What should marketers and brands do about Google+?

What brands and marketers should do about Google+

Get involved!

Google+ is not a shiny new tool or an innovative beta social media platform anymore. 6S Marketing has been telling the world for a few months to get involved with Google+. Chris Breikss insisted during his presentation during the social media week way back in September that Google+ was going to play a big role in the social media and search results world and said that brands and marketers should jump on board as soon as possible. We told you that Google+ business pages should not be ignored, and we gave you tips and tricks on how to use Google+.

In this blog post, I am not going to try and convince you to get a Google+ page by giving the top 10 or top 20 reasons why you should get one. I believe the following two should be enough: Read More

Custom Snippets and Titles in SERP’s

A while back, you may have noticed that meta descriptions shown in the SERP’s changed a bit – compared to what is actually written in the meta tag. Google began to allow advertisers to go beyond the standard character limits and would then customize the meta description result to best match the users query.

Matt Cutts has been talking about these types of adjustments to snippets and titles since 2009 however, this is the first time I’ve witnessed the customization of a title tag specifically. I noticed this change while looking at rankings for one of my clients – they were ranking on the first page for a keyword but the title tag was only 3 words long. I immediately thought to myself “well there’s no way I would have left the homepage title tag at 3 words long”… so I investigated. What I found, was that Google had actually taken the tail end of my title tag (which was over the character limit) to better match the users search. Read More

The Most Influential Brands in Canada 2011

Our first Ad Week Toronto event on Tuesday, January 24th was the Ipsos Most Influential Brands in Canada presentation by Ipsos Reid President Market Research Canada East Steve Levy.

** Please excuse the graphic, I took a photo of the list with my iPhone and have not been able to find the complete list online… **

To determine the most influential brands in Canada, Ipsos developed an influence index where brands could obtain points ranging from 14 to a total of 427, the latter being the most influential.
The presentation did not go into detail as to how they polled Canadians, or the type of survey used but did say that it was completed November 23rd – 30th, 2011 by 1013 Canadians.

The 1013 respondents were polled and asked to identify the brands that they identified with in the following ways (known as the 6 dimensions of influence): relevance to the consumer, the brand is leading edge, shows corporate citizenship, has a presence, is engaging and trustworthy. The 100 brands in the survey were based on their advertising spend.

Levy stated that in order to determine the influence the top 100 brands held over each Canadian consumer “needed to make the consumer aware of something new, change their life in someway in their everyday life, make their life more interesting, offer something  really important in the world today, or be fundamental to the consumers life, or changed the way the consumer shops”.

The Top 10 Most Influential Brands in Canada Are: Read More

Google+ Infographic: Google Search Plus Your World

Google Plus “Search Your Your World” is a huge game changer for the social search industry. Growing at an astonishing rate of 625,000 Google+ subscribers per day, the social network is in line to surpass Facebook and Twitter to become the most widely used social network in the world. Google+ already has 90 million users and is on pace to break through the 100 million user mark in February 2012. Read More

Advertising Week Toronto Opening Breakfast

200 of Canada’s most creative and talented advertising professionals gathered at the Toronto Reference Library this morning for the Advertising Week Toronto opening breakfast. To kick things off an amazing breakfast was prepared by Top Chef Canada’s Mark McEwan. A pretty wonderful and delicious way to start off the week! His creation was eggs benny, served on toasted brioche and paired with caramelized onion potatoes.  It was simply amazing. Read More

North Shore Search & Rescue Honored by the Vancouver Police Department

When someone needs help finding a missing person, they turn to the Vancouver Police (VPD). When the VPD needs help finding a missing person, they turn to the North Shore Search and Rescue Team (NSR).  On Thursday, January 19th, our Managing Director and co-founder of 6S Marketing, John Blown, attended an awards ceremony with his fellow NSR volunteers where NSR was honored by the VPD for its dedication to community service. Read More

Offer Extensions: How To Guide for AdWords Setup

Last week, we introduced Google’s new Offer Extensions, what it is, and how you can use it. Today, we will talk about the business implications of this new type of extension and how it will impact brands, businesses and marketers online. This blog post also provides a thorough walk-through on how to properly set up Offer Extensions in your Adwords account. Read More

Advertising Week 2012: Events To Look Forward To

Advertising Week 2012 is taking place in Toronto this month from the 23^rd – 27^th. The annual event is Canada’s largest ad industry gathering and brings together many of the ad-world’s top thought leaders.  The week is full of workshops, speakers, award galas and of course wouldn’t be complete without some parties – all of which are to recognize the accomplishments of the Canadian communications industry.  

Top Industry Speakers

Facebook – Jordan Banks

If you’re familiar with 6S Marketing you know we love all-things Facebook. The opening lunch for Ad Week on the 23rd features Jordan Banks as the keynote speaker – the Managing Director of Facebook Canada. It’s always exciting to hear from top industry experts like Jordan to gain valuable insights and stats directly from “the horse’s mouth”. In April 2011 we had the privilege of having Alfredo Tan, the National Director of Facebook Canada, come into the 6S office where he offered some mind blowing Canadian Facebook usage statistics which we were then able to illustrate in an infographic for our readers. I’m hoping to be able to come out of Ad Week with some more stats and knowledge about the all-mighty Facebook and more specifically a more in-depth understanding of how Canadian businesses are using the social network. Read More

Adwords Offer Extensions Allow You to Add Coupons, Discounts & Rebates to your Advertising Campaigns

Offer Extensions: New Ad Extension for AdWords

One of Google’s latest ad innovations is the new Offer Extensions for Google AdWords.

This blog post will introduce what Offer Extensions is, what it can do and why you need it in your online advertising campaigns. Read More

Google Search Plus Your World: you will never search the same way again.

What’s new with Google?

If you have a Google+ account and use Google.com to search the web, you may have noticed something different this morning:

These little icons showed up at the top right of your Google Search page. What are they and what do they do? In this blog post, I will explain what Google Search Plus Your World is. Next week, I will post a follow up blog post about what brands and marketers should do to take advantage of Google+ and this new feature, with an awesome infographic.

Google Search plus Your World

Yesterday (January 10^th), Google announced the launch of Google Search Plus Your World. Google Search Plus Your World integrates personalized results into the regular Google search results. By clicking the left icon, the results will switch to include Google+ data and Picasa photos on the topic you researched. The icon on the right will switch you back to typical web search results. Read More