My blog

Tag: social media

  • Who is leading the SEO and digital marketing conversation?

    Patrick Crowder

    Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can be a tricky topic. You may often hear the argument that while search engines like Google once displayed a directory of the internet, they now indirectly determine the content of the internet. While this may be an uncomfortable thought, if a business or publication wants to get the word out about their operation, they now have no choice but to consider where they stand on a search engine’s homepage.

    If someone in the UK were to search “basketball”, for instance, then currently what they would find is a Wikipedia entry about the sport, followed by the NBA’s official website, then thirdly the homepage of Basketball England. The first company link to appear is Nike, which takes you to their basketball-focused shop. Nike does not hold the top spot by accident. The higher a webpage is in the results of a related search, the more likely people are to click on that webpage, and therefore the more likely people are to buy or consume media from that webpage. As opposed to the early days of the internet, when there weren’t too many articles, blogs, or services offering the same things, now digital marketing has become a contest of relevance.
    A study conducted by the B2B software and SEO company Rock the Rankings has found the most influential people in SEO and digital marketing by analysing their social media profiles. The list has been decided by taking into account engagement, number of posts, mentions, and number of followers on Twitter and LinkedIn.

    The role of the digital marketer is becoming more important by the day, though their critical role is often performed in the background. According to Rock the Rankings, the SEO industry is currently worth $80 billion (£70.17 billion) and is projected to grow quickly, so the prominent people identified by this study no doubt carry significant influence.

    The most influential figure overall was found to be Dharmesh Shah from the software company HubSpot. The Hubspot co-founder and Chief Technology Officer has high numbers across the board – with 296,500 Twitter followers and 1,036,649 LinkedIn followers, he has cultivated a large audience which engages at the respectable rate of .16%.

    By examining specific elements of these figures’ social media presence, we can see not only what level of influence, but also what kind of influence they hold. Google’s Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller, for example, has far fewer Twitter followers than others on the list at 139,233, but he has the most Twitter mentions. This points to the idea that his followers are keen to receive his advice and opinions, and also to be the first to hear what’s coming next from Google.

    Entrepreneur, investor, and online marketing expert John Rampton with 1,257,792 Twitter followers has the most by far. However, the founder of the online payment and productivity companies Due and Calendar has a 0% engagement rate, according to the study. While that does not mean that his influence is weak, it does speak to the way his multitudinous followers interact with his content.

    There are many ways to create influence through social media, and one is the way of prolific Tweet author Pam Moore. The in-demand keynote speaker and MarketingNutz founder has about a fifth of the followers of John Rampton, but she has managed an incredible 134,776 Tweets!

    In general, influence, and especially engagement, are not easy things to foster quickly. It takes a lot of quiet, consistent dedication over time to see the numbers of these professionals, and that is a skill which takes incredible patience and faith. As SEO becomes more important to find and maintain an online audience, these professionals serve as examples of what is possible – so if you’re looking to grow your online business or social media presence, it may be worth taking a few tricks from their books.

     

    Read about how AI is affecting the world of recruitment here

  • Meggie Foster: “Don’t wait for the phone to ring. Just do it yourself”

    Meggie Foster: “Don’t wait for the phone to ring. Just do it yourself”

    Emily Prescott

    Meggie Foster has had a good pandemic. You may not recognise the name but if you have ever ventured onto Twitter or TikTok, you will know the face.

    When the virus hit, the 27-year-old trained actor was working in an office. She dreamed of performing but because London is so “bliming expensive” and the industry is “crammed full” of talent she was working a 9-5 job hoping a door into the creative industry would somehow open for her.

    Finally, furlough gave her the time to focus on her creative career and she started posting videos online featuring lip-syncs of politicians and celebrities, much to the delight of millions of people in desperate need of some whimsy.  

    One video, which has been viewed more than 1.5 million times, uses the audio clip of the home secretary’s April press briefing announcement, that there had been “300,034,974,000” coronavirus tests on one day. Foster lip-synced Priti Patel’s announcement while swigging from bottles of spirits and smoking throughout, before getting out a roll of clingfilm and attempting to use it as a facemask.  

    In another, which has received nearly 20,000 likes, Meggie lip-syncs an interview between ITV news presenter Tom Bradby and Meghan Markle in which Markle admits she struggles with life as a royal. Meggie’s Bradby plays the violin and Meghan wipes her tears with a £50 note. 

    She is in demand. Foster took a call from Robert Peston’s production company asking if she could come up with a video mocking his biggest blooper. She reenacted the awkward moment Peston appeared to say an expletive when the chancellor asked for his question during a press briefing. 

    Foster playfully presents the ridiculousness of people’s own words with her perfectly timed syncs, exaggerated facial expressions and costumes (which are often borrowed from her Dad’s wardrobe).  

    “I think it’s sort of an eye opener that you can actually do it yourself and not wait for the phone to ring. I was definitely that person to wait and see if anything would happen. I’d never sort of gone out there and done it myself and maybe that was because I was scared, ” Foster tells us.  

    Her apprehension about putting herself online is understandable, but thankfully, she has not encountered too much meanness.

    “I haven’t really got too much negativity. With acting I knew people could be quite vicious about it. Even on your looks and stuff like that, especially for a girl you’ve got a load of pressures on looks and stuff like that. I’m actually really surprised how I haven’t got comments about how I look. I am really shocked about that actually.”

    She speaks with such buoyancy and enthusiasm, it is easy to believe that she would not be too disheartened by a few nasty comments.  

    “I have got quite a thick skin, I’m quite a tough cookie when it comes to stuff like trolls. I think if you don’t want to watch them, if you don’t find them funny then just don’t watch them or don’t follow me, it’s as simple as that. I am not really bothered what people like that think. Obviously if the majority of people were saying that but they’re not. The majority of people have been overwhelmingly positive.” 

    Despite her new-found online stardom, Foster is yet to feel the full force of her fame, she tells us from her family home in Oxfordshire.  

    “A few people sort of recognised me and things like that but because we have been in lockdown I haven’t been out too much and wearing a mask around, no one can see my face anyway.

    “I feel like I am not famous because I have been stuck in my childhood bedroom, with my mum and dad sort of nagging me to pick up my clothes from the floor. So I feel like I’m back at school if anything but we will see. We will see what happens.” 

    When I first reached out to Meggie with an interview request in April, she politely declined. She later said she had taken the advice of her journalist brother and was composing herself before speaking to the media. Since then, the savvy comedian has featured in The Times and on Lorraine. Now she has an agent and is thinking about next steps. 

    “I do worry that it is getting boring. I know lip-syncing is funny but I don’t want to bore people now so I’m trying to spread my wings a bit and see whether there is any more life in other directions. Dreaming big I would love to have the Meggie show.”

    Foster, who is continuing on her upward trajectory, has some advice for budding actors and comedians.  

    “I think my main piece of advice would be: do it yourself. Don’t wait for that phone to ring you know, you can create stuff yourself if the work is not coming to you, especially now when theatres are closed. 

    “If you have got sort of, I don’t want to be cringe, but a dream or a passion or something you want to get to: you can do it. You can create your own luck.” 

  • Opinion: Diana Blamires on the need for live learning in the home

    Opinion: Diana Blamires on the need for live learning in the home

    Diana Blamires

    The recent plummet back into homeschooling has shown that the gulf between setting homework and live classes could not be wider. In some cases, it will mean the difference between passing and failing GCSEs, or worse, a career succeeding or failing.

    Assiduous students will most likely succeed with or without live sessions, but there is a huge swathe who will lose out if there isn’t a full diet of Zoom-style live engagement every day. This is why MP and Chairman of the Education Select Commitee Robert Halfon’s decision to call for the government and Ofsted to urgently come up with detailed guidance for online provision is so well-timed.

    Boys are most vulnerable; peer pressure dictates that set work should be done as fast as possible, not as well as possible, and the rest of the day is usually spent on the playstation. Once we hit the anniversary of the first lockdown, some students will have lost almost a year of their lives to such recreations. They will have shot down their chances of success with too much time spent on the wrong kind of screen.

    What’s more, lazy students forfeit their place on the top table by pretending to do their work when in fact they are inputting random answers just to get the work done. The students whose parents have time to check that Seesaw, an online learning app, hasn’t been swapped for social media will succeed. It’s easy to look like you’re top of the class when you’re on Tik Tok.

    Social media depicts earnest children and parents at the kitchen table with laptops, but don’t be deceived: for those with challenging children the struggle is untenable. When asked to do set work, many children react with defiance. This leads to the offering of sanctions or bribes, and the defiance continues. Some children are immune to sanctions and bribes, and for a significant number of challenging children no work is done. And parents, working from home, are most likely at their wits’ end.

    This scenario is being played out in countless homes by families (or worse, single parents) every day. Some parents resort to violence or the child lashes out, and the situation escalates. Zoom work calls are abandoned and siblings are left traumatised; parents have breakdowns; children struggle with their mental health. Remote homework has the potential to morph into more serious situations and bring about new challenges for exhausted parents.

    Asking a child to attend a live lesson, however, is not often met with the same defiance. Children want to be with their friends in real time as they are desperately missing interaction. After face-to-face interactions, live lessons are the next best thing. And it is not just private schools who get a glowing report. Some state schools are offering a full timetable of live lessons, and those at the top of the class in the state sector have proved it can be done. 

    Some childrens’ futures are being needlessly thrown down the drain. It’s time to act; it doesn’t take a GCSE in computing to provide a week of live lessons, and they will change lives.

    Diana Blamires is an education PR consultant