The main event in May was Google’s I/O developer conference in San Francisco on the 19th & 20th of June where they announced the latest developments in Chrome, Android OS and their biggest announcement Google TV. By combining the TV that you already know with the freedom and power of the Internet, Google plan to create a more satisfying viewing experience. With the help of Sony and Logitech Google TV will be built into TVs, set-top boxes and Blu-Ray players of the future.

Google announce Google TV

A big birthday was celebrated at the end of April with YouTube turning 5 and the month of May was used to celebrate and look back at who became famous thanks to YouTube. The first ever video to be uploaded onto YouTube on April 23rd 2005 at 8:27pm and thankfully people have got a little more creative with their cameras since that first ever YouTube video.

YouTube celebrates it’s 5th Birthday

A rumour started in May that made some people panic and others jump for joy. TechCrunch reported that the relationship between Zynga (makers of Farmville) and Facebook had reached a low resulting in Zynga threatening to pull Farmville off Facebook because of the intended 30% Facebook tax on game credits. This rumour was scotched when Zynga and Facebook signed a 5 year strategic partnership, so it looks like we will see more notifications of people looking for nails to help build their barns

Facebook and Zynga sign a 5 year deal

The location based social media game Foursquare received a huge boost in May when it was announced that both Starbucks and Domino’s plan to start official campaigns offering the Mayors of their branches receive special offers. Domino’s offer of a free Pizza each week to the mayor sounds a lot more appealing then Starbucks $1 off but it’s a step in the right direction and will show how Geolocation can be used as a viable marketing tool.

Starbucks launch nationwide Foursquare campaign in USA

Domino’s Launch Foursquare campaign in the UK

Facebook has been having a tough time of it lately with all the news about its privacy settings and their CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, admitting they had made mistakes. It was the controversy with a particular page that resulted in the biggest reaction. A Facebook page created after the 200th episode of South Park invited people to draw images of the profit Mohammed. This resulted in protests followed by the banning of the whole Facebook site in Pakistan.

Facebook is banned in Pakistan

As we move into June let’s hope the nice weather continues and be sure to check the next Fantastic 5 update on July 2nd

The relationship between Apple and Adobe took a major turn for the worst with a post by Apple about the failings of Adobe Flash and how it is not suitable for mobile devices, something that Adobe have been working hard on improving. This was then followed by an announcement by Adobe confirming that they will moving away from Apple and concentrating on getting flash onto Android, Microsoft and Nokia devices.

Apple and Adobe’s close relationship is getting strained

People have been getting from point A to point B thanks to Sat Nav for many years but the first nail in what could be Garmin’s and TomTom’s coffin has been launched. Satellite Navigation used to require a specific device and more recently just an application on a smart phone, all of which cost money. Google has caused panic in the Sat Nav companies by launching Google Nav as a free service, which utilizes Google maps and takes advantage of Street View, on their Android OS. Could this be the end of paid Sat Nav, especially when it is released on the iPhone soon?

Google Launch their free Satellite Navigation System

Where do you go to watch the latest premiership highlights if you miss Match of the Day at the weekend? Next season you will be able to find them all at Yahoo. Yahoo has secured the exclusive UK online highlights rights for the English Premier League from 2010 to 2013.

Yahoo wins Premier League online highlights rights

Google has been flexing it’s financial muscles this past year and in April we saw them acquire a number of companies and the Internet light up with speculations as to what their intentions are. One of the acquisitions that caused the biggest stir was that of Agnilux, which is a start-up created by ex-Apple employees. Others this month include the Widget creator LabPixies, Web video Platform Episodic and recently the BumpTop application.

Google goes on a spending Spree

Much to the disappointment of our Studio Manager Drew, Palm announced that it was up for sale looking for a buyer to keep it alive. Palm was bought by HP as what I think could be a potential quick and easy way into the booming mobile market for them. Palm was a trailblazer in handheld devices but does the name still have the same clout as it did or has it gone forgotten by a generation wanting iPhones and Androids?

Palm is bought by HP

See you next month

One of the big topics of January was the battle between Google and China over it’s censorship of search results. It started with a cyber attack on Google originating from China, believed to be aimed towards Human Rights Activists involved in issues, such as Tibet.

• Google lifts censorship on China’s search results

Internet Explorer (IE) took a hit from the German and French governments when they both advised their people to find alternatives to using Microsoft’s browser in order to protect themselves from online attacks.

• Germany & France warn against using IE

Google also featured heavily in the news thanks to the launch of its first smart phone, the Nexus One. Many smart phones on the market use Google’s operating system Android, but this is the first attempt by the Mountain View Giant to enter the handheld market.

• Google launches Nexus One

Social Media websites, such as twitter, have caused problems for sports teams when their players share too much. In the summer Darren Bent was tweeting about his potential transfer to Sunderland and recently Ryan Babel vented his frustration about Liverpool’s selections on his twitter account. This resulted in both Manchester United and Manchester City banning their players from having twitter accounts.

• Manchester United ban Twitter
• Manchester City ban social media sites

Finally we have to mention Apple’s big announcement of January, the iPad. Apple once again got the world excited and sitting on the edge of their seats awaiting for Steve Job to take to the stage and reveal the latest toy.

• Apple launches iPad

Now all that is left is to wait and see what February has in store for us.

Since then we have been driving forward an SEO campaign aimed at dominating the market across Google, Yahoo and Bing, for "Manchester Airport Parking" and all related keywords and from a standing start, the green shoots of our industry are starting emerge (it must be all that rain we had over July and August?)

It hasn’t proved an easy task and there is still a long way to go to break the Search Engine monopoly of the large booking agents, but things are definitely moving in the right direction.

So in the last two months, what have we achieved? Well, at the start of the campaign we looked to make an immediate impact on the market by targeting keywords such as "cheap manchester airport parking" and we felt that if we could establish a solid presence with these we would then have the foundations in place to attack the primary keyword, "cheap parking manchester airport"

For each of the keywords we were targeting, our starting position was predominantly outside the top 500 on Google Yahoo and Bing. However, an aggressive campaign of on-site and off-site optimisation saw these positions sore to the top 3 on Yahoo and MSN and onto page 1 of Google.

However, the great success came with the keyword "manchester airport parking" a keyword with 100% advertiser competition and one that would cost up to £20,000 / month to be top of the PPC Sponsored listings. From no-where, we have witnessed a steady rise up the rankings to where we currently reside in position 22, 24 and 19 on Google, Yahoo and Bing respectively.

Now I know there will be choruses declaring you’re either page 1 of Google or no-where, and I agree, however, this position now gives us a great opportunity to aggressively target the keyword and drag it up to its rightful place and with conversion rate from clicks to bookings of over 25% we know if we can drive in the traffic, the site we built will make the customers stick.

KMP is a keen supporter of the Year in Industry initiative and have been helping students through their first forays into the professional world for 9 consecutive years, with many returning after graduation to become valued long-term employees.

Tim Brook has been appointed as our Junior Front-End Developer and will be working on a broad project portfolio including client-based and internal projects. A student of Interactive Multimedia, Tim is a welcome addition to our Creative team and will be working alongside our designers, front-end developers and multimedia experts.

Graham Smith, a placement student from Nottingham Trent University currently studying Bsc (Hons) Computer Systems Engineering is joining our Technical team and will be working on back-end development across all of our client and internal projects.

We look forward to working with them both this year and helping them on their way into this industry. Good luck guys!

Manchester Airport’s twitter profile

Last week we launched two applications that will help the airport make the most of this new channel and add real value to their twitter followers.

Live flight info via Twitter

Thanks to a sprinkling of API magic dust, followers of @manairport can now subscribe to receive live flight status updates by twitter direct message. Here’s how it works:

• Follow @manairport and they’ll follow you right back. This is important as the service uses direct messaging and you can only send DMs to users who are following you.
• Send a DM containing your flight number. You receive confirmation immediately and a status update as soon as the app can retrieve it. The application uses the same information as the Arrival and Departure boards. As long as your flight is due to arrive or depart no more than 12 hours in the future, the app will have information for you. If it doesn’t you will be sent a link to the full flight list.
• You will receive an update by DM every time the status of your chosen flight(s) changes until the plane has taken of (for departures) or the passengers are collecting their baggage (for arrivals). If you wish to stop receiving updates before then simply send a DM with the word CANCEL.

Try it out yourself right now!

(This example should work everyday between 8.20am and 10.20pm)

Follow for Vouchers, Retweet for prizes

Everyone likes free stuff, right? This is a campaign which aims to increase twitter followers and also boost retail and catering sales at the airport with the use of discount vouchers.

People arriving at www.manchesterairport.co.uk/twitter are invited to connect with the application to confirm they are following @manairport. Once this is confirmed the user is given access to 5 special discount vouchers that can be used in the airport retail and catering outlets.

They are also invited to Tweet a prepared message in order to be entered into a prize draw with a chance to win £500 worth of goods from Manchester Airport retail plus a stay in a hotel and free airport parking. The tweet can be sent from right there within the app or manually.

The winner is selected at random from all of the retweets that our twitterbot finds.

Why not enter now to grab your vouchers and be in the prize draw?

Cadbury’s Creme Egg Twisted

In order to promote their new chocolate bar – “Twisted”. Cadbury have come up with the C.I.A. (Cadbury Intelligence Agency) in which you can enroll and then solve clues to track down escaped Twisted Bars on a map. They’ve got many of the social media bases covered with Twitter, Facebook and Bebo profiles.

Do you want to become a C.I.A. Agent?

So far nearly 10,000 users are registered on the site, and another 52,500 have become friends or fans on the social network pages. This is a reasonable number of participants but it’s possible that they could have done better. The different elements of the site feel disjointed and there is little opportunity or incentive to participate with other people. The social network pages have not fostered much in the way of discussion or media submissions so the amount of shareable content is mostly limited to that produced by the campaign agency.

Nothing To Hide – Air New Zealand

In order to let people know that they don’t add hidden charges onto their fares, Air New Zealand have created the “Nothing To Hide” campaign. They persuaded members of their staff to appear in promotional videos wearing body-painted uniforms. The videos a very tastefully done and the humor comes from the reactions of people in the airport and on board the plane.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In terms of interactivity, there is little direct participation between Air New Zealand and the viewers however by creating compelling content and using YouTube as a distribution platform (making the videos easy to share), they have achieved the goal of creating awareness. At the time of writing the four videos have racked up over 3.5 million views between them.

Prizes for Twitter Mentions

Creating brand awareness by giving stuff away is not a new idea, however recently Twitter has been the platform of choice for these campaigns. It’s worth noting that the most successful campaigns are the ones that appeal to typical Twitter users, giving away laptops and mobile phones is likely to be more popular than boxes of cereal or spa days.

SquareSpace

Squarespace (an online website building service) created a campaign in which they decided to give away an iPhone every day for 30 days to a randomly selected Twitter user who had posted an update including the tag “#squarespace”.

Things have not run completely smoothly for Squarespace however. Once it became apparent that Squarespace were giving away $200 Apple gift certificates, which could be use to purchase an iPhone (or any other Apple products), question began to be asked over whether the campaign was being deceptively marketed.

The results were still quite impressive, #squarespace was a regular entry in Twitter’s trending topics for several days and peaked at 0.8% share of all Twitter posts – not bad for a total of $6000 in prizes.

Squarespace's share of Twitter posts

MoonFruit

Following Squarespace’s lead, Moonfruit (another online site building service) created a campaign to celebrate their 10th anniversary by giving away 10 MacBook Pros to Twitter users posting the “#moonfruit” tag. The response has been spectacular even in the face of other events dominating Twitter’s traffic.

A simple call to action with a desirable prize

Just a couple of days into the promotion, the term Moonfruit exceeded 2% of all Twitter posts

Moonfruit's share of Twitter posts

Having learnt from the criticism given to Squarespace, Moonfruit have been very clear in their offering – a MacBook Pro, delivered to your door, wherever you are.

What are the important factors here?

Be creative – Cadbury and Air New Zealand score by coming up with original and entertaining content, prompting people to share it with their friends.

Be relevant – Squarespace and Moonfruit have used peoples desire to own fancy hardware to motivate them into spreading the brandname in a simple case of grabbing as much traffic as possible

In both cases, the measured output is a volume of online mentions, something which is more relevant than ever as real-time search is starting to become a major source of online attention.

Over the years we’ve continued to develop MessageSender, creating PromoSender for organisations with a wholesale or branch structure. Using PromoSender Marketeers centrally can send standard emails to local offices or to their retailers. These can be customised and sent to local databases, and the central marketing team could see the results across the board.

The latest version of MessageSender has just been released, and has stronger CRM and permission marketing functionality, though, as ever, the emphasis remains on keeping MessageSender easy-to-use. For example, reporting can be done in more ways, and a simple click at the top of any column sorts the data by that field.

In terms of permission marketing and managing customer details, several improvements have been made:

• Email recipients can link to a form to subscribe to your news, specifying which of your services they would like to be kept updated about.
• Recipients can also adjust their name, address and preferences
• A double opt-in – sending an email to a subscriber asking them to click on a link to subscribe. When this option is selected, recipients won’t receive emails until they have confirmed their address.
• Automated welcome emails that, if chosen, can be a simple text email or full HTML based on users existing email templates.

As well as building a simple tool to make email campaigns as pain-free as possible, KMP also offers a good back-up service and help over the phone. This is a major reason for the continuing success of MessageSender, and why organisations such as Manchester Airport, Punch Taverns and Chester Zoo use MessageSender for their email campaigns.

To see a demonstration of the latest version of MessageSender, either over the phone or in your offices, give Julie Abbott a call on 0161 429 1498 to arrange a suitable time.

The workshop will be hosted by KMP’s Content Strategist, Dave Kinsella along with Andrew Lloyd Gordon, a digital marketing trainer who often hosts courses on behalf of e-consultancy. 

The aim of the workshop is to show you how you can manage your brand reputation and engage consumers with your brand online.  Dave and Andrew will guide you through this half-day workshop with a combination of practical training sessions and educational tips and advice.

We will be providing an introduction to blogging and online PR, explaining what it is, how it differs to traditional PR and an overview of the changing media landscape.

Tickets are available at an early-bird discount of £125 + VAT. Book now!

However, if you weren’t one of the lucky ones in attendance, How-Do have created a short video of the highlights of the evening, to make sure that no one missed out.

You can view the video below:

Click here to view the embedded video.