Since the growth of online social media, there has been a large pattern of growth in the use of it.  The bookmarking method; where users of the social media sites tag and present items they believe their friend may enjoy, has been the vehicle in which many social media sites have really found success.  This prolonged success has brought about the need to produce many kinds of marketing exclusively for social bookmarking.

A big obstacle in using social bookmarking for a marketing device is picking websites that will be best utilized for the purposes you desire.  Every property of social media has a different audience, different material it focuses on, and features that are different from the next site.  To assist you in deciding which social media site may be the best for you, we will go over some of the most popular ones. (more…)

Our project manager, Dean Jones and I attended PubCon last week, better known as WebmasterWorld conference in sunny, warm Las Vegas, Nevada. There was a ton to be learned and lots to take in- Twitter is hotter than ever, Social Media is being embraced and people are trying to figure out what to do with it and how to make $$ from it. The mobile landscape is changing with the api release in to the Apple iPhone and Google phone from T-Mobile. There is a large focus on local search and many different ways to get yourself exposure (or your clients.)

I’ll be posting all week on sessions as Dean will too. Below is a session on Paid Links, and how to acquire more relevant backlinks to your website. My partner (in my other company LinkXL.com) John Lessnau (LinkAdage.com) was the first to speak. He was well received and the session was packed with well over 300 people attending including Matt Cutts (head SPAM engineer) of Google. (he hates paid links and people that sell or acquire links to get better rankings- more on this later.)

So after picking on Dwight for months about his obsession with Twitter, I’ve sold out and gotten one.  I have to admit, I’m kind of addicted to it now.

So in playing with my new Twitter account I started looking for desktop apps to quickly update my twitter.  The problem that I faced is that I already have at least four different programs open at all times to keep track of both my personal and professional life.  I really didn’t want another one.

I tried a few Firefox plugins for Twitter since I always have Firefox open anyway, but wasn’t satisfied with the results.  And then….I found Digsby! (more…)

If a recent online political ad revenue prediction is correct, President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign could account for at least half of all 2008 online political ad spending. The winning candidate’s campaign shelled out nearly $8 million through October to Google, Yahoo, Facebook, news Web sites, ad networks, and in-game ad firm Massive.

Google remains the clear winner of Obama’s Web spoils, though the search giant’s payments for October have yet to appear in the campaign’s Federal Election Commission filings. The company collected $3.5 million from Obama for America, according to the latest FEC reports analyzed by ClickZ News. Keeping with a trend established early this year, Yahoo remains a distant second, having garnered around $673,000 from the campaign. A total of $7.97 million was spent on Web ads in ‘08 through October by the campaign, according to FEC reports. (more…)

Obtaining customer trust is a crucial aspect of online marketing.  In order to build good faith in your website’s product and accountability, you need a mixture of consistent branding, pleasing design, and clear content.  Together, these components work to create an atmosphere in which the prospective buyer feels comfortable to make purchases with private information.

Clearly convey your brand
The brand of your website is equitable to the essence of your business. Your company’s brand should clearly convey the idea and feel of what you offer. It should be consistent throughout your web pages, providing the buyer with a distinct impression of the idea for which your company stands.

Effective branding impacts the customer instantaneously. The prospective buyer should be able to immediately identify the product of service offered by your company. By hitting the customer quickly and directly, there is no confusion as to what it is you are advertising. This allows the customer to quickly decipher the purpose of your website and whether or not they have found what they were searching for.  This type of direct attitude of your site helps avoid creating consumer suspicions. A trustworthy environment is perceived in that the customer does not have to filter through your site to understand what your business is all about. (more…)

President Obama used technology to motivate his base and get the vote out. What’s phenomenal about Obama is that he came from practically nowhere two years ago, and despite running against established rivals - first Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, and then John McCain - managed to not just take the White House, but surfed into it on a landslide. Wow, and technology was there to help.

But just how did he do it?

Here are five uses of technology that helped him win.

(more…)

Cool, there will not be a monopoly created- until the next scheme deal.

Faced with the prospect of a lawsuit by federal antitrust authorities, Google decided to pull the plug on its proposed search ad deal with Yahoo. “After four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement,” Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, wrote on the company’s blog Wednesday. “Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners.”

The deal called for Google to power some paid search ads for Yahoo. The companies estimated that the arrangement, forged to fend off Microsoft’s takeover bid for Yahoo, would have increased Yahoo’s revenue by around $800 million in the first year. When they announced the deal in June, they said they would delay it for four months, to give the federal authorities time to investigate.

Wednesday, after the companies announced the deal collapsed, the Department of Justice said it would have sued to block the arrangement. “Google and Yahoo would have become collaborators rather than competitors for a significant portion of their search advertising businesses, materially reducing important competitive rivalry between the two companies.”

After the deal unraveled, Yahoo said it was “disappointed” that Google “elected to withdraw from the agreement rather than defend it in court.”

Ref: MediaPost

The main point of search engine optimization (SEO) is getting your website on the primary search engine results pages, usually in the top 10.  The top search engines are Google and Yahoo; so a high ranking on their SERPs (search engine result pages) will mean lots of traffic for your site.  (but remember, have clear goals. top 10 rankings and lots of traffic does nto mean conversions) Big businesses with a lot of money to spend aren’t the only ones to get a high ranking for their site.  A small business can do it too; all you need to do is study up and work hard.

There isn’t one thing you can do to ensure your site will get a top ten ranking but if you use on and off-page SEO methods; you can raise your ranking.

Keywords are almost like the foundation of an SEO campaign and the research you do to determine your keywords is extremely important.  Don’t assume you know the keywords; research them to ensure you don’t waste your time or money.

You can use keyword research tools to see what people are searching for.  After you get your results, choose a few of the top terms to use.  If you have many competitors with considerably larger budgets than yours, you should pick a keyword that isn’t as popular with not as much competition.  Then you can rank high for that word or phrase. (more…)

SEO copywriting is different from marketing copywriting; you need to do many things in order for it to get the results you desire.  Use these suggestions when doing any SEO copy writing if you want the content to make a positive difference for your site.

First figure out what the objective of your copy will be.  Do you want to get more brand awareness, would you like to increase traffic, or do you need to raise your conversion rate?  Determine this before doing anything else. Remember that relevancy for keywords and phrases should be worked in to your copy for brand terms.

Determine what terms people are searching for that are in your target market.  Use keyword tools and other means to achieve this. Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery.com and SpyFu.com are great resources. Also try Google trends.

Study your target audience; know the demographic information, what they like and dislike, and what kinds of products they buy.  You need to do this to help you write content that will interest them.

Start studying your competitors who are doing well and have the same target audience.  This way you will know designs and other elements that work well. Do a “linkdomain:www.your-competitors-website.com” in Yahoo and see the sites that are linking to them. What keywords in anchor text are they using?

Display your information so you get the attention of your target audience. Be genuine and talk to your audience in a normal way. Remove the sales pitch. It may sound good to the director of marketing but your customers will read through that jargon.

Make sure your navigation is easy to follow and keywords are used in the URLs and anchors texts. Let people use your site. Allow them to just “do”.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

Wow. Was this not just writing on the wall? And with the announcement in MediaPost they use the cover of yesterday’s newspaper that highlights our Mayor….errr- ex-Mayor now prison inmate Kwame Kilpatrick. I have to say that I am ashamed that I live in a city that for so long allowed their image to be tarnished, ridiculed and laughed at on an international scale- weekly for the past year. I also am ashamed that more of these newspapers have not taken the opportunity to embrace online advertising and really take initiative to train their sales staff to be helpful during and after the sale.

On Tuesday, Gannett said it would be laying off 3,000 employees, or roughly 10% of its total work force of about 32,000. Not only are big companies like McClatchy and Tribune cutting, but their smaller competitors are also swinging the axe with abandon.

Although Gannett declined to give specific figures, Robert Dickey, the president of Gannett’s beleaguered newspaper division, explained that “the fiscal crisis is deepening and the economy is getting worse. Gannett’s revenues continue to be severely impacted by this downturn, and our local operations are suffering.”

Make Your Bed, Now Sleep in it
Here’s one reason - their traditional media sales people don’t understand internet and how to sell it to be effective for the advertiser. Their rates are artificially inflated with extremely high CPM’s and include limitations of calls to action and landing URL and click tracking capability that is exterior to the paper online.

My agency, TM, places media for a number of clients. In 2009 our strategy is to do many negotiations of clients for their traditional advertising so they get more bang for their buck. What we have learned is that many are getting screwed with unrealistic prices from their salespeople to place online media. Our knowledge is power to get them better placement and lower rates. Many times there are a few places we can place the media in the same online locations- eliminating a sales person.

This is across the board, and I don’t see much getting better. Honestly, this may be a good wake-up call for the media giants. They need to know that advertisers want value, and their sales agents need to be properly trained to sell - not just a product- but also forthcoming to show value.

Our clients are becoming smarter to online advertising value. Not that they are dumb, but have never been properly introduced to online advertising, conversion tracking and analytics. Now that they are seeing the metrics and control that they potentially have, they are making more savvy considerations when placing their ad dollars online.

Hail to change in Detroit and traditional media.

From: MediaPost

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…