Creating engaging presentations can be a tough job, but threat not, help is at hand!

Here’s some tips from Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, a search engine optimisation software company, about creating simple and interesting presentations that should keep your audience engaged.

TNW announced yesterday that Facebook has begun rolling out a new timeline design – a single column layout. Currently only available to users in New Zealand, the redesign appears to be a tidy up job.

Messages from friends are now only on the left-hand side, instead of appearing (rather messily) on both the right and left. The header thumbnails for photos, friends, likes, events etc. have been removed and replaced with a text only menu. Activity from Open Graph apps, such as Spotify, can be found by clicking on the ‘More’ drop-down menu. Other notable changes include the removal of relationship information from the header and highlighted posts cannot be stretched across the page when starred.

Facebook Timelines Compared

On the surface, the new Timeline looks cleaner and is easier to navigate. My only concern is if all these features get rolled out to Facebook brand Pages. The inability to stretch highlighted posts, specifically photos, across the page alarms me. In my experience, highlighting/stretching a photo across a page sees higher engagement than if the photo were the timeline preview size (403 x403 pixels). Also, when a fan posts a photo on a Page and it is not highlighted/stretched across the page, no one pays any attention to it, likely because it’s hidden in the ‘Recent Posts by Others on X Page’. And if app tabs, such as competitions, newsletter sign-up and Pinterest, are hidden in the ‘More’ drop-down menu rather than a thumbnail in the header, will users notice them? I suppose that predicament would mean Page admins need to promote those apps more via the timeline wall, but still, it’s helpful when content is easily found.

So, a good revamp for individual pages, but I’m waiting in anticipation to see if/what the impact could mean for brand Pages.

Images source – TNW post

This has got to be one of the coolest bottles out there. It records and remixes any sound and then remixes it into a beat.

Awesome.

Re: Sound Bottle from Jun Fujiwara on Vimeo.

An interesting an humorous Ted Talk by Andrew Blum, well worth a watch!

“My cable guy said, ‘There’s your problem. A squirrel is chewing on your Internet.’” (Andrew Blum)

Here’s a nice little video from the Facebook marketing team about how British people are spending their time on Facebook.

I am a big fan of infographics and am really interested in content  marketing, so I was happy when I opened my inbox this morning and discovered Econsultancy’s post on B2B marketing infographics.

There’s a ton of marketing infographics floating around the web, but they mainly focus on B2C, so thank you Econsultancy for your roundup on some of the best B2B marketing infographics out there.

I’ve embedded two of my favourites below, but if you would like to see them all, then check out Econsultancy’s post.

An insightful study exploring how different travellers – leisure and business – research, plan and book travel online. Some interesting findings, specially with regards to video – 93% of business travellers watch online video when planning travel compared to 89% of leisure travellers.

This study combines findings from Google’s annual ‘Traveler’s Road to Decision’ study and Google search data.

Ever wonder how to get your videos on YouTube to rank well? Well wonder no more! Here’s a helpful video, courtesy of SEOmoz, that covers 12 specific YouTube ranking factors which will help see your videos rise to the top.

But remember, it’s all about great content. Without it, no matter how well you optimise your videos, if it’s not worth watching, then no one will engage with it and, therefore, YouTube will deem it unworthy of ranking well.

Tesco has just launched the UK’s first virtual grocery store, located at Gatwick Airport. Using a virtual fridge, holiday goers can shop for their groceries before they go on holiday and arrange to have them delivered when they get home. What a nice idea.

Check it out for yourself. Would you use a virtual store like this?

I’ve just finished reading yet another spot on on blog post by the KISSmetric team, “What Are The 3 Most Important Things Businesses Need To Know About Social Media?”. It’s a social media marketing 101 subject, but one that I think a lot of brands should revisit from time to time as they lose sight of what social media is about: relationships.

There’s an analogy in the post that I felt compelled to share, as it does a superb job at articulating how brands should view social media when it comes to advertising:

    “Social media is not an advertising platform. However, it can and should be used as a place to occasionally promote your latest offerings and sale…As an analogy, think of social media like television. If all a network did was broadcast their programming, they wouldn’t make any money. But if all they did was broadcast commercials, they wouldn’t have any viewers. They need to strike the right balance, and many of them have done that. For most networks, about 30% of their broadcast is advertisements; the other 70% is programming.”

Thanks Kissmetrics for hitting the nail of the head, once again.