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February 28, 2008
Heirs Still Fighting Over the Page View Estate
Good article in Computerworld this week called Life After Page Views: Web Analytics 2.0.
To sum up, the page view has been tossed into the Pythonesque "bring out your dead" cart by a lot of people, including me, in an article I wrote at ClickZ a year ago:
Page views have long been one of the Web's most reliable measurements. But because of technologies like AJAX, Flash, and RSS, a site can perform at engines better than ever and users can spend as much (or more) time on your site than ever before, but the page view count won't reflect it. Page views rely on Web 1.0's click-and-wait model. ...
Sites with an income model that relies on excellent search engine positioning and subsequent page views must be especially diligent in showing potential advertisers a true picture of the site's user experience. Whether it's shifting the influence of time spent on a site, adding script-based click tracking to internal AJAX applications, or something entirely different, a multifaceted approach to Web measurement is becoming more and more important for Web monetization.
So imagine how vindicated I felt when, last July, Nielsen / NetRatings decided to abandon the page view as the primary web analytics metric. From the CW article:
At the time, the Internet benchmarking firm cited the growing popularity of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, or AJAX -- which can refresh content without completely reloading a Web page -- as the main reason for the change to measuring time spent on a site.
But it turns out that video, not AJAX widgetry, is the major culprit in the growing chasm between falling page views and climbing "time spent" online. All of which leaves us with the same question: How do we measure consumer engagement in a post-page-view web publishing landscape?
The article is a little too long to sum up quickly, so I do recommend the read. The basic issue is that companies like Nuconomy are trying to be the first out of the gates with new engagement-measuring metrics such as "comments added to blogs, ratings, applications shared with friends, clicks on ads and online video use -- all of which can show how 'engaged' a user is with a particular brand or product," while folks like Avinash Kaushik (Google Analytics guru and recent SEMMY winner) caution us against rushing out and arbitrarily defining concepts while totally abandoning concrete measurements.
"I am not saying don't create engaging experiences," he added. "[Just] don't use the term engagement, because it has been bastardized to the point that it doesn't mean anything."
More questions than answers, certainly, but that's not necessarily bad.
Posted by erik at 10:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 27, 2008
A Global Perspective of Social Networking Usage
A newspaper in France called "Le Monde" recently published a pretty sweet map that describes the usage of social networking portals across the globe, which was originally created by the research firm Datamonitor. The social networking usage graph depicts the number of hours (in millions) users spend at major portals across 5 world wide regions and sheds some light on the diversity of social networking participants around the globe.
In North America it shows that MySpace has a slight lead on FaceBook regarding social networking usage within the states. The users in Brazil and India seem to migrate towards Orkut, whereas in Asia-Pacific Cyworld and Mixi are the top dogs chosen by users. Africa social networking users gravitate towards sites like Netlog, Yonja, and Skyblog, while users in Latin America and Mongolia prefer to use hi5 to get their social networking fulfillment each day.
Considering Myspace and FaceBook has spent a considerable amount of time in the last few months working on expanding into other markets, its only a matter of time until these US focused giants gain proportional existence in other foreign regions. It will be interesting to to see who dominates the foreign social networking landscape in the near future. Time to place your bets folks....
Posted by brett at 06:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Maybe Red Page Borders are the Answer
When selecting website color schemes it's important to decide what emotional response one wishes to evoke. Washed out, weak colors, especially coupled with gray or small, hard to read fonts, can counteract the best copywriting. Colors, shapes and copy should work together to enhance a company's unique selling proposition.
In discussing selection of website color schemes with a customer, and how color can evoke emotional responses, I was reminded of J.L. Morton's Color Matters Blog post where she has a neat set of before and after images of how a child danced in the colored sands of a half-finished mandala. If you ever get the chance, I highly recommend visiting a mandala exhibition where Buddhist monks create intricate designs from colored sand. Several years ago I saw monks creating one of these spiritually inspired designs and the combination of color and design was mesmerizing.
MarketingExperiments.com defines the strategic use of color (along with design, images and copy) as part of a Congruence factor that has to always support a site's Value Proposition. While we are on the subject of color, users who are color blind should be taken into account when planning color schemes, so reliance is not just on hues, but also on differences in tint or intensity.
And if you just can't get a handle on using color in page design, no worries. Get some pointers from Human Factors International's cartoon "Return on Investment." Those red page borders sound like a good idea...
Posted by lisa at 05:36 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Debra Mastaler's Link Building Roundup
Many SEOs contribute extensive rumination to the Link Building confabulation, but pure Link Building dictation carrying with it SEO-like education seems almost an aberration. Wouldn't you agree with that postulation?
Debra Mastaler is one of the few exceptions. Her Link Spiel is a very enjoyable read woven together with excellent Link Building tips. Debra doesn't keep secrets. If something works, she tells you about it. Debra's most recent post at Search Engine Land is an all-encompassing collection of the best Link Building tools available. I recommend it to anybody interested in Link Building.
Posted by tom at 11:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 20, 2008
Search Engine Marketing Myths
One of the questions we get asked is about myths in the field of SEO or Search Engine Marketing. Here are three of the most current SEO/SEM myths:
1. SEO is done once, then you sit back and enjoy the fruits forever.
Running a successful SEO campaign is not like launching a missile. It's more like driving a car. You see you're starting to veer to the shoulder, and you compensate. You make turns when necessary. When we explain upfront to a client that during a campaign, we're going to work, then observe, then work again if the results aren't what we want, most understand it, and it paves the way for a smooth relationship. Often, people think SEO is a two-party vacuum -- the client site and the engine. They don't typically realize that their competitors are also working hard, and that every time the client moves up a spot, someone else moves down -- and typically isn't too happy about it.
2. Flash (or AJAX, or any technique) is universally bad.
Upon starting a campaign, we're often greeted by some pretty hostile and defensive IT and design departments. They've read article after article about how a certain technique spells certain SEO death, and they assume we're going to preach the same doom-and-gloom sermon and tell them their techniques are forbidden. Certainly, we have our coding preferences, but we're not here to dictate look, feel, or overall visual design. Instead, we work very hard to suggest changes to supplement existing site techniques, not replace them. We study all sorts of sites, and we can cite examples of Flash pages that lead their industry with almost no text on the page. So balance is critical. What you lack with one SEO factor you need to make up with others.
3. Search engines love blogs.
This really isn't a myth as much as it is a misapplication of cause and effect. What search engines love is content in its best forms: unique, frequently updated, easy to link to (and from), and easy to access from the root domain. It's merely a coincidence that most blogging platforms meet many of these criteria with minimal tweaking. To say that certain content performs better than other content because it's on a blog is like saying that certain people have lower blood pressure than other people because they frequently park near the fitness center. This misses the bigger picture. Search engines loved news sites long before blogs became popular, because well optimized news sites have the same characteristics. The difference today is that content platforms enable this type of site much more readily than they did 10 or even 5 years ago.
Posted by doug at 11:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
When Ecommerce Sites Become Destination Sites
Remember the days when "surfing the Web" was all the rage? Normally today people have a set of "trusted sites" they visit often, with occasional forays into unknown territory. While the headlines remind us about Facebook's popularity, a number of retail sites are building strong communities of their own. Perceptions are changing. Is Netflix.com a place to sign up for DVD deliveries, or is it a place to get movie reviews written by people who like what I like? Is Zappos.com a place to buy shoes, or a fun site, where even if you don't care much about shoes, you want to read their wild and crazy blogs? And even though I have never ordered anything from this site, I have to say that I'm fascinated with the neat things you can do on the Republic of Tea's site. Try getting your fortune from Madame Oolong here.
So have these sites failed if, after I've visited their communities and tried their cool tools, I don't end up buying anything? Not at all. Word of mouth is still a very powerful thing. According to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, people have a natural desire to share their experiences with friends and family. They may choose to do that offline; like how I'm going to tell my friend to go check out that funny guy in the pink gorilla suit over on the Zappos blog. So maybe I won't buy shoes from Zappos, but my friend might. And we both get to contemplate why a guy would want to ride in a golf cart in a pink gorilla suit anyway...
Posted by lisa at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 19, 2008
Social Media News Aggregator: newspond
Newspond is a clean news site that is now being described as a tireless electronic brain that is an ultimate hub for the latest news stories related to technology, science, and gaming. It has a clean look and is matched by the sites ability to parse stories across news sites and blog hubs online. Once a story starts showing up online Newspond notes all details about the story such as the rate at which people click on or bookmark the article and the size of each of the sites reporting that story. It utilizes a rating system called "Rating Buoyancy" which is described by Newspond as a "measure of the exact upward force exerted on a news story by the internet, in real-time."
I have a feeling we are going to see some really cool things coming from Newspond in the near future.
Posted by brett at 08:59 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 18, 2008
MSN's Berkowitz Pulled from the Index
I haven't seen this anywhere except ClickZ and I thought you might be interested. As of last Thursday, Steve Berkowitz, the SVP of Microsoft's Online Services Group, is out. He'll be staying through August "to ensure a smooth transition."
In the big picture, two years doesn't seem like quite enough time to have turned the MSN Search ocean liner around, despite the fact that Berkowitz is credited with Ask's financial turnaround during his tenure there. But someone has to fall on the sword in situations like this, and it looks like he was the logical choice. One wonders whether a simple management shuffle will have a significant effect, or whether it's merely bringing a sharper knife to the gunfight.
Further reading:
Posted by erik at 04:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
comScore and Media Contacts Study Depicts Variances Among Online Video Viewer Segments
A study by comScore and Media Contacts was conducted to understand the consumption habits and mindsets of Internet video users as they relate to online video, TV, and advertising plus content across both media. The findings were very interesting in that the top 20% of viewers averaged 841 minutes of online viewing per month, moderate viewers (next 30%) spent 77 minutes, and the bottom 50% spent just 6 minutes a month conducting the same activities online.
The heaviest users spent most of their time online visiting niche video sites that catered to individual topics with less general videos being displayed.
Moderate viewers sent most of their time visiting specific video content on broadcast TV sites, including WorldNow (ABC), CBS TV Local, ABC Daytime, Scripps TV, and CMT, rather than frequenting more general video-sharing sites.
The study found that light online video viewers are actually heavier TV consumers, with 46 percent of this group indicating they watch more than 13 hours of TV per week. In comparison, 39 percent of moderate video viewers and 30 percent of heavy video viewers watched the same amount of TV.
Although there is a great deal of variance between the types of videos, content, and media sources being accessed online it is imperative to gain a better understanding of what consumers are actively watching to better meet their needs from a marketing perspective. This type of research will lay the foundation for how search marketing companies target online video consumers from a strategy standpoint.
Posted by brett at 11:01 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Google quality score and minimum bid factors
One of the major influences of how much Google Adwords advertisers are paying per click is the quality score. The quality score can also affect not only your cost per click but your ad placement. Overall quality score is a correlation between the user’s original search query and the relevancy to the text ad that is displayed to the user. Ultimately, even the theme of your pay per click landing page is also incorporated into your overall Google Adwords quality score. Google rewards high quality scores with better ad positions and lower Google Adwords campaign costs.
Factors that affect minimum bid and quality score are the following -
• Click through rate
• Overall history
• Most recent history
• Ad copy
• Landing page
• Account quality score
Keyword quality scores ultimately have one of three states, Great, OK, or Poor.
It is optimal to strive for a great keyword quality score to insure your Google advertising campaign is cost effective, and is serving the most relevant ads to the user. It is helpful to gauge this from the click to conversion stand point to both insure the highest amount of relevance and at the same time reduce pay per click costs.
As for the element of minimum bid and quality score, the CTR score is only influenced by google.com. It is important to note that CTR is not measured by the Google search partner network or the content network. Also CTR is judged by position; Google knows and understands that ads in the top two positions are going to have a higher CTR than an ad in position 5 and is judged on a CTR basis accordingly. If the ad in the 5th position has a lower CTR by nature of placement Google does not penalize, but adjusts its algorithm accordingly.
Posted by charles at 10:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 15, 2008
Google Testing Video Ads on Search Result Pages
The New York times is reporting in their blog that Google has started testing video ads in their SERP's.
Do Google user's want to have their SERP cluttered with video ads? It seems that with testing done in the past that this could be acceptable to the search engine users.
Marrisa Mayer - VP of Search Products and User-Experience says:
“The big insight of Google wasn’t text ads; it was that the ads should be conducive to the format,” Ms. Mayer said. “We were doing text-based search that was all textual. Visual ads don’t work in that format.”
By contrast, she said text ads are not as effective on pages with search results that include images and video. The eyes of users automatically gravitate to the images more than the text, she said. Now that Google’s main search results pages include more images, video links and other elements, it is more appropriate, she argued, to have corresponding advertising formats.
“With universal search, something is getting shaken up a bit on the bottom part of the page,” she said. “The ads on the top part of the page should match."
As of yet, I haven't seen a SERP with the new video's on it so I don't have an opinion. I would like to so if someone can send me a query to produce, or a screenshot, I would really appreciate it.
Jusqu'à ce que nous nous rencontrions de nouveau.
Posted by james at 11:16 AM | Comments (1)
Where oh Where Is Thy User-Friendly 404, Google?
As I kick off my day this morning enjoying the beautiful weather down here in Florida and sippin' on my starbucks, I noticed something I found to be quite interesting with Google. They have no user-friendly custom 404 page!
Now I know Google is probably not a company that needs to be too concerned about having user-friendly custom 404 pages, but feel it would make sense for them to at least have a link on 404's going back to their home page. If I were tasked to create a 404 page for Google, I'd want to have links to a bunch of services such as GMail, Google AdWords, Webmaster Central, Blogger, Google News, Picasa, Google Analytics, Etc.
By having a user-friendly customized 404 page with links to a plethora of services, Google can potentially attract new customers who may not be aware services such as the aforementioned are even available.
Just my .05.
Have a great weekend everyone!!!
Posted by sean at 08:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 13, 2008
Timing Email Messages Key to Winning Over Customers
As a smart email marketer I'm sure you've read articles on how to increase opens, how to write catchy subject lines, and how to create compelling offers. If you're looking for a powerful way to win over your customers, consider the timing of your email messages. The timing of your email messages is as important as the content. Send too many emails at the wrong time and you run the risk of alienating the customer. Don't send confirmation or welcome emails on time and you risk confusing the customer. Timing is the essence of great customer service.
Consider the case of email communications pioneer and ClickZ writer Al DiGuido who planned a stay at a Westwood W Hotel. Mr. DiGuido discusses his delight with the hotel's superb email timing here. The hotel sent a welcoming email two weeks before his trip asking if they could do anything to make his stay extra special. They followed this message with an email a week later that gave a view of his room, then completed the exchange by timing several emails during and after his stay to ensure he was receiving the best service. It's all in the timing, which is definitely a fine line between being intrusive and establishing a dialogue that shows the customer that you care.
If you're a Netflix customer you likely enjoy how they time their customer emails. For example I get an email asking me "When did you mail back your movie?" and they list several dates. All I have to do is click on the date and I'm done. They also send an email saying "When did you receive your movie?" Again all I have to do is click on a date. Such ease of communication shows me they care when I get my movies, which is a key component of their service. The best part is that I am not inundated with Netflix monthly newsletters and extraneous email messages that I don't want. That makes me really happy.
One last point - timing email messages is worth little if the customer service isn't there to back it up. Westwood W hotels not only engaged Mr. DiGuido in a dialogue, they backed that up by providing outstanding service during his stay. Netflix not only times its emails well, it doesn't turn a hair if your dog chews up a DVD; they just say "Stuff happens. No problem." Email can help begin a personal engagement with customers, but it's the human element that closes the deal.
Posted by lisa at 01:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Nip/Tuck Drops Google, and Leaves It on the Ground
I found myself in the midst of a double-take last night while watching Nip/Tuck. A patient revealed that she found McNamara Troy when she googled [free plastic surgery]. Now Nip/Tuck has a history of sprinkling web talk into episodes (YouTube episode from Season 4), and a Google drop today is as common as a professional athlete wandering onto the Brady Bunch Astroturf. However, in almost all cases, characters google to learn about a person or a thing without a direct action. What led me to double take was that an actual conversion had just taken place. The character made an appointment based on the results of her search.
So how far did Nip/Tuck take it? Is the media in place to draw in curious fans who might perform the search? Think Seduce and Destroy Hotline from Magnolia, which was actually in operation when the movie was released. Well, McNamara Troy has a site with plenty of interaction available for curious fans, but no easy route to get them there. Certainly, curious fans would not get there from a results page.
So, tell me what you don't like about your site.
Almost no content accessible to search engines. The only actual content on the page is the "HOME" link and the footer.
No other pages available for indexation. All links on the page point to FXNetworks.com or are behind JavaScript.
Site is buried. McNamaraTroyLA.com permanently redirects to FXNetworks.com/shows/originals/niptuck_s5/ , which links to an incredibly long intro that eventually displays an unspiderable link to McNamaraTroyLA.com/LosAngeles/.
As a result, the site is nowhere to be found for [nip tuck] and barely hits the front page for [mcnamara troy]. No chance for [free plastic surgery] or any other term.
Then again, maybe the character was referring to the McNamara Troy PPC landing page? Nope, nothing there either.
Kudos to Nip/Tuck for upping the ante on Google dropping. I loved seeing a greater level of understanding applied to casual dialogue, yet it only leaves me wanting more. I felt the same way last year when the characters all watched the sexy YouTube video. Could you imagine the views if they actually had uploaded the video in question?
Posted by tom at 10:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 11, 2008
Reason # 1,000,000 That Google Adwords Isn't Going Anywhere
If you've ever wondered how long the Paid Search "Bubble" will last, I think you'd better start asking about how long until traditional advertising is eclipsed. I found a video from Google regarding Android, their new open-source cell phone software, and frankly it was an eye-opener. I'm not going to say this is an IPhone killer or anything flashy like that. Rather, I think we're just beginning to realize how pervasive and persuasive online advertising will be.
Imagine having a free phone that has IPhone like flashiness and all of the social networking (Facebook), web searching (Google), business application programs (Google Docs), email (Gmail), and even direction finding (Google Maps) programs already built in or a least easily available. All along all of us web types thought that these programs were just for us, but it appears that we are the tip of the iceberg. I would almost say that we're the beta testers for the non-techies but that would be going too far off the reservation.
Suffice to say that online advertising is not only not going anywhere, but soon people will see our ads and not even know that they're online. Knowing how to get the word out and manage your 'online' reputation will soon be a necessity as it will permeate more and more of our way of life.
I killed my cell phone over the weekend and had forgotten how it felt to not have one. I remember when I got married 10 years ago, I didn't even have a cell phone. It felt weird going to the gas station this weekend and not being able to get in touch with my wife to see if she needed anything while I was out. Imagine how I will feel in 10 years when my cell phone is DOA and I feel lost because it didn't load the latest and greatest local ads just for me when I get off of the freeway.
Not to be too sci-fi, but have you seen the move Minority Report? The deeper I get into the online advertising arena, the more I see the future of advertising being like it was in that movie. Although instead of retinal scans, your phone will be the device that triggers these tailored ads.
Wild and out there maybe, but the truth is always stranger than fiction. Oh and by the way.....I'll be the weirdo who's camping out for the Android phone in my town. I'd be foolish to bite the hand that feeds me. See you in line!
Posted by brent at 02:38 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 08, 2008
FaceBook Now Targeting Spanish Users
FaceBook is now targeting users outside the US by unveiling a Spanish-language version of its popular online social network, in an attempt to catch up with its rival MySpace. This new platform has been created because FaceBook currently has about 60% of its users reside outside of the US. Facebook plans to add French and German versions before April, according to Matt Cohler, the Palo Alto-based company's vice president of strategy and operations. Out of its 64 million active users, 2.8 million are in Latin America and Spain, which is a great incentive for FaceBook to cater to this Spanish speaking population. As of next week, anyone accessing FaceBook from a Spanish speaking country will be routed to the Spanish version of their Web site. There were 1,500 FaceBook users who translated the sites vernacular and applications into Spanish using tools provided by the company. The same approach is currently being used to translate the site into French and German versions of this popular social networking platform.
Posted by brett at 10:56 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Tracking Local Press Release Syndication Performance
If you are a PR professional and looking for a way to track your newly syndicated press releases across a local platform then you've got to check out "Google's News" new local search feature. Now you have the ability to look up your news via zip code, city, or state and see what's showing up in your local market. You can use this information to see how well your local PR campaigns are doing online and get a better feel for other places to possibly syndicate your news.
To check out the new Google News local search feature go to news.google.com and scroll down the page, look for the "Local News Category", and enter your pertinent information into the search box. You will then be presented with the latest local news that reflects whatever region you are searching for online.
Your news results will look like:
Then to monitor your local news with ease on a daily or weekly basis create a Google Alert with your local news preferences are you are good to go!
Posted by brett at 09:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Predictive Search Merges into Consumer Apps
This isn't breaking news, but in their recent versions, both Netflix and iTunes have integrated some very smart internal search utilities into their systems.
They're using a type of search function that goes by several different names, including "predictive," "intuitive," or "suggestive" to offer users additional help during the internal search process. Here's an example of Netflix's system in action:
The Netflix system appears to list terms in alphabetical order, and the search term itself is always first in the list of suggestions. This is good intuitive search, but it's not as good as iTunes' method:
iTunes uses a pretty sophisticated algorithm that appears to rank by popularity (instead of alphabetical order) and perhaps more important, inserts the typed term anywhere in the query that makes sense -- not just as the first term in the string.
Why does predictive search matter? Because when users select the right artist, song, film, whatever -- that's a conversion. These intuitive search features shorten the click path between a user wanting something and getting something. Compare these two potential search paths:
Without intuitive search:
- User types terms at a search box
- User clicks "submit"
- Site (or app) returns search result
- User scans search results page
- User clicks result that matches his/her query
- Site (or app) delivers correct page
With intuitive search:
- User types terms at a search box
- Site (or app) displays potential queries immediately
- User clicks term from dropdown suggestion box
- Site (or app) delivers correct page
A click path is like plumbing with loose joints. The more twists, turns, and connections, the more cargo (visitors) you lose due to leakage. In the cases above, the addition of intuitive search reduces the plumbing overhead by a third.
Coincidentally, the respective features of Netflix and iTunes parallel those of Google Suggest and Yahoo Search Suggest, which I wrote about a few months ago.
Posted by erik at 07:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 07, 2008
Finding The Right Search Engine Marketing Company: Part Two
Questions You Should Ask About The SEM Company's Services
Need help sorting through the scores of Search Engine Marketing companies?
In Part One of Finding The Right Search Engine Marketing Company, I shared my thoughts on questions you should ask SEM companies about their company. Now let's look at some good questions to ask the SEM company about their service offerings:
- What do you consider the main goals of the campaign?
- How does keyword research fit into your SEO process?
- Will you conduct a full site analysis of our site prior to the campaign to evaluate how search-engine-friendly our site is?
- Do you offer guaranteed search engine rankings?
- Changes To Our Site: Will your company be writing all necessary code and content recommendations and who will manage the implementation on our site pages? What happens to the code and content should our company stop using your services? How flexible will you need us to be to make changes to our site to help improve its performance at search engines and increase traffic?
- When should we expect to see the first results from the campaign?
- Link Building: Do you have a web site linking methodology for both internal site links and external, third-party links? What is your approach to building links and what are your thoughts on quantity versus quality? Will you submit my site to top tier paid directories? Will the links you gain for my site be one-way or reciprocal links? What happens to the links in the event our companies stop working together? Do you include advanced link building strategies including XML sitemap generation?
- What are your opinions in regards to “Best Practices” for SEO? Do you utilize “Black Hat” SEO techniques for your clients?
- Reporting: What type of performance reports will you provide us and how often? Do you report on search engine placements, search traffic, conversions, revenue, etc.? Web site analytics reporting will you provide to us? Will you provide consulting to explain what the data means and how it affects our marketing objectives?
- Based on the goals of my site, along with SEO, what other SEM services would you recommend?
Posted by doug at 09:47 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 06, 2008
Create Great Email Newsletters with these Free Templates
Have you ever been caught in a pinch where you needed to update a customer's HTML email template and just can't get the right look and feel? As a veteran of the email marketing wars I have spent more hours than I would care to mention tinkering with and cobbling together templates to create email newsletters that 1) Function well in the majority of email clients, and 2) Offer layouts conducive to getting users to click through. As savvy email marketers, we know we have to create compelling offers and persuasive calls to action. All that hard work is for nought, however, if the newsletter layout is not user friendly. Then there's the ultimate challenge...What happens if your template won't work in a recipient's email client? If that happens they'll never even see your marketing message.
Thankfully there are a few good resources available such as Campaign Monitor's 30 Free Email Templates. This template collection not only includes a variety of content layouts but the templates have been tested in all major email clients. These templates even work in Outlook 2007, which can cause some rendering problems through its use of Microsoft Word's HTML rendering engine. A little tinkering and you can add customer brand-specific colors and other tweaks to customize these sample templates.
If you're going to be doing some heavy newsletter template tweaking, you may find yourself in the market for a good text editor. I've found over the years that people get pretty attached to their text editors. I remember one company I worked for practically insisted that employees use one particular editor. Over the years I've tried so many editors but keep coming back to Arachnophilia 4.0 (scroll down the page for download links). The newer versions of Arachnophilia are built to be platform agnostic, so if you're not running a Windows machine, you might want to use a newer build. The Build 5310 version I use is quite old - from 2001! I heartily recommend it to Windows users for its nice array of command and macro functions without a lot of fluff to slow you down.
Posted by lisa at 09:32 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 05, 2008
Reputation Management: How to Track Corporate Buzz Online
Tracking corporate buzz can be easy if you know the right Web sites to monitor online. Companies wishing to track their corporate buzz online should utilize blog and social media Web sites that have active users who are engaged on a daily basis with a variety of brands from companies across the Web. In an attempt to make this easier for you marketing professionals out there I have compiled a list of the sites you should monitor along with brief descriptions about each site.
Serph - A search engine that crawls online social media sites to find the latest buzz about a company, product, etc.
Technorati - Allows users to search for user-generated media (including weblogs) by tag or keyword.
Digg - A great place to monitor if your clients are in the technology industry.
Reddit - A social news site that was launched in June 2005 and is a competitor to Digg.
ShoutWire - Provides discussion of news, entertainment and videos every day, as well as a provides a free blogging platform with image and video hosting.
Propellor - Owned and operated by AOL LLC, a Time-Warner company and provides news and video online.
NewsVine - Site built with the purpose of allowing users an efficient way to read, write, and interact with the news.
A great way to monitor these types of sites is to set up Google Alerts that use your company name, products and services, or corporate professionals plus the name of the social media/blog news sites as your search query. This way you will be notified via email if Google's search results are displaying any information about your brand at any of the sites mentioned above.
Posted by brett at 10:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 04, 2008
Google IP Exclusion
Google Adwords IP exclusion is a major benefit in the Pay per Click Community. In addition to controlling your ad placement through methods such as location and language targeting, site exclusion, and network distribution preferences, you can refine your targeting with Internet Protocol (IP) address exclusion. This feature enables you to specify IP addresses where you don't want your ads to appear.
One major benefit of Google Adwords IP exclusion is now there is a way to combat click fraud from competitors bidding on your keywords. If you are able to get you competitors IP addresses you can add them to the IP exclusion tool so when competitors are checking out competing advertisers you can block your ad from displaying alongside theirs. So in essence if your competitors can’t see your ads they can’t click your ads.
The down side to using the IP exclusion tool is that some large Internet Service Providers (ISPs) use a range of IP addresses for all their users. If you exclude an IP address that is a proxy for many users, you could be blocking a large amount of legitimate and potentially profitable traffic.
Posted by charles at 10:11 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 01, 2008
When In Doubt, Buy Them Out!
Here I am yet again on a Friday morning enjoying a fine cup o' Joe and reading world news. Its a typical Friday morning for me as I gain my caffeine energy boost; that is until I read one of today's headlines "Microsoft bids $45 billion for Yahoo" on CNNMoney.com.
Seriously? Does Microsoft really want to play this game? I thought they learned their lesson well over a decade ago about monopolizing a market but I guess some companies are natural inclined to repeat mistakes like some governments I know.
If Yahoo! bites on the lucrative $45 billion dollar bid from Microshaft, what will this mean to the SEO community and to search in general? What will happen to MSN Search & Yahoo! Search? Will the two entities become one or just share algorithm components on the backend? Will one of the two search engines disappear like Teoma or DirectHit when they were bought out by Ask.com?
Well, I’m doubting the two companies would consolidate the two engines into one. There’s just too many loyal users of each to play that card. I actually envision the two entities just sharing backend technology such as Yahoo!’s Inktomi to increase relevancy of MSN Search & Live.com both of which have been struggling of late to increase their meager search market shares.
It should be VERY interesting to see what transpires in the event Yahoo! accepts the bid.
There you go again Microsoft! If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em!!!
Posted by sean at 08:34 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack