Alex designed some trolls!
It’s been a ‘trolly’ good week this week, as Alex (our Graphic Designer) has drawn and illustrated an amazing troll for one of our clients! You can’t say you’re not impressed!
Posts
10 years of Twitter and some interesting facts that will blow your mind
Did you know that one of the early names considered for the platform was “Friendstalker”? We’re not so sure how successful the network would have been with that name or even if it would reach its 10th birthday; but, having done so and with over 305 million monthly users, we’re sharing some of the most impressive and fascinating facts about the platform to date.
Most retweeted tweet
Can you guess? That’s right, Ellen DeGeneres’ Oscar selfie, with her Hollywood A-lister friends, received over 3.3 million retweets on Twitter. Selfie-taking (for better or worse!) has now become a way of life for us all, to the extent that the term itself has now been accepted into our dictionaries. It somehow seems fitting then that the modern selfie phenomenon would lead to Twitter’s most significant sharing moment to date.
Most followed person
Somewhat surprisingly you might think, given the competition, American pop-star Katy Perry is Twitter’s most-followed person, boasting nearly 85 million users, which is more than the population of Spain. Katy is closely followed by pop prince Justin Bieber, with 78 million followers and pop princess, Taylor Swift, with 74 million.
Most tweeted emoji
To date, the most tweeted emoji with 14.5 billion impressions is the ‘tears of joy’ emoji. Personally, we like the aubergine!
Most tweeted hashtag
Hashtags have been named ‘the child of Twitter’. Their development enabled users to employ the hashtags to start a conversation, participate in trends and make new connections. The most popular hashtag to date is #FF – Follow Friday. For those of you not already #FF savvy, this is a popular phenomenon where users encourage their followers to follow new accounts; either because they’re new to the network or have done something worthy of recognition.
Total number of tweets
Since Twitter’s launch 10 years ago, the network has managed to generate 500 million tweets per day across the world. On average, 6,000 tweets are tweeted every second, which corresponds to over 350,000 tweets per minute.
Most geo-tagged location
Surprisingly, the most geo-tagged location is south-east Brazilian city Sao Paulo, having received over 638 million tags. Sao Paulo is classed as one of the world’s most popular cities with well over 11 million inhabitants.
With Twitter reaching its 10th birthday and generating 6,000 tweets per second, us marketers are intrigued to know what the numbers will look like on its 20th birthday? Will it even get there? With the rapid rise of rivals Instagram and Snapchat eating into Twitter’s audience and user base, some marketers are heralding its imminent demise. Will it become the next MySpace or have Twitter got something up their sleeve to secure its position in the social media platform hierarchy for another decade? Only time will tell…
If you’ve found any more fascinating facts about Twitter which you think is worthy of being added to our list, get in touch!
Guess who ‘hopped’ into the office?
The Easter Bunny ‘hopped’ into the TLC office today. Happy Easter!
Little Princess Trust
We’re all very proud of Abby who has donated 8 inches of her hair to the Little Princess Trust.
The Little Princess Trust provides real hair wigs to boys and girls across the UK and Ireland that have sadly lost their own hair through cancer treatment.
To find out more about the Little Princess Trust, click here.
Cheese straws anyone?
That’s correct – TLC have done another bake off, and you guessed it… Cheese straws! Congratulations Anna!
Technology shifts and their impact on content marketers
With technology continually evolving, content marketers need to ensure that they stay on top of the trends and technologies that will influence their audiences and marketing channels going forward. With this in mind, we take a look at some of the emerging technologies that are shaping the world of marketing this year. Is your business on top of them?
Social purchasing
Social purchasing has been a growing trend over the last few years. It involves consumers being able to purchase products and services direct from an organisation’s social media channel, rather than their website.
Facebook have lead the way with social purchasing, through their Facebook ads, but other social media channels, such as Pinterest, with their buyable pins (where consumers are able to buy products straight from the network without leaving the page) have supported them. According to a study by Deloitte, 47% of millennials say their purchases are influenced by social media, indicating social purchasing opportunities are only going to increase. Businesses that have to-date ignored social media marketing, could be missing out on a trick!
As you might expect, social media is the most popular marketing channel for marketers looking to share content and build an audience. With the rise of social purchasing, it does raise the interesting question of is this the beginning of the end for the traditional business website?
Live streaming
Streaming live video has become a growing trend, with apps like Meerkat, Twitch and Periscope appearing more frequently on our smart phones. Even mainstream social apps like Facebook have adopted their own live streaming features, and users are beginning to demand new ‘in-the-moment’ content, rather than pre-scheduled.
This could put a heavy burden on businesses large and small. Even large organisations, like Red Bull and Home Depot in the States, who rely heavily on video content to engage with their consumers, will be challenged to come up with genuinely engaging ‘in-the-moment’ content. It will be particularly interesting to see how video leader, YouTube, will respond to the growing trend, with their platform currently set up to deliver pre-recorded rather than live video.
Live streaming also offers opportunities for SMEs looking for closer engagement with their target audiences. It is important that marketers in smaller businesses don’t discount this exciting medium. It is not all about the big brands!
Mobile usage
Mobile messaging apps are beginning to transform the way consumers interact with brands, and Facebook is once again at the forefront of this trend. In March 2015, Facebook announced their partnership with Dutch airline KLM, giving KLM passengers the ability to access booking confirmations and boarding passes via their smartphone.
The practice of carrying out transactions through messaging apps is already expanding in China, where consumers are moving rapidly towards mobile purchasing, and away from online purchasing. The rapid rise of mobile purchasing will force businesses that offer an online-only service to adapt and evolve.
The dramatic growth of mobile usage and the rise of the smartphone is heralding the slow demise of traditional PCs and computers. For a long time, laptops and desktops were the preferred choice of consumers for researching and purchasing, but now the tables have turned. With the advent of 4G and Wi-Fi becoming ever more ubiquitous, amongst us in shops, cafes, restaurants and even banks, smartphones are becoming our primary means of running our lives. From a content marketers perspective, ensuring your content can be easily accessed on a mobile device is now a must.
If you are involved in content marketing and aren’t considering the impact of these and other technological developments on your strategy, you’ll be missing out on some very exciting opportunities.
We all survived skiing!
TLC thoroughly enjoyed skiing on the dry slopes at Calshot Activities Centre, and surprisingly all came back in one piece!
TLC’s Campaigns of the Month
With the New Year now gone and Easter on the horizon, it is a good time to review how some of the bigger brands have been boosting their marketing in early 2016 (or end of Dec 15 in one case!). Whose campaigns have stood out and why? We’re taking a look back at 3 of the more innovative and quirky campaigns that kicked off the year, just in case you missed them.
We saw pop-up shops from the likes of Crème Egg and Skittles and live-streaming billboards from Land Rover. Take a look at the details below to see if you can draw inspiration from any of them.
Crème Egg Café
January 22nd was an exciting day for all London-based Cadbury Crème Egg lovers, with a new Crème Egg Pop-Up Café opening in Soho, London.
The café is spread across 3 floors, where consumers are able to order takeaway Crème Egg toasties on the first floor, Crème Egg brownies and even Crème Eggs with soldiers on the second floor, and access a Crème Egg ball pool on the third.
According to EventBrite, the tickets were on sale 3 days prior to the opening, and were sold out by the time the café was scheduled to open. The café is open from 5pm Friday – Sunday for 7 weeks, and with nearly every day sold out, I think we can all agree that this is a highly successful campaign.
Land Rover
Land Rover’s Instagram filter OOH billboards definitely brought a new perspective to the people of London and Leeds last month, as part of their #Hibernot campaign.
Land Rover transformed the cities’ landscapes with their Instagram-like live filters on digital billboards, encouraging consumers to ‘see winter differently’. The billboards displayed live images of the immediate area and then applied their own ‘Land Rover filter’, encouraging consumers to follow their Instagram page, and get out and about to explore the season by taking a drive.
Skittles Pawn Shop
Wrigley-owned sweet brand, Skittles, opened a pop-up shop in Toronto on 26th December for 4 days. Consumers were able to exchange unwanted goods for sweets. Now, we understand that this campaign wasn’t quite in January, but we loved the idea so much we wanted to include it.
Consumers were encouraged to bring any items that they no longer wanted, and receive Skittles for them. The store particularly promoted novelty gifts, such as knitted clothing and cuddly toys. All items received were donated to the Goodwill ReUse centre in Toronto’s Scarborough district.
To extend the reach of the campaign, Skittles launched an accompanying digital campaign for those who weren’t in the area at the time, where fans could see how much their unwanted items were worth in exchange for Skittles.
We loved these campaigns and look forward to what 2016 has in store for us. Stay tuned for the best marketing campaigns of February!
Christmas came early!
Thanks to our clients, Green Team Interiors, Christmas came early in the TLC office today!
Camkids Winter 2015/16 Newsletter
TLC proudly sponsors Camkids – The Cambodian Children’s Charity, and this week we received our Winter 2015/16 Newsletter. Camkids are an amazing charity who supports less-fortunate children in Cambodia with parents who are unable to support them.
Camkids have had a great start to the year, as they are now a fully-registered International Non-Governmental Organisation (INGO), which underlines their commitment to providing quality education, nutrition, healthcare and development to the children of Cambodia.
To see what Camkids have been up to, click here to read the Winter Newsletter in full.