begin with an introduction about the many different definitions of social media. Anthony Lukom and Hakan Thyr will follow this up by addressing the question of its relevance, particularly in E-commerce.

Fergal O’Mullane and Emma Griffin’s talks will focus on the nuts and bolts of the issue: the use of tools to deliver content and monitor social media strategies. We’ll round this off with a question and answer session via Twitter (#Pod1SocialSeminar) with all our speakers.

A little about our speakers:

Mark Blenkinsop, Senior Search Marketing Manager, Pod1

As the job titles suggests Mark is responsible for all things relating to Search Marketing within the agency with a particular focus on SEO and Social Media. He joined Pod1 in April 2006 with a view to integrating SEO into the agency’s’ offering and the result nearly 4 years later is a healthy client list and an expanding department. An avid interest in digital marketing with a decidedly ecommerce bias has definitely been a plus.

Anthony Lukom, Director, 33 Seconds

Anthony is currently heading 33 Seconds, a media consultancy business which specialises in Social Media. Clients include ATC Management (who work with artists such as Radiohead, Kate Nash) and BD, a creative agency, where they act as Social Media Strategists (clients include Mars, Coke, Nintendo and Cineworld).

Previously he was MD for MySpace UK for two and half years as well as European Head of Business Development. Before that he was at AOL Europe for over 7 years as Head of European Business Development, Head of Search and ran a company wide product innovation project based on Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

Hakan Thyr, International Partnerships Director, Bazaarvoice

Håkan has 13 years international business development experience from the IT industry with companies ranging from high-growth start-ups to established industry leaders. He has a special passion for companies that succeed by rewriting the rules of the industry. Håkan holds an MSc in Civil Engineering from Chalmers University of Technology.

Fergal O’Mullane, Director and Co-founder, 10CMS

Fergal is a director and co-founder of 10CMS and is primarily responsible for strategic business development. Fergal has worked in the digital media space since 1999 with a particular focus on retail and consumer brands and he helped form 10CMS in 2006.

10CMS is a leading provider of rich interactive merchandising for retailers in the UK and US, client experience includes LK Bennett, Anthropologie, Heal’s, Jimmy Choo and Clothing at Tesco among others.

Emma Griffin, Meltwater

Emma was part of the initial set-up of Meltwater’s Social Media monitoring arm, MBuzz early 2009. In less than a year, MBuzz has now grown to consist of 13 offices spread from California to Hong Kong with over 50 employees and from start-up to one of the most recognised Social Media monitoring providers globally.

Starting as a Sales Consultant in Meltwater News’ Dublin office in March 2007, within a year Emma moved to South Africa to help grow the operations in Cape Town. Within two years of being with the company, Emma led the set-up of our Meltwater News operations in Accra, Ghana.

Emma carries her competitive nature through to her pastimes and has competed for her country in Football, Basketball, Swimming and Lifesaving surfing! She also enjoys Yoga and is an eager cook! Emma holds a 1st Class Master Degree in International Business.

See you on the 23rd!

If you are interested in attending please contact:  flora.malein@pod1.com

“The Greatest Fashion Show on Earth” campaign, run in conjunction with the Sunday Times, is a series of fashion events held at the centre throughout March. The site provides a portal for event information, ticket booking and email sign up. The site also provides value-added content such as key trends for the season, goody bag giveaway’s and styling tips.

As the fashion events occur, rich media content and event imagery will be added to the site for users to browse.

The main catwalk shows will be held on the 19th and 20th of March 2010, and will feature over 700 luxury and high street fashion brands.

Check out the site here http://londonfashion.westfield.com/

As part of Google’s ongoing effort to improve their Webmaster Tools, they’ve launched 2 new features which I think will make life easier for many webmasters.

The first one is called Fetch As Googlebot Mobile and it’s an addition to the recently presented Fetch As Googlebot feature in Webmaster Tools. The tool shows, in real time, what Googlebot and Mobile Googlebot sees when it accesses the page.

To access the tool:

• Login to Webmaster Tools
• Select your site
• Go to Labs > Fetch as Googlebot

The second addition in Webmaster Tools is the possibility of adding extra users to particular account, just like you would do in Google Analytics. This means that both you, the client, and in fact, anyone can access the same account. The down-side is the fact that the list of verified users has to be maintained and updated if needed.

To access the tool:

• Login to Webmaster Tools
• Click on Verify next to your site
• Click Add a user

Go to Webmaster Tools to check out new tools and visit our Search Engine Otimisation page to see how Pod1 Ecommerce can help you improve your website’s rankings

The Microsoft Courier can best be described as a “digital journal”. The interface will be primarily touch/pen-based with some sophisticated handwriting recognition taking place under the hood. This interface is based on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series OS out in the final quarter of 2010 which in turn is an evolution of the ultra-slick Zune HD OS. In keeping with the new Windows Phone 7 emphasis on integration and sharing, the Courier has many ways to share and collaborate your journal elements with colleagues making any creation a group effort.

The Microsoft Courier places an emphasis on mobility and takes the journal metaphor further by being split into two screens that can fold in to create an ultraportable device akin to a notebook. It will be small enough to easily stash away in any backpack making it as essential a device to carry around as ones cellphone.

Other key elements to the Courier include a built-in camera (an obvious one-upmanship on the upcoming iPad), a 3.5mm mini-jack for media playback, ebook reader, contact address book and web browser.

Now that I’ve given a brief introduction, I’ll allow Engadget’s video footage to really show off the exciting functionality of the Courier in action.

Find out more how Pod1 can help you with Search Engine Optimisation

Here we often have discussions around why you should do PPC & SEO on branded terms when you get most of your traffic and possibly revenue from organic branded terms anyway. I guess we need to take a closer look at what’s happening here.

There are two reasons why you get more traffic from branded terms when using the wonderfully free Google Analytics.

Convenience
Many, (many many) users have Google or any other search engine setup as their start page. Rather than typing your URL into the address bar they just type it into the nice and friendly, large text field in the middle of their screen. Ask a random sample of your users if they know what the address bar actually is. Ask your office mates. I swear most won’t know what you’re talking about.

Last click counts
This is the second reason why you get so many “head keywords”. Users come to your site in different stages of the purchase cycle. They most likely start of on a long tail keyword like: “Pink polka dot jumper”. They find a few pages, check them out and might even land on your page if you’ve done your Search Engine Optimisation right. Now they do something else, go back to work; take care of the kids; go out for a coffee and then remember that website where they saw that great Pink Polka Dot Jumper. Most likely they have no idea how they got there or what the product was actually called (I’ll do a post about slang later this month). What they do remember will be your brand name. So instead of going back to Google and using Pink Polka Dot Jumper then click through endless results, they type in your brand name and, shazam, you have a head term conversion.

The problem with Google Analytics is that it only counts the last click from which a user came to your site. So even if they have come from a natural long tail keyword they are likely to convert on an organic head term or even branded PPC term. Analytics will only count this last click, but not the first one or second one or third one. So your stats will be skewed and it might look like only brand terms convert. There is of course and additional problem that many users will use their lunch break to research but convert at home, i.e. switch computers. Forget about these users; it’s going to be a while until we get those tracked.

So should you do SEO and PPC on your own brand name or the other way round: “Should you even bother with this nasty long tail optimisation?” Yes is the short answer. You actually have to do it as otherwise you’ll simply die a virtual death. Always think of the purchase cycle your customers are in. Unless you’re a really really really big brand (Coca-Cola level I’d say) your customers will start of on a long tail keyword search. Most searches are 3 or more keywords long (see: http://image.exct.net/lib/fefc1774726706/d/1/SearchEngines_Jan09.pdf) so it is fair to assume that is the same for your customers. Brand names tend to be a bit shorter. If they don’t find you for Pink Polka Dot Jumper they won’t remember your brand name as they won’t get in contact with it. Not doing PPC or SEO for your own brand terms (PPC even for the sake of getting cheap clicks and preventing competitors to bid on it) will lead to them, if they do find you on the long tail search, not finding you on a branded search.

Now that it is clear that you must do SEO for both, long tail and head keywords what should you attribute the traffic to?

I guess the only way to find out is to launch a PPC campaign on your own brand name and see how far organic traffic drops. The difference should be your convenience clickers, the rest probably very engaged customers.

Discussion more than welcome!

P.S. Yes there are ways to hack 1^st touch into GA, check this out: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-get-past-last-touch-attribution-with-google-analytic