Why this day? The night of 23rd June, leading into the 24th June, is the shortest night of the year. In the northern hemisphere, the shortest night of the year also means that the light wins over darkness, according to pagan mythology. Traditionally, it is said that this is the perfect night to chase away bad spirits and to bring in good ones. On the Noche de San Juan, friends and families head to a local beach to celebrate this festival with the local community. The most common traditions are building and lighting a bonfire, dancing around it and then jump in

This week, Peppermint’s guest blogger Irene Leon Maestre shares her research into the rise and rise of Pinterest. More than a scrapbook For a very long time Pinterest was known to be the ideal page for: planning a wedding, Mums’ interests (recipes & baby care), DIY, fashion, and quite a few cute puppies. Recently, with the rising importance of visual content online, business owners have realised the power of Pinterest. It is a scrapbook that became a mood board. It is no longer the platform where women at home pin pretty pictures; it has become a social media platform for effective, entertaining,

I came across this publication “The Content Marketer’s Dictionary” via my eMarketer FYI daily updates, which I must say are very useful if you haven’t discovered them yet. Get yourself over here https://www.emarketer.com/newsletter and sign up for the newsletter. If you’re looking for Twitter and FB posts; eMarketer is a great source of easy-to-understand information that keeps you updated about a very wide range of marketing and advertising news.   Every profession likes its jargon and marketing is certainly no different. This publication, which you’ll have to sign for by supplying your company email address etc etc, is downloadable  from http://newscred.com ;

On the May Day holiday I met a digital marketing expert for lunch in Marbella. It was a purely social occasion; not a brain-picking exercise. At some point in the conversation the term “big data” appeared and was bandied around for a few minutes before disappearing into a chat about the Kardashians, Kanye West and Google Glass: the computer that fits on your glasses. On arriving in the office the next morning I discovered that eMarketer, an invaluable online information resource for keeping up-to-date with emarketing developments and trends, had sent me a newsletter alert about a downloadable information roundup about

Go to any workshop, presentation or even join an informal chat about social media and at some point, somebody is likely to say: “content is king.” Writers grin like Cheshire cats in response to this, because content requires content providers and that’s writers. We discovered this via Sonia Ingriselli the Digital Marketing Manager of Marbella-based optimasit.com, who gave a great presentation at Andalucia Lab on Google’s Hummingbird and on why businesses with an online presence need social media in 2014. Go here for copies of Sonia's presentation. Search Engine Optimisation Good content is vital for search engine optimisation (SEO). According to eMarketer, a

In my previous blog about mentions I focused on why a tool like mention.com is vital for keeping track of multiple accounts across the various social media platforms. I also promised you some more tips about social media. So here goes. Tip 1: Split second reactions My social media tipsters reckon that speed is everything when it comes to social media responses. You’ll find that a tool like mention brings your attention to a client mention seconds after it has appeared online. That’s great! You want to know asap if somebody is saying bad things about your clients and, of course, you

It’s one thing keeping track of your personal social media accounts, but when you’re running a social media strategy for several clients you need some method of keeping track of any “mentions” across all the networks you use. It’s particularly important when you want to keep track of what your clients’ customers are saying about their product; both good and bad. I signed up for mention.com. It is pretty easy to use and not only does the company alert you to all mentions, it also shares some useful information with its users. So, I thought I’d share some of their findings

In Asia, insurance companies use super-sad ads to reel in customers: in the UK we prefer to use humour. While I was searching for some interesting stories about insurance and approaches to insurance marketing and advertising, I came across an interesting article at Business Insider about the Asian approach to advertising insurance. I know that we’re in Spain and that our insurance clients focus on the expat market in Spain, Gibraltar and Portugal, but I couldn’t resist sharing this article with you, if only because it illustrates how emotion can be a compelling sales tool for insurance. It also emphasizes the

This month Peppermint is celebrating its 10th anniversary! My my doesn't time fly! Over the past 10 years Peppermint has gone from strength to strength