On Thursday 19th April 2018, Mali Lewis and I did our first ever SEO talk at ManyMinds – Give It a Go in Cardiff. ManyMinds Give It a Go is designed for first time speakers to get over their fear of talking in front of a crowd, as it creates a warm, welcoming and comfortable space for people to stand up and talk about what they know best!
All of the talks were amazing – Content Marketing Exec Emma Croke had some strong gifs in her talk about going from an Agency to In House (the underlying message of communicate and stop competing is one we should all take onboard), and Luke Berry’s talk about easy and free link building tactics gave us some great insight on how SEO professionals should be looking at the way in which we all do link building. Product Designer Michael Gearon gave an excellent talk about how AMP enhances user experience, and Laura D’amato delivered a really interesting and funny talk about outreach and how to please the client, audience and journalist. Gareth ‘s discussion about how people can fix their site to stop them losing money on bad CRO was great, and we all want Bamboo socks.
The event was a great opportunity for everyone involved, and the meme game was very strong. A huge thank you to Kirsty Hulse (founder of ManyMinds) for organising the event, and the bar tab was the cherry on top of the cake!
Fake News and its Impact on Digital Marketing and SEO
Fake news was declared as the Collin’s Dictionary word of the year in 2017, but fake news has been around for centuries. In recent years it has been something we’ve seen turn into a social media phenomenon to a cliche within journalism and it is now an angry political slur. Donald Trump didn’t coin the term fake news, (the talk threw a lot of shade at the orange man child who’s currently running the free world), but misinformation has saturated the media, and people make decisions based on the media they use.
From influencing the way people see a brand or interpret an event, we’ve seen on a worldwide scale how it can positively and negatively influence a situation. But fake news doesn’t have to be on a large scale in order to degrade a brand’s trust and reliability; digital marketers are creating and promoting fake news on a daily basis, often without even realising it.
In this talk we discussed exactly what fake news is and gave some examples of current events that have been impacted by fake news (the Avril Lavigne Conspiracy Theory runs strong), and how digital marketing professionals may or may not be participating in the creation and distribution of fake news. We then discussed how Facebook and Google are tackling the wider issues surrounding fake news and what this means for the future of content creation, Digital PR and SEO.
Key statistics to remember
- 7 out of 10 people worry about fake news.
- 25% of people consider the results shown on Google’s SERPs to be part of the media.
- 59% of people cannot tell the difference between fake news and real news.
- There are 1,754,000,000 active monthly users on Facebook.
- There are 81,000,000 fake Facebook profiles.
- Only 32% of people trust the media.
- 27% of the UK think news is controlled by hidden agendas.
- 33% of the UK think that news sources are bias or one-sided.
(Edelman Trust Barometer 2018)
Check out our Fake News and SEO blog!
