AMA Team Puts Word of Mouth Marketing into Action!

The American Marketing Association put their words where their mouth is with this fun video promoting, ironically enough a Word of Mouth Marketing presentation by Andy Sernovitz.

This blog and a post by Andy are proof that this word of mouth effort is already paying dividends! Congrats to the AMA team.



Andy is the author of and host of Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking and the afterward is by Guy Kawasaki.

I am also reading Andy's book, and it offers very solid business strategies with excellent real world examples of word-of-mouth marketing in action.



PS - I avoided a Simon Cowell evaluation on the performances, 'A' for effort!

Yahoo Buzz versus Digg

On February 26^th Yahoo launched the new Yahoo Buzz. This social media site is very similar to Digg where users share noteworthy news, articles, images, and videos they find online. Currently Yahoo Buzz is in beta, and during this period they are only allowing 100 websites into this network. By the summertime, Yahoo will open the site up to the Yahoo Publisher Network.

All of the content you find on Yahoo Buzz will obtain a Buzz Score (comparable to the number of “diggs” received on digg.com). The Buzz score is comprised of the number of votes, how often the content is shared via email, and how popular the search terms are on Yahoo. A cool feature with Yahoo Buzz is that the content with the highest Buzz score can be seen on the Yahoo Homepage. Since most people start their searches on the homepage, this is a great way for content to receive increased exposure.

One of the notable differences between the Yahoo Buzz and Digg interface is the option to leave comments. On Digg, users are able to leave comments on all content posted on the site. Leaving comments is a great way to get users involved and to encourage users to submit content to see what others have to say about it. At this time Yahoo does not have this option. Another difference is that Yahoo allows its users the ability to vote down or “buzz down” content on the site that the user does not like. Digg does not have this feature.

With the release of Yahoo Buzz a few years after Digg was launched, many are questioning why Yahoo, being the world’s second largest search engine, seems to be far behind the bandwagon on the release of this service. How will Yahoo Buzz compete with Digg in the future, and will loyal Digg users switch over to this site because it is powered by Yahoo, only time will tell!

Using Social News Sites to Promote Your Personal Brand and Blog

Being part of the Social News scene is a lot of work and takes time, but in time, you’ll definitely get something out of it. When you figure out that you want to put time into becoming a user of these social news sites to eventually get your content out there, there are some things to look into before even diving in.

1. Determine the site you want to use and learn how it works. See how the community responds to certain types of stories. Observe the kind of stories that are on the front page too.
2. Find the most popular users, learn about what they do for a living, and befriend them.You can learn the ways they use the site, as well as learn what they know to eventually get to their level – if you’re really determined. There are two benefits for doing this – you learn from those who know more that you do and they could help you out by featuring posts on their own blog.
3. Since being a part of these types of communities takes time, you need to set time out of your day to explore and contribute. Just like being part of any online community, you take time to get to know it and submit stories, as well as comment on other stories you find interesting. In order to build some sort of trust, you need to start by submitting stories that may be useful to others.
4. Connect with other users of the site and get to know them. Just like in real life, you learn from others, so it definitely doesn’t hurt to add people you find interesting to your list of connections on these sites. Once you built a reputation of being a helpful part of that community and build contacts, most likely other people will return the favor back to your blog posts.
5. Ask your friends that aren’t on these social news sites to join. It’s not a community unless there are people participating, and you will automatically have another friend added to your list of connections.

Developing a user profile is also a great way to brand yourself and become an influential part of the community. The most popular sites are Digg, Mixx, Reddit and Sphinn (for internet marketing related stories) with new sites like these popping up all the time.

Blogs I Like

This is Jeff, not a week goes by that one of us here at TGR doesn't talk about the blogs we subscribe to or refrence them in a blog post. Practically everyone here has referenced the Adwords Blog or Matt Cutts or the countless other internet marketing blogs that we subscribe to. But many of you are wondering what other blogs do we subscribe to (maybe not internet marketing related), well I am going to be the first in our weekly series "Blogs I Like." Please to Enjoy a sample of some of my favorites.

Windy City Gridiron - As a Chicagoan born and bread, I am a diehard Bears fan, this is one of the best and oldest Bears blogs out there.

Deadspin - What was now part of the underground is now mainstream complete with Book Tour.

www.creedthoughts.gov.www\creedthoughts - Any fan of the Office will recognize this blog url.

Garfield minus Garfield - It's Garfield comic strips with Garfield removed.

Stuff White People Like - To quote Homer Simpson, "It's true, It's true, We're so lame"

Too Much Rod Benson - A blog by NBA Development League player from California living in Bismarck, ND.


There are many more, like Gizmodo, G4 the Feed, and Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century. What blogs do you secretly subscribe to and enjoy, put them in the comments. Please don't plug your own blog if its not any good.

Affiliate Summit in Las Vegas is Booming!

Superstar Affiliate Jim Kukral kicked off Affiliate Summit West 2008 at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas. He introduced Maholo.com CEO and Founder Jasan Calacanis who shook up some affiliates asking about the ethics in the industry.

Calacanis explained 'think of affiliate marketing as a pond, if you take out all the fish and pollute the water what will be left?'

The trade show floor was very busy and everyone was doing lots of business!

Ten Golden Rules CEO, selected to make Closing Keynote Marketing Presentation at Conference for eBay Sellers

Jay Berkowtiz will be speaking in front of eBay sellers about the latest Internet marketing ideas, and tools helping to grow their online sales and maximize website traffic. The marketing presentation is set to take place at the Walt Disney World Resort on February 28 through March 1. For more information visit the TGR page or RocketPlace.

See Where Your Visitors Click On Your Website

My last post featured how Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer are ways that the search engines see your site. This post is about seeing where your visitors click on your website. Crazy Egg is an interesting tool that tracks where your visitors click. There are a few different ways to visually track clicks – Heatmap, Confetti, Overlay and List.

The Heatmap shows where people click and based on the amount of clicks an area has, you can see what area is hotter than other areas. A blue area would be a cold area where not many people click, while a brighter color like yellow is an area where many people click.

Confetti shows a bunch of different statistics. Every dot represents a user from where they came from and where they clicked. The different statistics are Top 15 referrers, Top 15 Search terms, operating system, browser, window size and time to click.

Overlay shows the area where the user clicked, how many clicks that link got and the percentage of its popularity.

List gives a list of raw click data, which you can also import into a spreadsheet.

By using CrazyEgg you can improve your website design and test the best places to put ads, links and content. You can try the service for free and track up to 5,000 visits and up to 4 pages at a time. To track more visitors, more pages and other advanced features, you pay a monthly fee. I don’t think it hurts to try it out, and you’ll find it interesting seeing where visitors click and get something out of it to make your website better.

View the Demo for a better look into how CrazyEgg works.

January 2008 US Search Engine Rankings

Yesterday, comScore released January 2008 US Search Engine Rankings showing that its business as usual in the search engine marketplace.

The top three search engines had little changes in their share of search:

• Google increased their share marginally by 0.1%
• Yahoo lost a little ground by loosing 0.7% of their search share.
• MSN stayed the course, keeping their search share at 9.8%.

If you noticed that comScore's reporting for AOL Search has changed, it's because in January 2008 Time Warner Network was split into two distinct properties: AOL LLC and Time Warner Network (excluding AOL). AOL LLC represents their core search business and came in 4th at 4.9%, gaining 0.3% of the search share.

BusinessWeek on Blogging...an Update

Back in May of 2005, BusinessWeek produced a story called "Blogs Will Change Your Business". Yesterday, after noting they missed mention of Social Media in the first story, and of course citing mass changes, they posted an update called "Social Media Will Change Your Business".

This nine page article, written in blog form, shows the progression of blogging, podcasting and other social media. It gives specific tips and references some of the biggest stories our industry has had relevant to Social Media. From the Google firing of Mark Jen to the advent of Steve Rubel's Micropersuasian blog to Adam Curry cementing his reputation as "Podfather".

It's a boon to our industry when MSM (that's "mainstream media" to you non-bloggers) reports so deeply into the emergence of Social Media. In addition, they are calling for companies to "Catch Up...or Catch you later" when it comes to Social Media in general. Their final note is to announce the start of their own blog: Blogspotting.net where they pledge to cover the "business drama ahead, as blogging spreads into companies and redefines media."

A heady promise for MSM these days. But, I think I'll add their blog to my reader for a while and see how it goes.

Google Updates Display Url Policy

After much rumor and speculation. Google announced that effective April 1st (not the Google Hoax) the display url and the destination must be the same. Most ads are not affected by this change, mostly redirects and vanity urls.

From the Google Blog redirect urls are still accepted (if you use tracking urls) as are the use of subdomains (as long as the top domain is the same).

Adwords will also send alerts to the Adwords accounts before the April 1st date to let those accounts know if they have ads that are not incompliance with the new policy.

What Recession? Internet is still Hot! Hot! Hot!

Despite some serious signs that the US economy is headed towards a recession, the internet economy is still showing signs of burning up!




Two trade shows announced 'Sold Out' status today.

The fantastic Affiliate Summit show coming up next week in Las Vegas announced today that their event passes are sold out and that people are selling passes on eBay. Shawn Collins, one of the event organizers is a former ticket broker himself so he encourages this practice :)The trade show sold out months ago).

Also today, Internet Retailer announced that their booth space was sold out for their show June 9 -12 in Chicago.

How The Internet Can Play A Role In School Safety

Should Internet connections become a student’s new safety net? In schools students aren’t allowed to have their cell phones on, however, many bring laptops to take notes and do research on the web. Although they are not supposed to be using social networking tools like AIM, Twitter, and Yahoo Messenger during class, should the rules be changing following the tragic incidents at Universities? They now have to worry about safety and sitting in classes, so is it ok for them to have these tools on during class in case of emergency? What if someone entered a class room and wouldn’t let anyone use the phone but they were on AIM, or Twitter, or Yahoo Messenger and could get the word out? Would this help save lives? Should this be a new safety measure? Can you think of a faster way of getting in touch with someone?

Although they may be distracting during class, the social networking sites may actually help people in danger and get someone’s attention, especially if there is no cell service or the phone is off. I feel that students should be logged into these sites whenever possible so that they can always have an open line of communication. One option I feel would work great is if students registered with their University, people could get a pop up on from their AIM, or Messenger regarding dangerous situations taking place.

Are Visitors Bouncing Off Your Website?

Bounce Rate: The percentage of web site visitors who arrive at a web site entry page, then leave without going any deeper into the site.

You've probably heard that the old saying, "If you build it, they will come," doesn't apply to a website, and that you need internet marketing strategies to get traffic to your website once it's built. However, have you ever thought about what happens after a savvy internet marketer gets those visitors to your website?

By simply logging into your website analytics, you can see how many visitors are coming to the site, how many pages they looked at, and if they left your site shortly after arriving to it.

If your website has a high bounce rate you should probably be asking yourself:

• Is there anything broken on the landing page? - Sometimes a high bounce rate can be related to a website issue. Maybe your form is broken, images are missing on the page, or the server is overwhelmed by visitors and the pages are taking too long to load. Any of these factors can chase your visitors away before they even have a chance to look deeper into your site. If you suspect there's a problem with the page, test, test and test again to make sure everything is working as it should.
• Are my internet marketing campaigns targeting the right keywords? - It's great to rank well in the search engines; however, if your web traffic is bringing in the wrong type of visitor, they'll waste your bandwidth and take off as soon as they see that you're not what they're looking for. Local businesses need to pay special attention to this factor. For example, a Miami caterer is ranking well for "special event catering". However, if the visitor that arrives is throwing a party in San Diego, they're not going to hire a Miami caterer.
• Are my landing pages designed to draw visitors deeper into the site? - Search engine friendly landing page doesn't have to be a block of solid text that is unattractive to the user. Graphics with call to actions, attractive offers, fun widgets can be value add-ons to get the visitor to stick around and explore the contents of your site.

If you've asked yourself these three simple questions and still can't figure out the answer, then you might want to consider getting some outside help. A strategic internet marketing consultant can offer an outsider's viewpoint, helping you improve your web pages and get visitors to stick around!

See How the Search Engines See Your Website

If you own and run a website, there are two tools that you should consider using. These tools help you know how the search engines, notably Google and Yahoo see your website.

The best things about these tools are that:
1. It’s Free – All you need is a Google account and Yahoo account in order to gain access.
2. Created by the two biggest search engines – Google and Yahoo.

Google Webmaster Tools is pretty easy to implement on your website. All you need to do is insert a meta tag into your index page or upload a text file to your site, which is used to verify that you are the owner of the website. This is the first step before Google can even reveal any information. Once your site is verified you will be able to see a lot of information, which will ultimately help you make your website more “Google search friendly.” GWT (Google Webmaster Tools) will show you broken links and errors and even statistics. If you wonder how people are getting to your site when they are searching on Google, you’ll find the answer here too. Other things you can see in GWT are Links, Sitemaps and Tools. For a more detailed summary about each one, you can go to Google’s Webmaster Help Center.

Yahoo Site Explorer is the same idea as Google Webmaster Tools but you can only view Yahoo Search statistics. You can find the sites and subpages that are indexed by Yahoo Search as well as find pages that link to that site or page. When you authenticate the site, you can also view more detailed information about those sites and subpages. For further analysis, you can even export Site Explorer data to view in a spreadsheet format. To view a more detailed summary about what Yahoo Site Explorer offers you can go to their Resource Area.

Are You a "Natural Born Clicker?"

Comscore yesterday released a report on Display Advertising. Some interesting and more importantly not encouraging findings were reported. First off 6% of internet users make up over 50% of the clicks on Banner ads. Additionally, this 6% is mostly male, between the ages of 25-44 and make less than $40,000/yr (hardly representative of the typical internet user). Also, these individuals even though they spend 4xs as much time online as a typical internet user, their spending online is not proportionate.

That information is certainly disconcerning for those companies that advertise with banners on a CPM basis. But, probably most disappointing is this information from the report.

Further preliminary Starcom data suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance.

This is only one study that was done, and by no means does it represent all banner campaigns, but it certainly should make you reevaluate all of your banner campaigns. Is this report, that is the first step to having all online advertising on a CPA basis?

Powerful Search Engine Optimization Guru can Read Your Mind!

I can read your mind!

Well not exactly your individual mind, but using powerful Search Engine Optimization tools such as Wordtracker and Trellian's Keyword Discovery, I can tell how often keyword phrases are searched in a 24 hour period.

We use this powerful mind bending technique to add the words that people search most frequently to our websites to attract search engine searches. We recommend the following best practices:

1. Do keyword research to find out which phrases that are relevant to your business are searched most frequently and have the least online competition.
2. Select three keyword phrases per page
3. Add each phrase to the title of the page and use it in the words on the page two to three times
4. Add the keyword phrases to the tags on your page, most important are the title tag and the alt tags/image descriptions.

In this chart below, we have researched phrases someone might use to search for a firm like Ten Golden Rules. Circled are similar phrases that describe search engine optimization and we find this term is searched much more frequently than 'seo' or 'search engine marketing'.









By reading the minds of consumers we can target which phrases to add to our site and drive more traffic to these websites.

Top 5 Claims Made by SEO Spammers

At the beginning of the week, I came across a rather compelling article from Danny Sullivan that discussed the recent criticism made against the search engine optimization industry by prominent writers such as Gene Marks from Business Week. As a search engine optimization specialist, it bothers me that SEO as an industry is still widely misunderstood. Many small business owners who lack the knowledge in SEO and web technologies, and are working on small budgets can fall prey to these SEO spammers who are looking for a quick buck.

Here's the top 5 claims made by SEO spammers:

1. Top 10 Search Engine Placements for $19.95/month - Search engine optimization companies that promise "fully-automated technologies" creating "full websites that have thousands of pages" for only $19.95 a month are not offering an SEO solution, they're selling spam. They might claim these "content-driven" sites are search engine friendly; however, more than likely they're scrapping content off other websites and creating reconstituted spam.
   
2. We have "special" relationships with the search engines - No matter what these SEO spammers say to you, they do not have special relationships with the search engines. They can't get your pages indexed any faster than Joe SEO down the street. They don't have the inside scoop on Google's algorithm.
3. You don't have to change your website.We host the domains and create the websites that we submit for you. - This spammer's statement really scared me. So for a fee, they create microsites which YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER using your company's brand, and spam them over the search engines. Even if they generate traffic that converts, the minute you stop paying the spammer, the traffic dries up, because the spammer just changes the DNS and points that traffic elsewhere.
4. We'll submit your site to thousands of search engines and directories, getting your websites all over the World Wide Web. - Search engine optimization isn't about getting your site into "thousands" of search engines and directories. Most companies only need to worry about the top 3 search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN. All three search engines actively crawl the internet looking for new content, so you don't have to submit your site to them, just employ some good link building techniques to be where the search engines are crawling.
5. We guarantee our search engine placement results! - Most business owners want a guarantee on their investment, especially when it's on something they completely don't understand. However, in search engine optimization there are no guarantees no matter what the SEO spammers say, because in the end, it's the search engines, and not SEOs that decide what's relevant and should have top search engine placements. The only guarantee I'll give you is that there's some loophole in the contract that let's the spammer out of his "guarantee".
   

So don't be fooled folks! Search engine optimization requires one of two things: time or money. Either you have time get search engine optimization training and implement these strategies yourself or you have the money to pay a professional SEO to do the work for you. And I "guarantee" it's going to cost more than $19.95/month to get quality work.

Using Video for Marketing Your Business Online

Including video to promote your business is a great way to get attention on the web. Using popular video sites has never been easier, not to mention free, to do. The most popular video sharing website is YouTube, along with other sites that are also gaining popularity, such as Meta Café and Google Video. The videos hosted on these sites also have a chance of showing in Google Universal Search too.

Currently, most of these video sharing sites provide minimal results to measure the success of your videos. TubeMogul is a free service that allows you to track how many visitors each of your videos have. They also feature ways to present your results, by using charts, as well as uploading your videos to multiple video sharing sites all at once.

Here are some tips and ideas for creating videos for your business:

• Put watermarks on your video, such as your company logo, which will brand that video yours.
• Include your URL in the actual video, such as the end of the video and also in the description of the video that most video sites let you include.
• Keep the video as short as possible. Getting the point across quicker will be more effective.
• Creating a series of videos on a topic can also bring viewers back to your channel.

Strategic Internet Marketing Consultant of Ten Golden Rules Speaks at FDMA

Jay Berkowitz will be sharing the 10 Proven Techniques to Increase Websites ROI to the Florida Direct Marketing Association on February 21, 2008 in Ft. Lauderdale.

Some Topics will Include:

* Learn the ten critical elements of successful website design and better website ROI

* Review best practices for paid online media to maximize website traffic

* The essentials of search engine optimization and how you can position your website at the top of Google and the other search engines?

* Discover the new Web 2.0 technologies that are important for business. Including: Blogging. Podcasting. Wikipedia. Second Life. Twitter. Seesmic.

For more information please visit Ten Golden Rules or to register visit the FDMA website.

What a Wiki is and What You Can Use It For

A Wiki is a website that holds information that other people can edit and contribute to. They are often used to collaborate and share information either on a specific subject or multiple subjects. Wikipedia is the most well known wiki that houses information about many different subjects. There are other wiki’s that are about one specific subject, such as the Organic SEO wiki, which is focused only on anything related to Organic SEO.

There are many ways to use a wiki, but the most popular way is to share information about a subject that you are knowledgeable about. Wiki’s are even used to collaborate within a group of people in a business their ideas and sharing information. There are even wiki’s that are focused on families, where each family member has their own wiki page and can update their lives for their other family members to read. Wikis for that purpose can be restricted to a certain amount of people, while other wiki’s such as Wikipedia, is open for anyone to read and contribute to.

Starting a wiki is not very difficult at all, in fact, there are many Wiki services that will let you start a wiki for free, hosted on their domain. There is also wiki software that you can host on your own website and customize it to your liking. If you are thinking about starting a wiki for your business, you should keep in mind that if you make it public to the World Wide Web, you are allowing them to contribute to it and possibly voice their own opinions.

Some free hosted wikis that you can use to start with – WetPaint is targeted towards anyone that wants to start their own wiki about a specific subject. PbWiki is a wiki targeted towards businesses to collaborate ideas and information.

What Can Yahoo Gain by Listening to MSN's Bid?

This week Yahoo Search! received an unsolicited offer from MSN to acquire the company. The $45 Billion bid created an instant media and blogging frenzy, creating intense speculation on whether or not the third largest search engine could gain search engine market share by buying out the competition.

According to ComScore's US Search Engine Rankings, Google currently holds 58.4% of the search marketplace, Yahoo is at 22.4% and MSN has only 9.8% of the search shares. Even if MSN's bid for Yahoo Search! is successful, they would only have a combined share of 32.2% of the search marketplace, still placing MSNahoo (MSN + Yahoo) significantly behind Google.

Microsoft has tried to buy out the competition before. However, if you compare the two search engines, Yahoo is by far doing better. MSN needs Yahoo more than Yahoo needs MSN. So what does Yahoo have to gain by entertaining a bid from MSN?

There are several benefits of creating this type of internet buzz, even if the bid doesn't go through:

• The mere speculation of the sale is going to bring significant publicity to Yahoo, raising the company top of mind with searchers and perhaps taking a little bit more search shares away from Google.
• Rise in stock prices for Yahoo. As of this morning, Yahoo's stock has risen $28.75, that's a 50% increase per share.

In the end, it doesn't matter if MSN buys out Yahoo, they're still going to have a long way to go before they start beating out Google's share of search. However, its the perception of the sale that's going to bring big payoffs for these two struggling search engines.