Category: Uncategorized

Online Advertising: Are You Leaving Money On The Table With Your International Traffic?

It was reported in the Wall Street Journal, Internet companies from blogs to large Amazon.com types are now drawing more of their web traffic from overseas. I know from personal experience that this blog’s traffic is more than 50% international. I’ve seen this trend rising the last couple of years (research data).

What exactly does this mean for companies that charge advertising? It means that when a foreign overseas visitor clicks on your site and your running banner ads that get you a monetary % of click thru’s, you are leaving money on the table. How? For example: European visitors clicks on your landing page and you (or the ad network platform you use) serve them a Verizon ad special that is only available in the United States. Is that ad compelling to the visitor? Do you think this International visitor is interested in clicking thru the US centric ad? No way!

Thousands upon thousands of ad revenue is lost and sitting right there on the table. The problem is that if your running a global media company and your serving up U.S. ads, your potential revenue is in danger. Most of the US ad network platforms that websites run, only serve up U.S. ads. What can you do to solve this issue? If your ad network is “in house” …..make sure you serve your international clients  visitor a country specific ad. it’s real easy to identify these visitors thru international domains, first-party cookies, and IP addresses. If it’s a U.S. visitor, serve up a U.S. ad. If you outsource to an online ad network that doesn’t have these capabilities, try hiring an international advertising platform company. There are a lot of them that are London based. Need an ad network platform on the Pacific Rim or India where Internet usage is sky rocketing with the arrival of DSL? Try ad companies such as Komli Media (India). Selling internet ads to local international markets is a tough issue right now. Larger companies with resources have sales teams set up outside the U.S. Companies such as MySpace and Facebook (that now get over 50% of traffic from overseas) are trying to ramp up their sales teams internationally. The majority of Facebook’s growth is international. Of the 75 million uniques it added in the last year, just 13 million (17%) were in the U.S., where MySpace is still twice Facebook’s size. Internet usage overseas is anywhere from a few years behind to ground zero. As they gain access to telephone lines (DSL) and cable, this customer base will grow exponentially. You have to prepare to exploit your platform to serve these international visitors. Get to them now before your competitor does.

Twitter musings

TwitterTraditional carpet bombing advertising does not work well in social media networks. Heavy PR (one on one) conversational marketing is too costly. Your spending too much money, time and resources to get to the influencers. Brands who want to be effective with their scarce resources (budgets & marketing department personal), NEED to find out who is the top 5-10 influencer in their market and focus their one on one (conversational) marketing primarily on them.

A few examples of brands & Influencers taking advantage of Twitter: Shaq (THE_REAL_SHAQ), Lance Armstrong (lancearmstrong), MC Hammer (MCHammer), Walt Mossberg (waltmossberg). Get to these guys be it product reviews or endorsements, the larger the social media ROI. Have you seen how many “followers” these guys have on Twitter? It’s ridiculous. Not that the quantity of followers makes all the difference, focus on the “quality” of the followers as well.

Utilizing a Blogger(s) to Spread the Company’s Message

A quick “blogger relations” example: A friends company found a popular blogger who had spoken highly of the company’s product + brand. Just prior to launching a new product, the company sent the blogger a free sample, inviting him to review it with “no strings attached.”

Long story shot, after a back and forth conversation with the blogger during his review, he (blogger) wrote a favorable review that generated a flood of comments. The company got nearly free publicity and feedback for a future version of the reviewed product. This blogger is a very popular on a very popular blog with thousands of followers as well as content that is syndicated. Product sales surged 35% right after the article/review was written. The traffic to the company’s website from the blog tripled (as tracked by google analytics data). Welcome to Marketing Web 3.0

Tips on Hiring a Virtual Administrative Assistant

Virtual Assistants or “VA’s” can offer remote support to anyone that does not have access to a group or company administrative assistant. I will present tips on how to hire a VA as well as where to find them. VA’s come in different varieties. You can get someone cheap (think India) to someone expensive with a lot of experience and skills. Depending on your needs and time horizon, it’s better to get an inexpensive VA for simple tasks. If your needs are immediate, and you don’t have time to bring a VA up to speed, it’s better to go with an expensive US-based VA that already has the skills you require now.

First off, where do you find a Virtual Assistant? There are many online resources and companies to choose from. More and more are popping up all over the world every day. US-based VA’s will run anywhere from $20-$100 per hour. US-based VA can be found here:

www.ivaa.org
www.ondemandvirtualservices.com
www.guru.com
www.elance.com (Also handles International)

Indian VA’s will run anywhere from $3.00-$18.00 per hour. India-based VA’s can be found here:

www.yourmaninindia.com

The benefits of a remote VA across the world is that they work while you sleep, and cheaper than a US-based VA’s. As with all VA’s, make sure you set a task rate (cost per task) or an hour cap for the tasks you assign. Otherwise, you can get into a real financial trouble if your VA is slow working and using your hourly budget fast. My choice would be to get a rate per task cost. Make sure to give your VA exact directions and exact task list so there is no misunderstandings. Assign each task in order of relevance or priority. An example of a home office business task list includes: Word processing, expense reports, travel, bookkeeping, sales reports, bill paying, PDF file conversion, custom mailings, database entry, meeting schedule, faxing, invoicing, even proofreading.

The great thing about hiring a VA is that there is no onsite employee, which means no liability, no worker’s comp insurance, and no payroll taxes to calculate. Everyone is an independent service provider. Lastly, hire a VA that is working within a company that specializes in virtual assistants so that if your VA is sick or out on vacation, there is a backup person to fill in their place. That is a key benefit to hiring a company that specializes in VA’s.

Using Del.icio.us. Social Bookmarking Platform as an Effective Collaborative Reference Tool

What is social bookmarking?
Social bookmarking is one kind of a system in which several websites are being organized and require you to visit again and again. However, rather than bookmarking those websites on your computer, you choose to bookmark those sites on a particular social bookmarking website such as “Delicious.” In order to search for your favorite website on a social bookmark platform, you have to use a “keyword” or “tag” which represents that website you need to refer. Delicious can even make all your entries either private or public. When you choose to make your entries public, they are always visible to other visitors using the platform. A public display will illustrate who has created that bookmark and how/when those keywords and tags are useful or popular.

How does a social bookmarking website help you?
Social bookmarking is useful in many ways. By creating a list of popular public websites, you have the capacity of sharing the information with as many other people that are interesting in the content. It also enhances communication between individuals within a team (or clients). These people can easily find an entire list of websites which display the subject they are looking for. Searching is normally done by using some kind of relevant keyword or tag. This is a great method of helping people find useful details or even sharing resources as a collaborative group. For instance, if group of people need certain information on home office tools, they would log into Delicious.com and type the keyword “home office tools”. After few minutes, a complete list of bookmarked websites tagged with the keyword phrase “home office tools” is generated.

With this reference tool, you can also find out how popular that bookmarked website is and who has bookmarked it. You can even contact a person that is interested in the same topic. This way you can also extend your community to a large extent. Besides these benefits, this type of social bookmarking website can also help you to generate traffic to your business. If you have a blog or a website you can link it into your favorite tagged websites and enable all your visitors to simply bookmark your blog or website. This will increase search engine ranking and potentially it can increase your visitors.

Delicious.com is one of the best bookmarking websites that allows you to share information (bookmarks) with contacts such as coworkers and clients in one place or repository. By using other people’s shared bookmarks, the collaborative aspect can be exploited.

The most important part of your website

newmediaandmarketing:

According to Hubspot; 76% of consumers say the most important factor in a website’s design is “the website makes it easy for me to find what I want.” This is the most important reason for conducting usability studies but too often this important process is overlooked when updating branded websites.

The most important part of your website

Jade Musing: Bbloggersoz Recap – How should PR agencies work with bloggers?

jademusing:

Hooray! The first #bbloggersoz went really, really well. Thank you to my co-hosts Ling and Celeste and everybody else who participated! Couldn’t have asked for a better first go at #bbloggersoz.

To recap, the topic of the night was:

How should PR agencies work with…

Jade Musing: Bbloggersoz Recap – How should PR agencies work with bloggers?

Social Media Trifecta for Small Business

If you’re like a typical “small business”, you’re looking for new ways to bring in customers. My advice = Use Social Media. Most “small business” have little or no resources to hire a full time Social Media manager. If this is the case, then my recommendation would be to concentrate only on these 3 Social Media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp). Take an hour a day (or night) and network/add content to these Social Media sites.

Yelp

This is a great site and becoming a force in small business marketing. Yelp is your chance to give customers the scoop, right on your Yelp business page. Once logged into biz.yelp.com, build out a rich profile under the “Business Information” tab. You can share the history behind your business and what you do best. Also, add a little something about yourself and your employees so that Yelp users can get to know you. Let people know your business is on Yelp. Add a button (Yelp link) to your email signature file, website, and all marketing collateral

Get photos of your business up on Yelp, ASAP. If your business is a restaurant, add a picture of your menu. Own a boutique? Add a shot of your great new merchandise. It’s a simple, fun and effective way to illustrate your story. Finally, ensure a photo of your storefront is included so people know what to look for when they decide to visit you offline and in person.

TwitterTwitter

Twitter is also for small business owners looking to build new local customers. To sign up for a twitter account, go here www.twitter.com. The first thing to do is set up a proper “Profile”. Make sure you fill out your twitter profile to include your website URL, business phone #, and specific keywords related to your business or service that will help potential people to follow you. Follow people in your field of business such as peers, customers, and competitors. Follow your competitors followers as well. Run twitter contests, give away special online twitter discounts or offers. Always include “Add Follow Me on Twitter” in email signature file, website, and your other social media accounts.

Make sure you don’t mix your twitter business account with a personal account, keep them separate as well as the messages. Engage in related business conversations. Look up conversations that will help drive customers to your twitter account using keywords in twitter search. DO NOT go overboard and follow too many people that follow you or you will risk looking like a spammer. If you have a blog on your small business website, always reference a new blog post on your twitter account. Stay with it everday and be patient, the ROI will pay off in due time. Retweet others relevant to your field or business. This helps establish credability and you will pick up more followers.

Facebook 

Get on Facebook now! Facebook pages tend to work better for businesses while Facebook “groups” do well for non-profits, interests and causes. If you’re a one-person business, rather than creating Facebook pages for your name, consider setting up a Facebook page for the company, product or service name and add keywords to it. People may be more likely to subscrbe to your Page (become a “fan”) when they see the topic that follows the company name.

Content is king for a Facebook business page. Facebook is a great place to share tips on how to do things faster or more effectively with your product or service. Post “how-to” videos or screencasts. Announce free upcoming events or webinars. Mention if you or someone from your business will be attending an event for a potential meet up. Its always a good idea (content-wise) to import your twitter feed and business blog posts.

Make sure you use Facebook to connect with your existing customers AFTER they’ve already bought from you – rather than trying to use Facebook to mine for leads. This is the path of least resistance. Since they already know you, they are more likely to interact with your page – crucial for organic growth on Facebook.

SEO Visual Guide to Success

SEO Visual Guide

I found this great SEO visual guide layout for anyone planning a campaign for the first time. Its also a handy guide to keep on hand at all times. You can drill down the tree limbs and get more detailed and plan out milestones, etc. The guide came from Dave Chaffey at e-consultancy.

Before you begin any SEO campaign (organic or paid) its imperative to know how search engines operate and how people interact with them. There are many guides out there where you can learn the “basics” of search engine friendly design and development (or you can hire a consultant). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is arguably THE most cost-effective digital marketing technique, but also the most challenging to get right. It can get overwhelming with keyword research, link building, usability, and tweaking content. In the end, always keep measuring and tracking the data (success) and build off of whats working, and whats not working. If your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities available to websites provided via search – people who want what you have visiting your site. Always keep in mind not to go too overboard with content optimization or you will get labeled a “spammer” or a “content farmer” which will designate you as a low-quality website/publisher.