My Five: Five things worth sharing from the last week (or so), brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by Katie.
Happy New Year to everyone from the first my five of 2014!
1. New Year Honours
As usual, the year kicked off with the announcement of The New Year Honours list on New Years Day. It was nice to see digital get some recognition in this years list with Richard Eyre, chairman of the Internet Advertising Bureau, being awarded a CBE for ‘services to Advertising and the Media’, and Michael Andrew Murphy being awarded an MBE for ‘services to Business and Digital Media’.
Media, marketing and creativity featured heavily in the honours list too, with ‘services to the creative industries’ earning Mind Candy founder Michael Acton Smith an OBE, ‘services to media and communications’ earning Ofcom’s chair Dr Mary Colette Bowe a DBE and ‘services to marketing’ earning Aviva’s chief marketing and communications officer Amanda Felicity Mackenzie an OBE.
2. Econsultancy Best Practice Guide
To help you start the year as you mean to go on, Econsultancy have produced a 2014 best practice guide that contains everything you need to know about SEO for in-house teams, independent workers and agencies. Created with the ‘help and frontline insight of globally-esteemed SEO practitioners’ including our very own Joe Friedlein, for a great understanding of search marketing this is a must read.
You can find the guide here.
3. Social Media Trends for 2014
The social networks are sure to continue with their global takeover this year and there have been some big predictions for social media in 2014, including a couple of platforms tipped to push Facebook from the top spot – interesting news for anyone working in social media and definitely a time to keep your finger on the ever changing pulse.
Apparently, 2014 holds a triumphant return for MySpace and an eventual rise to power from Google+ as Google plans to base personalised search experiences from Google+ social signals. Micro-video is also tipped to become huge, so why not head to Vine or Instagram’s video features and start figuring out to transfer your 140 character statuses to video format…
All this of course means that there will need to be more focus on social media for businesses, and Business Insider informs us that if you have ever fancied becoming a SEO Specialist, a Social Media Strategist, an Online Community Manager, a Social Media Marketing Manager, a Social Media Marketing Coordinator or a Social Media Copywriter then this could well be the year for you.
4. New year, new job…?
If you fancy a new job this year then why not take a tip from Dutch multimedia designer Niek Gooren who designed a website to help him in his job search. An unemployed Gooren created this to advertise himself to potential employers. The ‘Who is Niek?’ page shows a picture of Niek lying on his sofa in his pants looking sad with the caption ‘As you read this Niek is unemployed, lonely and alone at home on the couch eating chips’. Awwww. He then lists his skills, the projects he has previously worked on, his CV, and If this was not enough he also points out that as a black coffee drinker he is ’cheaper than the average coffee drinker because you can save on sugar and milk’ plus a graph shows how he transforms a company’s creativity, sex appeal and werkplezier (happiness at work).
It’s witty, clever and genius – the site went live in September and Niek received around 50 job offers before accepting a job with a PR firm. Neik thanks the Dutch population from his new website which shows him ‘washing away his chips with champagne’.
5. Happy Birthday (and get well soon) Michael Schumacher
As the world continues to wait for news of improvements in the critical condition of F1 ace Michael Schumacher after his tragic skiing accident, he turns 45 today. Although Michael isn’t awake to celebrate his birthday, Ferrari have organised a silent ‘red’ vigil to take place and have invited fans and well wishers to show their support by gathering outside the hospital wearing red. They are also running a tribute to Schumacher on their website.
