Business Blogging RSS Marketing online marketing

A-list blogger Toby Bloomberg is a leading light when it comes to business blog and social media strategy. Her popular Diva Marketing Blog is both an insightful marketing resource and a fun read. Through her company, Bloomberg Marketing, where she is president, Toby helps clients develop integrated marketing plans that utilize interactive tactics such as blogs, podcasts, video, and social media. Stephan Spencer, Netconcepts’ founder and president, had the pleasure of recently interviewing good friend Toby.

Listen to this 23 minute podcast, and hear what Toby had to say about blogs, social media strategy, and more…

 

 Interview with Toby Bloomberg [23:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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In this presentation to The Wisconsin Publishers’ Production Club’s (WPPC) Catalog Innovations meeting in January, Netconcepts’ Director of E-Business, Hershel Reese explains how Web 2.0 has great implications for catalogers and publishers online.

RSS feeds are changing the way people are consuming their media. You need to stay on top of this channel in order to remain competitive online.

Web 2.0 is also changing the way people interact with web properties. The user generated content phenomena is helping site owners to actively engage an audience and build community online.

This presentation will also discuss how one online publisher, www.dmnews.com, is leveraging the Web 2.0 tool kit.

Social Media Sites are emerging as a channel to be reckoned with online. If you are not participating in these communities you are missing opportunities for increased brand recognition and traffic to your sites.

You Will Discover:

• Best practices for RSS usage
• The benefits of user generated content
• Why tagging matters for website owners
• How industry leaders are leveraging Web 2.0
• How social media can bump up your traffic and impressions

This presentation was originally held on Tuesday, January 30, 2007 at The Country Springs Hotel in Pewaukee, WI.

 

 Interview with Hershel Reese and Web 2.0 [37:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Countrywide’s CreditDemystified.com Isn’t a Blog, or Is It?

Web development companies are increasingly recognizing the potential of WordPress as a content management system (CMS). CreditDemystified.com, an educational site developed for Countrywide Home Loans, illustrates how a corporate microsite can successfully be adapted to the blog platform.

The microsite, developed by Netconcepts, is designed to help visitors become credit savvy by providing simple answers to credit questions. Although the microsite’s platform is WordPress, CreditDemystified.com is far from a traditional blog.

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Mike McDonald of WebProNews interviewed our very own Stephan Spencer at SES in Chicago last month, in December 06. This 10 minute interview with Stephan and Lee Odden from TopRank discusses the credibility of Web 2.0 marketing tactics in the eyes of consumers.

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With tens of millions of users (but probably not the purported 100 million), MySpace.com is a force to be reckoned with. Especially when you consider that MySpace apparently drives more traffic to online retailers than MSN Search, according to some recent Hitwise data.

But MySpace is hard for many of us adults to get our heads around. It just doesn’t seem logical: How does it hold the interest of so many young people with short attention spans, despite the fact that the design/usability is so atrocious, the Web page creation platform is so frustratingly restrictive, and it’s chock full of so many profiles that are obviously fake, spam, duplicated, or abandoned?

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It’s 2007 already. If you are like most merchants, you’ve followed the advice of your NSO firm and completed some basic site optimization projects. You routinely spot check your Google indexation, and your rankings on 100 or so “trophy” keywords to show your executive team. And a look at your web analytics shows your natural search channel sales growing. So what’s wrong with this picture?
Let the Long Tail of natural search and KPI metrics strengthen your website through best practice SEO.

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The WordPress plugin “Replace by Referrer”, written by Charlie Evans, Sr. Developer at Netconcepts, was designed for a client who had advanced tracking capabilities in place but no way to utilize them. When prospect phone calls came in they wanted to know which search engine referred them. Additionally, they wanted to offer a different phone number displayed for each search engine. The Replace by Referrer plugin was developed to automatically replace defined text on pages and posts within content depending on search engine referrer.

If Google refers a visitor to your site, a custom phone number (specific to Google traffic) or a custom link (to a specific Google referred landing page) will be displayed to that visitor. The same technology can be applied to MSN (rebranded as Live Search), Yahoo, and all other search engines as well without having multiple pages for each search engine.

It is completely free and has been released as “open source” under the GPL license. So enjoy!

Features include:

• Allows you to replace specific text strings in pages and posts with search engine specific referrer content.
• Session identification specific to search engine. Replace by Referrer remembers which search engine the visitor came from throughout your entire site.
• And best of all, it’s FREE!

Download the plugin!

Installation instructions

1. Upload replace_by_referrer.php to your wp-content/plugins directory.
2. Activate the plugin.
3. Go to Plugin Editor
4. Click the “Replace by Referrer” file in the right hand column
5. Scroll down to “// comment about this replacement” (See example below)

   // comment about this replacement
'{test1}' => array(
    'google' => 'google1',
    'msn' => 'msn1',
    'yahoo' => 'yahoo1',
    'default' => 'default1',
)

   Replace google1, msn1, yahoo1, or default1 with any text string.

   For Example:
   // comment about this replacement
'{test1}' => array(
    'google' => '1-888-207-1109',
    'msn' => '<a href="http://www.netconcepts.com">netconcepts</a>',
    'yahoo' => '<img src="http://www.example_image_URL.com" />',
    'default' => 'This default text would appear in place of {test1} if the referrer is not Google, MSN, or Yahoo',
)

6. When you have everything configured, insert {test1} within a post or page where ever you want the specified text seen above to appear.

Note: In the example seen above, if Google were the referrer, {test1} would appear as “1-888-207-1109″, if MSN were the referrer, {test1} would appear as netconcepts, etc.

To-do

• Configure all the referrers and replacements via the WordPress options menu in the Admin, as opposed to hardcoded in the plugin.
• Modify the code so that you can serve the text string based on referring keyword, as opposed to referring by search engine.

Feedback?

Got a bug to report? Or an enhancement to recommend? Or perhaps even some code to submit for inclusion in the next release? Great! Share your feedback by commenting to this post.

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This session explores how specialized blog and feed (RSS/Atom) search engines gather content and provides tips on tapping into these growing forms of traffic.

Moderator:
Detlev Johnson, VP, Director of Consulting, Position Technologies

Speakers:
Amanda Watlington, Ph.D., APR, Searching for Profit
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts, LLC
Rick Klau, FeedBurner

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