As social media continues to grow and evolve at a rapid pace, it’s important for businesses and marketers to stay ahead of the curve and understand the latest trends. Here are some of the social media trends that are likely to emerge in 2023. Short-Form Video Content Will Continue to Rise Short-form video content, such as TikTok and Instagram Reels, have taken the social media world by storm over the past few years. As attention spans continue to shorten, this trend is likely to continue in 2023. Brands and businesses will need to start thinking about how to incorporate short-form video cont ..read more

Most of us don’t go a day without Googling now, and there is no difference here when it comes to our Christmas queries and habits. In a festive-themed blog, we look at what Google Trends reveals about some of our favourite seasonal things. Christmas in popular media Looking at Google Trends, we can learn a lot about how excited we get for Christmas music and films – and how particular artists or films enjoy seasonal popularity. Mariah Carey is the Queen of Christmas While Mariah Carey has a substantial music catalogue, she is the best example of someone who becomes particularly popular in Nov ..read more

In November, Netflix will launch a new streaming plan that includes adverts after many years of an ad-free platform, and this will be rolled out in 12 countries including the UK.  We take a look at why they finally moved to an advertising model, what this means for streaming, and whether the new plan will be enough to keep Netflix in a position of power against its new streaming competition.  What will Netflix with ads look like? For those who are worried their viewing experience is going to be ruined by adverts, rest assured that this will just be an option offered by Netflix. Adver ..read more

There are many ways to improve your website, and one of these includes optimising your page load speed to make sure that users get the best possible experience when browsing your site. What is page load speed? Page load speed is the average time it takes for a web page to load for the user. It is often calculated from when the first click occurs to when the page is fully loaded. Another variation of page load speed is the Time to First Byte (TTFB), which is the time between the browser requesting a page and when it receives the first byte of information from the server. Largest Contentful Pain ..read more

SEO is important for all websites, but your approach should vary depending on the type of website you have. Ecommerce SEO, for example, has its own rules and techniques that are important for making sure your website has the best chance of increasing its visibility in the search results. What is ecommerce SEO? Ecommerce SEO is the process of making sure your online shop is optimised to appear in search engine results. It involves understanding how people are searching for the goods or services you want to sell and making sure you have pages that can rank for those terms. It takes into account ..read more

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, filed for a trademark application earlier this year for ‘TikTok Music’. It lists a variety of goods and services that include allowing users to purchase, play, share, and download music, songs, albums, and lyrics, as well as live stream audio and video interactive media programming.  After the success of music on the current platform, this is perhaps a logical next step for TikTok. Given its success with rivalling platforms like Instagram in the social media space, could it tackle music streaming giants like Spotify? TikTok Music isn’t entirely new grou ..read more

Web developers and digital marketers throw around all sorts of terms when discussing your website, and one you might have come across is ‘schema markup’ or ‘structured data markup’. In this blog, we take a look at what this actually is and why it’s important to implement it on your web pages. What is schema markup? Schema markup is a type of structured data vocabulary that you can add to your website’s code to help search engines contextualise your web pages. It is a standardised format for classifying page content and allowing search engines to present it properly in the search engine results ..read more

Another year and another new social media craze to fight for our attention. BeReal is an app created by a French social media startup that is currently topping app stores worldwide. It has now been downloaded over 20 million times and continues to gain popularity, but what is BeReal, and does it have a future? What is BeReal? BeReal is a photo-sharing app with a twist. You get a notification at a different time each day and you then have two minutes to share whatever you are doing at that particular moment by taking a picture on your phone with both your front and back camera. Most people choo ..read more

Google has evolved from the days of just displaying a list of web pages when you type in a search term. With more search engine results page (SERP) features than ever, they are aiming to make the user experience as smooth as possible by providing all the information you need at first glance based on the type of search you perform It seems that such additions will increasingly become part of the Google experience, so we’ve put together a guide on the different SERP features available and what they mean. What are SERP features? Search engine results page (SERP) features are the name for the addi ..read more

Many people resent having to view ads to access content on social media platforms. Although this is how the model works to give you free access, the tech giants behind the advertising platforms make a huge amount of profit and many have become disillusioned with the concept. Enter WeAre8: an app that allows you to get paid and donate to charity for watching ads, rather than the money going to Google or Facebook. We take a look at how the model works and whether it could be a turning point for the ad industry. What is WeAre8? WeAre8 describes itself as ‘The People’s Platform’. In simple terms ..read more