Should the advertising world boycott Israel?

Near silence emerges from the advertising community when questioned about potential boycotts of Israel.

If actress Scarlett Johansson achieved anything by choosing SodaStream over her ambassadorial role with Oxfam, it was to increase global awareness of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

As BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti told The Guardian at the end of last month: “Oxfam is a human rights organisation. They cannot maintain an ambassador if they are involved in a complicit Israeli company built in a settlement.”

Since then the BDS movement has hit headlines around the world and rattled Israelis fearful of economic isolation. A report in The Economist noted that Norway’s finance ministry has “excluded Africa Israel Investments and its subsidiary, Danya Cebus, from a government pension fund”, while Dutch pension fund PGGM had previously withdrawn tens of millions of dollars worth of investments from five Israeli banks, citing the “banks’ unethical and illegal practices in the West Bank”. All of which followed on from the American Studies Association’s decision to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

To read full article click  here.
Originally published by: Campaign Middle East

6 Steps to Building and Managing A Successful Social Media Marketing Team

6 Steps to Building and Managing  A Successful Social Media  Marketing Team from Awareness, Inc | Creators of the Social Marketing Hub.

So you’ve decided it’s time to get serious about social media, and you’re excited to begin building a strategy and a social
media team. Whether your team is diving in for the first time, or restructuring an existing strategy so that it becomes more
effective, you should aim to answer the following questions for your team.

1. Why are we engaging in social media?
2. Who should be part of our social media team?
3. Where should our team focus our efforts in social media?
4. What social media content should we monitor and create?
5. How should our team produce content?
6. When and how often should we produce content?

This whitepaper aims to help marketing decision makers develop a strategy as it relates to team workflow. It also includes
tips for maintaining and evaluating your strategy.

Click here to read/download the paper courtesy CIOWhitepapers.com

How Can Older Websites Maintain Their Rankings Over Time?

Matt Cutts, Google’s Head of Search Spam, answered a question when someone asked him.

"I have been in business for over 14 years with my domain, and see much newer domains passing me. Any algorithms to protect older domains/sites in business from newer sites with more spam?"

Many owners of older websites are facing this issue.

Matt said that he has heard this before. This can apply to new sites as well when they try to rank above old sites.  The problem is not exclusive to older domains.

Google tries to show the most relevant and latest (recently updated) websites in its search results. If you have had a website for many years then you do need to take another look at it. Over time things change, specially technology, which changes at tremendous rate. New styles, designs and better interfaces have come out to provide a better user experience.

So bring your design up to date.

And what about your content? Most new sites add blogs that provide them with ongoing updates, always leaving them with fresh content. 

Update your content on a regular basis

Matt says that users will not be too happy landing on a site that looks outdated. If a user lands on a site and it looks old and has same old content then there is nor reason for them to come back. This even applies to the old sites that may still be ranking well. Act now to keep them there.

Rankings are not permanent and are constantly changing with the changes in the algorithms but sites with fresh and most relevant  content have a better chance to rank high. Matt says,

“Just because you are a domain that is well established, or has been around for a long time, doesn’t mean that you will automatically keep ranking.”

Click here to watch Matt Cuts' video