http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html Use tips from this RSS feed to boost your sales and improve marketing processes. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 02/16/2011 11:18:10 AM The dramatic impact of social media services over traditional Internet marketing techniques shows it eclipsing more established techniques like search engine optimisation and search engine marketing. The rapid ascent of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are well-known, but now it seems that they are not just accounting for more of the time that people spend online but displacing traditional websites and websurfing techniques. All signs that any social media strategy needs to put these projects at the heart of any broader marketing initiatives. The report from Internet marketing firm DoNanza can be accessed through its blog here here: http://www.donanza.com/blog/ “This shift towards Social Marketing indicates that businesses believe that the potential value of social marketing is higher than any other online marketing channel”, said Liran Kotzer, CEO of DoNanza. “I believe there are many reasons for this: first, the huge number of people spending their time on social environments such as Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, and the fact that social networks are here to stay and people are learning how to use them for business. In addition, many social media campaigns are more visible and easier to measure and understand than some of the methods used for in search engine marketing. However, Search engine marketing is definitely not decreasing, quite the contrary. In 2010, it is still the largest in terms of projects available on DoNanza.” Some of the accompanying graphs show how Facebook dominates marketing projects aimed at social media channels. Other graphs demonstrate that the average budget for social media marketing projects are higher than for search engine marketing. DoNanza found that there is still considerable evolution within the social media channels themselves, with Facebook and LinkedIn projects increasing, though others connected to MySpace in decline. The report found that more established marketing techniques, such as email marketing are now marginal areas of the business. Less than six months ago, Facebook’s prediction that email was in terminal decline seemed like an arrogant assertion, but now seems like an emerging fact of life, especially for non-corporate online communications. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 02/11/2011 11:18:10 AM A great new ebook demonstrating the powers of social media marketing has just been published online by Kelvin Newman. Titled the "'Clockwork Pirate", Newman shares his insights into improving social media traffic and SEO services, as he explains on his website: http://www.clockworkpirate.com/ "If you download my free book you'll get the most comprehensive guide to building links for SEO and social media traffic ever written, but you'll also get the opportunity to judge whether you have the wiles and follow through to call yourself a Clockwork Pirate," he writes. Newman also includes a novel way to promote his book, by obliging anyone who wishes to download it, to first either tweet or make a Facebook comment about the download – a novel marketing concept through Pay by Tweet that's worth checking out, even if you never intend reading Newman's book. In fact, Optimize discovered the ebook in exactly this manner, because a friend who we follow on Twitter, issued his obligatory tweet when he downloaded the book: "I've just downloaded @kelvinnewman free book on link building \'clockwork pirate\' http://bit.ly/b41Qvk" Newman wanted to share what he'd learnt from spending his "working hours developing relationships, creating content and reaching out to people with the sole purpose of achieving better search engine results". Better search engine optimization results simply means that through fine tuning websites and making the most of social media channels, more people who will be interested in your services will find your information more easily when they search using Google and similar services. With so much media talking about the political power of social media in countries like Egypt and Tunisia and sceptical voices like Evgeny Morozov querying its effectiveness, there's little doubt that as a marketing tool, social media marketing has truly come of age, even if it's political reach. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 01/27/2011 11:18:10 AM Apple’s App Store proved its incredible success after just two and half years in operation with the 10 billionth download on January 22. The App Store, which distributes applications for Apple’s range of iPhones and iPads was greeted with some scepticism at its launch, but has demonstrated that consumers are willing to pay small amounts, if they pay at all, for programmes that can play games, access social media services and even convert an iPhone into a monitor for sleeping babies. According to Apple, more than 350,000 separate applications are available in more than 90 countries. Apple gave the lucky British iPhone user who made the 10 billionth download – of a free game – a $10,000 gift card: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/01/22appstore.html “The App Store has surpassed our wildest dreams,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The App Store has revolutionized how software is created, distributed, discovered and sold.” Now similar App stores are available for Android-based smartphones and Apple’s Macintosh computer range. Some critics warn that the spread of smartphone Apps is damaging the fundamental integrity of the Internet, though this has been dismissed by the many small developers who have found a new marketplace for their talents and the consumers who have zealously embraced the concept. Some clever commercial Apps include those aimed at tourism, like one created by Booking.com for online hotel reservations. Simply by clicking open its iPhone widget, it can help a traveller search for hotels through a very simple interface. The App can also make the most of the iPhone’s inbuilt GPS system to search for hotel rooms close to the current location of the user – really making the most of a smartphones capabilities. The upshot is that creating or utilising the right kind of App should now be a fundamental consideration for any Internet media strategy if you want to stay innovative and ahead of competitors in a marketplace that is constantly evolving. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 01/13/2011 05:01:10 AM Two separate and controversial social media campaigns on both sides of the Atlantic in early January have resulted in questionable benefits for both originators. A former participant in the British reality television show Big Brother started a campaign via Twitter that seemed to suggest his support for “managed anorexia”. His comments triggered a series of responses and media comments, with stars like Rihanna getting involved in the debate and urging him to change his mind. Through his account @MrKennethTong, which has 22,000 followers, Ken Tong made comments like: “Thankful for this global opportunity to help girls all over the world know that to be skinny is to be perfect & to be fat is unacceptable.” Now the originator of the campaign has come clean and repudiated his own earlier comments, which he said were only intended to win a debate with a friend that he could use social media like Twitter to create a global controversy, completely bypassing traditional media. “The campaign has worked; I have been a Trending topic on Twitter for over a week. I am scheduled to appear on TV, the Press and Radio shows, over the course of the next week: Grazia, Telegraph, The Sun, The Sunday Times etc. Now it’s time to come clean and stop the bandwagon. My honest personal opinion on managed anorexia is it is an disgusting and illogical idea. It is a mental illness. It cannot be managed,” he wrote to justify the rationale for his earlier comments on Twitter. Though a hoax, Tong made a point that social media can be harnessed effectively to spread a message, though relying on sensational and false messages obviously reduces the value of what he described as a “scientific experiment”. In the United States, Toyota made no false claims about their cars, but did engage in what Mashable.com described as a “false controversy” by focusing debate on what would be the grammatically correct plural form for its Prius range of Hybrid cars. A YouTube video and a poll promoted by Toyota on the correct use of plurals can be seen here: http://www.toyotapriusprojects.com/#/006 “This little educational video will introduce you to the complicated nature of plurals. Hopefully after watching, it’ll be easier for you to pick your favorite plural of Prius. Once you decide, make sure to cast your vote and check out the official announcement at the Chicago Auto Show on 2.20.11.,” states the site, which also points towards a related Facebook page. Mashable noted that Toyota’s trust in social media services shows the value a global carmaker puts on social media marketing to improve brand recognition. “It’s a measure of Toyota’s confidence that it’s able to build a campaign around such a silly premise. A year ago, the company was grappling with product recalls that severely tarnished its stellar brand image. Time and the deft use of social media helped Toyota rebuild its image somewhat,” commented Mashable.com The message from the two very different social media campaigns is that the viral impact of social media services can be huge, but their execution needs careful evaluation to ensure they enhance, not damage brands. In the case of Toyota, creating a fun topic of debate seems to be working to its advantage. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 12/21/2010 05:35:10 AM Social media demonstrates its power to help cope with the snow shutdown Across Europe, travellers are struggling to make it home for Christmas breaks in spite of heavy snow showers closing airports. But increasingly, the power of social media is circumventing traditional media channels to keep travellers informed about weather patterns and airline cancellations. Unthinkable a short while ago, the widespread use of services like Twitter to disseminate information and provoke debate has demonstrated the widespread adoption of these social media services. Brussels Airports, for example, allows travellers to stay up to date through its website, facebook and twitter feeds, which can all be accessed here: http://www.brusselsairport.be/ Airports and airlines across Europe are using similar tools, with London’s Heathrow the focus of tremendous attention after some travellers have spent days trying to catch flights out. @HeathrowAirport was not only providing information on the airport’s operations, but acting as a questions and answers site, where queries were being answered openly on twitter. In Dublin, this tweet from @iweatheroline shows the immediate power of the medium to help prepare people for incoming snow showers: SNOW ALERT 10.15AM Dublin City Centre, new shower system approaching from Dublin Bay #IWO This message was then instantly retweeted by many others, swiftly spreading the word that a fresh fall of snow was imminent. It means that people no longer need to passively wait for the next hourly radio bulletin for updates but can pass on their own tips instantly for fellow travellers and receive relevant news just as fast. And for travellers who wish to register their complaints, Twitter has also created new opportunities for venting, with passengers using #britishairways as the hashtag to express both frustration and praise for the airline. They say every cloud has a silver lining, and if those clouds don’t turn to snow, then they’re spreading the utility of social media services very quickly too. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 12/15/2010 10:35:10 AM Starbucks gets massive return on social media spending – report A new report estimates that the the global coffee house giant, Starbucks, has received the equivalent of $67.8 million in free brand exposure through its use of social media marketing channels. The findings will rubbish criticism that social media doesn’t offer a great return on investment. Starbucks, which has more than 18.8 million Facebook fans and more than one million followers on twitter, has been placed in first position in its sector for a variety of successful techniques, according to the report by media measurement technology firm General Sentiment. Details of the report can be read here: http://blog.converget.com/2010/12/09/starbucks-tops-online-media-impact-rankings/ “The firm uses a technology platform based on natural language processing and sentiment analysis software, combined with Web site traffic and online news readership data, to track the volume of brand mentions and analyze the sentiments expressed. Its volume-oriented ‘impact value’ rankings use free-exposure media value estimates (equivalent paid advertising value) based on overall brand reach and a ‘sentiment’ level that assigns scale-based positive values to all mentions,” states the report about U.S. based corporations in the fast food sector. The innovative method of quantifying in financial terms the added value of Starbucks investment in social media marketing will strengthen the arguments in many companies as they assess their internet marketing strategies. Starbucks’ Facebook page contains much of the same information as its website http://www.starbucksstore.com/ but allows comments to be added and many of its simple techniques on Facebook are worth studying too. One of the key points touched upon by General Sentiment is the way Starbucks interprets the comments left by consumers, whether they are asking about new Christmas recipes or complaining about high prices. Smaller firms can use specialised packages, like http://www.jungletorch.com/ to achieve comparable results about how their products are being viewed by consumers. Starbucks may be a major multinational corporation, but many of the ideas it has harnessed can be used just easily by small firms to create a great impact. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 12/08/2010 11:05:10 AM New Gawker Web Design Illustrates Changing Web Formats The announcement from the Gawker (http://gawker.com/) group of websites that it will radically update design and place more emphasis on multi-media points to a major evolution in website thinking. For any firm thinking of revamping their Internet Marketing Strategy, Gawker’s plans give a great insight into how one of the most aggressive sites on the web sees the future evolving – more and better original content, clean web layout and more emphasis on multi-media material. Gawker first established itself as an aggregator site, with snarky comments and links to articles, but has developed over the past decade to include considerable original content and attracted much controversy about some of the topics. According to the detailed memo about the impending change to the Gawker.com website and its many affiliates, the site has found that big news stories it breaks have a much greater long-term impact on web views than merely rechurning links to stories originating elsewhere. “Aggressive news-mongering trumps satirical blogging. Gawker.com’s growth since 2008 — from 300,000 people a week in the US to 1.4m — came in steps. After each story-driven spike — Tom Cruise’s Scientology pitch video, Montauk Monster, Eric Dane’s hot-tub non-orgy, iPad security breach, Christine O’Donnell’s Halloween sleepover, etc — the audience settled back down, but at a higher level,” according to the memo, which can be seen in full here http://lifehacker.com/5701749/ A crucial change is that instead of every new posting automatically taking precedence as the main frontpage article, the top viewed story will remain centre stage while new stories will be positioned on a right-hand bar, as the site’s beta version demonstrates at http://beta.gawker.com/ It illustrates the restrictions with the current format by pointing to the absurdity of a previous exclusive when it had to stop posting new articles after an iPhone scoop was published, in order to retain its positioning as the most prominent article. Almost any website is bound by very restrictive controls on how it can post new material, so Gawker’s frustration will no doubt touch a sore point for many people. Crucially, the site believes that in future, video content will be essential to attracting and retaining websurfers: “The presumption in the new layout is that every single substantial item will be built around imagery: a video, a gallery, a striking image or, if the words are strong enough, a text graphic….Stronger presentation encourage sharing by readers and improve the performance of videos we currently publish.” Commenting on the significance of the announcement, the influential Reuters blogger Felix Salmon noted that Gawker’s transformation is a sign of its attempts to transform its own profile and felt the changes justified a substantial post of his own: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/12/01/the-new-gawker-media/ Salmon noted that the changes to mainstream Internet advertising techniques could also be due for a major revamp: “This is something it’s hard for old-school web or print publishers to get their head around: the idea of selling time, rather than space. But it’s not entirely new to the web: Fortune, for instance, will quite happily sell against the spike in traffic that it knows will come on the day it puts up the Fortune 500. Advertisers, too, are very comfortable with the idea, since they’ve been buying time on TV and radio stations for decades.” http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 12/01/2010 10:40:10 AM Massive Buyout Talk Proves Growing Marketing Power of Coupons Recent posts here have focused on the great potential of online coupons as a key plank of any Internet Marketing Strategy. Perhaps Google has been reading our previous postings, because according to the New York Times, the search engine giant is ready to pay up to $6 billion for Groupon, one of the websites featured in a post titled ‘Coupons Shed Their Old-Fashioned Image for the Internet Age: http://www.optimize-interactive-blog.com/?p=169 Based in Chicago, Groupon sends out daily emails on special deals for goods and services. The special discounts are activated when a certain threshold of people agree to buy it, which allows it to offer deep discounts. “Groupon negotiates huge discounts—usually 50-90% off—with popular businesses. We send the deals to thousands of subscribers in our free daily email, and we send the businesses a ton of new customers,” it states on groupon.com ‘UNPRECEDENTED PACE’ According to the New York Times report, Groupon’s strategy is a massive success, with more than 12 million registered users and revenue of $350 million – amazing for a business that was established two years ago. “Since its founding in 2008 by Andrew Mason, Groupon has been growing at a nearly unprecedented pace. The company, whose name is a combination of “group” and “coupon,” specializes in providing customers with discounts purchased in bulk,” reports the New York Times. The full story is available here: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/google-is-said-to-be-close-to-buying-groupon/?ref=business Groupon also has a special website, http://www.grouponworks.com/ where it shows how firms can utilise this kind of social media service to maximise online marketing. Groupon may not have the answers for every business marketing strategy, but it’s attractiveness to Google – which is prepared to pay almost 20 times its current turnover, indicates the potential this sector holds for lead generation. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 11/24/2010 10:30:10 AM Newspapers Set for Leap into Digital Age with New iPad ‘Daily’ Technologists sneer at newspapers as the “deadwood” industry because of its reliance on paper to produce its physical product. But until now, new technology has not managed to create a mass-market product that can help leverage the global newspaper industry off its reliance on the printed page and halt its genteel decline. The reason, quite simply, is the dependence for newspapers on print advertisements as a major revenue stream. In the United States, newspapers rely on advertisements for the vast majority of revenue while in Europe, it’s a balance between the cover price and ad revenue. One answer is ‘The Daily’, being developed by News Corp in conjunction with Apple. It will be launched on the iPad early next year, according to widespread media reports. ‘The Daily’ has a development budget of $30 million and a staff of 100 who will produce “rich media and photography built especially for the iPad”. For further details click here for The New York Times story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/business/media/22carr.html?src=busln Unlike conventional websites, it will not update constantly, but can be downloaded daily in a static form. Unlike traditional newspapers ‘The Daily’ will have no ‘deadwood’ version either. Consumers have embraced the Internet for news, entertainment and social media services but the advertising revenue generated hasn’t offset the financial losses for traditional media groups through the drop in physical circulation and the consequent fall in advertising revenue. For more than a decade, media executives have struggled to come up with a new formula that takes advantage of technology without siphoning off revenue from declining newspaper titles. The marketing industry in turn has looked askance, trying to develop its own credible internet marketing strategies with a mixed record. If a success, ‘The Daily’ would give advertisers the large screen ‘real estate’ that an iPad tablet screen offers, which is crucial for any brand awareness campaign or brand recognition through prominent display advertising. ‘The Daily’ may be a short-lived disaster or a notable experiment that could prove just as successful as the iPad itself. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 11/17/2010 10:15:10 AM Flurry of New Features Shows Dynamism of Social Media Every day new social media services are being announced or major improvements to existing platforms are unveiled as a wide variety of firms vie for the attention of global consumers. The intensity of competition to innovate and therefore to both capture and retain users gives an indication of the prizes on offer for all firms involved in social media marketing. Amongst the key developments in recent days are a new social media network that limits its users to 50 contacts, a new messaging system from Facebook, a new geolocation/review service from Google and renewed efforts by Apple to make its floundering Ping service more interactive. There’s no one simple message from these different announcements, but it all points to the importance of staying abreast of near continuous changes when planning your own social media strategies. These disparate services are all indicators of where the future direction of social media by consumers will go – greater concerns about privacy, more geolocation services and greater interaction of online communications. Path styles itself as the post-Facebook network and plays on the growing concerns about privacy on social networking sites to promote itself as a secure way to share photos and comments amongst close friends and family. It emphasises the point that while some people have 500 or more Facebook friends, no one has so many close relationships in real life: https://www.path.com/home.html “Because your personal network is limited to your 50 closest friends and family, you can always trust that you can post any moment, no matter how personal. Path is a place where you can be yourself,” states its blog. But if Path wants to be a more intimate version of Facebook, Facebook itself wants to lure users away from Google products like Gmail with ‘Messages’, which it hopes will draw together all kinds of SMS, instant message and email into one place, as it explains here: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=452288242130 “You decide how you want to talk to your friends: via SMS, chat, email or Messages. They will receive your message through whatever medium or device is convenient for them, and you can both have a conversation in real time,” states the Facebook blog. Some media commentators have compared the new service with Google’s ill-fated Wave project, though with 500 million registered users, Facebook’s service may have greater prospects of success. But anxious to expand its own share of consumer time, Google is announcing Hotspot, a new service for recommending places to consumers, as the graphic from Mashable.com below illustrates: On smartphone versions, it will tie in with geolocation services, a crucial factor in all new social media developments. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 11/10/2010 10:35:10 AM Social Media Survey Facebook may have more than 700 million registered users, but many small firms are still sceptical about the benefits of social media services as a business tool, according to a new survey by RatePoint. The detailed responses demonstrate that, unlike consumers, small businesses are not convinced that social networking can help them reach customers. Instead, they risk being left behind by larger firms who are investing heavily in social media strategies, as the retail giant like Zara is proving. The survey found most typical small firms are under-estimating the time spent online by their consumers on services like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and online service review sites. Just 36 percent of those surveyed agreed that their customers spent time on social networking sites. But RatePoint quotes separate research indicating that consumers spend much longer online, with 57.5 percent of all U.S. Internet users, or 127 million people, using a social network at least once a month. “Social media use is no longer limited to one demographic, everyone is adopting,” said Neal Creighton, CEO and co-founder of RatePoint, which has published details of its research and an ebook for small firms on social media located here: http://www.ratepoint.com/about/press_releases/10_19_10_small_businesses_uncertain_about_social_media_use_for_reaching_customers.html.en The survey was conducted with over 150 small businesses, most of whom have less than five employees, in August 2010. RatePoint provides customer reviews, testimonials and online reputation management services. “While many small business owners are uncertain, big brands are investing heavily in social media. Social media can be a great equalizer for small businesses to compete alongside larger brands and small and medium-sized firms are missing out if they are not involved,” said Creighton. According to RatePoint’s survey: - 25 percent of small firms believe their customers want to be contacted through social networks. 36 percent disagree and 20 percent were undecided - 35 percent agree that social media offers a quick way to connect with customers. 28 percent disagree, and 22 percent were undecided The survey found that small firms who proactively use social networking to communicate with customers are achieving a strong return at a lower cost than the alternative marketing strategies. Of the firms surveyed, 70 percent of those who use social marketing as their main method of driving new customers said it is the least expensive option. Social media tools are becoming more effective, not just to win new customers but to stay in touch with existing ones as part of an Internet marketing strategy. It’s a great way to understand customer needs and react immediately. For example, if a hotel manager monitors reviews by former guests posted on Tripadvisor, he can quickly improve services and through his online responses can be seen to do so too. So the message, for anyone contemplating the allocation of their marketing budget, is to think again before assuming your customers are not as engaged with social media services as other consumer groups. These are cost-effective channels that can be utilised by all firms to create a more level playing pitch and demonstrate that the biggest is not always best. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 10/27/2010 10:30:10 AM Coupons Shed Their Old-Fashioned Image for the Internet Age Coupons were traditionally a very simple direct marketing tool that consumers could, for example, cut out of newspapers and take to their local supermarket for discounts on groceries. The concept has taken a while to find a comparable niche and really take off in the Internet age, but new services like Groupon and Social Living are proving it can work and appeal in an era where people do shopping and reading online. Young people, not the typical targets for cutting up newspapers anymore, are very enthusiastic about properly marketed coupons, according to the latest media reports. Naturally, the new era of coupons work in a different way to the traditional printed matter and crucially, takes advantage of short deadlines to make them appealing – shoppers make impulse purchases if they feel they are getting a great deal that expires within 24 hours. Every day, Livingsocial.com offers consumers in cities across the United States, Canada, the UK and Ireland special offers that are directly relevant to their hometown. In Dublin, for example, it was offering a 79 percent saving on a 90-minute yoga course at the time of writing. Within the first six hours of this offer being available, 8 people had already signed up. “LivingSocial offers one fantastic deal every day with discounts of up to 90% at local restaurants, bars, spas, theaters, and more,” it explains on its website. For more information see here: http://livingsocial.com/deals/how_it_works. So far, the phenomenon has only taken off in the United States, though early adopters in the U.S. are often followed by other countries in Europe and around the world. Another online discount firm, Groupon, which has 250 local markets, reportedly has a lengthy waiting list of service providers who wish to be featured by the site. It’s also just announced a joint promotion with the online auctioning giant eBay. Visitors to eBay through the link http://groupon.ebay.com will find daily updated deals from Groupon featured throughout the auction site and can earn eBay award points, using a system that makes the use of geolocation technology, according to a press release. “Teaming up with Groupon allows us to surface deals tailored specifically to eBay users and then reward them for shopping,” said Kurt Apen, Senior Director Loyalty $ Consumer Marketing, eBay. “This affiliation blends the unbeatable deals and unique experiences of Groupon with the depth and breadth of merchandise on eBay,” said Sean Smyth, Vice President of Business Development at Groupon. For firms trying to think of new or innovative Internet marketing strategies, coupons could be something that fits with the product. Although, be warned, some U.S. firms have reported more enthusiasm than they anticipated and found themselves giving out more discounts than they expected. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 10/20/2010 10:20:10 AM Google Starts Adding Location Options to Search Results The importance of appearing local while operating globally is not lost on the world’s largest search engine Google, which is introducing a crucial adjustment to the way its key search software operates. The changes point to the growing significance of geolocation tagging and other social media services that don’t just offer up general information, but also help pinpoint it for users in the most relevant way. The changes are explained on a new Google’s blog post: http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/10/more-transparency-and-control-over.html As Google starts rolling out the changes to 40 separate language sites around the world, the location of desktop-based browsers will automatically be included in a highly visible left-hand panel, not buried elsewhere on the desktop. Google believes this will improve search results: “With this new display you’re still getting the same locally relevant results as before, but now it’s much easier for you to see your location settings and make changes to it.” As the screenshot below illustrates, Google sees the service helping consumers find products, like pizza restaurants that are close to them; not irrelevant articles, pizza recipes or advertisements for major pizza companies who don’t operate nearby. By allowing users to simply “change location”, consumers can just as easily search for pizza restaurants on other side of the world, if they wish. The impact will be profound for Internet marketing strategies and search engine optimization. Your SEO planning must now presume that the physical location of a consumer will become a major priority in how answers suggested by Google are picked. Of course, location isn’t directly relevant to all products, particularly those traded over the Internet, but for any firm where a fixed location is in any way relevant, Google has just tweaked an important new variable in the mix. It already took location into account when delivering results, but in a less overt way. But the change arguably has more positive benefits for small firms than large companies, because the location, not the size of a business will now be a bigger factor in the results offered up by the search engine. At the moment, in the untuned version of Google, size matters more, as the search algorithm automatically prioritises website and other data that receive the most hits, though location is also a factor. “As time has gone by, more and more locally relevant information has come online, whether it’s local business listings or a blog from your hometown. Meanwhile, Google has become much better at presenting this locally relevant content—so it felt like the right time to make this setting easier to find,” states the Google blog post. The broader message is that just as smartphone apps increasingly use inbuilt GPS hardware to offer geolocation services for social media networks like Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, the search environment is taking location services into account. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 10/13/2010 10:30:10 AM Digital Lifestyles Survey Shows Social Media Eclipsing Email A major new survey of 50,000 people in 46 countries has found that in many emerging markets around the world, people are spending more time on social networking sites than on email. The startling result, is just one of many insightful conclusion in the report from British research firm TNS that can be viewed here: http://discoverdigitallife.com/ But the survey also showed a distinct difference in behaviour between consumers in China and the United States, with Chinese users spending 5.2 hours on social media services and 4 hours on email per week, while American users were spending 5.1 hours checking email and 3.8 hours on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. There are compelling reasons behind the disparity in Internet usage that are directly linked to social media development, said TNS Chief Development Officer Matthew Froggatt: “We’ve seen that in mature markets where people have been online for years and where access is ubiquitous, the Internet has already become a commoditised item that consumers take for granted.” “However, in rapid growth markets that have seen recent, sustained investment in infrastructure, users are embracing these new channels in much more active ways. The digital world is transforming how they live, develop and interact and online consumers in these markets are leaving those in the developed world behind in terms of being active online and engaging in new forms of communications,” said Froggatt. The Digital Lifestyles Survey also found that: - Social networking has been fuelled by the transition from PC to mobile smartphones, with mobile users spending 3.1 hours per week on social networking sites compared to just 2.2 hours on email - Globally, people with Internet access use it as the primary media channel (61pc) followed by TV (54pc), radio (36pc) and newspapers (32pc) - Consumers in rapid growth markets are more engaged with digital activity than in mature markets led by Egypt (56pc) and China (54pc) compared with Japan (20p) and Denmark (25pc). - Blogging and social networking are growing very fast in developing countries. Blogs and forum posts have been written by 88pc of Chinese users compared with just 32pc of users in the U.S. The results of the survey appear to endorse the predictions of Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg that was featured in a blog post earlier this year, when she said that it was just a matter of time before emails are largely replaced by social networking sites and text messages. For her comments see: http://www.optimize-interactive-blog.com/?p=61 The lesson for your Internet marketing strategy is to gear up your social media marketing plans, especially if you’re trying to develop brand awareness or brand building in emerging markets. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 10/11/2010 10:15:10 AM What Is the Real Role of Social Media? In the current edition of the New Yorker magazine, the best-selling writer Malcom Gladwell challenges some of the conventional wisdom that has grown up quickly around social media services like Facebook and Twitter. Gladwell, who has written books like Blink and What the Dog Saw, has made his name and reputation for his offbeat perceptions. His latest article can be seen at: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell Using political examples, like the violent Tehran riots after the 2009 Iranian elections, Gladwell asks if the widely reported allegation that Twitter was playing a role in organising the protests was valid. He points out that protesters were unlikely to be using English, but Farsi, to arrange their meetings, but that this obvious detail was ignored by many journalists who reported on the protests based on English-language tweets allegedly being written inside Iran for Iranians. Stepping back in history, he argues that personal contacts were the foundation of many earlier protest movements around the world, long before the Internet, never mind Twitter had been invented. His theory is that personal contacts, as a communication tool are being vastly under-estimated and that the influence of online social networking sites are being overstated. “The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life,” writes Gladwell. He argues that since an individuals relationships with people through social networking sites are weaker than real life ties, their influence cannot be very deep on people either, although he acknowledges that acquaintances can channel information in a very efficient way over the new media. Gladwell’s essay has, perhaps ironically, spawned a debate on Twitter about the merits of his argument about social media networks and there’s a clear lesson for anyone using the Internet for online marketing - don’t buy all the hype and don’t assume that new technology can replace or cover over other deficiencies in products or services. There are clearly many benefits and new channels being opened up by social media and the growing interactivity offered by all kinds of online communications. At the same time, it’s not the only solution to many problems, so don’t expect it to replace the need to develop a clear marketing strategy or to develop a great product in the first place. Social media strategies are a great way to generate leads and to promote services and brands, but they are still only building blocks and not the goal in itself, as some people seem to forget. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 09/21/2010 10:30:10 AM Prepare for a New Twitter Strategy – 140 Characters Won’t Go Very Far Twitter doesn’t like to think of itself as a social media company like Faceook or LinkedIn but instead perceives itself as an information provider. In reality, it spans both sectors but risks falling in between unless it continues to evolve its own niche, something it’s attempting to do with an impending series of major changes. Defining Twitter has always been one of the harder concepts in explaining to sceptics who wonder how its micro-blogging structure with a 140 character restriction per post can be relevant to social marketing. Twitter is much more open than social media services like Facebook, because if you search for a topic, you see all the most recent comments – unless specifically blocked – not just those by people who you are ‘following’. Twitter is also very fast at updating information, so on issues of global interest, be it celebrity or tragedy, new tweets are often added every few seconds. Twitter can contain a tremendous amount of ephemeral trivia but has also increasingly demonstrated its capacity to create real news – nearly triggering the downfall of the Irish Prime Minister last week. A tweet by an opposition politician suggested the Prime Minister sounded either drunk or hungover in a morning radio interview, triggering immediate demands for comment from political reporters, all within an hour of the initial broadcast. The story was picked up by more than 500 news organisations globally and acted as the tipping point for questions about the leader’s suitability for high office. It’s a political example, but the new rules of instant media apply to any kind of brand awareness, both positive and negative. Grasping the power of Twitter can sometimes be a little difficult until you see people you’re interested in making comments on topics that you care about – and suddenly you sense the open debate it creates and the relative equality every voice and idea carries. More broadly, a convergence of social media services is underway, with Facebook and Google trying to incorporate specialised tasks like geotagging into their products, and Twitter is retaliating with an expansion of its own core service. In the future it will split the main page into two vertical panels as you can see on its own website, and it will move away from a near ticker-tape functionality. Instead of 140 character ‘tweets’ that can contain abbreviated links to webpages, videos and photos that are hosted elsewhere – taking users away from the Twitter site – multimedia will now be directly incorporated within Twitter, as this clever video illustrates. There are a number of other changes, such as referencing search results that are directly linked to each tweet. These will pop out to the right of the main status update feed, where you’ll also find more accessible information on user profiles. The changes are going to take effect over the coming weeks, says Twitter. So, while Google and Facebook tread on Twitter’s territory, it’s retaliating with an offensive strategy of its own – all developments that will affect your own social media strategies and how you evaluate the relative merits of each channel to reach specific customers. It’s not clear if Twitter’s most fervent users will embrace the change, since many adore the simplicity of its interface and may be turned off by the enhancements which they may see as a distraction from its core purpose. The social bookmarking site Digg had an unhappy reaction from many of its most enthusiastic users in recent weeks, when they expressed discontent at its new interface, which draws it closer to a social media network than its original mission. One lesson for social media marketing professionals is to stay abreast of the evolving media space and to bear in mind that the video, photo and search capabilities of Twitter mean you must think about more than short bursts of text if you wish to make the most of its capabilities. A second lesson is the increasing power and credibility of instant new media, as the Irish political system has just discovered. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 09/16/2010 11:30:10 AM Google Search, Gmail Changes Signal New Rules in Evolving Marketing Game Google has announced key changes to its Gmail service and its core search engine that will challenge Internet marketing strategy decisions. And, it signals similar changes by other major web services in the months ahead. Google says the updates will make life easier for consumers and make their services more intuitive, but they raise uncertainty about how interactive marketing services can reach consumers. A new priority inbox has appeared for the roughly 170 million people who use the Google webmail service, which now puts personal and filtered emails ahead of general emails. Google says this will prevent people from becoming overwhelmed by emails and missing the most vital messages. But if personal emails are prioritised, then direct marketing emails are being downgraded in a user’s inbox, making it harder for e-marketers to reach consumers directly through an email campaign. One solution is to get users to add your email communications as one of their marked priority emails, so that it pops up ahead of other, less relevant, emails. But this means providing content that is relevant and interesting – something users want to receive…not simply a sales pitch! Google says the new system learns from the behaviour of users, so if people do open and interact with emails, then these are automatically treated as more significant by Gmail. It’s another reason to ensure that the content in every email dispatch to customers in your mailing database are well profiled, so your communications can be tightly tailored to address their personal interests with targeted email marketing. Achieving this kind of personalisation requires sophisticated use of services like Lyris to ensure that your email marketing strategy makes the most of the previous behaviour patterns of your customers and deploys all the personal data they’ve allowed you to use with maximum effect Moving on to search, Google’s new instant search service claims it will save users a billion seconds every day – simply by predicting what they will type and offering up search results even before words have been completed. The impact for advertisers is immediate, as the way search results are reached depends more and more on the first words that are typed in by users. Consumers will not bother typing in a string of three or four words for their search if the first one or two words gives them what they require. For example, instead of a consumer typing “apartment berlin rent november” they may stop after typing “apartment berlin” when they see the results that are delivered. Since the change has just been introduced, there’s little hard data on how it is effecting search engine optimisation (SEO) the current choice of SEO-friendly content, but the changes mean that doing detailed research and clearly defining your search keywords are becoming more crucial than ever. There are also numerous media stories that other major firms will follow Google’s lead, with their own enhanced webmail and search services. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 09/08/2010 06:05:10 AM Major social media development as firms compete across more areas – from geotagging to social bookmarking to networking services The consumer market is getting even more crowded as the big online giants try to expand their own footprints into new areas of the social networking landscape at a quickening pace. Whether it’s social bookmarking, geotagging, following friends or looking for online music providers the distinctions between the services are becoming more blurred by the day. In early September, Apple launched its Ping social networking service, which is built on top of its phenomenally successful iTunes music store. Many analysts believe Apple is attempting to replace the struggling MySpace social network, which has become more focussed on music than its rival Facebook, which has now completely overshadowed it in terms of total users and social media content. But just as Apple attempts to go social – and gained 2 million users in just two days – Google is reported by Reuters to be mulling a new music store of its own to compete with iTunes by the end of year. This would give potential buyers of Android mobile phones a compelling reason to avoid Apple’s iPhone with its inbuilt iPod and iTunes access. Facebook, which has recently entered the sphere of geotagging with its ‘Facebook Places’ service, introducing a geotagging strategy to compete with niche products like Foursquare and Gowalla, is now introducing a formal of social bookmarking to its search section. It tells users which of their friends ‘like’ or put up links on topics. So, for example, if you search within Facebook for a topic, say ‘Russia’ it will immediately take account of the comments, links and tastes of your own network. The move comes a few weeks after Digg, previously a dedicated social bookmarking site, introduced a strong element of social networking to its own site that drew comparisons with Twitter, much to the dismay of many loyal users. These examples clearly illustrate the intense efforts by some of the technology industries biggest names to not only defend their own patch of the Internet, but to try and extend their core business offering – no matter how many toes get stepped upon. The lesson for firms using social networking as part of their overall internet marketing strategy, is that the market is incredibly fluid and competitive, with interesting new products being launched and others waning on a near daily basis. Apple’s Ping may not replace Facebook, it may not even dent MySpace, but with an ability to draw millions in days, Apple has shown its business strategy is flexible and predatory. So, before concentrating too much on a single service as part of a strategic plan, remember, there could be an alternative or sleeker service, lurking just around the corner that will draw fickle consumers away. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 09/01/2010 10:35:10 AM Social Bookmarking Makes a Big Difference to Visibility for Social Marketing The human touch makes a dramatic difference when it comes to website visibility as social bookmarking is demonstrating to increasing effect. While algorithm based services like Google use 'spiders' to scour the Internet and rely on links and keywords as the way to rank pages, social bookmarking services put readers in control. Increasingly, Internet users rely more on the tastes of other users to help define what they read, with the recent relaunch of Digg emphasising social networking as an integral part of the site too. It means that for a wide variety of services, like Reddit or Digg, there's a person somewhere highlighting articles they think are worth noting for others. Many services also offer the option to add tags to articles, so that when someone searches within the site for a specific topic, say 'banks', up will pop articles tagged with the word 'banks' that also link to the popularity of articles containing this tag. But just as computer-based services will err based on their programming limitations, the human-inspired social bookmarking depends on the accuracy and relevance on what is bookmarked and how well it's tagged. Social bookmarking is also intended to defeat automated spamming and overzealous search engine optimization which pushes links at search engine users that may not always accurately give them what they want causing frustration in users, which is detrimental to brand building. But social bookmarking systems are also open to manipulation if websites try and push their own sites up ranking systems gratuitously. There's a happy medium, where websites can add their pages to social bookmarking services and at least give readers the chance to discover them. By adding relevant and accurate tags to pages they're also doing other users a favour, by indexing the content properly. There'll be more detail on how to do this in an upcoming blog post so you can make the most of social bookmarking as part of your social media strategy. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 08/25/2010 10:30:10 AM Geotagging Geotagging is about to come of age as both Twitter and Facebook introduce it, letting users physically locate friends and contacts which makes social media services more interactive than ever. Geotagging uses data from smartphones to pinpoint a user’s location. In existing services like FourSquare and Gowalla, it lets people ‘check-in’ to bars, restaurants or just about anywhere and upload photos or reviews, which other people can then see, when they’re in the same physical area. The concept has been around for a little while, though it hasn’t taken off in Europe with the same enthusiasm as some areas of the United States, like San Francisco, where the fun in competing to become the ‘mayor’ of popular venues has been a big hit and boosted their brand recognition. In the U.S., but not yet globally, Facebook now allows users to geotag photos. Twitter’s iPhone app can also scan nearby tweets so you can see who’s been active near you as the screengrab shows, including the green sweeping ‘scanner’ as it searches for nearby twitterers. Like other apps, the Twitter service relies on Google Maps for its service and it must be just a matter of time before Google launches some kind of similar app itself. Many of these different services interact, so that after checking in via Gowalla to inform friends they’ve arrived in a restaurant, you can automatically send a tweet that informs people nearby who are using the Twitter iPhone app of recent activity in the vicinity. For businesses looking at their social media strategy it’s important to consider a specific geotagging strategy as this technology moves on from the early adopters and into a critical mass of general users; to people who use smartphones that have GPS and phone trigonometry. There’s no reason why many other services can’t make the most of geotagging’s possibilities as one element of their social media optimization. A small sushi bar could start customer loyalty campaigns by offering discounts to every user who ‘checks-in’ with it via FourSquare. Or an expresso bar, could give an extra coffee every time one of its patrons lets their friends know where they’re hanging out via Twitter – in other words relationship marketing. Local information providers can also step up and offer alternatives to the international firms, building in simple geotagging tools to their own apps. Some already do this, but they don’t always work smoothly – yet. Issues about privacy and even personal security are being raised by the way geotagging can physically locate people and make it public over the Internet. Though, so far, these concerns don’t seem to be hindering their usage. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 08/17/2010 10:10:10 AM Why is it So Hard to Do SEO Right In-House? I’m convinced you’re not going to get the best return on your search engine optimization investment if you don’t continuously monitor the performance of your keywords. Why? Because the effectiveness of your keywords changes as the market changes and as search engines use new search criteria. Tracking market changes requires an on-going competitive analysis of your keywords versus those of your key competitors, plus understanding how the keywords you’re investing in are performing. This is an important step that is beyond what Google Analytics provides. In addition, since users change their search behavior as market terminology changes, it is necessary to track keyword usage and test new keyword combinations. Keeping up with search engines like Google is another challenge altogether, one that requires time-consuming, hands-on research. Since you never know directly what changes a search engine has made, it is often hard even for an SEO firm or SEO company to keep on top of developments. It’s like playing chess where you don’t see the moves of your opponent, only the results of his actions. The sheer volume of research necessary for SEO optimization makes it impossible for most companies to succeed with in-house search engine optimization. You need a team of analysts dedicated to keyword tracking and search engine research. Then you need another team to develop and post content. If you decide you’ve had enough of trying to do all this in house, look for an agency that uses the most advanced, real-time analytical tools available – such as JungleTorch (www.jungletorch.com), a new service developed by the founders of Alta Vista that is now available to customers of Optimize Interactive. And, you’ll be sure the agency can deliver cost-effective SEO content development and SEO management in multiple languages. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 08/10/2010 10:15:10 AM Monitor Online Brand Awareness to promote, influence opinion Apart from promoting themselves through CSR projects and other programmes, firms need to need to monitor their firm’s brand identity using smart programmes like Jungletorch.com It aggregates comments and makes it easier to monitor the general sentiment towards a company – imagine the kind of feedback BP would be getting at the moment with regards to its brand management. Unlike BP, other firms not in the headlines on a daily basis can find it harder to assess what people are saying about them and this is where monitoring of social media content is essential. After all, you can’t try and influence the opinions of people through a marketing strategy if you don’t know what is being said through keyword tracking and keyword analysis. Another option to social media optimization is to create your own forum, for example through LinkedIn, which recently allowed its 70 million members to ‘follow’, companies and watch out for news and other developments on firms they may be keen to work with one day. This tool allows people to shadow and learn about firms where they could seek a job, so it’s crucial that the brand building online reflects well on your business. But whatever approach you take, it needs to be part of a broader social media strategy so that you cover all the angles. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 08/03/2010 10:05:10 AM Best Methods to Publicise ‘Employer Branding’ The key way to publicise efforts at HR ‘employer branding’ are through social media marketing strategies that generate positive goodwill. “Studies have shown that all things being equal, employees will choose to work for companies with a strong corporate social responsibility programme ¬– they want to be proud of where they work,” said Jeff Hicks, the creative director of Optimize Interactive. “To get the most from your CSR investment, you need to communicate what you are doing to the widest possible audience as part of your branding strategy,” he said. Since social media services act like modern word-of-mouth marketing tools, people can learn either directly or through their friends and family about these projects. Choosing the right channels to ensure that as much information as possible is openly available to search engines through search engine optimization (SEO) is also critical. “Use the right forums, blogs and sites to offer meaningful content using social media services. You should establish a timetable to deliver your messages. This can take a lot of time and effort and may require the services of an outside specialist, but it pays off in the long run,” he said. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 07/29/2010 04:45:10 PM How Social Marketing can make the most of CSR for ‘Employer Branding’ There are many sound social and moral reasons why companies pay attention to their corporate social responsibility (CSR), but the benefits can be tremendous for marketing a business as a ‘brand’ to potential employees. Superficially, it may seem cynical for a commercial firm to benefit from an exercise intended to give something back to its own community. But in fact, the more a firm gains from CSR, the more generous it is likely to be with its time and resources. Despite the economic slowdown around the world, human resource departments within many businesses - big and small - are reporting difficulties in attracting the right people to niche positions. And it’s here that the perhaps unfortunate phrase “employer branding” joins forces with CSR, because one way to make your firm attractive to future recruits, is to show the world a philanthropic side – all part of the bigger picture of brand building. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 07/20/2010 05:45:10 AM An Apple of Advice about Protecting your Brand Online When Steve Jobs gave a rare press conference last week to defend Apple's fourth generation iPhone, he specifically criticised what he said was the way the media had exaggerated problems with the smart phone’s antenna reception to attack the company he founded at the start of the digital era. To watch the event go to http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/100716iab73asc/event/index.html While conceding there was a problem with some units, Jobs said it was not widespread and pointed to the lower return rate from unhappy customers than the previous model as he grappled with a major crisis of brand identity But what Jobs either misunderstood or willfully ignored, was the magnifying effect not just of traditional media outlets, but the wider social media content where any product flaws are quickly dissected. It's quite ironic that a world-famous technology veteran and his company, which have been praised for spearheading many breakthroughs and effective brand marketing, are themselves directly affected by the power of social media content. That’s why brand building online, quickly rebutting false allegations and resolving legitimate criticism is crucial for brand management. This social media strategy can take place across a wide array of platforms, from blog posts, to twitter or within commentary on websites. In fact, it doesn't matter anymore if there's no big stories about your firm or products in the mainstream mass media because, as anyone who has dipped into the forum sections of a website like Macrumors.com can see, there's often hundreds, if not thousands of comments on every topic, whether it's the antenna problem or new product launches that can hit your brand identity. This means instant peer reviews that can either knock down or stand up just about any claim and all it takes is someone to type “product name” and “type of problem” into a search engine to find out if they are alone or not – it’s the way consumers make the most of search engine optimization for their own ends. In the case of the Iphone, the problems and some solutions had already been clarified, long before Jobs offered his apology last week. Analysts say that with sales of the smart phone very strong, there doesn't seem to be a short-term impact from what has been dubbed "antenna-gate". But they also caution that in the longer-term brand management, Apple's shine may have lost some of its lustre - the secret ingredient that has differentiated this apple from all the lemons. And the lesson everyone else can learn? If you have a problem, come clean as quickly as possible to minimise criticism and perhaps earn some rewards for honesty from cynical consumers who thrive on social networking. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 07/08/2010 10:45:10 AM Marketing strategy turned upside down Once upon a time, like in the post-War era depicted by the Mad Men TV series, clever people in marketing departments or an elegant advertising agency spent their time dreaming up catchy ways to lure consumers to their products. They created demand for things people never knew they wanted, they sliced up the market and pored over their research data as they sought new ways to differentiate their products from competitors, often creating irrelevant and artificial distinctions. Does it really matter which cola you drink? But that era is long gone as the one-way media funnel has been inverted and brand recognition has changed, well, beyond recognition. It was easy to tell people what they wanted when they couldn't respond or could only absorb the bombardment of messages on television screens and newspaper advertisements. Now, through the two-way communications of blogs and social media, consumers can decide what they want and demand products that are tailored specifically for them. Consumers will also make sure they inform their friends when their satisfied and they’ll make absolutely certain to tell everyone when they’re not happy – what else are all those status updates about? There may still be smoke-filled boardroom plotting the behaviour of millions, but the emergence of a conversation, means only those engaged in a social networking dialogue will succeed. Now, it’s the era of social marketing, where only the arrogant would think the boardroom is where a successful brand strategy can be created. It’s on the internet in the comment section of a blog or the response to a friend’s twitter. Think of your social media strategy as a way to be part of the real chat and make sure you listen when your potential consumers tell you what they need, it’s the way to create your own cyber smoke-filled boardroom. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 06/29/2010 10:30:10 AM Pick the right social media strategy for your audience, not someone else’s. There's a vast and confusing array of social media services out there, from Twitter and Tumblr to Bebo and blogs. But there's no point trying to focus on all of them, or your social media marketing won't concentrate on anything. That's where Optimize Interactive can help with all your online communications. We follow the rise and ebb of different social media sites, to tailor your social marketing to increase site traffic. For example, if you're trying to focus on teenage consumers, then you're not likely to reach them on LinkedIn. And depending on the country you're targeting, perhaps Orkut might be worth considering over Facebook, if you want to reach Indians or Brazilians where the site is very popular. The same holds true for business professionals, with many Germans using Xing, not LinkedIn for career networking and recruitment – it’s the kind of detail that makes all the difference when it comes to lead generation. "It all depends on the client we're helping, so we can identify what's the best way to reach their audience and what's best for the client themselves when it comes to demand generation," says Geoff Thompson, the Director of Digital and Social Media for Optimize Interactive. For business users, insightful blog posts will catch readers’ attention, if you employ search engine optimization to tailor your organic seo message effectively. Your blog content could then be the foundation for a whole series of other social media services that draw attention to it, for example by using Twitter to release links back to the blog post with key phrases from the contents. And once the reader likes what they see in that blog post, they can seek ways to look for future posts, by following you on Twitter, adding your blog to an RSS feed or subscribing to email lists - it’s all part of relationship marketing. "There are so many options out there, but it all depends on social media content. You need to focus on it if you are going to get people's attention and keep them interested," says Jeff Hicks, Optimize Interactive’s Creative Director. The same rules apply to video hosting sites like YouTube – they’re not just the place for funny videos but can be a great way to visually demonstrate your services by offering examples of what you do that will draw appreciation and sales lead generation from a new audience. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 06/22/2010 10:15:10 AM Do teenagers set tomorrow’s behaviour trends? A top Facebook executive predicted this week that email will soon go the way of the handwritten personal letter – it will become a rarity. The bold assessment from Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg argued that while people of her generation use email constantly, the next generation has already discarded it for social networking sites and text messages. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but in consumer technology, if you want to know what people like us will do tomorrow, you look at what teenagers are doing today,” Sandberg told Nielsen’s consumer 360 conference this week. web address http://www.consumer360.com/ “And the latest figures say that only 11 percent of teenagers email daily. So email – I can’t imagine life without it – is probably going away. So what do teenagers do? They SMS and – increasingly - they use social networking,” Sandberg’s point may attempt to create a self-fulfilling philosophy that will benefit her own employer, but it also confronts the dramatic changes taking place in how people communicate. Critics immediately pounced on Sandberg’s reasoning and countered that just as they grew out of their own teenage habits so too would the current crop of youngsters. They also argue that for many complex and confidential discussions, Facebook is no alternative to email. But even allowing for some hyperbole, the figures for Facebook’s usage are startling. Sandberg pointed to the speed of Facebook’s growth – up from 150 million users a year ago to 400 million today – 70 percent outside the United States. Globally, more than 100 million people use the iPhone and other smartphones to check into Facebook, she said. And no, emails aren’t going to disappear, but as communications evolve and even fragment, there are new opportunities for marketing through social media sites – not just Facebook, as people, not just teenagers embrace new ways to stay in touch and access information. So even if the teenage trends are only half-right as a predictor of future behaviour, it’s a future that already has hundreds of million users right now, that you can reach, if you make contact in the right way to the right individuals. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 06/15/2010 10:45:10 AM Don’t say something until you have something to say With mailboxes, RSS feeds and updates overflowing with information, only the truly relevant will catch the eye of a busy person – just like you. So when your contacts see you’ve put out a new posting, you want to be one of the few they automatically read and not the many more they delete unopened. The key is to keep your messages relevant and your communications sparse. And by sparse we mean no more frequent than is required but not so few that you become forgotten. Let’s take LinkedIn as an example. Some people seem to believe that spamming all their group contacts with a constant flurry of message will endear them to everyone and give an impression of activity. On the contrary, it only demonstrates laziness and a contempt for readers – a sure way to get quickly blocked. designated as junk mail. Instead, make your content matter, so that it will be read and acted upon by the people who are interested. So if you’re in financial recruitment, don’t send out group messages to a wider pool of people than say, a self-defined group that you know are in the banking world. I.T. people don’t want to hear about opportunites for someone with 10 years experience in asset management. And if you’re commenting on someone else’s posting – make sure you have something substantial to say, or else say nothing at all. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 06/08/2010 11:15:10 AM For successful SEO optimization, you need to create an effective content writing program. For many companies, it’s not easy to do SEO-friendly content writing and keyword optimization on an ongoing basis. But every time a search engine crawler goes through your website and finds little or no change, it automatically extends the time before the next visit. And if your blog is stale, PR and article submission flow decreases, your organic SEO ranking will slide as well. If you plan your content writing program to include social media as well, you’ll save time and money. Develop content once and then leverage it for SEO, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn groups, blogs you follow and more. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 06/01/2010 10:15:10 AM We recently developed the new corporate identity for a client. Following out standard procedure, we asked for background material that included their vision, mission and value proposition statements. I was surprised to see that their vision and mission statements were reversed – the vision should have been the mission and vice versa. So, to help you avoid this confusion, here is what we do to create mission and vision statements: Vision Statement What is the vision for your company in 1 year, 5 years, and long-term? We want to understand your business goals, such as knowing whether you want growth by acquisition, penetration of new markets, or new product/service development. We’ll want to understand how you want your business model and internal structure to evolve over time. We’ll help you define a vision for your company that will help guide future decisions for years to come, and enable us to communicate this vision to your audience. Mission Statement In contrast to the Vision Statement which focuses more on quantitative business goals, the Mission Statement defines your qualitative goals, the purpose and values of the corporation. It defines what market you are in and can describe, from a high level, how you will benefit your target audience. As we work with you to craft this statement, we are distilling it into elements that can be communicated graphically. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 05/25/2010 10:35:10 AM According to Forrester, 73% of companies are using web analytics and the spending on analytical tools will reach 1 billion within 5 years. For you to understand how your customers find and interact with your website, data must be reliable, available in real-time and meaningful. For example, as you develop content or run PPC campaigns, you need to know your best performing keywords in real-time. You can’t assume that your most popular keywords last month will always be at the top this month. Trends, campaigns and competition all work to change the landscape. It’s important to know how where your traffic is coming from so you can focus your content on the best performing sites. If you’re considering new media, you’ll need tools that help you calculate ROI. And what about your company’s or product’s reputation? Since most of this information is available for free, why are companies paying for advanced analytical tools? Here are some reasons: Real-time dashboards that combine information into a convenient, customizable interface Insight into best performing conversions mechanisms (lead capture sources) Relating traffic/conversions to marketing initiatives The ability to segment site visitors Charting a visitor’s path within the website (helps evaluate navigation and architecture) Our top goal is to track whether a lead becomes a sale. The more data and reporting we have, the closer we can get to calculating ROI. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 05/18/2010 11:15:10 AM Many managers are scared to death that social media will create chaos with their brand, messages and, even worse, pose a security threat. These are legitimate concerns, but a well designed social media program will take care of all these potential disasters. To start, social media usage guidelines (supported by an internal campaign) must be distributed to all employees. What these guidelines should cover includes: Proper brand usage and messaging Employee social media behavior What content can be shared/what is restricted What sites can/cannot be used Results of improper usage should be clearly spelled out, but balanced with incentives for employees to share approved content. Then, it is necessary to monitor employee social media usage. At first, it can be monitored and improper events pointed out and used to train them to achieve proper usage. As the program matures, consistent violators of guidelines can be barred mentioning the company in social media. Like you would at any time, a security breach must be dealt with according to standard corporate policy – just like you would if employees breached security through email or any other channel. Don’t think of the need to monitor as a reason not to do social media. Monitoring is made easy with all the scanning tools that are available, and it can be outsourced, inexpensively. It will also be cyclical, requiring more attention at the beginning of the program or when new campaigns are rolled out. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 05/11/2010 10:15:10 AM A new client asked me today what percentage of revenue should be budgeted for marketing. We’ve worked for companies that have ranged from 2% to 10%. This is an enormous spread. So what criteria should you use to determine the percentage that’s right for you? Consider 4 things: 1) Brand Awareness Companies with a strong, positive brand can don’t need to spend as much on building brand awareness. Newer companies or companies with brand perception problems need to invest more. 2) Target Audience How hard is it to reach your target audience with a differentiated message? How much clutter and competition is there in the marketplace? The easier you can reach your audience, the lower your marketing spend. 3) Your Industry Certain industries/services (B2B or B2C) require more expensive media channels than others. The more expensive your media, and the higher your need to rely on media, the more you need to spend. 4) Your profit per sale If your profit-per-sale is high, you can afford to calculate your marketing spend proportionally to your growth targets. The lower the profit-per-sale, the more you’ll have to spend to reach your targets. To sum up, set realistic growth targets, then work backwards to see how much you’ll need to spend to reach them, given your specific circumstances within the above criteria. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 05/04/2010 10:30:10 AM Continuing last week’s Facebook for business theme, I met a marketing manager who was working on a campaign for a new credit his company was offering. I mentioned that Facebook would be a perfect marketing option. He was a strong skeptic. So I asked him how many employees were in his company – answer: 3,500. I then explained to him that if he implemented an in-house Facebook campaign to encourage employees to create Facebook pages and build their list of “friends,” he could make good use of “viral marketing.” Simply put, if he used incentives to encourage employees to place a post about the new debit cards, and if let’s say 1,000 of them post them to be seen by at least 5 friends, he just reached 5,000 people – and that’s before the friends pass the word on to their friends. Of course, employee Facebook guidelines need to be published and monitored to be sure the branding and image of the company and product are maintained in the posts. It was fun to see his positive reaction when I explained this to him and he started to think about what it costs to reach 5,000 people by other channels. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 04/27/2010 11:30:10 AM Twice this week I’ve been surprised by the strong negative comments I’ve received when suggesting that Facebook is an essential tool for business. One said “I’ve avoided it like the plague.” Another said, “That’s for my children, not my business.” I was again surprised that, once I made the case for Facebook, both did complete turnarounds and became interested. I’ll describe the case I made for the first skeptic this week, and the other next week. The first contact is in the recruitment business, focusing on legal, IT and financial executive searches. My first comment to him was: “60% of HR managers look at the Facebook pages of potential candidates.” He was amazed. Clearly, it is in his best interest to help his candidates manage their Facebook presence. Then, I pointed out that his business is built on personal relationships – trust, competence and confidence developed between him and his clients AND his potential job candidates. You simply can’t build relationships fast over the phone, and how often can you realistically meet, go to lunch or play golf with your clients or prospects? To broaden your ability to let people know who you are, Facebook is the ideal tool. The right combination of relevant information delivery (news about seminars, new industry trends, etc) and personal information (attending charity events, on the golf course, travelling to conferences) is a great way to build relationships. And finally, in this case, he said retaining customers is hard in the current economic climate. What better way to retain clients than unobtrusively keeping your name in front of them? So how many of his clients and candidates are on Facebook? Well, in Luxembourg, a conservative community, 1 out of 4 are there! (and the numbers are growing fast). http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 04/20/2010 10:30:10 AM Continuing on last week’s theme of segmenting your database to provide relevant content, most marketers hesitate to adopt this approach because they’re concerned it will take too much of their time and cost too much. So here’s an approach that makes it easier and less costly: 1- Take content input from product managers and stakeholders by phone interview (asking for written content input usually kills the project at the beginning). 2- Leverage the same content for different audiences. This is critical and simple. For example, describe your new product in short, succinct terms to C-level or high-level decision makers, focusing on business benefits (faster, better, saves money, competitive advantage, etc.). And for influencers, the technical or operational personnel focus on features and on how it will benefit them in their job. 3- Use the same content, but present it differently depending upon where they are in the sales cycle. Use different offers. Drill down deeper as prospects become more engaged, and provide more information that builds confidence (quality, performance, references). This can be done by providing links to existing information. To sum up, if your content development approach is well planned, you can execute it without additional in-house resources and it will pay huge dividends as your conversion rates skyrocket. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 04/13/2010 10:45:10 AM Segmenting your prospects is essential to maximizing marketing ROI. By segmenting, we mean putting leads into separate groups in your database based on their profile (interests, job titles, etc.). By providing information relevant to each segment, your lead conversion rates are significantly higher. Creating content for each segment takes more time, but they payoff is worth it. Here is an interesting fact, backed up by a study done by MarketingSherpa: Response rates are 5 times greater when relevant content is delivered. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 04/06/2010 10:30:10 AM Incentives are essential to the success of B2B eMarketing or advertising. When presented in combination with a compelling benefit message, people will respond. There are several basic types of effective offers, and you need to know when to use them. 1) Soft offers (USB sticks, calculators): use to introduce your product/service or for purchasers in the early stage of the sales cycle. 2) Hard offers (white papers, brochures, demos): use for prospects who are close to making a purchase decision. These are traditionally the best performing offers. 3) Service offers (free analysis, free business case): Use in conservative industries where “soft offers” are not appropriate or budget doesn’t permit. To maximize the performance of your offer, have a clear call-to-action and instill urgency by limiting the time the offer is available. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 03/30/2010 10:15:10 AM A very revealing study done recently by Polaris Research showed that a balanced multimedia mix containing TV, online, new media and direct was able to mitigate the negative impact of the economic downturn. 1/3 of the sales that were lost through declining customer confidence were re-gained. An effective media mix helped change the mind of 1/3 of customers who had initially decided to pass on a new purchase. As former CEO of GE Jack Welch said, the best time to advertise is when times are tough and everyone else has cut back on spending. Your message and brand stand out and have impact! http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 03/23/2010 10:40:10 AM Good subject lines are essential to email marketing success. Avoid using “Free” as it has been abused by spammers. Be sure it states a clear benefit that is quickly perceived. Engage interest with action words like “Exclusive, Important, Valuable, Best-Practices.” Also, encourage forwarding by adding “Pls Forward” at the end. This can greatly increase your circulation. Then, personalize each message, but be careful to be culturally sensitive. For example, in the U.S. you can use first names, “Dear John,” but in other cultures you should use “Dear Mr/Ms.” http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 03/16/2010 09:20:10 AM For email marketing, the best list is one you build yourself. Start by making sure your website is set up properly to capture leads. Then be sure all your marketing campaigns and activities include opting in your prospects and customers so you have a proper, permission-based list. In exchange for contact information and agreement to opt-in to receive email, give something of value in every channel you use: banner ads, telemarketing, trade shows, social media, purchased list email campaigns. This can be a white paper, free webinar, etc. Over time, you’ll have permission-based lists for prospects and customers that you can nurture to increase your revenue. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 03/09/2010 10:20:10 AM We’ve been advising clients for years to put prospect conversion campaigns in place that build relationships with prospects over time. Unfortunately, sales people within many companies still focus on “hot” prospects and let the rest lie fallow. In reality, most people who respond to your campaigns or find you because you’ve achieved a good organic search ranking are simply gathering information. By engaging them in a dialog, through social media and prospect conversion email campaigns, you are top-of-mind when they are ready to act. This is one of the most important ways marketing can support the sales effort, and in fact, become a real profit center. Also, if you ignore the 90% of leads that come in through your campaigns that are not “hot,” you’ve wasted a lot of marketing dollars generating these leads. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 03/02/2010 10:20:10 AM In using social media, once you begin two-way interactions with your target audience, the first goal is to gain their confidence. They must trust you, see you as an expert who can help them do their jobs better. If you use blatant self-promotional tactics, you’ll lose them. You have to provide real value to encourage them to continue the interaction. At the same time, by providing them with relevant information about how your product or service solves real problems they deal with daily, you’ll increase your sales. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 02/23/2010 09:20:10 AM It’s important to understand the real value of social media so you can use it properly. At its core, social media enables two way communications with prospects and customers. Several reasons why all marketing budgets should contain a line item to develop and implement social media strategies is clear: you build confidence, provide relevant information about new products and services, move prospects along the sales cycle, ensure customer loyalty and build your brand. It is also one of the most cost-effective marketing tools you can use. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 02/16/2010 09:05:10 AM Developing back links with a number of quality, relevant sites will improve your organic ranking. In fact, proper back-linking is one of the most effective-SEO tools. The sites that link to you can provide context about your subject matter and reflect the quality and popularity of your site. The more relevant content you have published online, the more SEO success you’ll have. Keep in mind, however, that you need to be published on quality sites where your content would legitimately appear. Plus, using link exchange schemes that focus on quantity while disregarding quality and relevance will hurt your SEO ranking. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 02/09/2010 09:10:10 AM Be sure your content development is grounded in an SEO-optimized messaging strategy. This means being sure your marketing messages are built on solid positioning strategy and written using keywords that have been carefully chosen after extensive research. To ensure effectiveness, actively manage your keywords and make adjustments when necessary. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 02/02/2010 09:40:10 AM Search engine optimization is not a one-time event. Optimizing your site is just the beginning. To continue to increase your organic ranking, or simply to maintain the seo optimization success you've achieved, a substantial amount of seo-optimized content needs to be created every month. Articles need to be written, blogs maintained, social media sites updated, SEO press releases generated and more. As well, this material needs to be published online on as many relevant sites as possible, with back-links to your site. For many companies, this presents a major challenge. To solve this problem we've created affordable search engine optimization monthly maintenance packages that make it easy to develop content. http://www.optimize-interactive.com/marketing_tips.html 01/26/2010 09:35:10 AM