The place where Web Marketing Specialist, Marci Rosenblum shares her knowledge, observations, news and ideas on how to have an Effective and Successful Cross Platform Marketing Plan and Web Presence!
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Blending Marketing Efforts for the Best Results from WebProNews Videos
As the search industry continues to grow and become more mature and sophisticated, managing search programs becomes more challenging. According to David Roth, the Director of SEM at Yahoo, this is especially true in regards to large paid search programs.
“It just gets harder and harder every year to maintain your edge if you’re out there doing big paid search programs,” he said.
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To better manage these programs, he believes that marketers should integrate their paid efforts into other campaigns such as organic, display, affiliate, and social media. In other words, he recommends that marketers view all the programs as one and optimize them as a whole.
Yahoo, for instance, had a #1 ranking for an organic listing for a brand keyword. It then purchased a paid search ad on top of it, which drove more traffic to the organic listing. Marketing efforts are, essentially, more effective when they are blended together.
Incidentally, Roth also discusses the Yahoo/Microsoft transition. His job was to transfer all of Yahoo’s advertising over to adCenter and use it to manage Yahoo. In addition, he was responsible for monetizing search results all over Yahoo. He said that both companies continuously evaluated the transition in order to ensure that the highest level of quality was being maintained.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Simple Tips For Making Your Blog Better from WebProNews Video
Scott Hanselman, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft, spoke to Abby Johnson about maintaining a quality blog.
Hanselman says a lot of people “have low blog self-esteem,” meaning they think their blog sucks.
Professional blogs have a sense of focus and bloggers who are not professional need to ask themselves why they are blogging and who is their audience.
Be passionate about the subject your are blogging about and have a focus. Hanselman says he blogs consciously and with focus.
Make your blog look tidy and protect it against comment spam. Also make sure you have a tempo when you blog, it does not have to be everyday, it can be three times a week.
Read More...Friday, October 29, 2010
Video: The Next Stage of Internet Video - WebProNews
If you’re involved in social media and marketing, you know who Chris Brogan is. As the President of New Marketing Labs, he is very respected in the industry for both his knowledge and his personality. In this interview from the Inbound Marketing Summit, Brogan talks to WebProNews about his latest endeavor, The Pulse Network.
As he explains, this network is about building “content, community, and marketplace” around various channels. For the Inbound Marketing Summit, The Pulse Network sent live broadcasts back to their studio and incorporated live studio hosts and bumpers.
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Online video has seen many changes since its early days and more are expected to come. It’s a new and exciting realm but still has many challenges. For starters, the combination of the popularity of mobile devices and the talk of multiple tablets coming to market create format issues that need to be addressed.
Another challenge is the bandwidth issue. However, Brogan believes a bandwidth overhaul will be sooner than later. He goes on to say that phones will actually do what they are advertised to do on commercials.
Brogan also points out that HD consumption of online video is on the rise and will continue to increase. This is something that he previously did not think would happen, but he has been proven wrong.
In the end, just like many other areas online, good quality content will rule with Internet video.
“There’s going to be a lot of bleeding edge fallout, but I think also we’re going to see that the iteration process of that will be a lot faster,” adds Brogan.
In addition, Brogan touches on some of the primary topics discussed at the Inbound Marketing Summit. According to him, marketers now want to know specific numbers and statistics. They are also very interested in getting conversions and determining what works in the sales funnel.
Watch the Video!
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Survivor Creator: What Kind of Idiot Changes a Successful Format? - WebProNews
Mark Burnett, an executive television producer behind shows like Survivor, The Apprentice, The Shark Tank, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader, and many others (he was even behind the MTV Movie Awards where Bruno landed on Eminem), took the time today here at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo in Vegas to draw some parallels between his experiences in television and searching for success in new media.
Frankly, he almost painted something of a doomy picture for those aspiring to find such success, discussing how truly hard it is to succeed. Success is unpredictable, but "the unpredictable nature is the creative driver" he said. He says shows like Survivor or American Idol are so successful in part to their unpredictability. You don't know who's going to get eliminated from week to week, compared to a show like CSI or House, where you generally know that the main characters will probably not die.
Interestingly enough, it's that same unpredictability that helps shows like Survivor and American Idol thrive in the social media universe. People get excited about who will win and who will lose, and they frantically discuss every week, all week, before and after and during the show.
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Saturday, September 11, 2010
Video: Battle Builds in Quest to Bridge TV and Web from WebProNews
With the launch of Google TV coming sometime this autumn, WebProNews looks at how the platform will change the living room viewing experience and gets some thoughts from search industry expert Danny Sullivan on the topic.
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Sullivan says Google TV will maybe make more people adopt Android tablets and phones in future because of the ability to run applications on multiple platforms. Sullivan thinks if people run apps on Google TV they will want to be able to do the same on other Android devices.
Some of the challenges Google TV faces are concerns over privacy and how much control the company would have over online video advertising. Hollywood, cable, and satellite companies worry users will drop their paid subscriptions.
Google has maintained its TV service advertising model would provide revenue and would not have the same effect as other online services have had on the music and newspaper industries.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Reuters earlier this week that the company is working with a variety of program makers and electronics manufacturers to bring the TV service to consumers.
“We will work with content providers, but it is very unlikely that we will get into actual content production,” Schmidt told journalists after a keynote speech to the IFA consumer electronics trade fair in Berlin.
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Friday, August 27, 2010
Measuring Social Media Effectiveness May Have Just Gotten Easier - WebProNews
Everyone knows that social media provides some great opportunities for marketing, but measurement issues continue to plague businesses. You know content is being shared, but you don't know how people who its being shared with are responding to it.
Are you content with your ability to measure social media effectiveness? Let us know.
ShareThis, which reaches 400 million people a month through social media share buttons across content all over the web, has released some new metrics for measuring social media effectiveness.One of the metrics is its Audience Index, which lets publishers understand and compare their social audiences against 850,000 other sites (and soon against categories), find out what types of influencers your site attracts, and find out how well you connect with influencers, listeners, and engaged customers.
Read FULL Article at WebProNews!
Video: How Retailers Can Leverage the Economic Comeback
Fortunately, online retailers are beginning to see the economy bounce back. According to Ryan Gibson, the Vice President of Marketing at The Rimm-Kaufman Group, online retailers are seeing improvements in conversion rates.
As the economy continues to turn around, there are some elements that retailers should apply to better leverage the comeback. From a paid search perspective, Gibson recommends that retailers update their keywords based on incoming inventory.
During the recession, many retailers cut back on their inventory. Now that the economy is starting to improve, they are ordering more products. Gibson says retailers need to make sure that their new inventory is represented in paid search. He also adds that retailers need to optimize pages to guarantee that they are found in the search engines. Ultimately, no one will benefit if the new inventory cannot be found.
Gibson also tells WebProNews that The Rimm-Kaufman Group is adding products. In the past, the company focused primarily on paid search. As Gibson explains, it is now adding an attribution management component that will help its clients understand what is happening outside of paid search. RKG will talk with clients about the data it collects and help them build an attribution model.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Being an Effective Marketer, Both Online and Offline from WebProNews Video
The term “marketing” gets used a lot and, sometimes, it’s used rather loosely in search and social media circles.
“Not all, but a lot of the search industry tends to be kind of search geeks who are trying to figure out what marketing is,” says Bill Leake of Apogee Results, formerly Apogee Search.
To make a long-term difference in customers, he believes effective marketing is key. Factors such as determining what the customer wants to do, how you can make it happen, and how you can transfer business objectives into strategies that can be implemented, are all instrumental aspects of marketing. He goes on to say that search is just one area of marketing that is important, but it works best when used with the other aspects.
Some people focus heavily on search, since it is easily measured. Other challenges of marketing could result from all the departments in companies and, particularly, within marketing itself. Due to the lack of communication these departments create, many opportunities are missed. As online marketing increases in awareness, there is also the danger of neglecting offline channels.
Online marketing is very valuable for businesses involved largely in the consumer space and B2B. On the other hand, online isn’t as valuable when reaching enterprise level companies and government agencies. Essentially, Leake says businesses need to market wherever their customers are, whether it be online, offline, or both.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Tips for Conversion Rate Optimization from WebProNews Video
Alternatively, he suggests looking at analytics to find the primary areas of focus. Once these areas are determined, think about the customer and what he or she wants instead of simply making uncalculated changes.
Although changes will vary from site to site, Saleh recommends taking things such ad spend into account. In addition, he advises people to look at their analytics to see the navigational path users take. This not only helps site owners understand where the customers are going, but it also could identify any areas that they themselves need to modify.
By taking these factors into consideration, Saleh says people could see meaningful increases in conversion rates. Are you paying attention to these areas?
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Global Marketing: What You Need to Know - WebProNews Video
As Kennedy points out, a big SEO challenge is language. However, she believes the biggest challenge is enculturation in matters such as finding the right keyword set for a different country. This could be a problem since it may not translate directly. For instance, soccer cleats in the U.S. are called football boots in the UK and something completely different in France.
It’s also important to think about these cultural matters in regards to content, link building, graphic design, and more. Although localization and enculturation are the most important areas, Kennedy says understanding the language barrier is the first step in getting these areas right.
Although Nordic eMarketing is based in Iceland, Mar Hauksson says it has found ways to market its products in a multilingual environment. He also points out that the company understands the impact of culture and realizes that not everyone speaks and uses English.
“When you understand that, you have a much bigger market that you can market towards,” says Mar Hauksson.
At the time of the recording of this interview, Google had recently made the move to stop censoring its search results on Google.cn and was redirecting visitors to Google.com.hk, which it does not censor. While some developments have occurred since that time, it is far from being over. Just last week, Google reported that its operations in China were partially blocked and that Chinese officials were allegedly reviewing its application to operate in the country.
Today, the company released this statement, “We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China.”
Both Kennedy and Mar Hauksson believe it is important to pay attention to the Google/China situation from both a SEO and marketing standpoint.
Kennedy also offers some tips for doing social media globally. Just as understanding culture is critical to SEO, it is also critical to social media. She says marketers need to be aware of what social networks are popular in each country and how the people use and interact with them.
“Social media, by its very definition, depends on the nature of the society where it’s doing business,” explains Kennedy.
Are you embracing marketing on a global level?
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Building an Effective Social Media Strategy - WebProNews Video
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
How to Approach a Web Video Series as a Marketing Strategy
What’s a proven but very overlooked social media business strategy for professional minded individuals and small business operations, one that’s well-suited for online video? According to successful author and Chicago media personality Robyn Okrant, it’s doing “serialization” with your video content – i.e., knowing how to tell a story as a series of videos where your audience stays tuned on a daily basis. Listen to my podcast interview to hear about a how serialization can be a successful online video strategy that builds an enthusiastic audience and great-word-of-mouth marketing – even without having an actual marketing budget.
So how does someone with a performance background but no real techie background manage to be a proven success with social media all by herself? Well, aside from picking a subject that happens to be arguable the biggest key influencer in modern history save for perhaps one or two religious figures (I’m referring to Oprah Winfrey of course), she touched on a concept that is pervasive in the traditional entertainment world and high-priced video webisodes, but very rare with your regular bloggers – that would be serialization.
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
What Recent Google Announcements Mean for Google - WebProNews Video
As we have previously reported, Adobe announced an update pack to Dreamweaver CS5 for HTML5. Since the announcement was made at Google I/O, Sullivan believes Google wants to publicly show that it embraces the idea of openness that HTML5 is built upon.
Saturday, June 05, 2010
CEO's Marketers, Business Owners and Entrepreneurs Join Me on Facebook
Warm Regards,
SEO Strategist, Web Traffic, Social Media Marketer
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Innovative Marketing In The Form Of Brand Fiction - WebProNews Video
Helen Klein Ross, the founder of Brand Fiction Factory, spoke to Abby Johnson at SXSW about this concept. She explained, “The idea of brand fiction is not only to develop new, entertaining ways for consumers to connect with the brand, but to take the message and the story that brands are already telling and opening up to new ways. Giving consumers new incentives to connect with the brand. And validating them.”
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Twilk: Create a Twitter Background of Your Friends - WebProNews Video
Many people are using Twilk as a way to reward their followers for following them. Others just like seeing their friends’ faces on their background. For businesses that use the application, Twilk allows them to exclude certain people such as competitors and other people that they do not want to show up.
Mulka told WPN that they would like to develop the background to the point that it is clickable.
For more information on Twilk, visit their site.
Friday, April 23, 2010
The Secret to Viral Videos - WebProNews Video
Everyone wants their video to go viral, but is it really possible? According to Margaret Gould Stewart of YouTube, people need to, first of all, understand what types of videos go viral.
As she explains, most viral videos happen by accident. There is, however, another category of content that could go viral. People producing this type of content create it on a regular basis in order to build a sustained audience.
When it comes to actually creating viral content, Stewart says, “It really is about great content. It’s really difficult to make content that is not interesting or exciting go viral.”
Another factor in creating viral content is knowing your audience. Content producers need to understand who their audience is and build sustainable relationships with them. In addition, Stewart points out the importance of attaching metadata to the content.
Just as SEO is important for Google, it is also important for the second largest search engine, YouTube. Ideally, the best content is at the top, but you can help it by making titles clear and direct and putting in the right tags. If you do this, searchers will be able to find your content easily when they search for it.
Lastly, content producers need to make sure they are enabling the embedding capability on their video. Stewart says that as a video starts to go viral, the largest amount of traffic comes from other sources in the first 48 hours.
In the end, all viral videos do not receive one million viewers. For businesses especially, a video can be viral as long as it reaches its target audience.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
How Business Models Determine Success - WebProNews Video
When he started uShip 6 years ago, he says he was very focused on proving out their business model. Unfortunately, a lot of businesses in the Internet space tend to create a business around hype and users and consider the business model later.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Is all Press Really Good Press? - WebProNews Video
Friday, March 26, 2010
State Of SEM Discussed (With Stats) - WebProNews Videos
At SES New York, SEMPO’s Sara Holoubek summarized the state of search marketing by saying, “Things are looking good for search.” She also said, “Folks should feel confident in their spending.”
Friday, February 26, 2010
Making Time for Marketing - WebProNews Videos
Many small and medium-sized businesses tend to struggle since they typically have a lack of resources. Most of them are understaffed but still have to make time for social media, search engine rankings, leads, following up on leads, and more...
While at the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego, Mike McDonald of WebProNews spoke with Genoo’s CEO Kim Albee about these very issues. Genoo provides tools that allow businesses to manage multiple aspects in one place. As a result, the business has more time to dedicate to leads, follow-ups, and conversions.
These areas are very important to small businesses because, as Albee points out, “…if you don’t follow up, then whatever you spent to get those leads lose their value every month that you don’t follow up.”
In addition, the company puts enterprise level information into SMB terms. Often times at industry events, the perspective is from a large brand. Genoo takes that information and makes it applicable to SMBs.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Samsung Unveils Impressive Products for 2010 - WebProNews Video
Samsung’s display at CES 2010 was one of the most talked about exhibits at the entire show. With its fascinating collection of TVs, 3D innovations, and a new category of e-readers, Samsung wowed everyone that walked by including WebProNews...
First on the list was the full lineup of TVs consisting of LCDs, Plasmas, and LEDs. Each of these product lines has a full range of 19-65-inch TVs. Some of the models within each of these lineups will feature a new technology called AllShare. This innovation allows users to connect the television to other devices in the home such as digital cameras, computers, mobile devices, and more.
The company also introduced their own App store called Samsung Apps. Now users can download content for their TVs, just as they do for their mobile phones. The store includes a wide variety of apps such as informational apps, gaming apps, and movie-streaming apps.
High-end versions of the 3 television lineups also have 3D capabilities. As Scott Cohen told WPN, users can watch anything in 3D with Samsung. Some TVs have a processor that allows users to render any 2D content into 3D.
With Plasma specifically, Samsung’s product line has grown. The primary focus of this line is picture-quality enhancement, such as deeper blacks and better motion. Top-end Plasma models will have customizable features that allow users to adjust the picture to their preference.
The last but certainly not the least in the TV product lines is the LED. The advantages of this line are low power consumption, vibrant colors, and brightness. Also, the LEDs are all under 2-inches deep with the flagship model at only 0.3-inches, which is thinner than a pencil!
In spite of all the hype around the fascinating TVs, Samsung’s category of e-readers also created a lot of buzz. The company will be bringing 4 e-readers to the market with screen sizes ranging from 5-10-inches. In addition, Samsung revealed a partnership with Google Books for this product.
All these Samsung products will be available during the first half of 2010. To find out more, visit www.Samsung.com.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Polaroid Brings Back Instant Film - WebProNews Video
Many of you probably remember when Polaroid ended its line of Instant Film cameras back in 2008. Fortunately, the company has decided to bring back its legendary Polaroid OneStep camera but with a modern twist.
Jon Pollock, Polaroid’s Chief Marketing Officer, spoke with WebProNews at CES 2010 and explained how so many people expressed remorse for the Instant Film products. Specifically, artists and photographers reached out to Polaroid and asked them to bring it back.
In November, the company made its official announcement that it was bringing back its classic film. Polaroid will be offering a redesigned, modernized version of its OneStep camera that Pollock proudly showed off at CES. He said this camera “really represents Polaroid.”
The PIC 1000 will be available just in time for the holidays this year. Incidentally, Polaroid’s new Creative Director, Lady Gaga, pointed out in this WPN report that she was excited to help Polaroid take its Instant Film into the digital age.
For the latest information on Polaroid’s products, visit their site.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Ghost Tweeting: Right or Wrong? - WebProNews Video
Earlier this year at SES New York, Guy Kawasaki raised quite a stir when he gave his keynote address regarding his use of Twitter and specifically, his use of ghost tweeters. Although many SEOs disagree with the practice, Li Evans of Serengeti Communications defends him on the grounds of marketing...
Kawasaki’s use of Twitter became a problem when some people discovered that he had ghost tweeters but didn’t disclose it. Although he does disclose now, Evans says people need to understand that Kawasaki is a marketer. With marketing, the message plays one of the most critical roles.
In an interview with WebProNews at the BlogWorld Expo 2009, Kawasaki responded to the criticism of his ghost tweeters by saying: “At the end of the day, the ultimate test is not who tweeted it, as much as, is it interesting.”
According to Evans, the core issue is the expectations of the audience. Ashton Kutcher is an avid tweeter and his followers know it. On the contrary, 50 Cent has other people tweet for him; although it doesn’t make everyone happy, his followers know that he is not tweeting on his own.
In regards to business usage of Twitter, Evans recommends planning a strategy to determine the best way to meet the audience’s expectations. If the expectations involve more than the business can do on its own, make sure to disclose whoever is doing it. Otherwise, the business could lose its credibility.