The Internet is obviously, a vital part of almost all business.  So why aren’t more people, especially in smaller businesses, getting more out of it?  We’ll ask a few questions over the next week to find out.  For today the question is simple:

polls, LinkedIn, Roadblocks to success

As you’ve noticed, we’ve switched Morning Coffee to Coffee Break since we don’t get the posts up first thing in the morning.

Here’s an article worth reading if you’re looking for an explanation of how Blogs work for marketing.  This is about one aspect: the product review.  It’s a good explanation of both how blogs have become important, and explores the mommy blog “phenomenon” that you’ve probably been hearing about.

Happy reading!

Source: NYTimes.com

Blogs, Product review, blog marketing, mommy bloggers, NY Times

As social media solidifies its presence in our lives – and in some cases, takes over – a growing faction of society is dissenting.

Their concern is valid – Facebook and other sites like it make public too much personal information.

But how much is too much, and isn’t that relative?

On this video from CNN, college professor Mark McSherry suggests that something as innocent as showing a visible tattoo may be enough to turn people off. And by people, I mean potential employers, etc. – the ones who matter in the context of this “To Facebook or Not to Facebook” conversation.

While I respect the opinions of others – after all, it’s their choice to adopt social networking into the lives – it seems sort of primitive to avoid social networking out of fear of what others might think of you, the perception they may receive. From my POV, this debate is more an issue of how much self-control does an individual have to make smart choices when using the sites, and how much should this person care what others think about them based on their profiles? Aren’t profiles an extension of one’s real self. And isn’t is safe to expect that anyone who would be offended by one’s profile, will be equally offended by the real person?

For instance, I have several tattoos – well hidden, meaningful, and nicely done. If a potential employer discovered I had tattoos via my Facebook page – and they are posted there – and subsequently decided I wasn’t fit for a job, why would I want to work for that employer? I wouldn’t. My personal life – though many parts of it are public now – has no bearing on my professional ability to perform in the workplace. The same goes for other aspects: sexuality, my choice of partner, what I do on the weekends, etc. I don’t want to hide who I am for fear that someone so close-minded might not hire me. In fact, I’d rather he or she didn’t hire, so that I wouldn’t be subjected to such a person.

There’s another facet to this multi-sided debate I’d like to touch on as well. What gives people the right to judge someone based on their social networking pages? Outside of being outright offensive – posting nudity, racially charged innuendos, things that are generally deemed unacceptable by an educated public – why do others care how one lives his or her online life, and is it a moral issue to deny to someone employment or gainful benefits based on content that one individual deems inappropriate?

Frankly, I have more esteem for people who put it all out there – who have nothing to hide – than I do for those who try to brush their dirty little secrets under the rug.

But I may be different than most people, so I ask: When it came down to it, who would you want to work, live or hang out with – someone who actively and unapologetically gives you an honest glimpse into their life via social networking, or someone whose past is impenetrable and protected by an avoidance of all things Internet?

The latter seems a tad shady in today’s world, doesn’t it? Just sayin’.

I’ve got six goodies for you today.  Google just announced a new operating system based on their recently released web browser, Chrome.  Is it a threat to Windows? They also recently removed a little word that’s been hanging around your Gmail screen since you joined the tens of millions of users of that popular email service: “Beta”

Just to transition away from a heavy Google news day, we’ve also got a review of Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, which was launched about a month ago, and how it compares to Google.  David Pogue seems to be quite smitten, but the numbers aren’t in Microsoft’s favor.  Since launch, Bing has been hovering at around 3% market share, while Google is still at around 89% (source: StatCounter).  But just because it’s the little guy doesn’t mean it’s not great.

Now, I know the web is a big part of your life, so why not take it with you?  Well, many of us do, in the form of smart phones, net books, laptops, and even the Kindle.  One guy thought it would be great to offer a different take, and started printing a newspaper of sorts with only blog content.  I don’t think it’s as crazy as it sounds, but the venture has recently closed.  This is a good read for anyone starting a new business.

And finally, in case you haven’t heard, Michael Jackson has died.  How much of an effect did he have on modern culture?  Enough to make people wonder if following his death and memorial online would cause the intertubes to crash. The internet pulled through just fine – but take a look at this article to get a sense of the scale of these things.

Happy reading!

1. Google Plans a PC Operating System
By MIGUEL HELFT and ASHLEE VANCE
Published: July 8, 2009
Google announced it is developing an operating system for personal computers, a direct challenge to Microsoft.
Source: NYTimes.com

2. In Chrome, Hints of a Real Rival to Windows
By MIGUEL HELFT and ASHLEE VANCE
Published: July 9, 2009
Google promises that its Chrome operating system will put an emphasis on speed, simplicity and security.
Source: NYTimes.com

3. After Five Years, Gmail Finally Sheds the ‘Beta’
By MIGUEL HELFT
Published: July 8, 2009
By signaling that its online applications are mature, Google is hoping to increase its minuscule share of the business software market.
Source: NYTimes.com

4. Bing, the Imitator, Often Goes Google One Better
By DAVID POGUE
Published: July 9, 2009
Microsoft’s rechristened search engine, Bing, makes a concerted effort to organize search results in more helpful ways than Google, and often succeeds.
Source: NYTimes.com

5. Blogs-on-Paper Idea Runs Out of Steam
By Claire Cain Miller
Published: July 7, 2009
The Printed Blog, an audacious experiment in printing blog material to distribute in newspaper form, has stopped publication.
Source: NYTimes.com

6. The Web Holds Up During Jackson’s Memorial Service
By Jenna Wortham
Published: July 7, 2009
Video sites and social networks appear to have kept running smoothly during the memorial service and tribute held for Michael Jackson.
Source: NYTimes.com

What is the online marketing cash funnel you ask?  Simple: low-cost online marketing solutions that help your company meet and exceed its business objectives.

Though the Internet has been around for a long time, many companies are still struggling with how to take advantage of online marketing to improve their business.  For this reason, we decided to expose the elephant in the room and put together a survey to see how you could use online marketing to begin funneling success to your business.

When we recently surveyed 97 small businesses in and around New York, the overall question was simple: Is your website meeting your business objectives?  To answer, we asked these 97 businesses 9 important questions to discover whether the elephant was being ignored or whether it was being leveraged for success.

The results laid it out in plain English: Companies with Internet Marketing Strategies in place more often report that their website is meeting their business objectives.

A Little Strategy Goes a Long Way

Of companies that reported that their website was meeting business objectives, 53% update their website weekly, and 72% update their site at least monthly.  Whether or not SEO is part of their marketing strategy, frequent updates help keep search engines hungry and coming back for more.  Even more importantly, updates keep the site fresh and relevant, showing a visitor that behind this site is a company that is constantly innovating and improving.

Think of your company’s site like a house: if you don’t fix the house up on a routine basis, it’s eventually going to fall apart on you.  If you don’t ever change anything, visitors will begin yawning and searching for something new and different.  By keeping your content exciting and dynamic, you will bring the, “Wow,” factor to your clients while also improving your standing with search engines: a nice double play for your business.

Perhaps the most worrying of the data collected in our survey is that only 33% of companies reported that their website is meeting business objectives and 11% aren’t sure whether their business objectives are being met.  Having a clear-cut strategy to reach your website goals is extremely important and each Internet Marketing practice should work towards those goals.

Four of the focal pillars in Internet Marketing are email, blogging, PPC, and SEO. In a study by marketingsherpa.com, email marketing and SEO ranked as the best ROI for business in Q4 of 2008.  Accordingly, we can see in the chart below that a majority of companies reported that email and SEO marketing were the best practices used to meet their business objectives.

When looking at your company, are you meeting your business objectives?  What Internet Marketing practices do you use?  Which Internet practices are most successful?  Asking yourself these types of questions will help you identify where you are having success and where you need to improve.

The B2B vs. B2C Myth

We commonly hear that the Internet is good for B2C businesses, but bad for B2B… a lot of people also believe in flying pigs, but you don’t hear us touting that line.  Survey results show that a near equal number of respondents in B2B and B2C companies had the same experiences down the line.

As you can see, the B2B and B2C results are corollary, so you can tell your rumor-spreading coworkers to stop crying wolf on that one.

Building Your Golden Funnel

The Internet is the main mode of communication in the 21st century. These days, you can do just about anything online.  We’ve gone from on-site malls to amazon.com, from garage sales to craigslist.com, and these same opportunities apply when considering offline to online marketing.  Not taking advantage of the ever-expansive web means missing opportunities and provides more chances for your competitors to tie your shoelaces together when you’re not looking.

There is a lot of work to do when funneling Internet Marketing success to your company.  As nerdy as it might sound, helping your company’s Internet Marketing is what we know, what we do and what we are incredibly passionate about.  We are just happy that we can help you out on the journey!

The full results of the survey:

How many unread emails do you have in your in-box and what was your reason for ignoring them? Has your mother been emailing about how you don’t call enough? Are you ignoring online bills? Are you being solicited by men who need you to wire them $100,000 because they have been unjustly exiled from their home country?

Many recipients either unsubscribe or simply stop reading emails from online marketers. Year-after-year, in-box clutter has been the number one reason people resist emails, but this year, things have been turned on their head. A 2008 study from Marketingsherpa’s email summit in Miami has determined that in-box clutter is not the biggest problem – the problem is relevance.

58% of those surveyed said the number one reason they opted out of or unsubscribed from an email was because the email was not relevant to them; 44% said it was because they received too many emails from a particular sender; and only 31% said it was because of in-box clutter.

Good News For Email Marketers

It is good news that relevance is the reason people are opting out of emails, because unlike in-box clutter, this is something we as email marketers can control. It is more important than ever for your campaigns’ to immediately strike a chord with your customers. Marketers need to identify the absolute best products/offers they can send out. Copy and design need to work seamlessly together from subject headline to layout to entice customers to open.

The chart plays an optimistic beat for online marketing – it asserts that you are in control of the effectiveness your emails have on your customers. There will always be recipients who opt out, but good online marketing practices can limit and decrease these numbers.

“Nothing in this world is free.”

You’ve heard that a million times – probably from your father – but is that antiquated, omnipresent quote valid anymore?

Yes …. and No.

It may seem like we’re getting all kinds of free content – Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, etc. – but blogger John Falls, who maintains the site Social Media Explorer, begs to differ.

In his recent post “The Economy of Free Is Stupid,” Falls argues that our free ride has a limited lifespan. And his stance makes sense. The reason these platforms and applications are “free” is because advertisers’ dollars subsidize our costs. They pay, we partake. But how long will it last?

His point – the short of the long – is simple. Take DVR for example, he says. We love our TiVos, but sooner or later the shows we love the most – the ones we record so we can skip over the commercials – won’t be around. Advertisers pay all the fees associated with television – actors’ salaries, production costs and so on. If you’re not watching their ads, they’re not making any money – and they’ll be less inclined to sponsor that show in the future. And when measurable viewership declines, advertisers pull out, leaving the networks no choice but to halt production.

Of course, there’s a loophole in this theory. Falls’ belief is based on the assumption that the masses will adopt DVR. But so far that hasn’t happened. While many people are moving their TV viewing to TiVo and online, the majority of couch potatoes still watch TV the old-fashioned way – in front of the set, enduring 15-, 30- and 60-second spots for products they don’t need or want (or so they think). But how long will that last? Sooner or later, TiVo – or a similar brand – will wiggle its way into most American homes. Just like VHS, DVDs and CDs did. It took time, but it happened.

In his post, Falls also touches on social media developers. The ones who rely on investors to finance the building and marketing of the technology; the ones who offer it for free, hoping that a Google or News Corp. will swoop down and save the day by buying it up for an exorbitant amount of money.

But that doesn’t always happen. For every Facebook, there are a thousand social networking sites that can’t find their legs – ultimately leaving its developers broke, with investors banging down their doors.

Which goes back to Falls’ original point. How long will this “freeconomy last” – how long can it last? Sooner or later somebody has to pay the bills. But if there’s no one there willing to foot it, what happens next?

Good morning.  So I realized, I probably won’t be posting before you have your morning coffee – so let’s think about this series as an occasional list of articles I liked during my morning coffee.  Articles you can read during your mid-morning break.

First, a note on the Associated Press: They stink.

Today’s articles cover your privacy online, the evolution of internet video, and the dangerous side of life with a computer!

Here are my morning picks, minus the AP articles:

1. Bits: Four Privacy Protections the Online Ad Industry Left Out
By Saul Hansell
Published: July 6, 2009
The Internet advertising industry’s “new” privacy principles are essentially unchanged from the old ones. Trade groups rejected the enhanced disclosures and protections suggested by Google and other industry players.
Source: NYTimes.com

2. Rise of Web Video, Beyond 2-Minute Clips
By BRIAN STELTER
Published: July 6, 2009
Producers and advertisers are discovering that users, aided by the screen-filling video that faster Internet access allows, will watch longer videos online.
Source: NYTimes.com

3. More Computers, Many More Injuries
By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Published: July 7, 2009
While computer use is often linked to wrist and back pain, people are also winding up in emergency rooms with other injuries from computers.
Source: NYTimes.com

4. Twice the Work, Half the Pay
By MARTHA C. WHITE
Published: July 7, 2009
Site bookers and coordinators, paid by hotels on the number of rooms used, say they are working twice as hard for half the money.
Source: NYTimes.com
[This is a good time to suggest working with the Coleman Center.  They're an excellent meeting, training, and conference center in midtown manhattan - and they make event planner, site-booker, and event and site coordinator's lives very easy.  Hey, if you're going to get half the pay, why not minimize the work you have to do?]

Internet Advertsing, Online Privacy, Internet Video, Web Video, Computer injuries, event coordinators

I love newspapers, I love journalists, I love a well researched article written with intelligence and the bigger picture in mind.  I love knowing that I can get information about what’s going on in the world, from people whose profession it is to suss it out and tell the story.  And until this morning I loved the Associated Press.  (OK, love is a bit strong – but I often turned to the AP for news.)

While preparing my Morning Coffee Articles post this morning, I found three AP articles I wanted to share with my readers.  I went to the post link on the articles and was given a few options:

1. The free one required me to post the entire article with ads, but only for one month.
2. If I wanted to pay I could post an excerpt or a PDF.

Now, I know they want to get paid for their hard and sometimes dangerous work.  I appreciate that.  But I think iCopyright (the service they use) or the AP got the options wrong.  They missed the part where the Internet becomes valuable to them because they’re part of a web of information and sharing, a community.  I’ll pay to put a picture on.  I’ll pay to put a certain amount of the text right on my site (they charge $12.50 for as little as 5 words).  But I won’t pay to do what I see as the right thing:

1. Post the headline
2. Post two sentences
3. cite the author
4. link to the article
5. and link to ap.com

So, AP, you’ve lost three good links this morning.  And for the record, that’s costing your affiliates (in this case the Montgomery Advertiser, the Albuquerque Journal, and KMOV-TV, Inc.) visitors, ad dollars, Search Engine “link juice”, and brand exposure.  Nice work AP.

Give me and a couple of folks a few days with the AP and I bet we can come up with a better model that would increase their exposure, make them money AND not alienate their readers.

By the way, I think iCopyright is on the right track – and I don’t know what options they offered the AP.  Either way, it’s the AP that made the decision.

Associate Press, iCopyright, blogging, copyright, journalism

I’m starting an experiment here, so let me know what you think.

Each morning I read the New York Times and other news sources (the ones that have apps that download the articles to my phone for offline viewing) on my iPhone on the way to work (on the subway – not while driving!).  I often read articles very relevant to Internet marketing; these are the articles that get me psyched for the day, excited about Internet marketing and the work we do for our clients. So, I thoght to myself, why not share? These aren’t necessarily the latest in news about online marketing, but NYTimes and other news media do a good job of discussing the tools, people, and phenomena of the Internet and Internet business. It’s a welcome change from the blog posts and tweets that focus on this issue or that feature.

As always, this post like the rest of our blog, is geared to people who use Internet marketing for their business but aren’t necessarily IM geeks – like us.

Below are my links for today.  Grab a cup of coffee, and happy reading! Don’t forget to let me know what you think!

-Gabriel

1. Spinning the Web: P.R. in Silicon Valley
By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
Published: July 5, 2009
Public relations gurus are courting influential voices on services like Twitter to endorse new companies, Web sites or gadgets, perhaps forever altering their roles.
Source: NYTimes.com

2. Lead Us to Tweet, and Forgive the Trespassers
By PAUL VITELLO
Published: July 5, 2009
Many churches are trying to embrace social media networks, but it has been an uneasy alliance thus far.
Source: NYTimes.com

3. Stereo for One: A Brief Unaccompanied History
By DAN BARRY
Published: July 5, 2009
Decades before iPod, there was Walkman. And before that, car horns and bird song.
Source: NYTimes.com

4. Facebook’s Easy Virtue: ‘Click-Through Activism’ Broad but Fleeting
By Monica Hesse
Published: July 2, 2009
Facebook activism, the trendy process by which we do good by clicking often, was in its full glory last week after the death of Iranian student Neda Agha Soltan, killed by gunfire in the streets of Tehran.
Source: washingtonpost.com