It’s officially Santa time and Boom has been getting into the festive spirit.
Our next Drink Digital event is fast approaching, and we’re really keen to see 2019 kick off with a bang, so do come and join us for some digital marketing fun if you can! There’s free food too.
In Decembers digital marketing round up, we take a look at dodgy dealings on Amazon, domain authority metrics and facts about pizza… it’s all relevant, promise!
Ian Lockwood
Director
Prime and Punishment: Dirty dealing in the $175 billion Amazon Marketplace
by Josh Dzieza (@joshdzieza)
This is a long read and frankly a frightening one if you rely on Amazon for a substantial amount of your sales. The ease with which either the system or competitors can get your account suspended through buying reviews for your products or reporting them as dangerous, and the difficulty in getting through the appeals system to reinstate it are equally troubling. The tale of a company losing control of their own product listings despite them being patented and trademarked, because a competitor registered the original company’s Amazon account name as a trademark, is particularly eyebrow-raising.
Incidentally, if you want to understand more about how the increasing monopolization of industries is harming the economy, a book I received for Christmas called The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition is an excellent read. Maybe just don’t buy it from Amazon…
Wayne Barker
Director of Online Marketing
Interviewing Google’s John Mueller at SearchLove: domain authority metrics, sub-domains vs. sub-folders and more
by Will Critchlow (@willcritchlow) A great interview from Will Critchlow with Googler, John Mueller – it even comes with a dissection from Will on the questions he didn’t ask and the ones he feels he should have pushed further.
There are a couple of not so shocking revelations in the interview – who knew that Google might treat subdomains different, huh? Who knew that they did have a domain level authority score?
It’s nice to get these things actually confirmed!
Getting the Most out of Google Chrome for Technical SEO
by Saijo George (@sajiogeorge) So there are a bunch of tools out there that can help with your technical SEO – some go to’s for us, Sitebulb and Botify. But what if you need to do it without the budget for tools? Impossible, right?
Well no.
Sajio runs through some of the cool stuff that you can actually do with Chrome Developer Tools. Essential reading – you will learn something new, I promise.
A couple of tools that have piqued my interest recently:
A handy little tool for quickly removing the background on any image – no Photoshop skills required.
A handy little site that curates all the Google Sheets that you could possibly need for running digital marketing campaigns.
James Walsh
Head of Production
10 eCommerce trends for 2019
by Absolunet (@absolunet) Although this has a US focus, everything that happens there trickles over here eventually (waves begrudgingly at Black Friday). Worth checking back in on this little mini-site every year for a pleasant magazine style lunchtime read about the broad-scale things predicted to happen to eCommerce this year.
Amy Hunt
Digital Marketing Client Manager
Five Ways To Inspire Creativity
by Eve Ash (@eveash) As an SEO, sometimes it can be difficult to just “turn on” the creativity. This short list gives you a few inspiring tips to help you on your way to creative genius. It’s also a great one to add to your favourites, should you need a little boost in the future.
Finding Your Muse: 12 Ways to Inspire Creativity for Marketing Professionals
by Forbes Agency Council (@Forbes_Agency) Sticking with the same vibe, this is an awesome list of tips to boost creativity specifically among marketing professionals. Another one worth adding to your favourites!
Cara May-Cole
Digital PR Specialist
Top 10 Public Relations Trends for Those Paying Attention
by Diane Schwartz (@dianeschwartz) A handy guide providing 10 key topics to include in your 2019 PR plans. They’re great tips for whether you’re working in-house or agency.
How to Use Colour to Draw More Web Visitors
by Matthew Royse (@mattroyse) A look into just how powerful colours can be for web design. It explores the psychology behind colour association and how designers can implement it in their work to draw attention and behavioural patterns of people.
Peter Bingham
Head of Design & Creative Content
An unexpected fact about pizza sizes is making people like maths
by The Poke (@ThePoke) Part of my job is to find interesting data, analyse the shit out of it and transform it into awesome content. When that data involves pizza, then the end result is so much more enjoyable. This little ‘slice’ of data really caught my eye, and had me (and thousands of others) scratching their heads. I know what I’ll be ordering next time…
David Allsop
Web Developer
Gutenberg Phase 2
by Mel Choyce (@melchoyce)
Now Gutenberg is included in the latest version of WordPress, many contributors and users are turning their attention to the next phase of Gutenberg implementation, which will lead to users having the ability to control the overall appearance of the website rather than simply the content within it.
Mel’s blog post covers where current website design/content areas reside in the WordPress dashboard, with ideas and mock-ups of how their current functions could be implemented in future. Gutenberg phase 2 covers Gutenberg outside the post content, customization and upgrading themes, widgets and menus.
Adam Dennis
Senior Developer
PHP 7.3.0 release
PHP 7.3.0 has now been released, bringing with it performance improvements to mbstring, support for Unicode 11 and full Case-Mapping/Case-Folding support.