Ewom Marketing

Google has launched a new online information service called Knol to rival internet encyclopedia Wikipedia.

In the past few months YouTube has received a number of new features, some good, some not so good. The new features, includes a new site update which is aimed to create a more personalized experience for users. In this Post I will take a look in more detail at some of these new features.

Online advertising is growing faster than ever, any popular site will eventually feature adverts, but why is this form of advertising so popular? Well here a just a selection of some of the bigger benefits of online marketing:

Measurability
One of the greatest benefits of online advertising is that advertisers can track the success of campaigns far more effectively than they can do offline using web analytics and other online advertising tools. Not only can you measuring clicks through your website, you can also track user behavior to build up a complete journey of users visit. I know this quote is almost in every text book but, John Wanamaker famously said ““Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don't know which half”

Cost
Online marketing and advertising is far cheaper than advertising traditional methods. In some cases it’s even free; the only thing you need to provide is your time.

Reach Your Target Audience
Marketers often moan about the difficulties of reaching the 18-34 age group. The say that Traditional channels such as television adverts and press adverts just don’t work! But a study from the Online Publishers Association found out that 18-34 year olds are far more likely to go online (46%) than watch TV (35%), listen to the radio (three%) or read a newspaper (also three%). Marketers aim is always to reach the consumer in their natural environment with advertising that is engaging, entertaining, maybe even useful; they may be more receptive to advertising messages. Web 2.0 can be exactly all those things.

Target Niche/Micro Market Audiences
Alongside the big social networks groups there are also a few smaller social networks based around a community of shared interests. There are also different groups formed on some social network groups like Facebook, where consumers with the same interest gather and chat about that interest allowing businesses to have the target market in one place.

Increased Choice of Channels
With TV advertising you limited by time slot and choice of channel, which unless you have a lot of money could become be bad. But online, the choice of advertising formats is far more varied. But with Web 2.0 it’s all about being creative, when using web 2.0 to market anything is possible. Videos, games, banner the list goes on and on.

This is my second blog on Twitter, but after reading a interesting article about Twitter in BusinessWeek magazine earlier this week, it made me think about Twitter again. The Article soke about how project teams in companies are now being asked to deliver real time status updates to one another using Twitter. Therefore I took it upon myself to further look how people around the world are using Twitter.

The biggest users are Market researchers who are using Twitter to try and identify consumer trends in real time. I also came across a couple of interesting folks who use it and I thought it would be interesting to share:

In the U.S. the Los Angeles Fire Department uses it to communicate real time fires and accidents to local citizens. (The LAFD News & Information blog can be found at: lafd.blogspot.com)

In the UK, the government has signed up to Twitter and uses the site to send out updates on the Prime Minister’s activities.
BusinessWeek, also reported that Dell claimed to have boosted sales through searching for mentions of its business on Twitter and jumping into the conversations. They state that they boosted sales by $500,000 in recent months! Now that’s not a small increase of sales! Are we under estimating the power of Twitter?

One of the key tasks I played a major role in over the past year is putting together and issuing press releases. Along the way I have picked up some methods and handy tips so I thought I would share them with readers.

I would recommend to try and issue at least 5 to 10 press releases every year. Sending out a press release once every 2 months will keep your company in the press. Even if you feel that your target audience is small remember that a well written press release will only help build your image and strengthen your current customer base, therefore it really is worth putting a good deal of time into press releases.

The press releases that I usually issued were launching of products, but other good topics for press releases could charity work, or reaching a specific target. This may sound silly but remember the content of a press release needs to be interesting, don’t just use press releases to sell products, the more you capture the reader’s attention the article the greater chance it will be used and even forwarded by readers. You could use a good headline and strong first leading paragraph to do this.

Keep in mind who your target market is. For example if your target market is engineers, then keep to topics they would be interested in, don't focus greatly on sale reports or marketing information.

Remember in this new marketing era, press release can feature on websites, blogs, forums, not just print. I have also heard people say that you have a greater chance of your press release being used by editors if you fax rather than email, but I cannot say that I have experienced this.

Press release are also a great way to build up some contacts in the press. By thanking reporters who used your press release will establish a good relationship between your company which will result in a better chance of future press release being used.

Don't forget also that online press release will increase year Google ranking due to the back linking!

Great news for everyone who has Flash built website's and Flash content on your websites. On 1st July 2008 Google took its first steps to start to include Flash in its website search.

Digg.com is a News website it is controlled by users. Similar to the all new “Yahoo Buzz“, “Propeller” and Mixx. There is no central governing body that decides which news to report and which news makes it to the front page. The community of users submit the stories and “vote” on them by clicking the “digg this” icons besides each story listed on its pages. Digg was originally featured mostly technology related articles but has since grown to include a whole range of categories that cover almost any topic.

• Socializing is key: The more friends you have on Digg the better because when you submit a story, you can then invite all your friends to Digg it.


• Comment on other Stories: An easier way to get traffic is by posting comments on popular stories with high diggs. Write a comment that is relevant to the story and then leave a link (signature) at the end of your comment.


• Digg your blog: If you have a fairly large number of readers to your blog, you can submit your blog posts to Digg and then insert a “digg this” button in near your blog. Readers of your blog can vote your story up the Digg ranks.

Early Today I posted a blog stating that Google and Yahoo were about to sign a deal. Well I have great pleasure to tell you that this deal have been confirmed by a number of news sites. As a Yahoo shareholder this is great news.

According to a statement by Yahoo they expect to earn additional cash flow of $250 million to $450 million within a year of implementing Google's ads on its pages. Yahoo state that this deal will deliver financial value to stockholders and will help them to invest in broader strategy to transform display advertising and advance our starting point objectives with users.

Under the agreement, Yahoo will carry ads purchased by Google advertisers on terms and results pages of its choosing. It may also carry Google ads on non-search pages. The agreement lasts for up to four years, and consists of an initial four-year term followed by options for two three-year renewals.

Some have speculated a Google-Yahoo tie-up on search advertising could create a virtual monopoly for Google. But to me I think Google already have a monopoly, Google already controls nearly 70% of the online search advertising market.

According to new statistics released today (11th June) by marketing group Hitwise over 87% of all UK searches during May went through Google.

This week I discovered a wonderful thing….YouTube Insights! I have a channel on YouTube and have uploaded 10 -15 videos for my company, trying to reach our target customers. These are everything from How to guides, getting started videos, demos, presentations, etc.

Although I can tell how many people view the video, I always wondered who exactly was watching them, and were they attracting audience we wanted. Now thanks to YouTube Insights I can find out just that!

YouTube Insights is a free video metrics and analytics service. In March YouTube introduced YouTube Insights, which it aims to extend further in the future. It gives you the demographic breakdown of the viewers of your videos a chance to see who, where, how, when your video was viewed.

The details are collected from YouTube users whenever they watch a video, there sex, age, location and the list goes on. Video-by-video basis the demographics of viewers are broken down.

A bar chart represents the percentage of your audience in different age groups, and a pie chart showing the breakdown of gender. You can then filter that data by country or for a specific time frame.

To access this features, go to the “My Videos” section and simply click on the “Insight” link for any video where you’d like to see the stats.

Insights also shows referrals so you can see what links and methods are effective in driving traffic to your videos or channel on YouTube. As it links to Google they also provide which keywords users found your videos by when searching on Google as well as while searching on YouTube.

Although this data is extremely interesting, its key to remember and not get carried away, try to keep in mind that the data only shows information for viewers who are registered with YouTube. It would be interesting to see the number percentage of registered users compared to those who are not.

After looking at the data provided it from the videos I have created for my business, the data shown in YouTube Insights matches that of what our target customer is. Therefore the data is useful to me as it confirms that our videos are reaching our targeted consumer based

I am surprised that YouTube doesn’t charge for this service. In the future i think they will introduce an “upgraded version” of insights that YouTube users will have to upgrade to a higher level membership. Maybe they already offer a more detailed version to businesses that currently pay for adverts through YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/

One of my favorite websites is YouTube. As well as using YouTube to watch videos I have created and uploaded my own. For work purposes I also created a channel on our products, which contained videos such as how to guides and demos. The Channel proved very popular and was a first within the company. YouTube also roved to drove traffic to our websites as well as help ranking in the search engines. Therefore it is very important that when you submit a video to YouTube that you make is Search engine spider friendly. Everything from the title to the thumbnail are very important! Below I have put some information to help you make your YouTube videos help both the viewer and YOU!

Many people think that just by naming their image file with the keyword that they desire, and by inserting a descriptive “alt” tag text in the HTML code, the Google’s Image Search system will index your image and thus your page. Well if only it was that easy! That does have some effect but not much!

While exploring social networks further I discovered a good tool on Facebook for companies who don't have the budget to pay for adverts. Facebook now enables products and brands to have their own special Facebook pages free of cost!

If you go to the homepage of Facebook, at the bottom of the page is some small links, click on the one called Advertisers. Although this takes you to a homepage to buy ads. You will be able see a free opportunity to post a Facebook page for your product or company even if you don't use the Facebook advertise program.

You get to name the page, add images, videos, links, forums, news, and more. Very similar to the group application on Facebook.

I imagine this works stronger for B2C than B2B businesses or strong and well known brands as they have built-in enthusiast and fan bases. Not sure of the impact it has on Search engine ranking yet. I’ll keep you updated!

www.facebook.com

There’s lots of articles on the internet that list different methods and techniques to create a successful blog. I combined about 3 - 4 articles and come up with this guide for myself:

1. Blog with consistent
Make up your mind first on how often you will make posts on your blog. If you want to do it twice a day, or once a day, or once every 2 days or just once a week - decide this and then stick to it. Don’t post everyday for a few days and then do nothing at all for a week. You will lose whatever repeat “sticky” traffic you could get.

2. Be passionate about your topic
You have to be passionate about what you blog. You should be knowledgable about your niche blogging topic, and keep updated. If you are not passionate about your blog, you will probably not excite your readers.

3. Interact with readers
Allow your readers to post questions directly to you and reach you if needed. Don’t alienate yourself from them. Many readers may want to get in touch with you and ask you questions. Listen to them, and help them out! Blogging is a two way street. Involve your readers and they will be loyal to you. Build two way relationships!

4. Don’t be afraid to link out
If you see and read a good posting or article elsewhere, link to it! This may seem contrary to popular belief and at first it looks like you are channeling traffic away from your site at the risk of getting your readers hooked elsewhere. But by providing valuable links to other stories, you are gaining authority and credibility by showing that you know what is happening around you. Readers will love you for referring them to other stories, and will come back for more stuff if you send them to quality articles in the sea of poor content.

5. Build Your Blog Brand
Whatever you choose to call your blog - make sure you have your own domain name and not a subdomain on say for example yourname.blogspot.com . That just doesn’t work in the long run for serious bloggers. Take control of all you can do with free blog software like Wordpress and install them on your domain - it takes less than an hour and you can easily contract out someone for as little as $50 to install it. Having your own domain name gives you your unique brand, and allows you to stand out from the crowd.

6. Be a good writer
Communicate your thoughts and ideas in well structured English. Some people take longer than others to express their thoughts. It’s ok to have a few typos as its acceptable by blog readers. But don’t have too many typos. People are interested in the content. Be clear and to the point - and don’t ramble on and on repetitively.

7. Read other blogs in your industry
See what other competing blogs are writing. Read a LOT. Reading is something you must do. Visit websites that are related to your blog topics and get ideas from them - but never copy them word for word. It’s ok to summarize another bloggers post in your own words, and saying the same thing in your way.

In my opinion banners no longer work well and are pretty useless! Banners usually achieve high click-through rates for the first couple of weeks, but after that they sink pretty quick. There are few ways to increase your click-through rates if you still use banners though, here's a few tricks.......

Use “Action” Words - Use words which ask web users to react for example: “Click Here” Banners with “Click Here” teasers, and similar action phrases will improve click-through rates.

Short and to the Point - using short and to the Point sentences on banners will make a big difference.

What’s the Benefit? - Use statements that offer benefits to the user and offer solutions to solve customers’ problems

Animated Banners vs. Static Banners - Animated banners usually receive more click- through rates then static banners. Users of the Internet are more likely to notice banners that are animated. Further more use a combination of both text and images.

Change your Banners Frequently - After the user has seen your banner for the 3rd time, they will probably ignore the banners in the future. You should track your click-through rate closely and if you notice it falling it is time to change the banner!

The publication Business weekly this week published an article on Twitter, which made me think that I should really write or “blog” something about it:

Twitter is a social media service that is a cross between SMS text messages and Blogs. Twitter otherwise known as “microblogging”, has become hugely popular with traffic on Twitter exploding within the past couple of months. The basic concept is that you can subscribe to get short and brief commentary in the form of live alerts from other members by SMS, Instant Messenger or Email. You can also choose to follow your favorite users and get updates from (Yes basically the status feature from Facebook)

If my description doesn’t make sense here’s the basics from Wikipedia:

“Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (e.g. on a cell phone), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application.” >With such a large user base, businesses are now looking to use twitter as a channel to talk to customers. Media groups in the U.S. are using users of Twitter (Twitterers) to gain first minute news.

Currently I do not use twitter for personal reasons. I have tried in the past to try and drive traffic to websites through it. Although due to a lack of following this didn’t help! If you are already a well followed blogger or forum user then Twitter could benefit you though. Here’s a just three ways of how it can help you:

I attended the Internet World Exhibition & Conference which took place last week in London, UK. It looked at all things marketing but focused only on electronic marketing. It was attended by over 100 well known internet companies including Google, Facebook, Linkedin, and EBay. It was interesting to hear that online advertising spending in the UK was 2.8 billion pounds! While in 2004 it was just 653 million pounds. I’d thought I’d share a few points I noted that interested me and that I thought may be useful to you also.

Over the past 10 years there has been a large growth in the amount of creativity used in marketing and adverts. Every company wants to stand out from the rest and gain the attention of the public. I have put together a list of the top 5 adverts that do not just stand out but are also very creative and clever.

5. Bend over!

This yoga company advertised its yoga club by showing just how much they will bend over to help you get fit! These straws were distributed to local drink establishments, as well as containing a picture of someone doing yoga, who bends anyway you bend the straw, the company also placed the address to their website on the straw.