If you have a smartphone, whether it be an iPhone or Android based phone, chances are you may have experienced the phenomenon that is Angry Birds. The strategy puzzle game was first released at the very end of 2009 on the iPhone and has since seen many updates, conversions to other platforms and the release of seasonal special editions to become a very successful brand. This brand extension has seen the birds branch out into many different areas, one of which is social media.

The Angry Birds have had a high presence on all social media sites.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the Angry Birds game involves firing a range of birds with different specialities from a giant slingshot to knock down structures containing the green pigs who have stolen their eggs. The original red bird would simply fly in a straight line but there is also the blue bird that splits into three, the black bird that explodes on impact and the white bird that drops explosive eggs from above. Players progress through a series of levels consisting of forest, desert, ice and stone themes and get a star ranking depending on their point score. Since the initial Angry Birds on iPhone, there has been an additional special edition released, Angry Birds Seasons, which features a range of special edition levels based on certain holidays such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day. The Birds popularity has also seen a licensed edition released to tie in with the animated film Rio.

This week saw the release of the latest edition, Angry Birds Space, which features brand new gameplay mechanics as it sees the Angry Birds take their fight against the pigs into outer space. The game now features stages that are no longer flat, with round planets to fling the birds around using each of the different planets gravitational pull. The developers of the game, Rovio, have been pushing the latest release hard on social media sites with teaser trailers detailing the new location and new birds via videos on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter. Upon the day of release, “Angry Birds Space” was a constant trending topic on Twitter as people downloaded and played the latest game.

The continued success of the brand has lead to the Angry Birds expanding into all sorts of other areas away from the main games. They have been featured in numerous advertising campaigns for other companies including the Bing search engine and Nokia and T-Mobile phones. They have also branched out into merchandise with plush toys, a board game, clothing and other accessories available featuring the range of different birds. Recently there has also been the announcement of Angry Bird themed playgrounds and theme parks and F1 driver Heikki Kovalainen even took to the track at last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix in a red Angry Bird helmet.

The continued success of Angry Birds shows how a popular brand can be bolstered by a continued presence on social media sites and keeping your audience engaged and up to date with the latest releases. If you think your local business could benefit from an SEO Coventry and social media campaign, then get in touch.

P.S. Are you on Google Chrome? If so then why not take a break and play Angry Birds Chrome?

The Internet is a funny place. If you take a look through your Facebook profile or search the popular hashtags on Twitter, chances are you will see someone posting a humorous picture, video or link. Just so you know what we’re talking about, we mean things like lolcats, the Star Wars kid and Peanut Butter Jelly Time which have gone down in Internet history and have even transcended into popular culture with appearances, parodies and mentions on shows such as Family Guy and South Park. Whilst a lot of these are merely there to pass the time and provide a laugh, they can also be utilised as part of an SEO social media campaign to engage with your users and increase traffic to your site.

An Internet meme is something that spreads across the Internet, with the most common form being an image with a funny caption, such as the above mentioned lolcats. These images are spread virally across the net via social sites like Facebook and Twitter, people see them, they laugh and then they too share them to all their followers. There are always new memes popping up and there are some which have been going for years and show no signs of becoming old.

So how do you utilise a meme for your own online social marketing campaign? First of all you need to find an existing meme, know the market and audience you are targeting and have a sense of humour. The above image is an example of the de-motivational posters meme, targeted towards people in the search engine optimisation industry. By doing a quick Internet search you will find the basic meme image to add your own caption to and once you’ve created a funny caption that taps into your industry, you will have your very own funny meme to spread across the net. The first place to post your meme will be your blog and Facebook, Twitter and Google+ accounts, which should then be liked, re-tweeted, commented on and shared by all your friends and followers. There are also social bookmarking sites that you can post your image to and some of these sites are very good for determining which memes are currently popular so you can make sure the one you create is relevant.

So how does having a funny image on your blog help with search engine rankings? Well, as the image (hopefully) gets noticed by people and reblogged, shared, liked and everything else, it will be providing links back to the blog page where you first posted the image. These links help tell Google and other search engines that your site is relevant and all the likes and comments on the social networks are a good thing since they are having more and more of an effect on rankings.

To discuss how an SEO Coventry campaign could utilise search engine optimisation and social media to benefit your business, get in touch with HeadRed.

Google Play

If you have logged in on any Android app in the last few days you will have been met with a new start-up screen as Google has rebranded the Android Market to Google Play. The cloud based service will allow you to access your games, apps, movies, music and books on any device so your smartphone, netbook and tablet will always have your latest downloads for easy access. The change is also a clever rebranding by Google who are keen to get rid of the perception of the Android Market being a place simply for free apps and establish the service as your go to place and an alternative to iTunes as the one-stop-shop for all your music, films and book apps.

Have a look at Google’s fancy reveal video below:

Twitter Campaign Cleared by ASA

Last month we wrote about the Snickers Twitter campaign which was being investigated by The Office of Fair Trading because of a group of celebrities that were tweeting about Snickers and seen as promoting a product without it being perfectly clear that it is an advert. Well the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has cleared the tweets and said that the teaser tweets were posted in such quick succession with the final tweet clear enough so as not to mislead consumers.

The interesting thing regarding this ruling is that it’s the first time that the ASA has made a ruling with regards to marketing on Twitter. While this issue has been resolved quickly with no further action needed, it will be interesting to see in the future if any further Twitter marketing campaigns breach advertising rules and regulations.

The New iPad

People were touting the names ‘iPad 3’ and ‘iPad HD’ but this week Apple revealed it was neither of these as they showed off ‘The new iPad’. With a retina display that has 4 times more pixels than the current iPad, a 5MP camera and ultra-fast wireless, the latest iteration of the popular tablet improves on the current model in every way. Apart from these improvements there wasn’t any surprise new features and most of the social media talk has been about the name. By ditching the number on the end of the iPad, Apple are making a clear statement that the tablet is here to stay and shouldn’t be looked at as numbered versions but as a piece of hardware that is a viable alternative to a PC or laptop.

#RIPGREGGJEVIN

For anyone that saw our Gregg Jevin blog post  the other week and were left confused, have a look at “Gregg Jevin: imaginary comic’s ‘death’ tops Twitter trends” for the full story.

Last week saw one of our SEO Coventry clients launching a photography competition across Facebook and Twitter giving people the chance to win a framing voucher up to the value of £250. Picture Frames Express supply made to measure picture frames and this new monthly competition gives photographers of all skill levels a great opportunity to show off their skills and be in with the chance of winning a great prize.

Have a look at the Picture Frames Express Facebook and Twitter for details on how to enter.

This week the changes Google has made to its privacy settings have been heavily featured in the news but is the situation being blown out of proportion and are people making more of a fuss about it than necessary?

Yesterday saw the new privacy policy implemented which sees the different privacy policies across the different Google owned sites such as YouTube, Gmail and Blogger all condensed into one policy which covers all of their services. This allows Google to now target ads on one site based on data collected from another, for example videos you browse on YouTube can now influence the ads you see when you login to Gmail and vice versa. Previously ads were only based on searches and data from that one service and not the different services across Google’s portfolio.

The reason this is making such big news is because the EU’s justice commissioner says that the policy is in breach of European law and that people should be able to have a say over targeted advertising. Google’s view is that they are condensing down over 60 different guidelines into one that covers all Google owned sites and that the change will help improve the quality of search results and provide more targeted ads to users. The changes have been advertised by Google leading up to the new condensed privacy policy but there is no way to opt out of the new changes. But the question I’d like to ask is; should users really be given a choice anyway?

Google is a business and needs to make money to continue offering the free services that they do. The way they make their money is through advertising and if they wish to change the policies for the services they own and operate then who’s to say they can’t? People most likely do a search on Google or view a YouTube video at least once a day and don’t pay anything to use these services. If people don’t like the new changes that a company are making then there are always other alternatives out there for people to use, but people stick with Google because the services they offer are that good. Don’t forget as well that these changes are only going to majorly affect users that are logged into a Google account. Are people worried that their YouTube viewing is so different to their usage of Blogger that they don’t want ads related to one site’s usage appearing on another? Since the changes have already been implemented, it will be interesting to see how this develops in the near future.

Have a look at Google’s new privacy policy so you can see the changes that are being made.

Some sad news came to our attention today in the HeadRed office and, if you’re a Twitter user, then you’ll no doubt have heard the sad news of the passing of Gregg Jevin. All here at HeadRed were very fond of Gregg and were shocked to see the news as the top trending topic on Twitter. He was a constantly happy character during his two week’s work experience here at HeadRed Towers; cheering us on as our SEO rankings soared, impressing us all with his can-do attitude to all tasks and entertaining us with his banjo renditions of popular Radio 1 playlist songs, my favourite being LMFAO ‘Sexy and I know It’.