We have picked our top 3 for each month, so leave us a comment below if we missed a moment that stood out to you!

January

• Facebook introduces trending topics for the first time
• Social media spending for business is predicted to rise
• WordPress and Tumblr continue to gain popularity over Blogger and Blogspot due to easy customisability

February

• Facebook turns 10 years old
• LinkedIn allows users to post blog posts
• Facebook buys popular messaging app Whatsapp for $21 billion

March

• Ellen tweets the most viral tweet of all time
• Buzzfeed is Facebook’s biggest performer, beating second place The Huffington Post by double the activity
• Twitter shuts down their music app (what music app?)

April

• WordPress rolls out free automatic security updates for all users
• Facebook reaches 1 billion mobile users per month
• #BringBackOurGirls trends on Twitter, spreading awareness of a previously unknown issue to the world

May

• The “Look Up” anti social media video goes viral, gains almost 50 million views
• Apple announces plan to buy Beats Electronics for $2.6 billion
• Google rolls out Panda 4.0, working to prevent sites with poor quality content from becoming top Google search results

June

• Facebook reveals it performed a secret “social experiment” by changing the newsfeed to influence moods
• Barbie joins LinkedIn
• President Obama holds a Q&A session on Tumblr  

July

• Matt Cutts, head of Google Webspam, goes on leave and unplugs to spend time with his wife
• The World Cup dominates the years top Twitter trends with 6/10 relating to the Cup
• YouTube becomes the most visited social network ever, overtaking Facebook

August

• The Ice Bucket Challenge goes viral and raises over $15 million for ALS research in just 3 weeks
• #Ferguson and many related hashtags fuel debates over race and police brutality that last the rest of the year
• Former CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, leaves company after 34 years

September

• Apple unveils the iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and Apple Watch
• Larry Ellison steps down as Oracle CEO but will remain on board as chief technology officer
• The Oscar Pistorius trial becomes the biggest social media story in South Africa’s history

October

• Instagram rolls out ads and sponsored posts in Australia
• Facebook announces safety check feature for natural disasters – will prompt users to check in with friends and family when something happens in their location
• At the end of October, Ello the new ad-free social media site, has 1 million active users and 3 million on the waitlist

November

• Snapchat allows users to send money to each other online – Snapcash
• The G20 arrives in Australia, causes many Twitter and Facebook memes
• Facebook adds donate button to newsfeed, gives money to charities helping to fight off the Ebola virus

December

• Instagram reaches more regular users than Twitter at 300 million a month
• Apple releases the best new apps of 2014 – including brain trainer Elevate and Instagram’s Hyperlapse
• Facebook’s most recent updates allows users to search for past posts using keywords

And there we have it, a monthly summary of some of the biggest and most interesting social, digital, and technological headlines from 2014. What has been your highlight of the year? On behalf of Studio Culture, we would like to wish you all a happy holiday season and a great 2015! See you soon!

The post Biggest Social Media Headlines of 2014 appeared first on Studio Culture.

(via 9News) 

Post-G20, the Brisbane Action Plan has been mapped out with a goal of implementing 800 reforms that aim to increase global growth by 2.1%. We also got out of it some koala pictures, a triple handshake, and some interesting quotes from Tony Abbott.

(via ABC)

But in all seriousness, what did the G20 really bring to Brisbane, from traditional tourism and digital marketing standpoints?

International media – hit or miss?

Sure, we’ve had constant G20 coverage in Brisbane and it’s all anyone seems to be talking about. But overseas this hasn’t exactly been the case. In the LA Times, the article “Australia left to cringe once again at a leader’s awkward moment” says “For Australians it’s not so bad — most of the time — to be so far away, so overlooked, so seemingly insignificant as to almost never factor in major international news. The lifestyle makes up for it.

But occasionally, there’s an awkward, pimply youth moment so embarrassing that it does sting. Like when 19 of the world’s most important leaders visit for a global summit and Prime Minister Tony Abbott opens their retreat Saturday with a whinge (Aussie for whine) about his doomed efforts to get his fellow Australians to pay $7 to see a doctor.

And then he throws in a boast that his government repealed the country’s carbon tax, standing out among Western nations as the one willing to reverse progress on global warming — just days after the United States and China reached a landmark climate change deal.” YIKES. 

NY Times barely mentioned the G20 and Brisbane itself when talking about Russia and Obama, while The Sun UK referred to the summit as “selfie summit” in an article only available to Sun subscribers. News searches of the G20 all report back Australian articles, it’s hard to find a mention of it in foreign press.

Last week we had a look at how much “Brisbane” had been searched recently due to the G20 (not much) and this week it has sadly stayed the same. Most articles and searches relating to Brisbane have been about this weekend’s heat wave rather than political activities.

Social media and another viral video

Local social media has had a blast over the G20 weekend – both serious and funny. Here are some of our favourites from Twitter as well as some image highlights. 

And how could we forget another viral video – this time the police who “accepted the Nutbush challenge” in the middle of the Brisbane CBD.

Did it put Brisbane on the map? 

So far, not so much. But it’s too early to judge how it will affect tourism and the overall economy for Brisbane. It certainly caused a lot of stir and hype locally, which is never a bad thing. Plus we had fun analysing tweets and articles, with the bonus of a long weekend (be sure to read our previous G20 post)!

The next country to host the G20 is Turkey in 2015, followed by China in 2016.

What are your predictions for future G20 summits, and how do you think we fared hosting in Brisbane? Let us know in the comments below! 

The post Was it Worth it? A G20 Recap appeared first on Studio Culture.

(Image via SBS)

Everyone in Brisbane will know that this weekend is a big one for us – it’s G20 time. The G20, or Group of 20, is made up of 19 countries ranging from Australia to Mexico to Turkey to Japan, as well as the European Union. Every year, G20 leaders meet up to discuss pressing issues and this time around the main themes are said to be “strengthening the private sector to promote growth, making the world economy more resilient to future shocks, and shoring up global institutions.” But what has everyone else been talking about? Here’s a run down of what the Internet has been saying about G20, where it’s Brisbane’s turn to play host.

Trends – did the G20 make Brisbane more popular around the world?

We know we said everyone in Brisbane will know about our hosting of the G20, but does anyone else? We expected search results around the world for “Brisbane” to soar, but they really didn’t.

There was a slight incline over the past few days, but overall there wasn’t a huge increase in searches.

It makes us wonder if all the G20 hype is local to us. We had a look at Twitter trends in Brisbane and sure enough, most of them are related to G20, but worldwide trends didn’t feature it at all! Seems Kim K did indeed #breaktheinternet.

Social Media and #G20

Social media has of course been blowing up with #G20 tweets, Facebook posts, and even YouTube videos. Here are some of our favourites so far.

And last but definitely not least, this gem: 

A soon to be viral video has also been released. Brisbane based YouTube comics Collective Noun made this hilarious but very true “G20 Introduction to Brisbane” parody video. 

Memes – shirt fronting, Putin and boat stopping

And of course it wouldn’t be a global event without memes. Again, here are some of our favourites. 

(Via G20 Memes)

News about G20

News Australia-wide has been heavily G20 focused this past week. A couple of noteworthy headlines are police removing suspicious devices from the CBD, homeless people in the city “making way” for leaders, banned political billboards, and of course the Russian warships heading to our shores.

(Via News.com.au)

But it’s not all serious business, the weird and wonderful have come out too. Phil Hogan, owner of Jade Buddha declined an invitation to meet Obama himself this weekend because his wife wasn’t invited and he wanted to spend time with her instead. As a result, Brisbane has banded together to trend #BeerWithObama in the hopes Obama will visit the club for a drink.

Meanwhile, gourmet burger chain Burger Urge have just released a new burger called the “Big Bad Vlad” – featuring “two presidential chicken breasts” and “shirt fronting sweet chili mayo.” But be quick, they’re only selling it from the 14^th to the 16^th this week! And finally, in an interesting move, the US Secret Service tried to remove an entire roundabout outside UQ so the President’s car wouldn’t have to slow down to pass it.

Abbott – left in the dark

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been making headlines but, as usual, not in the good way. His refusal to discuss climate change has put him and Australia under a lot of pressure. (Note: “3,527 more articles”)

America and China just signed a “gamechanging” deal on climate change with both of them giving statistics and dates for their end goals, making for even more ammo against Abbott. He’s really not so popular on Twitter or in the media right now. Read a couple of Junkee’s articles and you’ll see sarcasm and satire galore. 

(Via Junkee)

Putin and his warships

Ever since Abbott’s “shirtfronting” comments towards Putin, the pair have been all over media and social media alike. Searches for the “Russian warships” I’m sure you’ve all seen on your Facebook newsfeeds, as well as “Russia,” “Putin,” and “shirtfront” have all had a huge increase this week on various news sites. 

So far, though, all that’s happened is a confrontation at the Beijing leader’s summit and Abbott and Putin becoming the butt of many a joke online. 

Obama

The President of the United States has surprisingly been less hyped up than Abbott and Putin, but there are still some noteworthy goings-on to mention. Obama is set to give a speech at UQ on Saturday, and as we mentioned his security team tried to have a roundabout removed from the road. The University has been labelled a “special security zone” and so has his hotel room. The US military is involved too and you may have seen their choppers flying overhead this week. Despite the intense security measures, we all like him anyway and gave him a burger (we’ve sensed a common theme throughout all of this, it seems we’re showering the G20 leaders with true Aussie hospitality – burgers and a #BeerWithObama all ’round).  

While the leaders meet up over the weekend, the rest of us can enjoy some of the G20 Cultural Celebrations, ranging from live music to picnics to art installations.  And in the meantime, put your G20 skills to the test: try out ABC’s “World’s Hardest G20 Quiz” and see how you fare. We got about 37/110… Oops?

What are your G20 thoughts? Do you think the world leaders will have a great time in Brisbane? Let us know in the comments and have a spectacular G20 long weekend! 

The post The G20 was… where? Everything the Internet is saying about the G20 appeared first on Studio Culture.

Overall pros of using WooCommerce:

• Core plugin is free
• Easy to use for you and your clients
• Small learning curve if you are already familiar with WordPress
• Highly customizable and expandable
• Excellent for SEO
• Supported by a great community
• It’s hosted on your servers
• So many plugins!

Designing/developing an e-Commerce website? Here are Fil’s Top 10 WooCommerce plugins:

1. WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping and WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing: set pricing and delivery based on country, add rules for weight and items, bulk order discounts
2. WooCommerce Newsletter Subscription: works with MailChimp and Campaign Monitor, adds “subscribe to newsletter” on checkout
3. WooCommerce Print Invoice/Packing List: fast, easy way to print invoices and packing lists
4. WooCommerce Product Enquiry Form: allows customers to enquire about a product, gets mailed directly to store owner
5. WooCommerce Store Credit: allows customers to use coupons and store credits
6. WooCommerce Pre-Orders and WooWaitlist: product pre-order and waitlist options, emails customers updates on product wait times
7. WooCommerce Google Analytics Integration: adds tracking code to site, supports advertising and universal analytics
8. WooCommerce Cart Reports: dashboard widget shows what customers added to shopping carts and allows emails to be sent reminding customers of their cart
9. WooCommerce Xero: automatic invoices, discounts, shipping, etc to Xero
10. WooCommerce POS: improves point of sale, connects in-store and online

About WordPress Brisbane:

The WordPress Brisbane meet up community is for any WordPress user, new or experienced or anywhere in between, to get together and chat about all things web design, plugins, and WordPress. The group will range from beginner to advanced topics, so you’ll always learn something new! Some previous topics have been: WooCommerce subscriptions, WordPress 3.7 and beyond, and all about Backup Buddy. If you need to learn about website design in Brisbane, this is definitely one of our favourite meetups to go to.

For more WooCommerce information visit their website and be sure to contact us at Studio Culture today to find out how WordPress and WooCommerce can enhance your website.

The post Fil’s WordPress WooCommerce Brisbane Meetup appeared first on Studio Culture.

1. White Space

All four of these sites do this well, but ebay in particular pays exceptional attention to its white space. The top of the homepage – where the eyes first go – has the logo, a search bar, category button, search button, and two rolling ad banners. That’s it. The audience’s eyes are immediately drawn to the large advertisements that are displaying sales information, which is going to hook customers in and make them want to know more. Webpage clutter is never a good thing, so have a browse of ebay’s homepage to see how a large amount of information is spread out successfully.  

2. Consistent Branding

We’ve written a few web branding posts before: visual branding and social media branding. We are big fans here at Studio Culture! To keep it short and sweet: make sure that no matter what page your customers visit (including social media), they’ll know it belongs to you. Facebook has done this throughout their customer service pages by using similar illustrations to depict each help topic. You can do this for your own business using visuals, logos, colours, page formatting, and more. Be creative, but always keep your brand in mind.

3. Logos and Colours

As soon as you see blue, red, green, and yellow text what do you think of? And white text in a blue box? Google and Facebook both do logos and colours extremely well. Having a strong logo with a unique colour will help customers notice you on the web, which will evolve into recognition and brand loyalty. For businesses, that means sales! A great logo is the first step to strong online presence so definitely don’t underestimate it.

4. Clear Headings/Topics

Similar to the white space rule, you don’t ever want confusing headings or a hard to navigate main menu. It will fill the page with clutter, confuse your audience, and lose you a lot of traffic! ebay and Alibaba focus on product sales and therefore split their inventory by product type. Depending on your business, this is completely customisable – just think about what your customers will want to see and how they would want to navigate the site. Keep it clear and consistent and keep and eye on where people seem to be clicking the most so you can alter headings if need be! We wrote a whole article on conversion rate optimisation here if you want more information on how to do this.

5. Buttons and Social Media

Alibaba has social networking sites in clear view on their homepage. I’ve noticed a lot of websites stick their social media buttons out of sight, usually at the bottom of pages or not even on the homepage at all. Try moving buttons around and testing where they are most clicked on. Remember social media followings will boost word of mouth for free so it’s definitely worth the time to investigate.

For any web design (including the all-important logos!) or social media help, contact us today at Studio Culture. 

The post 5 Web Design Tips We Can Learn From Big Websites appeared first on Studio Culture.

CRO, conversion rate optimisation, is the process of designing a website or landing page with the goal of increasing the amount of page visitors who turn into customers. Higher CRO = higher ROI. 

How does it work?

You know CRO is important when Amazon employs a full time team that deals with the colour of the website and its buttons, constantly changing them and testing them to maximize sales. A full time team! The way it works is this: conversion rate equals total number of conversions divided by total number of visitors on the site. For example, if your website has 10,000 visitors and 100 conversions, that makes for a conversion rate of 1%. The higher the conversion rate, the higher the success of the goals of the website, whether it’s customers clicking a “buy now” button, signing up to an email newsletter, or anything in between.

What do I need to do?

Here are a few tips to improve your CRO:

• Test: Think about what you want. Email click-throughs? Facebook link clicks? Measure as many conversion goals as possible whenever you edit your site to see what gets affected and why.
• Editing a site’s copy is a simple, quick, and easy way to boost ROI and CTR. Be as direct as possible where you can. Cutting down on words can increase action as it takes your audience less effort to figure out what you are asking them to do.
• Images are also simple and quick to change and test. Think about what works for your audience, and test, test, test.  
• Technical aspects can take longer and cost more money to fix, so here it’s less about ROI and more about CTR. Loading time, server reliability, and website functions will all affect a user’s judgement of the website and your company.
• Also keep in mind user-friendliness. Just because a site has all the bells and whistles doesn’t mean it’s going to be effective. Think about exactly who your audience is and what they look for in an easy and informative website. Lower the barrier for entry on your landing page, increase the audience’s need to do something, and most of all – keep it simple.
• Observe: Record all of your results in order to make a decision. A good way to do this is to keep an online document (Google docs as an example) for everyone running the tests to keep records of what changed and how it affected conversion rates. At the end of testing you can go through the document and see what worked best and implement it straight away.
• Data: Record all types of data for whatever is relevant. Do your research and know your audience inside and out. This will help you justify changes and understand why certain things work over others. It will also show you and your team where the most time should be spent, whether it’s copy or images or technical details.

We also wrote an introduction post to SEO so have a read through it if you’re interested! For more information on CRO, SEO, web design, and everything else digital, contact us today at Studio Culture web design Brisbane. 

The post Introduction To Conversion Rate Optimisation And How To Use It To Benefit Your Business appeared first on Studio Culture.

First and foremost, blogging, if done correctly, can be fantastic for SEO. We’ve already written an introduction post to SEO here at the Studio Culture blog, but to sum up quickly: Search Engine Optimisation (some people call it inbound marketing nowadays to remove the negative stigma a lot of SEO has gained from some unethical practices in the market) can be a fantastic way to grow your customer base online through a number of ways, one of which includes creating blog posts that are informative, engaging and applicable.

Blogging relevant content backed with well-researched keywords can make a huge difference to web traffic and therefore exposure for your business and the products or services you have to offer. Remember to not just cram your posts full of keywords – this will actually hinder you rather than help you. Genuine, interesting, helpful posts will perform better for both SEO and audience responsiveness.

Blogs are also very easy to be shared and linked. If you create an interesting post that your readers want to share with their friends and followers, expect your blog to be crossposted to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and more. It’s been found that 77% of internet users read blogs so that means there’s a huge potential audience out there for you to reach.

You can also create infographics to go with your blog posts. Infographics are extremely shareable and create that added element of interest for the reader. As we stated in our last post, visuals are crucial for blogging as articles with images get 94% more traffic than those without. In the next few weeks we’ll compile a list of ways to make infographics for free online, but in the meantime check out Daily Infographic for some great ideas.

If you’re ever stuck for blogspiration have a look at what other blogs are being posted in your industry right now. Are there any important events coming up? A new product coming out soon? Any advice you can give? “Top tips” make for great post ideas. Remember, you can always write about your company too. Audiences love the “human element” to businesses. If you have a promotion coming up, let your readers know and get them excited about it. New staff member? Tell us about them. New store opening? Take a lot of great pictures and post them in a series of posts.

You also don’t always have to write to what’s trending at the moment, as you’ll be competing numerous other sources who are writing about what’s trending at the moment. Find stories and angles that are niche, original, yet still compelling.

Blogging presents you as an expert and a fountain of knowledge: you can inform and influence your audience with well-written and well-researched blog posts. If you need some help or more advice with blogging and related SEO benefits, let us know at Studio Culture – the digital marketing experts in Brisbane.

The post Why Blogging Can Be Great For Business appeared first on Studio Culture.

1. Blog articles with images get 94% more views than those without. Think about the last time you were looking through blogs. What enticed you to click “read more” and not scroll on by? It was probably interesting graphics and pictures as well as a catchy headline. We’re a visual bunch; we’ll always pick pictures over text. Keep that in mind when you’re blogging – and we’ll have a post up about blogging soon so watch out for it!

2. Visual data is processed 60,000 times faster than text. Our brains naturally read visual data much faster than text. If you want to grab your reader’s attention, do it visually! That will entice them to go further and work through the bulk of your message.

3. Companies that use infographics grow in traffic 12% more than those that don’t. Infographics are becoming more and more popular because they are so shareable and look great on social media. There are now multiple sites that feature great infographics which helps to drive traffic to the original content creator’s site. Daily Infographic, Cool Infographics, and Visual.Ly are just some examples of leading sites to give you some graphic inspiration or get your own content featured to promote your brand.

4. 46.1% of people say a website’s design is the number one criterion for discerning the credibility of the company. And in fact, you only have 0.3 seconds to make that first impression, so make it a good one! A well designed website with visually pleasing graphics and imagery automatically connects more to the audience than a poorly designed, heavily text-based site.

5. And of course, visual = sharable. All of these facts mean that people love visual information, and people will share what they love with their friends, families, and followers, bringing your business more brand awareness, more clicks, and more sales. Perfect!

For help with website design, visual content, and digital marketing contact us at Studio Culture. We’re an expert team and would love to help your brand go visual! 

The post 5 Reasons Why Your Brand Needs To Be Visual appeared first on Studio Culture.

1. 53% of millennials would rather lose their sense of smell than their phones
2. 77% of people are willing to opt-in to texts to receive coupons or deals
3. Half of B2B businesses sell through mobile
4. 91% of adults keep their mobile phones within reach at all times
5. 1 in 5 Facebook users are mobile-only
6. 9 out of 10 mobile searches lead to action or purchase intention
7. Mobile phone users pick up their smartphones over 100 times a day
8. There are 5x as many mobile phones in the world than computers
9. On average, people spend 3.3 hours per day on their smartphones
10. The world has more mobile phones than toothbrushes 

The world is a mobile place! Take advantage of this fact and target your audience through mobile marketing. For any social media, marketing, or mobile web help, contact us at Studio Culture today.

The post 10 Quick Facts: Mobile Phones appeared first on Studio Culture.

1. Use consistent but interesting profile information

Why should we follow you? Show us an interesting profile picture (this could be your logo or something that clearly relates to your business) with a relevant header image to match. Also make sure your bio information states exactly what your business is, what it does, and what it can offer to the consumer. If you post about a certain topic, throw that in as well! Twitter users in particular heavily pay attention to bio information so keep it strong. You can also link to your Twitter feed on your Facebook profile, your Instagram account on your Twitter page, etc, etc. Always make sure that your followers know exactly where to find you using consistency. Here are some examples of our Studio Culture social media profiles:

2. Post at the right time on each platform

Depending on your audience, you’ll probably need to post things to multiple platforms at different times throughout the day. Of course there are many tools out there to help you, but how are you going to know when to schedule the posts? It will vary from business to business, so always keep an eye on your activity and make diary entries for each day, focusing on what worked and what didn’t. In general, it has been found that Facebook engagement is 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays, and is 32% higher on weekends. Over on Twitter, tweets posted on Fridays and weekends, as well as tweets posted during the evening commuting hours generate more click-throughs. Mondays, mornings, and more than one post a day are the ingredients to a successful blog post, while most emails are opened from 5pm-10pm. 

3. Follow other accounts, network, and share content

It’s great to have a strong account set up, but you should think about networking within your industry online too. This will not only increase brand awareness, but it will help you to keep an eye on your competition which is never a bad thing! You can share content that’s relevant to your business, link to other blogs and social accounts, and get some great information you may not have seen before. 

4. Encourage engagement everywhere

If you’re on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, WordPress – anything! – make sure you are always aiming to up engagement. Ask for a retweet, ask for comments, ask for a like or a share! Just make sure you keep it relevant to whatever platform you’re on. Don’t automatically schedule a Facebook post from Twitter asking for a retweet, it won’t work. Let your audience know you understand them and you understand social media so you always get that engagement factor. 

Good luck! What are your top tips for successful branding on social media? And what platforms do you use? Contact us at Studio Culture for social media marketing help, website design, and more.

The post 4 Things You Need To Know About Great Branding On Social Media appeared first on Studio Culture.