Hello, hello. It's day 2. I have orange juice instead of coffee this morning. Lisa's still sick from yesterday. As usual, I blame Susan. I'm going to do my best to make it through today's batch of sessions. Kicking things off this morning we have Barbara Boser (3 Dog Media), Cindy Krum (Blue Moon Works), Randy Woods (non-linear creations), and Michael Gray (Atlas Web Service). Danny Sullivan is once again moderating. This man is earning his paycheck this week. Up first is Barbara Boser. Just as a fun fact, if you've never met Barbara, she's probably the nicest woman in the whole world. I'm just saying. Marketing your Business with Facebook Pages: You can build a page in Facebook for your business. She looks at DunkinDonuts page because its Greg's favorite. Aw. You can add events and people will get notifications. You can upload photos, start a discussion board, create a poll, etc. Polls are a good way to get answers about products your customers like. You're also able to let people write on your wall and upload their own media. When someone becomes a fan of your company, all of their friends will see that and can join too. Facebook Social Ads: It's not yet that advanced. You can filter through by age, keywords, place, etc, and narrow down your audience. Good way to target. The ads show up in the users' news feed or on the left sidebar. Groups: You can search for groups related to your business and then participate in the conversations going on about your company. Events: Create event pages. People can RSVP and write on the wall. Sharing: You can share blog posts. Every time you update, all of your Facebook Fans will be informed of that. Beacon: A little controversial last year because of privacy issues. You put some code on your site and when a FB user completes an action on your site, it gets listed in their news feed. Lexicon: You can put in a keyword and it tracks how many times Starbucks is mentioned on the Facebook wall across all profiles. Pretty cool. Apps: If you're on Facebook you probably have a whole list of people wanting you to download an application. Once you join, people will see a link to your company. You want to create something that's viral and that people will want to share with their friends. How Much Traffic Can I Get? She talks about Neil Patel's Flixster Facebook application where it compares what movies you like to what movies your friends like. He got 16+ million visits from Facebook. Barbara says that number has already doubled. Wow. Next up is Cindy Krum to talk about MySpace. Ew, MySpace. She still believes MySpace has a lot of value if you're trying to reach certain demographics. It still has 80 million users worldwide. MySpace Whoas (aka the good things): Flying Dog Brewery: Local Denver brewery with a MySpace page. The have used their page to establish a company voice and personality. They're reaching out to a specific demographic. They're talking to people and creating a community around the brand. They also use it to notify users about events and products. They're taking paper flyers and putting them on their MySpace page so all of their friends can see they're having a zombie dance party. Wow. A zombie dance party, eh? Snazzy. That flyer is also their new profile picture, which helps to draw attention to their profile. They also use MySpace Events to promote all of their events. People can type in their zip codes to look for events and the cool things happening in their city. They use MySpace bulletins. It's similar to the wall in Facebook. You can announce contests, release newsletters, offer discounts to MySpace users etc. Companies can also put YouTube videos on their page or post the videos on their friends' pages as comments. Because that's not annoying. They've also used their photos as a catalog for their merchandise. They can't buy from the MySpace page, but they can direct them to their real site. This has search engine optimization value. These pages rank well in the engines. True: Web-based dating community. Creating brand awareness. Link to quizzes, badges and fun games from their MySpace profile to engage visitors. They have a Create a Date game where you can skew pictures of people and then send it to a friend. It's viral. They have a Date-O-Rama game to help you find and plan a date. They've also put an entry way to their site in the corner of MySpace. It gets people where they need to go. MySpace Woes (the bad things) Westwood College: There were a lot of people who had self-identified as Westwood Students. They wanted to create a community online. The profile would encourage communication between students and disperse information about classes, events, holidays, news, school closures, etc. Your MySpace profile has to be a good representation of your brand. You can't just slap something up there. A cool branded profile takes a lot of time and skill - use CSS or MySpace's profile layout tool. Cool profiles have to be updated frequently. You can't accept everyone who wants to be your friend. You have to manage them and make sure they're appropriate. Get rid of those with questionable photos. Make sure they represent your brand well. She talks about how sometimes friends' profiles change. They had a nice guy in a polo T-shirt join. He was really active and participatory. And then he changed his profile pic of a photo of him in S&M gear. They had to remove all his comments because he suddenly didn't represent them well. (Hmm, not sure how I feel about that, but okay.) Communication needs to be managed. Will you respond to emails? Will all comments be approved? Will you participate in groups? What kind of blog communication is appropriate for your brand? Travel Site: They wanted to create a travel widget that would be useful for travelers and travel bloggers. They needed something cool that hadn't been done before. They wanted a widget that would work in all social networks. Not all Developers are widget developers. MySpace messes with your code. Widgets that work on other social networks may not work in MySpace. And Widgets that work in MySpace/IE7 may not work in Firefox. Tips for Developing Widgets: You can also use Open Social. Randy Woods is up to talk about LinkedIn. He starts off with some disclaimers. He's Canadian. Everyone laughs. Most of his clients are in the US. He's also old. His company started in 1995. He's also a generalist. He talks about conference brain. Conference brain means you're hung over. Wow. He says marketing is being defined in its narrowest sense - promotion. Social media is also important for the other elements of marketing - product and positioning. LinkedIn - Why Bother Harvard Business School did a study on LinkedIn and found out that 90 percent of people on LinkedIn are relationship managers. Five percent are networks and five percent are contractors. All of the Fortune 500 people you're interested in are in the relationship manager piece. They're only talking to people they know already. They don't want to meet strangers. But they do want their problems solved. They want to know before they engage with you that you can solve their problems. That's where the Question & Answer service fits in. You can use LinkedIn Answers to reach influencers. The challenge is that the people you want responding to these questions are your most valuable employees. They're the people who don't have time to be cruising social networks. But if you use Yahoo Pipes, you can combine everything and put it into one dashboard. Or something. Yahoo Pipes is about 10 leagues over my head. LinkedIn Answers means dollars in your pocket. Case Study: 11 percent conversion rate for free traffic. Four Things I Don't Believe: Recap: Marketing is more than promotion. No one important wants to hear from you. You have to get their attention. LinkedIn Answers equals dollars. LinkedIn Converts. Michael Gray will finish things off by discussing Twitter. Twitter is a microblogging platform. You write short messages and share them with the world. Twitter is what happens between blog posts. Or conference sessions. Why Marketers Should Care About Twitter Using twitters as a permission marketing tool to reach bleeding edge customers. It works like RSS. It's pull technology. It allows you to protect/block your updates from people. Twitter = Traffic Understanding How Twitter Works: Next to everyone's name is a star so that you can save it if you want. There's also an arrow to make it easy to reply to someone. If people reach out to you, make sure to respond back to them. The Archive section allows you to see everything you've ever Twittered. Tools To Get More Out Of Twitter: Who's Using Twitter? CarnivalCruise - Sends you to different articles More Tips for Getting More Out of Twitter Twitter Tracking and Twitter Search Tools You can type a word into Twitter and it will tell you everyone who has mentioned those words. If you're a company dealing with the public you should be tracking your company name. TweetScan Quotably: Makes @ messages into a threaded conversation. Helps give you context to a conversation He also points out the Twitter leaderboard. Twitter Ranks Jason Calacanis' Twitter feed ranks 4th for his name. Question and Answer Are there any legal issues to create a Facebook brand profile? Cindy: You have to be careful of what you say, especially if you're not the brand spokesperson. As far as legal stuff, she's not sure. Treat it like you would treat any other marketing venue. Age demographics of Twitter? Michael's not sure. Seems heavy handed to only let certain people by your MySpace friend. Do you think you're alienating people? For her example, they were trying to create a community for a private college. They wanted to create a perception of what the brand was. They wanted to control the image. They didn't want people to think that people who went to this school were heavy drinkers or pot smokers. I have so many problems with that answer. Barbara: On Facebook you can just be a fan and not necessarily have a friend relationship, so it's a bit different. Even if you're not going to use the social profile, you should claim the one for your company before someone else does. Randy: In a broader sense, there just may be some brands for whom the social networking sites aren't appropriate. I'm not sure if that's a long term strategy. Source: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/archives/2008/04/effectively_lev.htmlEffectively Leveraging Social Networking
JetBlue - They're really interacting with people and their community. They're a great example.
AmazonDeals
Woot
TechMeme
Sphinn
Zappos
HillaryMomJeans
Maratriangle
Barack Obama's Twitter profile has a top ten ranking for his name.
Effectively Leveraging Social Networking
How Google gains from MS-Yahoo war
SEATTLE: Neither Microsoft Corp nor Yahoo Inc wants to blink first in the software giant's proposed $41.7 billion takeover of the Web pioneer but as the gamesmanship drags on, arch rival Google Inc, the merger's raison d'etre, is the biggest beneficiary.
Not much has progressed since Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo on February 1, a proposal that was rebuffed by Yahoo's board as under-valuing the company. Microsoft has countered by saying its offer was fair and urged the board to take a second look.
The union of its two biggest Web rivals could eventually loosen Google's grip on online search and advertising, but a messy takeover battle followed by a complicated integration could give Google ample time to build on its advantage.
"Google benefits if Yahoo is in a state of limbo," said RBC Capital analyst Jordan Rohan. "The longer the uncertainty persists, the greater lead Google has in online advertising."
The impasse between Microsoft and Yahoo has lasted almost a full month and while analysts think that the two companies will eventually strike a deal, the stand-off shows no signs of a quick resolution.
Microsoft has not ruled out a proxy fight to win Yahoo and Yahoo continues to probe for other options. A proxy fight could stretch until July, the latest it could hold its annual meeting this year, followed by a strict regulatory review process in the United States and Europe.
After clearing those hurdles, Microsoft and Yahoo will have to merge two different advertising systems and consolidate completely separate back-end computer systems. Already, Microsoft is seeking to absorb its $6 billion purchase of advertising services company aQuantive from mid-2007.
All the while, Microsoft has to figure out how to head off a feared mass exodus of Yahoo employees while paring back redundant brands.
Microsoft expects the Yahoo transaction to close in the second-half of 2008, but analyst Marianne Wolk at Susquehanna Financial Group said a deal may not be finalized until early 2009, meaning Google may not face a stronger number two in Web search and advertising until 2010.
Google dominance
Google has proven what it can do when given an opportunity to build on a lead. Over the last year, Google's US Web search market share has jumped 11 percentage points, while Yahoo and Microsoft have both posted steady declines, according to research firm comScore. Factor in Web searches done overseas and Google's lead is daunting -- with three-quarters of the world market.
Its profitable search engine allows Google to devote more money toward research and development for growth areas like Web video advertising and search on mobile phones.
Google's $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, due for completion later this year, should also shore up its position in display advertising, banner ads placed on Web sites, where it has only begun to make inroads against Yahoo.
Without a clear number two to challenge Google, advertisers and Web site publishers may opt to stick with the status quo. "In the short term, Google is likely to continue to see renewals and traffic wins as various players realize that because of the merger and the time that could take that neither Microsoft or Yahoo could catch up for some time," said Susquehanna's
Wolk.
Microsoft and Yahoo, however, will become a "substantial force" in the online market over time, according to Wolk. At the same time, Google faces its own challenges. Two Wall Street analysts, UBS and BMO Capital, cut stock price targets on Google on Tuesday, citing a comScore report that showed a decline in advertisements delivered by the site in January, even though searches increased in the same period.
Google has raised concerns about a Yahoo-Microsoft deal, saying that coupling the two most often-visited Web portals with Microsoft's desktop software monopoly could undermine competition.
Mountain View, California-based Google could also see its R&D advantage shrink with a combined Yahoo-Microsoft. According to Wolk, Google spends about the same amount of money on Web R&D as Microsoft and Yahoo combined, but as separate entities, there is a lot of overlap in that investment.
"There is a lot of redundant development going on..., and at the end of the day, you don't need both," Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie said at the Goldman Sachs Tech Investment Symposium.
Little Known 'Boring' Websites That Make Incredible Money With AdSense
LOS ANGELES — Jerry Alonzy figured he'd be working into his 70s at least.
As an independent handyman at the mercy of weather patterns near Hartford, Conn., he'd always made a decent income that rarely grew.
Then he found Google and his life changed. Alonzy, 57, now makes $120,000 a year from the ads Google places on his Natural Handyman website, and he couldn't be more thrilled.
"I put in two, maybe three hours a day on the site, and the checks pour in," he says. "What's not to like?"
In return for placing its ads on websites and blogs, Google pays Web publishers every time one of its ads are clicked. Those clicks help keep Alonzy and his wife living comfortably and talking about moving to Hawaii. "All I need is a laptop and a high-speed Internet connection, and I can live anywhere."
The Internet may be a young person's medium, but the retired and those nearing retirement such as Alonzy have found that they can work the Web just as well. Sometimes, such "Gray Googlers" can live a richer, more financially rewarding life than when they were supposedly working.
"Google isn't just for kids anymore," says Google executive Kim Scott, who runs the company's AdSense program, the ad platform that provides the income for Web publishers such as Alonzy and others.
Take Jerrold Foutz. The former Boeing engineer, 75, started a website a few years ago devoted to one of his passions — switching mode power supplies, which help drive, for instance, the inside of video cameras.
He put Google ads on his smpstech.com site four years ago. After just one month, the first Google check was for $800. The second check totaled $2,000.
"I thought, 'Wow,' " he said. "This was the most amazing thing that ever happened to me. Something I thought would make $50 a year now equals my Boeing retirement check."
That comes out to around $25,000 yearly.
Foutz's experience is not an anomaly.
After Hope Pryor's four kids left home, she grew intrigued with the Internet and learned how to design a Web page. She didn't want it to focus on just her, so she posted some of her favorite recipes on the site.
Now, her Cooks Recipes site is bringing in nearly $90,000 yearly, mostly from Google ads. The holidays are the biggest-producing months of the year.
"Last December alone, I netted $30,000 from Google," she says. "There's not too many people I know who can walk into a car dealership and buy two vehicles at one time. I did just that recently."
While the upside of working with AdSense sounds exhilarating, it's not that way for everybody.
Scott says she posted an unsold novel on Google and earns about $5 a month from the AdSense ads on the site. Al Needham, 74, who runs a site about the care of bees (bees-online.com) from his home near Boston, reaps about $250 a month.
"Forget about getting rich overnight," says Alonzy. "It takes time to learn."
Jennifer Slegg, a consultant whose JenSense blog is devoted to tips for using so-called contextual advertising, says the easy part is getting AdSense up and running. Google provides computer code that must be copied and pasted onto a website. Figuring out how to do that "is very easy for new publishers."
Foutz says even if you've never cut and pasted code before (hint: On Windows PCs, highlight the text, press Control C to copy, then Control V to paste it), "Just follow what Google says. They have very easy-to-understand instructions."
Hard work, big reward
Introduced in 2003, AdSense was an outgrowth of Google's AdWords program, which put sponsored ads at the top of search results at Google's own site. Google created AdSense as a way to expand beyond search listings and onto hundreds of thousands of websites and blogs.
Google rivals Yahoo and MSN have similar programs, but they have found limited acceptance on the Web, where Google dominates both search, with more than 50% market share, and search advertising, with 90%.
Now everyone from big sites such as the New York Times and CNN.com to mom and pop operations such as Cooks Recipes and Natural Handyman have the familiar "Ads by Google" text-box somewhere on their site.
"With AdSense, we fund creativity on any topic," says Google's Scott. "If you have a subject you know something about, write about it, find a like-minded audience on the Internet and we'll take care of monetizing the content."
Or, as Joel Comm, author of the AdSense guidebook The AdSense Code, puts it: "People are amazed. They say, 'Really, all I have to do is write, Google will put ads on my site and pay me?' Yes, it's that simple."
There is a little more to it. The folks who reap the biggest rewards put in long hours setting up their site and feeding it lots of content.
"Write about what you know, write like mad and often," says Alonzy. "The more you write, the more opportunities you have to make money. If you post 500 pages on a topic, you'll have 500 pages with ads, and many more potential clicks."
Google's computers scan the content on Web pages to match it with appropriate advertisers. Articles on Alonzy's website about how to keep mice away might result in ads for pest control services, while a recipe for turkey casserole at Cooks Recipes might generate ads for diet tips and beauty makeovers.
"The beauty of our system is that we have so many advertisers," says Scott. "The content may not change, but our ads change every day. So you'll always see something different there."
Slegg says the biggest mistake new AdSense publishers make is clicking on AdSense ads — their own or others. That's a big no-no in Googleland, and can get you dumped from the program.
The computer won't break
Alonzy and other Gray Googlers say they haven't experienced any problems working in a young person's world.
"Many people my age are scared of computers; they think they're going to break them," says Needham. "The computers aren't going to break. But you won't find out unless you get in there and try."
At $250 a month, Needham's site generates revenue in line with its niche audience of folks who want to learn about bees.
"I bring in enough to fund a free vacation to Key West every year for the family," says Needham, a retired Department of Defense employee.
One stumbling block for many people is translating a great idea into a nice-looking Web page.
In the past, creating a Web page required knowledge of complicated HTML computer code, or learning off-the-shelf Web design software such as Microsoft's FrontPage or Adobe's Dreamweaver.
Now, Google and Yahoo have free tools to create Web pages or blogs. And many Internet website-hosting companies (such as GoDaddy and Brinkster) have online site creators that come as part of their monthly fees. Apple's iWeb is another such tool. With these, AdSense can be automatically added to your pages with the click of a mouse.
"When you retire, you have to have some interests," says Needham. "This is my indoor activity. I did a search online for how to create a website and found lots of good help out there for nothing."
The Internet, he says, opened up a new world for him.
"I started searching for other sites about bees and met some people from Australia with similar interests. We've since become friends, and I went to Australia last year to visit."
The same thing happened with Gail Bjork, 63, who runs the Digicamhelp site from her home base near Tampa. She designed her site but made a friend online in Ireland who has since redesigned it for a more professional sheen.
"My background was art," says Bjork. "I was an art teacher. I didn't know about code. My friend does. So now she handles the design, and I operate the site."
Bjork is a former local school board member who ran a print shop with her husband. A camera buff, she started the site because her friends were always asking for photo tips.
"This started as something to help my friends, and I've gone from a 14-page site to one with over 700 pages," she says. "I'm legally retired now — but not mentally."
Her site brings in around $1,500 a month. Bjork's advice to others: "For anyone, no matter what age they are, if they find something they truly love, write about it. You have nothing to lose but time. And it could really pay off."
Google sued over defamatory postings found on web search
The case, the first of its kind in this country that seeks to make search engines responsible for the content of the internet - could trigger severe restrictions on the free flow of information on the web.
Last night, internet experts warned that if the action was successful it would mean Google could be held liable for the content of 11.5 billion web pages.
The case is being brought by a 48-year-old man from Wembley who has instructed a City law firm to begin defamation proceedings after the search engine directed users to web pages that the businessman claims contained "deeply offensive and commercially damaging" material about his enterprises.
In one anonymous posting on an internet discussion forum, Brian Retkin, managing director of the internet company dotworlds, is wrongly accused of cashing in on the 11 September attacks on America by offering the free registration of domain names to the US in a way that took advantage of the fervent patriotism at the time. In other anonymous postings, he is wrongly and groundlessly accused of conducting fraudulent business.
The allegations are believed to have originated in America, where it is much more difficult to succeed in a libel claim.
US judges have ruled that search engines and other third party internet service and product providers are immune from defamation lawsuits. But in Britain, similar legal protection is conditional on the company not having notice of the complaint. And in Britain that area of the law is yet to be fully tested.
Mr Retkin, whose internet company is a domain name registrar (a company that allows customers to register domain names on the internet), says he has spent three years trying to persuade Google to permanently remove the libellous allegations from its search results.
In a letter sent to Google, Franklin Price, a litigation partner at the law firm Jeffery Green Russell, has given formal notice of the defamation action under the court's pro-action protocol.
"There comes a point," said Mr Retkin, "when someone must take responsibility for this material. These allegations were posted anonymously so there is no way of suing the author. Where it has appeared on internet discussion forums we have asked them to remove it but it keeps popping up again at other internet addresses. The only solution is for Google to remove it and give an undertaking they will remove it permanently."
In legal correspondence between Mr Retkin and Google, a California-based company with sales and marketing offices in London, claims it has "blacklisted" the offending links and removed the material complained of by Mr Retkin. It also rejects the idea that it should be responsible for the contents of links produced in an internet search.
In an email written by Google's legal counsel Harjinder Obhi, the company argues: "Google is not responsible for the content of any result of a query which may be presented to a user of Google's web search service. Google has absolutely no connection, control or ability to direct or influence the content of web pages which may be shown as links within any given set of search results."
Defamation on the internet
Internet publishers rightly fear the libel laws in this country, which are much stricter than those of other jurisdictions. They know the onus is on them to prove the truth of any statement found on their websites. Recent UK case law has established that a company based outside the jurisdiction may not be immune from litigation in this country if the material can be read by internet users in this country.
A successful defamation ruling against a search engine such as Google would have dramatic consequences for thousands of similar organisations or internet product providers which refine, channel and forward information. The reason that has not already happened is that the Defamation Act 1996 offers a defence to an internet product or service provider where it can claim it is unaware of defamatory or potentially defamatory material it is hosting or material arising from a search result. This protection is supported by the Electronic Commerce (EC) Directive, 2002. But the Defamation Act stipulates that once the company has been put on notice about a complaint it must take action to remove the material or block access.
Friday, 29 June 2007
Impressing Google!
While it's true that there are many different strategies that can be used to optimize a web site for search engine success, one of the most overlooked methods for improving search engine placements is building up your web site's credibility. When you provide your visitors with lots of useful, relevant information on your web site, you create professional credibility and establish your expertise in your industry. When your web site is credible, people will naturally want to link to all of your good information, and your pages will likely be loaded with the keywords and phrases that matter most to your company as well. In other words, a credible web site has many of the elements that impress Google the most!
Brownie Points From Google
One of the ways you can help build your web site's credibility is to create an online glossary for your site and link to it from the rest of your pages. Think about it - we know that Google gives you points for using your keywords in the text of your links, so why not pick up some extra points by linking your key terms to a glossary that further explains them? This is also extremely helpful to visitors who are on your site to learn about your company, products, and services as well.
Credibility Through Repetition
Let's say, for example, your business sells insurance, and that each type of insurance that you sell has its own web page. Now imagine that some of your important keywords like "auto insurance," "life insurance," and "renters insurance" are linked directly to a glossary page that contains these keywords, plus a short description of each. In this example, you've used your keywords as links, and repeated the keywords on the glossary page as well as on the product pages. All of this contributes to the credibility of your web site as Google sees it.
Thinking Like a Spider
A glossary page is inherently loaded with specific words and phrases that are relevant to your business. When a search engine "spider" visits your glossary, it sees these words and phrases and also sees that they are cross-linked and used throughout your other web pages as well. So what's a spider to think? It would probably think that your site is very important, relevant, and credible. And credible web sites can lead to more web site traffic, increased inbound links, and ultimately improve your search engine placements in Google. Now that's impressive!
About the Author
Lauren Hobson is the Editor of Biz Talk Newsletter and the Five Sparrows Marketing Blog from Five Sparrows, LLC. Read the most recent Five Sparrows articles on small business websites and marketing or subscribe at www.fivesparrows.com/biztalk. Copyright 2007