Date: April 2016

With so many things happening right now at Marketing Eye and also with my other investments, I find myself being pulled in many different directions. In some ways I just want to do the charity work I am doing, and make a difference to people's lives, but what funds that is my business interests, namely Marketing Eye.

As digital marketing continues to grow, we've seen far too much politics in the marketing landscape.

Big names in advertising agencies are proclaiming that digital marketers don't know what they're doing. Digital agencies and platforms are claiming that advertising and PR are dead.

These headlines keep popping up and frankly, they're unhelpful for businesses trying to get their marketing right and they aren't helping marketing professionals to be the best they can be. The reality is that digital and traditional need to work together to solve today's marketing problems.

Facebook's latest announcement of its Chat Bot feature sees a shift towards using artificial intelligence to engage with customers on social media. But considering recent events such as the disaster of Microsoft's Tay Chat Bot, should companies be concerned about using this feature?

Once I started accepting that I was in fact an entrepreneur, I started living it. Not quite like those who don't really have a job and say they are entrepreneurs to sound "cool" or so that one would think that they at the very least had some purpose - but more like the type that wakes up every morning and races to the office.

While Silicon Valley still is the money bags capital of the world as far as venture capital dollars are concerned, with 15 percent of the world's venture capital dollars being invested there, compared to 5 percent in New York, the tables are in fact turning.

Siicon Valley is home to the coolest companies on the planet, the highest salaries in the world and the most expensive real estate; it's New York that is comparative on a few levels here, but is currently experience a tech boom that may eventually take the reigns of it's Bay partners.

I have just spent over a week in regional and rural North Queensland. In the past few years, I have travelled north for a couple of reasons, but namely for work and for a charity I set up in the rural township of Charters Towers.

It's been humbling and a great reminder of what is important in life.

As our online network of friends continues to expand, social media companies and their newsfeeds transform and evolve as well.

On March 15^th 2016, Instagram, the fastest growing social media network, announced their latest update: an algorithm-based, personalised newsfeed. This means that photos and videos will no longer appear in chronological order, rather, appear based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post.

A client recently asked me "What kind of voice should you use for each social media platform?"

It's something Marketing Eye does everyday, but is so important for businesses to think about. Each platform has a specific personality. All posts should be based on your audience, but businesses need to think about the way in which they deliver their information. Does your audience want to read an extensive study? Or would they prefer a humorous anecdote? We've translated each platform and given them an equivalent voice
'dress code' to make things simple.

I am not a big mover in life, other than the fact I lived in hotels for a couple of years. I like my creature comforts and am simply too lazy to move house. I tend to stay in any one home for 4 years or so. Same with business. In 17 years, I have moved only a few times in each city. There are many reasons for this; size of business at the time, end of leases, owners wanting to tear down building and make them residential.

Data has played a vital role in turning marketing from an art into a science and now there’s more than ever. It can be difficult to know what statistics you should be paying attention to and how to use them. So how do you know your website is performing? What can you do to improve it? Here is Marketing Eye’s quick guide to Google Analytics statistics and how to use them to improve your online marketing. 

The most important thing you need to understand about Google Analytics Stats is that no singular statistic will tell you everything. The key to making informed decisions is looking at several statistics to form a more complete picture of your online marketing, and compare this to your strategy to see if you are on the right path. If you’re getting all your traffic from Twitter, but no one is buying your products, maybe you need to rethink your social media strategy.