Designing Data Science - Conversation with Shruti Shetty

I met Shruti Shetty, Art Director at Adrenalin Media at conference in Sydney few months ago. Shruti kindly agreed to answer some of my questions in regards to Design and Data Science. Answers below.

Shruti Shetty - Art Director & Data Science enthusiast

Mauricio: Why your passion for Design and Data Science?

Shruti: Design has gone through quite a silent transformation over the years. The canvas, the technology, the aesthetics have all evolved significantly. Now more so than ever I think, design plays a very central role in tying all these changing features and packaging them for experience. Moving into the new age of the Data Economy, made me look and explore this new and next avenue that will impact design in the coming few years. This lead me to Data Science.

M: Data Science brings insights from analysing data sets. Design can then help present those insights on ways they are easily understood but also engaging and interactive. As a result, those new insights or findings from data sets can highly resonate with audiences...is that correct?

S: That's correct. Traditionally data analysis and handling has taken place in the development or mathematical sense of the world. With the help of design, we translate those complex models, from texts and numbers to patterns, which we can see and understand, and in context to a collateral situation or problem. As said, an image might be as powerful as thousand words.

M : Analysis of data is just one part of a story; in some cases investigative journalism, historical context, current market, political, economic and social dynamics have also a great influence on helping shape data into powerful insights. How do you see the future of Data Science with other disciplines and how Design can play a key role?

S: Patterns are everywhere. They are the very fabric of human behaviour, which has now translated to our online lives. With the power of technology and our need to be switched-on 24/7, we are contributing continuously to this massive data pool. This also means data is being continuously altered and influenced by all and/or more factors, than the ones mentioned above. Hence, before we even begin processing the dataset, we try to understand the circumstances in which the data has been collected. Sometimes this can help fill in the blanks, with the bigger picture. The purpose of data science is to help tell our story, with the events & features of our data. As the scene setting changes so does the climax of the story.
It can be quite hard to identify these influencers in the process of crunching numbers, and this is where visualisation comes into play, within the process itself. Visual tools also help determine the influencing features and charter an appropriate course for the story.We use tools like graphs, charts, plots etc. that display the workings of the data sets in a visual form. As mentioned before, design is a key interpretation of this story into a visual language, which everyone can understand.

M: How important is for Designers (who help Data Scientists) to be involved from the early stages of data analysis? so they can fully understand final insights and create solutions that matches what Data Science want to convey...

S: Designing or visualizing isn't an end mean or a final output stage. Many designers would agree, that design and creation is a journey and a process by itself. Such as data, design goes through it's own transformations, gradually. Hence for a desired optimised solution, collaboration between the two fields, is key. The key is to compliment and co-relate.

M: Is it the role of Designers to just help Data Science better visualise data insights? or the Design role goes far beyond that?... Can Design also help companies better collect data or help companies to find better ways to engage people to contribute to data? or even more, can design engage audiences to analyse data sets?

S: I began the studying data science, my intention was to implement this within our service pool, for our clients. The data we collect can help impact the strategy with which we can constantly improve our products or technology, given the patterns that our users or consumers display. Which in turn, gives them a better experience.

This evolution needs to be refuelled by new and more precise data, which can again be facilitated by design. In short, we use design to translate the given said data, and help grow and alter the data set, to maybe evolve into a new pattern. According to me, this agile approach would best suit this relationship, between data and design.

M: There might be plenty of data visualisation tools these days. What tools have you worked with and found them great to use?

S: Open source softwares such as R Project , and Python, provide a suite of visual tools to crunch and model the data, during the process. The output results can be visualised using a suite of other tools. There are a lot of javascript libraries out there, to help with this. For eg: My team has used, Raphael.js in the past, for a real-time RFID visualisation project. At the same time, there are many other public toolkits to help with this. The one I have found useful is the Tableau toolset.

The Method Case: The project uses digital practices and processes to blur the lines between photography, data visualization, textile design, and computer science.

M: Organisations with no access to Designers or Data Scientists have a big challenge when analysing and presenting insights from data? Any tips for them?

S: Ideally, gathering of that knowledge and datasets would be the first step, moving into this direction. Maintaining records and collecting them in a consistent and efficient manner. I guess with any given field, you need to have access to expertise on that subject matter. If you don't have those skill sets in-house, you would seek those services elsewhere. Traditionally, companies have been gathering the knowledge for the datasets, but haven't been able to implement it's full potential, back into their businesses. For businesses that want to explore this area, there are plenty of options out there. There are independent Data Science organisations who can then collaborate and partner with other agencies, to help make use of their data. But at the same time, companies like ours - Adrenalin Media, are upscaling their skill sets to include this as part of their services, even for Small / Medium sized companies to big scale corporations.

M: Do you favour tools that automate the discoveries of regularities in data? meaning less work for data crunching and possibly just more work for finding compelling ways to present those discovered regularities?

S: I have learnt the hard way, there is no easy formula to help clean up datasets. Again, softwares like R and Python are quite versatile and can handle this process quite well. Personally I like the Google Refine programme, as it has some really nifty features such as a log of all the changes you have made to the dataset, which helps reverse back any mistakes you might have made.

M: As cloud services become more popular and affordable, companies now have the opportunity to collect massive amount of data. However the reality is most of that data gets untapped and/or un-used? Apart from using Data Scientists to help companies find better ways to achieve their key objectives/goals by effective analysis and presentation of Data turned into insights; is there anything else companies should be using their data for?

S: My answer would be similar to the above.

M: There is a lot of talk about how to use big data on organisations and companies but what about individuals, citizens using data for everyday life activities or local community based activities? Any examples or insights on this front?

S: Definitely! Why should all the big companies have all the fun? Sites like vizify.com help visualize your personal data into a cluster of visual graphics, aggregating all your stories online, from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc. Companies and services alike, have realised the power of visualization and there are a lot of them out there empowering us to take charge of our own data footprints to chart and describe the journey, in a visual form. It also helps keep things fun and interesting for the users.

M: Powerful visualisation of data is key but what about user interaction with data. Any user data driven projects and at what point can interactivity be a nuance for users to fully engage with stories and insights?

S: Interaction is such a powerful engaging tool. Data science wouldn't exist without user interaction. It's the basis of the records that we use. At the same time, the benefits of our insights are then used to display that information for the user to 'interact' with, in terms of engaging with and modifying a visual art piece or using a said service or product. The User interaction is central to the validation of the predictions that we as Data Scientists make. And design can then present this case for the user to accept or reject. In either cases, that would be fed back into the cycle, for the whole process to flow again. It's such a powerful concept, if one thinks about it.

M: What are possibly the top three projects you believe have implemented great design for their data driven projects?

S: Design can be assessed aesthetically or functionally. A good design follows a balance of both. Amazon, Netflix are a few of the companies that continuously update their design based on the data and user patterns that they record. While they aren't aesthetically prominent, they are studied to be one of the most effective use of Information Architectures. Similarly, you see startups such as Triptease, Evr.st etc. who hire data scientists, terming them as 'Growth Hackers' to bust and crunch the numbers and deliver visually stunning outputs for their users. The recurring themes with all these projects is the agile collaborative way that the data and the design teams work together to keep their services and their presence fresh and valuable.

Triptease - For finding lust worthy destinations curated by users 

 About Shruti Shetty ( Twitter - LinkedIn)

Shruti has a design background and been working in the digital space for the past 8 years now.  After graduating from BillyBlue College in Sydney, with a degree in Communication Design, over the years she has specialised in User Experience and Information Architecture. In her current role as Art Director at Adrenalin Media in Sydney, her team produce online solutions, ranging from websites, campaigns to integrating new technologies into their services for eg: RFID.

Infographic explaining Big Data, made by James West and published by New Scientist. It starts with the most fundamental concept which drives big data 3 Vs of Big Data and then moves on to talk about trends, features and challenges of Big Data.

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How to quickly invite all your Facebook friends to a Facebook event - Tip and Trick

We recently wrote an article about how to Invite all your Facebook friends to a Facebook page. Some times you also might need to invite all your thousands Facebook friends to a Facebook event but do not have the time to tick all those boxes next to your friends names. 

WHAT TO DO - TIP AND TRICK

Follow the below steps and you will get it done in less than a minute. Viola!
Cheers Mauricio @ eDigital.

• Join the event with your personal Facebook account using Firefox browser.
• On the event page, click on "Invite friends" box  - A pop up window will appear.
• Scroll down until the end of the "Search by Name" list.
• Open Firefox Scratch pad by going to Tools menu, then Developers, then Scratchpad.
• A small window or pad should open.

• Paste the below code into the pad.

javascript:elms=document.getElementsByName("checkableitems[]");for (i=0;i<elms.length;i++){if (elms[i].type="checkbox" )elms[i].click()};

• Click on to 'Execute" menu and then press "Run".

• Wait around 10-20 seconds and all your friends names should be now ticked.

Hope it works for you. If not give me a buzz and happy to assist +61481367711.
Mauricio

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• How to Invite all your Facebook friends to a Facebook page.

EBAY Australia Social Media Manager Presentation - Take Aways @ Illawarra Digital

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I went down to Illawara Digital event at Wollongong, NSW, Australia on the 24 of July 2013 to listen Daniel Young - Social Media and Content Leader for Ebay Australia.

Daniel's key note was my favourite of all presentations and some of the key take aways were:

Daniel Young - Social Media and Content Lead - Ebay Australia

• Having a mobile optimised website is possibly more important than doing social media. Get the basics right first.
• 7 million visitors a month to Ebay Australia.
• 84% of products are new products and just 16% are second hand
• Mobile traffic is a key player on Ebay Australia strategy. Ebay Australia Mobile traffic already accounts for 53% of total traffic.
• Customisation is key: Ebay presents products that shoppers are interested on.
• Ebay market positioning between: Amazon (Utility) and Pinterest/Etsy (Engagement).
• Ebay Australia key Social Media objective: Sharing products and stories; advocacy.
• Create and publish great stories to inspire shoppers as the key of Ebay Australia Social Strategy.
• Ebay Australia key consumer segments where they are currently focusing on: Mums and Fashion (Fashion Gallery launched mid 2012) with over 60 retailers signed up for the fashion gallery.

Ebay Australia Fashion Gallery - August 2013 - Home Page Carousel 

• Ebay Australia is also working with bloggers and trend setters to get people share great stories and products.

Other Tips from Daniel to companies doing social media:

• Have a clear objective.
• Better to concentrate on one social channel and be deep than having many social channels and being thin.
• Identify your value proposition and promote it well.
• Share your knowledge.
• Do not expect immediate results
• Great Case study: Black Milk (Brisbane) No traditional marketing, just use of Social Media with fantastic content.

Black milk Clothing homepage - Social Media is the only driver of engagement and sales

• Your customers are fuel for inspirational stories.
• Also find unique product stories. Example: Australia's most expensive Holden for sale on

We are Social is the current Social Media Agency for Ebay Australia.

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• Call Mauricio - Digital Marketing Specialist & on +61481 367 711
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• Are you a retailer who does not sell on ebay yet? Check this out:

Nordstrom Retailer using Top Pinned Pinterest items on In-store Visual Merchandising

Nordstrom Retailer using Pinterest signs on stores

Following their Top pinned section on their website; Nordstrom Retailer is experimenting with  Top Pinned Pinterest tie-ins as a strategy to drive brick and mortar (shops) sales. 

What do you think?

I wonder if Australian retail social media success stories Lorna Jane and Black Milk will follow suit...

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• Read more about this story...

How to choose a Social Media Monitoring tool - eDigital

Looking for a Social Media Monitoring Software (SMM) but not sure what to review and how to pick the best social media monitoring tool (SMM)?

The increasing importance of Social Media conversations in the process of shaping brand sentiment, brand reputation and influencing consumer behaviour  is now crucial for any business success. 

Companies do not longer control conversations and more importantly have recognised it. Coca-cola for example has mentioned, it do not have the extensive resources to monitor and control all global conversations. Other brands try to engage key influencers and control key topics which they believe are important for its brand health and success.

A Social Media Monitoring tool (SMM) come in handy when you want to automate some of  the process of finding those key conversations, influencing consumer behaviour and also having a high level feeling of your brand sentiment and reputation across the web. This is extremely important in case of media crisis or any other public topic affecting your brand.

To help companies to listen and monitor key social media conversations, a great range of tools/software/platforms (more than 250 according to Ideya Research)  are in the market designed to help analyse the vast quantity of Social Media Buzz. It has also, however created a highly complicated choice for marketing professionals and brand managers in identifying and contracting the most appropriate ones for their brand needs.

I welcome vendors to comment on this article and provide more information about their tool and what it make it unique. (Let's see how quickly and effectively they are monitoring their brand).

Out of the 250 Social Monitoring Tools in the market, here are some 26 Social Media monitoring tools (SMM) that are in my radar:

1. Adobe Social
2. Alerti
3. @ Walmart Labs (Former: One Riot)
4. Beevolve 
5. Brandseye
6. Brandwatch
7. Buzz Metrics - Nielsen
8. Cision
9. Converseon
10. HubSpot
11. Jive
12. Klout
13. Lithium Technologies ( Former: ScoutLabs)
14. Radian6 (Now part of SalesForce)
15. Reputation
16. SDL SM2 (Former: Alterian)
17. Sysomos
18. SocialMention
19. SproutSocial
20. TopSy
21. Trackur 
22. Twelvefold Media (Former: BuzzLogic)
23. UberVu
24. Venuelabs
25. Visible Technologies
26. Vocus

The below review criteria was made for one of my client's needs and you might want to give each factor your own importance (weight) depending on what your needs are and what exactly you need to accomplish with the SMM Social Media Monitoring Platform. I believe the below criteria covers all key areas to consider before committing to a Social Monitoring Tool contract.

How to review a Social Media Monitoring Vendor 

Before we move into the factors to consider, you need to know what you want to achieve with the tool (objectives) and how you are going to measure its ROI.

Start from the basic - What is a Social Media Monitoring tool (SMM)?

A tool/software (custom build web spiders) that detects when and where your brand has been mentioned on the web and has the ability to understand the importance (influence/popularity) and sentiment of the mention in order to gain actionable insights to help your brand's social media engagement strategy. 

Social Media Monitoring tools benefits

• Identify risks and issues at an early stage before they become a media chaos.
• Identify existing and emerging brand influencers.
• Benchmark and measure sentiment against your competitors
• Spot new consumer behaviour, preferences.
• Identify new social media platforms where conversations about your brands are happening.
• Identify business generation leads.
• Quickly identify customer dissatisfaction at an early stage.
• Identify purchase considerations and help with customer journey mapping.
• Improve product/service development.
• Identify gaps in the market
• Identify potential talent that can work at your company.

Selection Criteria - Factors to consider

1. CONTENT     

• How is the content aggregated? Third party? Own system? How often? Real time?
• You might want a tool that aggregates social media conversations in real time using their own system as "immediacy" will be key to shape your brands' conversations.

2. SENTIMENT ANALYSIS

• Is "Sentiment Analysis" automated?
• What's the algorithm? How is it being formed?
• Can the vendor show some examples related to your brand where automated sentiment analysis is performed? did it make sense? are they meaningful?
• Can you and your team members be alerted (via txt or email) when social media conversations from key influencers bring some sort of "bad sentiment" about your brand? Can the tool allow you to respond immediately and easily?

3. DATA RETRIEVAL

• How long is content archived? is back data available? To which year? If so, what are the extra cost?
• This is key as sometimes you might want to compare social media buzz between different dates withouth paying too much for it.
• Some of the Social Media monitoring tools might archived content for a specific period of time 6 months/one year so you need to ensure you have systems in place to archived the conversations in case you want to go back to them later on. In some cases it might be too much information so you might want to prioritize what exact conversations (keywords) you want to keep in your companies records (maybe just brand terms and not generic terms).

4. DATA COVERAGE

• Can the vendor offer an example coverage for a specific brand term you would like to monitor within a specific country and time range? Lets say you want your Social Media Monitoring vendor to give you an example of Data coverage for the term "Iphone 5" within Australia during the period of July 1st to July 31st 2013. 
• Getting an specific test will allow you to compare results within different vendors and have a great indicative on which tool might bring more relevant results.

5. DATA REACH   

• For some brands, most of the social media buzz happens inside private Facebook conversations. There is no Social Media Monitoring tool that will allow you to track these Facebook conversations that mentioned your brand's name.
• You would like to check with your Social Media Monitoring Vendor what other social media conversations the vendor cannot monitor: ie. Intranets, Instagram, any other.

6. SPAM   

• Ask your vendor what data cleansing strategies are in place to address spam, splogs, duplicate content? If results from duplicate content are found…would you have pay for them? 

7. SEARCH TYPES

• Is boolean logic available when constructing searches? ie "AND-OR-NOT"
• Does the tool allows for other way to construct searches?
• This is important as it will allow you to get the exact conversations you want to monitor and filter out the ones you do not really care.

8. SEARCH RESULTS SPEED   

• This is key. You might find some tools are quiet slow. You want to double check they are fast when bringing results. How long (on average) does it take to retrieve results for your brand's most popular term? within an specific country and time range? Get that tested before signing up.

9. METRICS AVAILABLE    

• What specific metrics are standard in the system?
• Do the tool offer sentiment analysis? At micro level? Post level?
• Check how the sentiment analysis was constructed by the vendor and see if it makes sense for your brand social media monitoring goals.
• Can the sentiment analysis be tweak by the tool user?

10. DATA PRESENTATION, CUSTOMAZATION, AUTOMATION, SHARING  

• What dashboard features are available in the standard tool version?
• Can dashboards be customised by users?
• Are drill down capabilities available for all analaytics on the dashboard?
• Can reports be automatically delivered and share across the organisation?

11. ENGAGEMENT - SOCIAL MEDIA RESPONSE

• What workflow capabilities the tool offers? Can specific conversations be assign to other users? You might want the tool to spot customers in distress (while using your product/service) or customers venting out bad commentary about your brand and pass that quickly to your customer service team for immediate follow up.
• Does the tool allow for user to engage directly with content owner?
• Can "owned" content (ie your brand website, Facebook page, twitter) be managed by the Social Media Monitoring tool user. 
• Can multiple Facebook pages be monitored?
• Once a conversation is engaged and completed, what reports the tool can offer?
• Can Real time social conversation alerts be sent to specific users? Or franchisees' emails ( non-tool users)?

12. SPECIFIC INDUSTRY BASED FEATURES    

• Is there anything in your the Social Media Monitoring Tool set up for set up for your specific industry? If so, ask the vendor to provide examples.
• I know some such as Venue Labs are made for franchisee based brick and mortar businesses for example.

13. INTEGRATION    

• What additional types of data can be integrated in the system? Google Analytics? Email database? CRM?, Sales Force?, etc

14. REPORTING CAPABILITIES  

• Does the standard version allow for reports to be generated?
• Can reports be automatically produced?
• Can reports be customized? At what level?

15. GEOGRAPHIC SCOPE   

• Can the tool just track conversations happening in Australia or in a specific City in Australia? How?
• Would it pick up Australian based conversations happening in different languages? Any extra costs?

16. PRICING STRUCTURE 

• There are three key main pricing structure most of the Social Media Monitoring tools offer: Volume based pricing, Search based pricing and flat rate.
• You need to compare which structure might be best in the long term. You might want to start playing for specific keywords monitoring regardless volume or you might want to pay by volume regardless the amount of keywords you want to monitor. The last alternative is to pay a flat rate that gives you access to a specific amount of volume and number of keywords to monitor during a specific time period.
• Is there any trail period? Can we try the tool for a month?
• How the cost varies depending on amount of members accessing the tool?

17. TOOL SET UP (INSTALLATION)     

• Is there any specific system requirement needed?
• You might want to check with your IT department there is no issues to install the tool in your computers.

18. TRAINING  

• Is training included on the tool costs? How many training hours? If not, what are the training costs?

19. VALUE ADDED SERVICES  

• Is tool installation and configuration costs included?
• Is customer service available just at business hours or 24 hours? weekends?

20. CLIENTS    

• Is there any success retail franchise based Australian client case study you can offer? If not, why not retail franchise based Australian clients have not bought your tool?

21. MINIMUM CONTRACT PERIOD  

• What's the minimum contract period.
• Can the Social Media Monitoring vendor allow you for a test period?

22. CONTRACT TERMINATION NOTIFICATION   

• Is there anything you have to be aware when deciding to terminate a contract with the Social Media Monitoring tool provider?
• When contract finish, is it clear how to store the data used during contract period? do you have to pay any extra cost?

23. TOP USP'S    

• Out of all the above criteria, which top two does your tool position as the best in the market?

I welcome your feedback and any other factor you believe can be added into the process of reviewing a Social Media Monitoring tool.

Mauricio Escobar Mármol offers support on Social and Digital Marketing and Media, you can contact Mauricio:

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• Call Mauricio - Digital Marketing, Social Media &  SEO Consultant Sydney on +61481 367 711
• Check Mauricio Escobar Mármol LinkedIn profile.
• Follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter or Google+

About Mauricio

Mauricio Escobar Mármol (BBsMn & MCom) is eDigital Sydney SEO Consultant, Social and Digital Media Specialist. Mauricio posses over 10 years experience helping companies to earn new customers and prolong customer lifetime value by effective execution of structured Digital Marketing strategies and executions. Mauricio worked as Digital Marketing Manager for some of Australia's most visited websites. Mauricio expertise focuses on Website Optimisation, Social Media, SEO/Networks Acquisition Strategies (SEO, SEM, Affiliates, Display) and vendor reviews.

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How to choose a Social Media Monitoring Tool - Guide from Mauricio Escobar Mármol

18 tips on How to promote a new Facebook application

18 tips on How to promote a new Facebook application

KNOW YOUR TOP KEY OBJECTIVE

1. The more specific your objective(s) the better.

Some objectives options are:

• Are you building an app to sell more of a specific product? Specificy which product and the exact quantities you are expecting to convert.
• Are you building an app to get people to visit your website and find out more about you products and services. Specify how many website visits you are expecting from the app.
• Are you building an app to make new consumers aware of your product or services. Specify how many consumers you want people to interact with your app.

BEFORE BUILDING IT, CREATE MEANS FOR VIRAL EFFECT 

2. Make a competition or contest for your target market to decide what and how they want an application to be and work. Same users to be able to vote for the best creative idea. This will ensure your app when launched already have a fan base. 

BUILD FUNCTIONALITY THAT PROMOTES SHARING 

3. Make one of the application main features to engage other friends into the use of the application. If friends do not play with the app the experience is not as great. Examples: Pringles island party application :friends are invited to win a party in an island. 

4. Ensure your application offers a custom result that users are happy to share and/or show off. this will totally give a viral effect and will make the application to be used by more people. Examples: Pringles Conga Facebook app: users upload a photo of them so the end result is customised. 

5. Add sharable options at the end of the application. Share on twitter/facebook/email..make sure the sharable options and not boring copy but cool call to actions and have the same tone, look and feel as the facebook application. 

AFTER LAUNCH - USE YOUR MEDIA CHANNELS & TARGET KEY SEGMENTS 

6. Submit it to the Facebook apps directory AND facebook developers blog/forum. They will for sure be interested on what you have build, play with it (test it) and recommend it to people. 

7. Create a Facebook ad campaign targeting the people you want to use the facebook application. They might click on your ad, run the application and promote the facebook application to friends/family members. 

8. Create a consistent promotion calendar. Specify days you will be promoting and reminding people about the app. You can use your brands other digital media assets: Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, LinkedIn, Brick and Mortars (stores - if you have any) and any events (events are fantastic places to launch your new app - ensure you invite key media editors and bloggers to your event).

9. Create a case study about how you build the app and the results you have had in the first couple of weeks and share it with the digital media industry: Digital Buzz website, Springwise, others.

10. Reach popular and influential Facebook profiles. Send it to facebook profiles with more than 2000 friends and give them some giveaways for sharing the app on Facebook. 

10. Contact key bloggers to review the app and talk about it on their blogs/tweeter/facebook accounts. 

11. Promote the app on key pages of your website: Homepage,  "Thank you" pages and e-newsletter. 

12. Make a competition for the first 100 people to use the app and share it with friends on facebook to win something cool/relevant. 

13. Publish a media release about the new brands Facebook app. Ensure you include the app url address. 

14. Get celebrities (at least one relevant) to endorse the app and Tweet/Facebook about it. 

15. Allow users to provide feedback about new features so you know how to improve it and get more users to the app. 

16. Promote it in your Facebook page: in the cover photo, wall post. You can also  publish  a poll about it. 

17. Send the app url address to providers and partner companies so they can also promote it to their staff in their e-newsletters. 

18. Make a video about your app ( the story, behind the scenes, how it was built, why it was build, what the benefit is, etc), upload it into your youtube channel so users can embed the video on their own sites and blogs….bringing extra free promotion to your Facebook application. 

NEXT 

• I can help you define, develop, promote and track your facebook application project.
• Call Mauricio - Digital Marketing, Social Media &  SEO Consultant Sydney on +61481 367 71
• Check Mauricio Escobar Mármol LinkedIn profile.
• Follow us on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter or Google+
• eDigital is a Sydney Digital Agency, SEO Company in Sydney and Digital Marketing Training Sydney.

About Mauricio

Mauricio Escobar Mármol (BBsMn & MCom) is eDigital Sydney SEO Consultant, Social and Digital Media Specialist. Mauricio posses over 10 years experience helping companies to earn new customers and prolong customer lifetime value by effective execution of structured Digital Marketing strategies and executions. Mauricio worked as Digital Marketing Manager for some of Australia's most visited websites. Mauricio expertise focuses on Website Optimisation, Social Media, SEO/Networks Acquisition Strategies (SEO, SEM, Affiliates, Display) and vendor reviews.

Sydney Marketers! - Instagram free photos and free images can now be embedded on any website!

NEW - Instagram photos and videos can now be embedded!

As per photo example above, marketers can bring their photos and video content into their website and blogs using the new Instragram embed functionality released yesterday.

Please note that if you use Tumblr blogging platform, it will just work when using the "Video" option. Tip: Within the "video" option of Tumblr you can still embed Instragram photos :)

What this means?

Marketers and website owners who already promote their brands on Instagram can bring their Instragram photos and videos to their existing and new articles, pages using the new Instagram embed functionality.

Why Marketers should?

By embedding your brand's Instagram photos or videos into your new articles or pages within your website, you get the below benefits:

• Saves you time! if you have a decent website Content Management System that allows for easy embedding, it will just take a couple of seconds to embed content.
• Make your articles more visually attractive! More photo and video content on your articles means more user engagement.
• More Instagram followers! People who visit your pages, articles that show cast your Insta photos, they might also start following you on Instagram. 

Remember: If your Instagram posts are not set as "Private"; anyone can also embed your Instagram content on their own websites. At this stage i cannot see ( please correct me if I am wrong) Instagram has built functionality to report back to users the exact location (URL) a specific photo or video has been embedded so you can monitor whether your Instagram photos/videos have been embedded on "appropriate" websites. You might want possibly Competitors using your cool photos or some "inapropriate" sites exhibiting your photos on their websites.

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About Mauricio

Mauricio Escobar Mármol (BBsMn & MCom) is eDigital Sydney SEO Consultant, Social and Digital Media Specialist. Mauricio posses over 10 years experience helping companies to earn new customers and prolong customer lifetime value by effective execution of structured Digital Marketing strategies and executions. Mauricio worked as Digital Marketing Manager for some of Australia's most visited websites. Mauricio expertise focuses on Website Optimisation, Social Media, SEO/Networks Acquisition Strategies (SEO, SEM, Affiliates, Display) and vendor reviews.

Marshall McLuhan

Best known these days for his phrases "The medium is the message" (the title of one of his books was The Medium is the Massage), and "the global village", not to mention a cameo appearance in Woody Allen's movie Annie Hall, Marshall McLuhan was a prophet of the new communications technology and the founder of Media Studies with his book Understanding Media (1964). Last year was the 100th anniversary of his birth, and he died in 1980. But there is a lot more to him than this, and as an educator and philosopher he repays careful attention. He was, by the way, a Catholic convert in 1937 thanks to the influence of G.K. Chesterton. Wikipedia (a phenomenon that would have interested him greatly) tells us not only that he claimed intellectual guidance from the Virgin Mary, but that he had a lifelong interest in the number 3 – his conversion began as he was studying the Trivium (the first three Liberal Arts) for his thesis at Cambridge University. That thesis was published for the first time in 2006 by Gingko Press, and examines the history of the Trivium from Classical times to the Renaissance. McLuhan himself was an exponent of Rhetoric in the traditional and broadest sense – hence his interest in the communications media. He saw how each new technology (writing, print, telephone, TV, computer) effectively transforms human cognition and society. He predicted the World Wide Web and analysed its effects as early as 1962.

The latest issue of The Chesterton Review contains a couple of pieces on McLuhan in "News & Comments". One (by Jeet Heer) concludes that to appreciate the full profundity of McLuhan's thought you need to read books like Hugh Kenner's The Mechanic Muse, Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, and Nicholas Carr's The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. But don't neglect to read McLuhan.