Best practices for bloggers reviewing free products they receive from companies

As a form of online marketing, some companies today will send bloggers free products to review or give away in return for a mention in a blogpost. Whether you’re the company supplying the product or the blogger writing the post, below are a few best practices to ensure that this content is both useful to users and compliant with Google Webmaster Guidelines.

1. Use the nofollow tag where appropriate Links that pass PageRank in exchange for goods or services are against Google guidelines on link schemes. Companies sometimes urge bloggers to link back to:
   1. the company’s site
   2. the company’s social media accounts
   3. an online merchant’s page that sells the product
   4. a review service’s page featuring reviews of the product
   5. the company’s mobile app on an app store
   Bloggers should use the nofollow tag on all such links because these links didn’t come about organically (i.e., the links wouldn’t exist if the company hadn’t offered to provide a free good or service in exchange for a link). Companies, or the marketing firms they’re working with, can do their part by reminding bloggers to use nofollow on these links.
2. Disclose the relationship Users want to know when they’re viewing sponsored content. Also, there are laws in some countries that make disclosure of sponsorship mandatory. A disclosure can appear anywhere in the post; however, the most useful placement is at the top in case users don’t read the entire post.
3. Create compelling, unique content The most successful blogs offer their visitors a compelling reason to come back. If you're a blogger you might try to become the go-to source of information in your topic area, cover a useful niche that few others are looking at, or provide exclusive content that only you can create due to your unique expertise or resources.

Principles of Mobile App Design: Engage Users and Drive Conversions

In a crowded market, how does an app attract new customers, gain loyalty, and deliver value? With great design for a delightful app experience. Here, Google's UX Research Lead Jenny Gove will take you through 25 principles to build an app that helps users achieve what they’re looking to do.

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/collections/principles-of-mobile-app-design-engage-users-and-drive-conversions.html

3 Ways to Make the Most of Programmatic and Data-Driven Creative

Programmatic buying coupled with data-driven creative can deliver more effective digital advertising campaigns. But connecting the dots between the data and the creative can be a challenge. Here we break down how to do it successfully.

Brand marketers know more than anyone that effective creative is equal parts data and emotion. When it comes to display creative, programmatic buying brings a lot more data into that equation. Knowing what to do with that data can be easy to grasp in theory, but perhaps more challenging to put into practice, especially when no single agency or partner has the full picture.
To understand what it takes to employ a truly data-driven creative strategy, DoubleClick partnered with several global brands, digital creative studio Fancy Pants Group, and the management consulting company Accenture. The aim was to conduct a collaborative, programmatic experiment through a series of data-driven ad campaigns. By tackling real brand campaigns with a variety of data insights at the ready, we learned how the campaign development process has to change to get to smarter, data-driven creative.

 

 

Understand all the available data that could inform creative choices

First, you may already be using data from customer relationship management (CRM) tools and market research to inform campaigns. But a wider array of data signals is available, from analytics on your brand's website (that could tell you your most popular products, for instance), to audience data (that could give a glimpse of age, gender, or interests), to contextual insights about which device, location, or media type delivered the most success for a campaign. The trick is to know all the sources of data available, and figure out which can fuel smarter creative.
For example, L'Oréal wanted to build a campaign to showcase two Vichy sunscreen products in France last summer. One sunscreen was for women, and the other was for children. To create relevant ads for each segment, the company used audience targeting lists to reach women both with and without children. The data enabled the brand to target the right consumers at the right time.

Involve creative agencies from the outset of the campaign process

Too often, the creative agency and production shop are brought into the campaign process after the media strategy has been decided. By informing the creative agency of all the data from the outset of the project, you can work with the agency to build more relevant creative strategies for your target audience.
When Gilt wanted to create a campaign to showcase its four available merchandise categories, the company gave the creative agency a list of the top-performing keywords from its previous DoubleClick campaigns. Sharing these insights at the beginning of the campaign process enabled the production team to tailor their designs to each segment.

Make sure all teams collaborate and communicate throughout the campaign process

In typical campaigns, each group completes its portion of the work and hands it off to the next group, often with little feedback. By involving the creative agency, the media agency, and the production shop throughout the process, you can ensure ongoing communication—and a more effective campaign.
In an effort to drive acquisitions of a premium credit card, the Royal Bank of Canada wanted to reach Canadians interested in travel. To kick off the project, RBC's marketing team held a collaborative briefing session with Fancy Pants Group, the creative agency handling the production; Initiative's media-buying team; and Accenture, the data analysts who defined the test and control specifications and set up the performance reports. Together they developed a matrix of various product benefit messages that were tested against an awareness control message. They found that one message in particular—no seat restrictions—led to a performance uptick of 28% in conversion.

Making sure the planning, analytic, and creative teams work together can enable your brand to maximize the value of programmatic, and create relevant and customized campaigns for potential consumers. Gathering insights from all types of data sources and uniting several agencies and partners throughout the campaign process may require changes to your process—but the result is smarter, more effective campaigns.
 

How to Build Your Mobile-Centric Search Strategy

When building a micro-moments marketing strategy, one place to start is with mobile-centric searches.

 So you want to create a killer mobile strategy. But where do you begin? There's no doubt that mobile has changed daily life and decision-making. After all, smartphones are the most personal of devices; They stay with us as we move across time, activities, and locations, and they have become the device of choice during the critical micro-moments when we want to know, go, do, or buy.

That means there are a lot of exciting possibilities for us marketers to reach consumers in the moments that really matter. If you're looking for where to focus first, one place to start is with mobile-centric searches―that is, searches which happen 75% of the time or more on a mobile device. These queries offer powerful insights into what your audience wants when they're on a smartphone, and how you can win by giving them the relevant experience they expect. It's about being there for them and being useful.

    Mobile makes up 88% of all "near me" searches, with those mobile searches growing at 146% year over year.

Why mobile-centric searches?

Being there and being useful requires an understanding of consumer intent and context. The intent signal that search gives and the context signals that mobile can provide (such as location) can help you tailor your answers and experiences precisely for that consumer's micro-moment. "Near me" searches (like "coffee shop near me") is one example of this. These kinds of searches grew by more than 130% year over year1 and they're much more common on mobile. Mobile makes up 88% of all "near me" searches,2 with those mobile searches growing even faster at 146% year over year.3 These mobile-centric "I-want-to-go" queries happen across almost all types of businesses, from hotels and rental cars to nail salons, shoe stores, pizza parlors, and banks.

If you have a physical location, "near me" searches are probably popular for your business too. You can see why they happen so often on mobile; When we urgently need an ATM or have the craving for fro-yo, we naturally turn to the devices in our hands to solve our need.

Of course, a "near me" search is just one type of mobile-centric search. Let's look at examples of mobile-centric searches for a few specific categories and see what themes rise to the top.

 Automobiles

You might guess that most car-related searches on mobile would be active shoppers looking for nearby dealers. But as it turns out, mobile searches are loaded with intent across various stages of the car-buying process. Among the top mobile-centric auto attributes:4

    for sale (such as "Chevy Silverado for sale")
    price (such as "Audi R8 price")
    dealership (such as "Dodge truck dealership")

Those three themes represent different flavors of moments in a typical auto-shopping journey—from "is-it-right-for-me" moments to "can-I-afford-it" moments to "where-should-I-buy-it" moments.

And a small device doesn't mean a small purchase. Many of the most popular mobile-centric searches for autos are actually luxury car price inquiries: searches like "Tesla price," "Maserati price," and "Audi R8 cost."5 Luxury car price searches like these grew nearly 90% on mobile from 2014 to 2015.6

Are they "I-want-to-know" or "I-want-to-buy" moments? That is, are these searchers walking by a valet-parked Rolls-Royce and wondering what it costs, or are they shoppers thinking about moving up to a luxury car themselves? A tool like Google Analytics can offer more insight into the intent signals of the user based on how they navigate your site. Using that knowledge, you can deliver a response that speaks to the aspirational intent of some and the purchase intent of others.

Jewelry

When it comes to bling and baubles, rings are among the most mobile-searched type of jewelry, followed by necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.7 But when you look deeper into rings specifically, things get even more interesting.

Some of the top mobile-centric search themes for rings are:8

    promise rings (such as "promise ring for girlfriend")
    wedding rings (such as "wedding ring set")
    engagement rings (such as "engagement rings for men")

Yes, the winner there is promise rings. In fact, promise ring-related mobile searches grew by 77% from 2014 to 2015.9 As the chart below shows, interest in these rings on mobile has been showing a steep increase over the past several years in general, with searches tending to spike around the holidays (most likely "I-need-a-Christmas-gift" research moments) and then Valentine's Day. The mobile-centricity may be in part a function of the younger, mobile-first demographic tending to wear these rings.

 Hotels

Hotel searches cover a wide range of types and use cases, from the business person searching for a luxury hotel in New York City to the family of five (plus pooch) in a minivan looking for a last-minute place to sleep near Orlando.

    Data from Hotels.com states that 74% of mobile bookings are made for same-day check-in.

When it comes to mobile-centric hotel searches, the themes leading the way include:10

    near me (like "pet friendly hotels near me")
    cheap (like "cheap hotels in Myrtle Beach")
    price (like "motel prices")

"Near me" searches are the clear mobile-centric winner in the hotel industry. This jibes with data from Hotels.com that states that 74% of mobile bookings are made for same-day check-in. In other words, near and now often go hand-in-hand.

Few things are more pressing than finding a bed for the night when you don't have one. Those last-minute hotel searches really show how people turn to their mobile phones in "I-really-gotta-book-something" moments.

 What it all means for marketers

All three of these examples show that mobile can't just be a shrunken version of existing online ads and desktop content. It really calls for us to think bigger about consumers' context and intent so that we can cater to mobile-specific situations.

And rather than trying to think about all the possible mobile micro-moments your brand might win, mobile-centric searches help you focus. Understanding and optimizing for them helps ensure you're there and useful for the consumer in their moment of need.

Here's how to leverage mobile-centric searches in your business:

    Identify your mobile-centric searches and themes. Talk to your agency and ask them to do an inventory of the mobile-centric searches for your category and brand. You don't have to master every moment at once, but make sure you know your key mobile-centric searches and especially the broader themes that rise to the top. These are places where your customers are calling out: "Please solve my need for me on mobile!"
    Be there, across the moments that matter. Once you know the mobile-centric themes for your category and brand, be exhaustive in the keywords you use to address those themes and attributes. Try to really own a larger "share of intent" on the mobile screen for these searches. These searches are where hearts, minds, and dollars are increasingly being won and lost. Being there is the first step in winning them.
    Find new ways to be useful. Put yourself in consumers' shoes for those mobile-centric moments. What situations are these people in, and what are they trying to learn, do, find, or buy on their smartphone? Then ask yourself, "Does the content of my ads and the functionality of my mobile site or app help my customers in their moments of need?" If you can find new ways to cut steps and be more useful, act there first.

For additional best practices for how to be there and be useful in consumer micro-moments, check out "Micro-Moments: Your Guide to Winning the Shift to Mobile."


Sources
1, 2, 5-7 Google internal search data, U.S., all devices, 2014-2015.
3, 9 Google internal search data, U.S., mobile devices, 2014-2015.
4, 8, 10 Google internal search data, U.S., all devices, 2014-2015. The searches within the category that took place 75% of the time or more on a mobile device were isolated. The searches within that set were then synthesized into themes or attributes, with the themes repeated the most being the "top" mobile-centric themes.

Assi El Hallani se produira à Mawazine sur la scène Nahda le mercredi 25 mai 2016

Pour cette15ème édition de Mawazine, la scène Nahda accueillera la voix de Baalbeck, le
chanteur libanais ASSI EL HALLANI.

http://www.relation-presse.ma/158142_assi-el-hallani-en-concert-a-mawazine
http://arabic.relation-presse.ma/193270_عاصي-الحلاني-يحيي-حفلا-بمهرجان-موازين

Facebook, Amazon and Google bid to livestream NFL games

Last football season marked the first time the NFL sold the rights to stream an entire game for free over the top. The buyer was Yahoo (YHOO), the game was played in London, and the grand experiment generally went off without a hitch, though some debated the level of success in the aftermath of the stream. Yahoo, parent company of Yahoo Finance, said 15.2 million people tuned in to the stream at least once, and that an average 2.35 million people were watching at any moment.

Now the NFL has decided that one good turn deserves another, or many more: The league is selling streaming rights to its Thursday Night Football (TNF) games as an additional digital package, separate from the TV deals it announced in February. (On TV, CBS will show five of the TNF games, NBC will show five, and NFL Network will show eight.) The NFL has also said it will sell streaming rights to all three of next season's London games. That's 21 games total. It will likely sell the Thursday Night games as a separate package from the Sunday morning London games, but it could give them all to a single provider if the price is right.

The process has prompted a slew of reports about various companies showing interest, from more traditional cable giants like Verizon (VZ) to tech companies like Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOGL), and Amazon (AMZN). This month, Facebook (FB) reportedly jumped in as well. And this week, in an interview with Variety, VP of partnerships Dan Rose confirmed Facebook's interest.

Each of the interested parties brings a different audience to the table, and has a different reason why streaming NFL games would appeal to it. The question now becomes which one will cough up the most for the rights. All the NFL has said on the matter is this, in its announcement last month of the final Thursday Night Football deals: "The NFL is in active discussions with prospective digital partners for OTT [over-the-top] streaming rights to Thursday Night Football. A deal announcement is expected in the near future.”

Nothing is stopping the NFL from having multiple streaming partners, just as it has multiple cable partners.  Sources tell Yahoo Finance that any number of combinations is possible: The league could divvy up the TNF games, selling some to one partner and some to another; it could sell all the TNF games to one company but divide up the London games; it could even add some of the rare Saturday games that happen late in the season. Sources also say there are companies in talks with the NFL that have not yet been named in the press—it's easy to imagine, say, ESPN being in the mix, or Twitter, which has implemented a rash of new features in the last year as Wall Street has pressured it to grow its user base. The league can end up with any mix it likes.

In other words, the NFL holds all the power in these negotiations. Live sports, especially NFL games, are for many people the last remaining good reason to pay for cable television. More than any other pro league, the NFL has held off on offering any real digital-only options for fans, thanks to the long-held relationships it has with broadcast partners. But it's finally showing signs of flexibility on the digital front. Offering up to 21 games over the top is a major step by the league, and streaming those games would be a major coup for any digital platform. It's why Yahoo reportedly spent somewhere between $17 million and $20 million for just one game. Critics said it overpaid, but the NFL could likely score nearly three times that amount for a package of the three London games. The NFL had no comment for this story; Yahoo Finance also reached out to all of the companies for comment.

Here's why paying up for the games makes sense for the interested players named so far.

Facebook

It makes perfect sense for Facebook to jump into the NFL streaming race, based on its recent product launches. Just before the Super Bowl, Facebook launched Sports Stadium, a live sports chat feature that targets Twitter's territory and also indicates Facebook has an interest in being a sports hub. Facebook has shown its ambition, lately, in becoming more of a place for live content: It launched live video streaming, streamed a live show with LeBron James, and has announced its intention to pay celebrities for live streams. Showing NFL games would also presumably bring in new advertisers eager to reach the eyeballs of cord-cutters. Facebook has an advantage of being so big -- 1.5 billion people have Facebook and use it each month -- that it wouldn't be asking viewers to to go to a site they don't regularly use.

Yahoo

It's hard to argue that Yahoo's stream last season of a Jacksonville Jaguars-Buffalo Bills game from London wasn't a hit for the company. It brought the brand to the fore again as the first to stream a game for free. And while some criticized the web giant for setting the game to auto-play on its homepage, 15.2 million people is 15.2 million people, and in an interview with Fortune after the game, NFL executive Hans Schroeder said that "somebody had to watch for 3 seconds before it triggers and counted. So if people came on to the Yahoo homepage and were looking for a link or a news story, chances are they didn’t count." It makes sense that Yahoo would want to bid again to stream—it could take the lessons it learned the first time and fix any bugs—but the package may end up being too expensive for the company.

Google

For the same reasons Yahoo would want the games, Google is an obvious possibility. The company launched its YouTube Red service last year, which charges a fee to access YouTube without ads. That might be the place for the NFL livestream should Google pursue the deal. As of last year, Google gets about 100 billion searches every month, so if it makes the livestream available through its home page on game days, it would benefit from a huge number of visitors who didn't come to the site for the game, but might stick around for it.

Amazon

As the retailer has seen success with its Prime subscription service and its Original Series line, it's easy to picture CEO Jeff Bezos shelling out for NFL games and then offering them only to Prime users to goose subscriptions.

Verizon

It already has the rights to NFL games on mobile—a Verizon customer can watch the local-market game on a Verizon phone for free (though that deal expires at the end of next season). So it makes sense that Verizon would consider shelling out extra to stream games on the Web and on connected devices, instead of just on cell phones. It would likely still limit the stream to Verizon subscribers. Like Amazon, it could tout the games as a selling point to get more cellular customers to switch over. And Verizon's acquisition of AOL is another domino that shows the company's interest in content investments.

CBS

CBS has the TV rights to five TNF games next season. This month, CEO Les Moonves said that CBS is in talks to stream those games on its All Access app. CBS already has the rights to stream its Sunday and Thursday games, but not on All Access -- only on the Internet. Last year, it exercised that right with seven games, offering them for free online. Even if CBS does get to stream its five TNF games on its All Access app, the NFL can still sell the right to stream those same games to a digital partner like Google or Facebook.

Apple

Initially, Apple was reportedly interested in the deal—NFL games could bring many more to its Apple TV service. But the latest reports suggest Apple is no longer interested. Still, never say never: Netflix, too, has long insisted that it doesn't plan to offer live content or sports, but as the market for this content heats up, there is no technology company that would definitively stay out of the fracas.

What's the timetable for a decision? The NFL had originally said it hoped to announce a streaming partner for Thursday Night Football the same day it announced the final cable deals, but in the end, it did not finalize a deal in time. The new date when the league is expected to announce which company won the streaming rights is March 20-22, during the NFL owner meetings in Florida.

Facebook for Business : Create your Business Story

Every business brings so much more to the world than products and services. Schools don’t just provide an education. They help us feel more optimistic about the future. A comedy club isn’t just a place to go out. It brings more laughter to a town. A gym doesn’t just make you strong. They push our limits and make us feel strong. And Facebook would like to help you tell your business story to the world.

We’d like to give a big thanks to you and all of our advertisers who have trusted us to help grow your business with Your Business Story. It’s a simple way for you to tell the world what you’re in business for. Because we’re in the business of growing your business.

Create your business story and share it with the world today. 

https://yourbusinessstory.fb.com/en/