I am always looking at new ways to advertise or new places to advertise. Recently I have been playing around with the social networks, mainly Facebook, and I have had either great success or almost no success per campaign, it has been a real feast or famine with my ads on this medium.
My point is that these type of media buying opportunities are really worth checking into, just do some leg work and testing to see if they will perform for you before making any serious commitment. The excerpt below, from Tessa Wegert’s article, was very interesting to me and I wanted to share it with you.
Let’s first acknowledge that Facebook’s advertising business model as it currently stands is something astonishing to behold. Although the site has encountered some resistance with regard to its more unorthodox offerings, nobody can deny that Facebook has done some groundbreaking things by harnessing the power of CGM (define) and connecting consumers with advertisers through their peers.
This point is essential to Facebook advertisers. Marketers who consider Facebook for an ad buy recognize the importance of a consumer’s social circle not just to her life, but also to the purchasing decisions that she makes. Good old-fashioned word of mouth has long been known to influence everything from one’s opinion of a product or brand to one’s interest in seeing a new film or eating at a particular restaurant. Facebook’s "social ads" leverage the actions and interests of Facebook users for advertising purposes.
I found this video on YouTube and it made me smile so figured I would pass it along. Pat close attention because it’s funny and true, you won’t get top organic listing for $19.95 or even $49.95, so don’t get ripped of using some bogus SEO link building service. Good SEO take time and a lot of hard work, realize that, accept that, and build your strategy around that fact and you’ve won half the fight already.
Another great article on email marketing and getting your email past the obstacles and into the Inbox. Stefan Pollard from ClickZ covers authentication and using branding to get not get caught in the spam traps. Good article and hope you enjoy it.
Getting your email opened and read by your recipients is like trying to get into the most exclusive club in town.
Having your name on the VIP list (your recipient’s address book or Safe Sender’s list) is the best way to get ushered past the velvet rope. If it’s not there, you’ll have to prove yourself to two tough bouncers, who are there to keep the riffraff out.
If neither bouncer recognizes you right away, you’ll either get turned away (blocked) or sent to cool your heels in the rope line (the junk folder).
For the past few months I have taken an active interest in Twitter, and I constantly swing back and forth from loving what it can do and what it’s becoming, to hating what it does and what it’s becoming. Yeah I know it’s confusing, so let me explain further.
For those of you who don’t know Twitter, and have no idea what a tweet is, let me explain the basics. Twitter is a micro blogging service, where you post entries up to 140 characters per post. These tiny blog posts are called tweets, and the web is exploding with tweets and people talking about tweeting on Twitter. It’s a powerful medium because it’s easy to get lots of people following you in a short period of time. I currently have 518 followers and have done very little to promote myself, so just imagine the audience reach of someone who invests a lot of time building their Twitter network.
Some basic user information; Twitter is fast becoming one of the largest social networking sites and with a very high adoption rate, it also has a very bad retention rate, which tells me people either get it or they don’t. Best way to really get to know what Twitter is all about is clicking the image above and open a free account.
Now that everyone has an idea what twitter is, let me explain my statement above. I love what it can do, short messages tell the world what you’re doing, what your business is doing, or you can connect via real time conversations with other twitter users. I love that it’s becoming an easy to use medium of communication between people, and since it has the 140 characters per post limit, it means people are forced to be succinct and to the point.
I also love the fact that it’s becoming a way to not only let people connect but organizations are learning to harness this medium to react and respond very quickly to their user base and customers. If you’re interested in seeing how one company has taken Twitter to the next level in their marketing and customer service then click here for a great article on what Zappos is doing, or better yet visit the Zappos.com Twitter page for yourself.
Now for the things I hate about twitter! I often find trivial short posts that offer no value to anyone, reading tweets like “I just lost my keys”, “Getting ready to go to wal-mart”, and the endless spam of ancient quotes are just short bursts of my life I will never get back. I find this useless drivel a waste of space and it drives me nuts sometimes.
I also hate that twitter is becoming a huge spam machine for repetitive marketing slogans and calls to action, without any value. I chalk this spam chatter up to the price I pay to be connected via this great service. Sometimes it seems overwhelming and that no one is listening, but the truth is that more than 6 million people are out their connecting and when I remember that I fall in love with Twitter all over again.
I offer you this advice, if you decide to make Twitter a component in your internet marketing strategy, learn to use it in such a way as to add value to your organization and your customers. You will find it has great potential, and the whole point of using it as a marketing tool is to spread the love, not the hate! So good luck and don’t forget to follow me on at http://twitter.com/OMPundit
Sometime this week I will be posting about how to track the success of using Twitter, so check back for another Twitter post and all the details.
I found this awesome article, by MsaNkadI, this morning on iShift. If you interested in doing SEO yourself but don’t know where to start, other than here of course, then this article is great place to begin. The excerpt below is just the introduction but the information that follows is well worth the 10 minutes of read time.
Wouldn’t it be pointless to open a pizza shop which nobody knows about? You know your pizzas are good, the ambiance is great, and people will love it when they visit your place; but informing people of its existence is a must. In today’s cut throat competition, advertising is the key to success for any business. Now think about your online business/website; if your site doesn’t get any traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN there is very little chance that people would come to know of its existence.
This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques come in. They will help you to get more people to your website through search engine hits. The best thing about SEO is that you don’t need to be a professional to do it. What you do need is hard work, patience and the willingness to learn. Let me begin by telling you why you should bother about putting in your time to learn SEO.
If you worry about SEO at all, one of the easiest and best practices is to make sure every image on your site is using keyword rich attributes that are also useful and easily understood by your visitors. This often will require some additional time spent thinking how to creatively say something that is natural and keyword laden, but it’s a smart time investment in your SEO strategy.
