How Long Can This Last?

How to use Adwords

2008-08-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since my last post and that's due to the fact that work has just been so busy! But today I finished a report that my boss asked me to before I go back to school. The report is on Google Adwords and how to use it. Once I go back to school, someone will be brought in to fill my spot and they will need to do a lot of the same work as me, but likely will not have the knowledge of how to best us Adwords. So I put together this two page document about it.

Below is a summary of it. To download the full file in .doc format: Click Here.

Topics:

Introduction
Basic Guidelines
Picking a budget
Keyword Costs
Keyword Research
Creating the Ad
Maintaining the Ad
Conversion Rates
Summary

Basic Guidelines

Only use keywords that appear in 7 positions
No more than 5 keywords per ad, no less than 3
Stop ads if conversion cost is more than 12% of the cost of the item
. . .

Please give me some feedback on it, if you have any, or email me if you have any questions. I also do consulting work if you are interested.

Thanks!

bsilverstein.info
as-seen-on-youtube.com

What was that about?

2008-07-22T08:46:00.000-07:00

So that post was a little strange and didn't really work. But what was I trying to do?

I have a couple of other websites that I have talked about before. I have links to them from this post and other places. Incase you missed them, here they are again:

www.bsilverstein.info
www.as-seen-on-youtube.com

www.politicsofamillennial.blogspot.com
www.asoyoutube.blogspot.com
www.always-free-shipping.com

So why show those again? I am putting this websites and links on this blog post because I have found in the past that if I post something on my blog with a link to my other websites, I get thousands of page views and visits on my other sites. And here's the best part, its because people are clicking on them!

If I have links to my other sites anywhere on the web, that helps my organic search on sites like Google and Yahoo. So that means if people search for keywords that I have in my meta tags or keywords which are relevant for my sites, my site will appear higher in the search rankings. This is of course simple SEO stuff, but fun to play with.

Try it out for your site and see if you have the same success!

Official Google Blog: Hitting 40 languages

2008-07-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

Official Google Blog: Hitting 40 languages

Social Networks & Free Advertising

2008-07-15T09:07:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of talk these days about social networking and how it is changing the face of communications. Many small companies are trying to break into social networks for free or cheap advertising and promotion of their website or company. But for all the talk, is it any cheaper or any more cost effective than traditional advertising?

The problem with advertising and promoting on sites like Facebook, MySpace, Friendster or any others, is that you are hitting a market that is already saturated with ads on a daily basis and are very good at ignoring them. Look at MySpace for example. The site is jam packed with ads that cost a lot of money and for what? So people can ignore them and get down to what to they really want to see? I'm not saying the ads don't work at all, but maybe they're a little over rated. Facebook offers a free page for your company which is great, but you need to have friends to invite to your page or you need to advertise it. The advertising generally comes in the form of a pay-per-click and the suggested cost-per-click can be higher than Google costs. But maybe just being on Facebook is enough to make you "cool" so you may have a higher ROI. But is their any hard evidence to this? I would like to see it because I'm struggling with the decision of whether or not to adveritise on these sites.

I just launched a new website this week, www.as-seen-on-youtube.com. The site is an open forum for people to post links of cool videos they have found on YouTube, MySpace, Google, MetaCafe or any other online site. It is free and simple and I make money from Google Ads on my site. But to get people to the site in the first place I have to promote it. But I have a very small budget. (Basically pocket change). I am on Facebook and MySpace doing what I can for free and have set up Google ads and MSN AdCenter ads, but those only produce so many clicks.

Now this may work for me and may be enough for my site to grow (I hope) but that doesn't mean it works for everyone. A viral campaign doesn't work for every age group. I am working with some people on a launching a new product and they want to implement a viral campaign because it is cheaper and cooler than regular advertising. While this may work a little, the target market for this product is above the age of 35 and mostly women. This market is not online chatting and viewing pictures and videos. So if we were to go ahead with a viral campaign, the little money we do spend could be a waste.

But then again, the fastest growing segment of the social networking realm is ages 25+, but this is because anyone younger already has an account! What do you do? Does anyone have a suggestion? If it helps with promoting my site, I would be willing to pay for good ideas. How can I reach 20+ million people cheaply and fast? I don't know yet, but if I figure it out, I'll be sure to let you know!

What did Yahoo do now?!

2008-07-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

So if you've been on the internet at all in the last few months, or even turned on a news cannel on TV, you've heard about the Yahoo fiasco and 'fightin' words from Carl Ichan. Well as in my last post, I talked about "Why Yahoo is F**ked" and explained most of the problems facing them and few suggestions for fixing them. Well just wait to hear what's happing now.

Yahoo signed a deal with Google (their BIGGEST COMPETITOR) to show Google ads on Yahoo search results. The deal is that Yahoo can choose what to show, where and when. Well great, they laid the seeds for Google to start taking over more features and eventually take over the whole company. But anyway, this week I got more news about Yahoo pay-per-click account. They are raising the minimum bids for most of my keywords! What?! Not only is this unnecessary, the bids are HIGHER than the minimum bids on Google for the same keywords. Here are some examples of what I'm facing:

Keyword: "debbie meyer green bags" My old bid: $0.20 The new minimum: $0.30

Keyword: "food storage" My old bid: $0.15 The new minimum: $0.42

Keyword: "carpet stain removal" My old bid" $0.32 The new minimum: $0.95

So I am a little ticked off to be frank about it. And what is my response? Bye-Bye Yahoo. Why spend money for a program that does not show anywhere near the same ROI as Google and is owned by a company that seems to be doing everything wrong? I'm going to close my Yahoo account and open an Account with MSN AdCenter. Earlier this year, Yahoo made up about 19% of all search engine usage in the US and MSN was about 12.5%. The way things are going, I expect to see Yahoo's share fall and MSN's grow. So I'm going to MSN (and of course keeping Google Adwords).

This is really a shame because Yahoo has a lot of great features that I like and think are important for them to stay competitive, such as Yahoo Answers. A great resource and asset to the company that keeps thousands of users on Yahoo for long periods of time. The email isn't as clean as Gmail, but they recently redid the design, but while doing so did not make a dramatic enough change to scare away the users that were used to the old design. This is extremely important and shows that Yahoo is, (or was) trying to keep their old customers while at the same time trying to attract new ones.

Yahoo is not down and out just yet, but they are down and it will take a lot to pick them back up. I just can't wait to see what they do next so I can post about that.

What’s the next step in E-mail Campaigns?

2008-07-02T09:36:00.000-07:00

Before you get the wrong idea, I love e-mail campaigns! I think they are a great and inexpensive way to drive sales. But across the board, companies are seeing that campaigns that used to bring in 30 or 40,000 dollars are now bringing in 7 or 8,000. Studies are showing that imbedding video in the e-mail or having links to video can increase conversation rates. But that doesn’t work for every market. Older customers may have no interest in watching video online and customers with a slow dial-up connection will have trouble opening it, which may cause you to loose customers! So what can we do to increase sales and keep customers?

The title of this post may be mis-leading, but it’s long as it is and I didn’t want to write “How can we make e-mail campaigns more effective and what is the next steep?” But that’s really what I’m talking about. E-mail campaigns aren’t going away anytime soon, but the problem is that almost every site asks for your e-mail address so that they can send you information and consumers are getting overloaded with e-mails. Many people now have spam blockers that can stop even ligament e-mails, and some are even on national “Do not e-mail” lists like the “Do not call” list. So for the few who will get your e-mail and SEE it, how can it stand out?

The first thing people will see is the title. It is important to keep this short and to the point so that when people are skimming their inbox, they can tell what your e-mail is right away. This is more important today more than ever before with smart phones. People check their e-mails with almost any phone now and the text is very small and short. They must be able to see your e-mail immediately if you want them to buy. If they don’t know what it is, they might just delete it. Years ago I had the idea of texting coupons to people’s cell phones. Some companies are doing things similar to this, but not exactly as I had in mind. Today, over three years after I first did my school project, I think cell phones are the next steep.

Instead of signing up for an Opt-In email on a website, wouldn’t it be nice to sign up for Opt-In text messages? Now this was originally intended for brick and mortar stores, but it can be easily adopted for online stores. If a customers shops at your store a lot, they are probably already on the e-mail list or mailing lists and get coupons as it is. But it is very easy to forget a coupon when you drive out the store, or have it get lost under a hundred other emails. But no one forgets their cell phone. So why not send the customer a text? They will be sure to get it and always have it on them. You might even get lucky and send it to them while they’re out shopping or at the mall and they can immediately go to your store and buy something. Also, if they get a text message, they are almost forced to view it before deleting it, where an e-mail can be deleted automatically. The cost for a text message campaign as large as an email campaign may be higher, but the principle behind it is a higher conversion rate which would mean the cost per conversion would be lower, or the same, resulting in higher sales and a higher ROI.

So are we going to see this soon? I work at company that has a very old target market and a cell phone campaign wouldn’t work because our customers don’t have cell phones. But for many other retailers, I think this could work. So what the hell, give it a shot and let me know how it works. If you want more information about my DECA project from years ago, send me an email. My website is: http://www.bsilverstein.info/.

Thanks!

Why Yahoo is F**ked

2008-06-27T09:09:00.001-07:00

When the second largest search engine in the United States passed up a multi, multi, multi billon dollar offer made by the largest computer software maker in the world, they all but laid seeds for their own destruction. It didn’t help that they signed a deal with their main competitor only days later.

Yahoo can’t seem to stay out of the news these days and most of the stories seem to be bad. Even when Yahoo thinks it’s good. Activist investor Carl Icahn has been rasing hell about the management at Yahoo and is doing everything he can to remove Jerry Yang, a co-founder and now CEO of Yahoo. And if Icahn, or anyone else, wants to save this sinking ship, it looks like Yang has to go.

After passing up the deal with Microsoft and signing a deal with Google, huge numbers of top executives left Yahoo because they were unhappy with the leadership of Susan Decker the President and Jerry Yang, CEO. Bill Gates issued a statement saying that a major factor in Microsoft’s desire to buy Yahoo was because of the executives and their creativity. (Microsoft has been putting ads out in Silicon Valley for executive positions now hoping to get some ex-Yahoo employees.) Now with many of them already gone or thinking about leaving, Yahoo’s value is quickly decreasing. This posses a problem for Icahn who wants to sell Yahoo to Microsoft if he is elected to the board. Microsoft may not even want it by then and if they do, you can bet the offer will be significantly smaller.

Then to top it all off, Yahoo signed a deal with Google to start showing Google ads with Yahoo searches. This means both companies are going to make more money, but now Google, which accounts for about 64% of all web searches in the U.S., has it’s foot in the door to eventually take over Yahoo which has another 23% of all web searches. That may seem extreme, but not out of the question. Yahoo is a big company and has spread itself to thin and got a little to carried away with acting like a big time dot com instead of building their company properly, like Google did. Yahoo’s board of directors include (or included as of recently) people who had nothing to do with running a web business. This is a MAJOR problem. Not all business is created equally and knowing how to run an airline, doesn’t mean you know how to run a website. Because of this, Yahoo’s services were numerous, but not very good.

So what should Yahoo have done? Take the first offer from Microsoft. Combine the powers of MSN search (#3 behind Google and Yahoo), build the strength of all of Yahoo’s services, revamp their board and THEN take Google head on. Instead they have headed just the opposite direction. So what to do now?

If I was to save Yahoo, here is my plan. Fire Yang and Decker for one. It’s just time to go. You can’t lead a company with people that don’t have the respect of their employees. Then spin off parts of Yahoo such as the website hosting service into a new and separate company. It is a great thing to have, but at this point may to much to handle for a company trying to beat the Godzilla of search engines. Then, now here’s the kicker, break the contract with Google. It may cost money now and seem like a bad idea, but it shows that Yahoo can and wants to stand alone. It also pushes back any ideas Google might have of taking over more of Yahoo. Then focus on strengthen Yahoo’s paid search service. It’s good now and has some features that Google’s Adwords doesn’t have, such as tracking exactly how much money people spend on your site on each conversion. Along with that, I would ad a free keyword search service like they used to have. Google’s keyword search is great and if Yahoo had one like that it would help bring in more small business customers. Now there are many more things to be done that can save this company, but I don’t have time go into all of them. But I think you get the idea.

Personally I work with a site hosted by Yahoo and work with their paid search service so I have to keep a close eye on this stuff. But again, this is the internet we’re talking about you never know what will happen next.

Is This What's Next?

2008-06-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since my last post and honestly, I’m not sure if anyone is even reading it, but that’s fine. For anyone who is reading, thanks!

Anyway, in my last post (and really the whole point of this entire blog) I talked about how blogs are used today vs. their original purpose and asked the question, how long will blogs last?

After working for a over a month for a company based at home (Rochester, NY) and doing web marketing and design, I have come across many different articles and blogs about everything from sports, to marketing tips, to random people’s vacations. What I am finding more often though, are blogs being used by reporters. Traditional reporting would have someone research a topic, submit a report and hope that it was worthy of making the news that day. If not, it would be lost in the clutter and never seen by anyone. Today though, reporters can post their reports in a blog and it costs nothing to put it online. This allows more people to write more articles and gives everyone and every thing the opportunity to become the next big hit.

But with more and more people being able to post things online through YouTube, Blogger, iReport and countless others, and the release of the new iPhone (which I fully intend to purchase) and other smart phones and mobile devices, I wondering about Mobile Blogging. Not just taking your laptop with you on a business trip, but really getting your phone out and blogging about something as it happens. More phones are coming out with full keyboards, making it easier to type long messages and with cameras in everything now, people can take a picture or even video and post it in a blog in literally seconds. This could be done anywhere, from floods in Iowa, to a concert in NYC, to the Olympic Games in China.

Is Mobile Blogging next? If so, how will businesses respond? Most people who blog for business do so from 9-5 at their office, not in the middle of the street or half way round the world. This could limit business and possibly put a little uniqueness back into blogging itself. And who are these potential Mobile Bloggers? Are they the same group of people who started the original blogs?

Again, I do not have the answers to any of these questions, but I intend to find out. Please leave a comment if you feel inclined to do so and I’ll be back soon with more thoughts.

How Long Can This Last? - First Post

2008-04-22T15:09:00.001-07:00

How long can this last and what’s next? That is the magic question on the mind of every marketer and business man and woman around the world. I am of course referring to social networking, blogging, and the online world in general. Everyone wants to get in on it while it’s hip and everyone wants to use it to his or her advantage. But how long will these things remain hip and cool and what will replace them when they lose their edge?

After attending a bully pulpit series at the College of Charleston, I started to wonder this question. I am a sophomore at CofC and pursuing a duel major in Business Administration with a Marketing Emphasis and Corporate Communications. I am in SIFE at CofC and was in DECA in high school. I am currently working for a couple of companies doing marketing work and this is the field I intend to work in when I graduate and possibility own my agency one day. But that aside, as I sat and listened to the forum, moderated by former NBC white house correspondent, John Palmer, I wondered how long the age of blogs will last.

The question came to me while listening to Julia Hood. Ms. Hood is the publishing director of PRWeek. She talked about her blog and how she thought it was “so cool” that people would respond to what she wrote so quickly and that she enjoyed reading the comments of her visitors. Everything about it was so new and novel to her and I felt like it one of my parents was talking about it. When blogs started out, it was a few young people looking for a new and cool way to share their thoughts and ideas. Blogging was cool because only a few people did it and each one was unique. But now that everyone has access to blogs and almost everyone is using them, I wonder how long they will stay cool and unique.

It reminds me of when I was a kid and there was a cool new rock song that I liked. I would sing it or play around my parents to show them how cool I was, but as soon as they said they liked it too, it wasn’t cool anymore. Can this happen with blogs? Once everyone starts using them, will the original bloggers move on? And where will they go? What is the next medium? And how long will it take for the business world to catch up?

I don’t have the answer to these questions but hope that those who read this may have some input. Am I alone in this thinking or do others have the same questions as me? And does anyone know what might be next? I am interested in this as a student who reads blogs for fun now and as marketer who may be using blogs for work in the near future. Share your comments with me and I will continue to update this as new information comes to me.

Check out my website: www.bsilverstein.info or my other blog: www.politicsofamillennial.blogspot.com.
Thank you.