Hot Potatoes - The Marketing Blog

By Barcodes Inc.

The barriers that separate all marketing disciplines are being stripped away.  As everyday people take control of the information they need (content), not relying on corporations to provide it anymore, the lines that used to separate PR, advertising, SEO, promotion, websites, direct, collateral and video are blurring.  About 10% of the TV audience watching the Oscars were also interacting within social networks during the show.  A rich flow of unique insight about the films, actors and actresses and awards fueled a global conversation that enhanced the experience.  Check out the data and brief story.

Despite the fact that the numbers were relatively small in this story, the size of the opportunity is massive.  Myspace has over 110M active users.  Facebook has over 175M active users.  LinkedIn has over 32M active users.  YouTube has over 25M active users.  Twitter has over 6M active users.  1 out of every 8 couples in America met online.  There are over 2B Google searches every day.  There are over 1M new blog posts every day.  Companies that recognize and act on opportunities to insert themselves into these conversations will open up entirely new sales channels for their business.  This channel is growing exponentially and represents first movers and high-volume consumers.  If your sales have suffered this year, innovate your way into greater profitability by talking to customers within the social networks.  Introduce a promotional offer or a new product directly to the people talking about those very items you’re offering.   You’ll see sales success with an ROI that will surpass every other marketing investment you make.

I’m one of those tweeple who want to get something of value out of my social media experience.  Call me strange.  I like to keep up with the personal lives of friends and family on Facebook.  I really enjoy Youtube, for both business and entertainment.  I text constantly, especially for business.  But there’s a manic mentality that’s penetrating businesses that isn’t healthy.  A feeling that they must have a presence, even if there isn’t a solid business reason to join.  There are great business case studies from companies that have figured out how to harness the power of social networks to make money and build loyalty.   So companies should NOT dive in unless there is a clear protocol and business objective in place.  There is a great opportunity for EVERY company to build their business using social media, but there needs to be a plan and a way to measure success before the first tweet.  If you want to smile, and read another perspective that makes this point, see Jessica Reaves story in today’s Chicago Tribune online.  Enjoy. 

You probably use widgets and don’t even know it.  Used your desktop calculator recently?  It’s a widget.  Checked on the weather?  You probably have a weather icon on your phone or desktop…they’re widgets.  Widgets allow companies to take their content out of their website and distribute it broadly online, increasing awareness, interaction and sales.   Widgets often take the form of on-screen tools (clocks, event countdowns, auction-tickers, stock market tickers, flight arrival information, daily weather etc).  So why should companies care about widgets?  Because there’s gold in them thar hills.    According to an e-Marketer* report:

-  Half of DailyPuppy.com’s 30,000 unique visitors a month come from their widget.
-  95% of pregnancy site Babystrology.com come from their cool widget that shows the fetus growing a little each day.
-  CarDomain.com saw an increase of 60,000 page views a day less than two weeks after posting their widget.

Check out this IQ Test and let me know if you think widgets are smart.  IQ Test

Wailin Wong, a new media reporter at The Chicago Tribune wawong@tribune.com wrote about the sales potential of social media, and by my assessment, gave it low marks.  Success is described as “humanizing the brand” rather than any specific sales or customer acquisition data.  Here’s another quote “Quantitative results from social media remain hard to measure”.  Hogwash.  Create a unique offer using a facebook app and you’ll see incremental sales linked directly to the app.  Offer widgets for customer blogs, websites and desktops (games, contests, recipes) and you’ll not only measure new sales linked via code to these specific apps, but you’ll also see an impressive increase in links back to your main website…boosting your page rank and online authority.  Check out Wailin’s story below and let me know if we’re the only ones experiencing a new sales channel and a strong ROI.  Wailin’s story

As another year comes to an end, I have to focus once again on the biggest lost opportunity most companies made with their marketing dollars in 2008.  Hundreds of millions are spent on broad awareness campaigns that are not very efficient or measureable.  Most companies, even the ones with large marketing budgets, failed to take advantage of the best value in marketing…strategic search engine optimization.  Check out our list, and get on this train to grow your brand and your business in 2009!

1-    Lack of Unique Title & Meta Tags: Not applying unique title tags, meta description and meta keywords for every webpage of your site.

2-     Not using search engine friendly URL’s: Dynamic URLs should be avoided if possible. Having multiple dynamic url strings can have a negative impact on the value of the page in the eyes of search engines. Static URLs with page related keywords are preferred.

3-     Use of Javascript Navigation: Linking with javascript within the navigation without having a non-javascript html format of the navigation in the code

4-     A deep navigation architecture: Important content pages being placed more than two clicks away from the home page. A flat navigation where the important pages are linked from every page of the site is critical.

5-     Creating a website entirely in flash. While there are techniques that will help the search engines read Flash, most companies don’t employ them.  High design is important, but recognize the impact your design is having on page rank and consider the alternatives.

6-     Using solely an image navigation. There are alternate CSS based solutions to creating an image navigation. A text link is believed to have a stronger algorithm value than an image alt-tagged link.

7-     Linking to Competitors: Promoting competing company or information sites by giving them one way links does more harm than good in terms of both search engine algorithm and traffic loss through the links directing your site’s visitors to other sites.

8-    Website Functionality Problems: Check for broken links, invalid sitemaps, invalid image locations, etc.

9-     Lack of 301 redirects: Changing URLs of webpages without implementing proper 301 permanent redirect commands pointing from the old URL to the new URL.

10- Creating content only for the search engines: While there are certain search engine guidelines that need to be obeyed; usability should be a more important factor than just writing for search engines. A good user experience is what delivers results.  “Keyword Stuffing” for the sake of search engine rankings should be avoided at all costs.

11-  Linking to “bad neighborhoods”: Search engines decide the intentions of a site more likely through outbound links rather than inbound links. Webmasters have to be aware of sites that use bad SEO practices and not link to “untrusted” sites.

12- Lack of Proper Keyword Research: Targeting underperforming (wrong) keywords can cost you time, money, opportunity & most importantly wasted links. A solid and comprehensive keyword research strategy is a must before jumping into an SEO campaign.

13-  Shooting for the moon: Setting up realistic expectations is an important part of an SEO campaign. If you are selling “personal digital printers” only; you do not necessarily need to target the short tail “printer” keyword which is harder to rank for and probably has a lower conversion rate and a higher bounce rate.

14-  Magic Dust Theory: Before starting an SEO campaign, the company’s management has to be prepared for thr long haul. SEO is not magic fairy dust and it will not result in page one rankings overnight (if ever).  Proper expectations need to be established, as well as strategy, investment and goals.

15-  Lack of domain alignment: Site owners have to align all different domains and subdomains that point to the website to be redirected to one central domain name.

16-  Miscoded robots.txt: Robots.txt is used to block search engine bots from indexing confidential information. A wrongly coded robots.txt could block the search engines from accessing some parts of the website that are meant for the public eye.

17-  Using frames: Frames just like flash have accessibility issues when it comes to search engine spiders. Lack of unique URLs for the framed content eliminate any search engine benefit for that content

18- Hidden Text: Hidden text or text that has a very small font size, or with a color that blends into the background  can be misconstrued as a deception by search engines. Don’t be too subtle, or let someone talk you into small, gray font.

19- Lack of header tags: Every website needs additional content emphasized through related keywords on page headers. While usability is still the #1 rule, placing good <h1>, <h2>, <h3> tags can make big difference in results.

20-  Not having social media outlets: Lack of a blog or a well syndicated RSS feed or ecommerce products hinders the visibility of  a site. SEO has exploded out of the tactical, technology realm and become highly strategic.  This is why relevant, high quality content is the most important thing you can add to your website to help gain visibility and visitors.  And when this content is syndicated regularly, you have created a business development pipeline that powerful and profitable.

Have a safe, happy New Year’s Eve and let’s all make 2009 much better than the pundits expect!

Ciao,

Dan

As we approach the new year, and see so many people in need, we’re rededicating ourselves to be more involved in our community…. watch this brief Vlog….a better 2009

Viral online tools like widgets, forums, video, wikis and blogs can add tremendous reach to your integrated marketing programs. They represent an excellent way for you to syndicate your content, or provide helpful tools to your clients and prospective clients that will endear them to your services. Muse Storm was one of the first companies to recognize the benefits of extending brands into viral environments. Of course Google is right up there too desktop.google.com/plugin. There are several examples of useful tools for blogs and desktops in today’s blog…just check out your industry on WidgetBox.   But the best widgets are those that distribute your company content to attract new customers. Adding a “Share with Friends” button helps your content become viral, introducing many new clients to your services and attracting links back to your website. Add some viral spice to your marketing programs with these online tools and watch your business grow.

Got aquainted today with a company called TurnHere that produces low cost, high quality videos for use online 

This will help a lot of companies dull the effect of the recession.  Video attracts buyers, proven by so many sources, and this company knows how to sell.  I talked at length today with one of their sales people (Phil) and am getting proposals for our clients.  Their costs scale with ANY complexity, so you have to be willing to play it a bit loose to save big bucks.  But the net effect of the low-budget vids is pretty good.  They also “don’t do SEO” which is a shame since there is only 6-degrees separation between seeding and improving page rank.  We live in a great time.   It’s exciting to think of all the permutations this company will foster.  Check em out  www.turnhere.com

While searching for “election results” tonight (during the waning hours of our US Presidential election), I was fascinated to see which sites won the page rank contest for the top of Google search engine results.  There at the very top of the page, in the first paid (sponsored) position, was The Guardian newspaper website…as most of you know….from the UK! Congratulations to the marketing team at the Guardian for beating out the huge US news organizations!  That is a coup that our US news companies should be embarrassed about.  No one can buy top position, but they can invest and choose strategic keywords to improve their chances.  And who do you think is at the very top of the organic page rank?  Of course…Google.  While page rank is influenced by several factors, it’s fun to take a quick look into the title tags for each of the top organic sites listed.  Google is “Google news - elections”.  Next up is a Canadian website enr.elections.ca which has the word “elections” in it’s domain name and the title “elections Canada - Election night results”.  Smart.  Next up is CBS News with the title “Election results- CBS News”.  They simply put the words ‘election results’ first, before their name.  Clever.  Next up is the New York Times, which has an odd, but effective title “Primary and Caucus results - Election guide 2008 - Percent of vote - the New York Times”.  That’s all in their title tag, which is casting a broader net, which is both intriguing and effective.  The next and last company we’ll look at is USA Today, with the title “2008 Presidential Election Results and coverage - USA Today”.

We can learn a thing or two from their title tags, although we can’t read too much into it because of the other influential elements effecting page rank.  But it’s an interesting and strategic micro-perspective into SEO strategy that we can all appreciate.  So tonight I’m cheering Jolly Good for the Guardian.  And am thankful that the last of the political ads can finally leak out of my brain and into oblivion.