How do you make a solid business case for blogging for marketing? What about managing upper management’s expectations on the outcome? Should you hire a professional blogger to write your company blog?
Continue reading »Spread the word: 
Web Development Web Marketing Portfolio
Thought Leaders on Marketing Blogs - Part 1
Traditional Vehicle, New Channel - Internet Word of Mouth Marketing
Strategic Branding — Auckland, New Zealand
- Where consumers gather and messages propagate: personal emails, discussion forums, chat rooms, blogs, RSS feeds, wikis and search engines.
- How to harness “word of mouse” to enhance existing relationship marketing programmes and your brand.
- Tips for facilitating the spread of viral messages about your brand.
- Who are the “sneezers” who will spread your viral message?
- Handling input and feedback from your consumers, the public, the media and analysts.
- Success stories and flops: what’s worked and what hasn’t.
- How can Internet word of mouth enhance existing relationship marketing programmes and your brand?
Spread the word:
Move over Blogs: Here come Podcasts
Think what audio books on tape did for the road warrior—turning our cars and airplane seats into mobile universities. Podcasting has the same capacity to change the way we learn and take in new information.
Continue reading »Spread the word:
New eyetracking study: where Google searchers look and click
I found the eyetracking study from Enquiro and Did-It unveiled last week at Search Engine Strategies and covered in Search Day fascinating. The aggregate heat map shown on the right (larger version here) shows where participants focused their eyes (and their attention) the most. As you can see, the first listing not only drew the most attention; the full listing was read more fully from left to right, than other listings.
Visibility drops the further down the search results you go, and clickthroughs drop even more markedly (as you can see from the graphs below). This got me thinking about Zipf’s Law. Zipf’s Law is applicable to Top Ten Lists, as Seth Godin explains, perhaps Zipf’s Law might be applicable to the SERPs (search engine results pages) too? (In general terms, Zipf’s Law states that being #1 is much, much better than being #2 which is much, much better than being #3 and so on. So dominating a Top 10 list is critical.) Although these graphs don’t follow Zipf’s Law exactly, nonetheless given this data I’d consider it foolish to be complacent if your search listings are not at the very top of the SERPs.
What is it about searchers that makes them so blind to relevant results further down the page? Is this due to the “implied endorsement” effect, where searchers tend to simply trust Google to point them to the right thing? Or is it just the way humans are wired, to make snap decisions, as Malcolm Gladwell insightfully explains in his new book, Blink? According to the study, 72% of searchers click on the first link of interest, whereas 25.5% read all listings first, then decide. My guess is that both effects (”implied endorsement” and “rapid cognition”) play a role in searcher behavior.
A few other important take-aways from the study:
- 6/7 (85%) of searchers click on natural (”organic”) results (not 60/40 as the search engines and PPC (pay-per-click) vendors would have you believe).
- The top 4 sponsored slots are equivalent in views to being ranked at #7 - #10 natural.
- (corollary to #2): This means if you need to make a business case for natural search, then (assuming you can attain at least #3 rank in natural for the same keywords you bid on) natural search could be worth two to three times your PPC results.
In all, a superb research study. Great job Did-It, Enquiro, and EyeTools!
Spread the word:
AntiqueHardware.com
This ecommerce site offers a range of items from cabinet hardware to telephone booths and from rubber duckies to magnificent clawfoot bathtubs. AntiqueHardware.com offers original restored antiques as well as flawless replica pieces perfect for any home or office. Visitors are greeted with their own account pages and an easily navigated shopping cart experience.
[ database | client admin cms | SEO ]
Visit The Site: Antique Hardware
LEMcellguard.com
A LEM USA site, Lemcellguard.com promotes LEM’s battery monitoring technology in a search engine friendly and easily navigated site. Information rich, this site was built to serve LEM’s customers with extensive insight into LEM battery monitoring sensors. Content that would then transalte into search engine visibility because search engine optimal linking and code.
[ database | client admin cms | SEO ]
Visit The Site: LEMcellguard.com
MyChurchLoan.com
A microsite of the Evangelical Christian Union (ECCU), dedicated to generating loan inquiries from churches specifically. Being a search engine optimized website, the site generates qualified prospects from natural search listings. This content rich website provides an easy to fill in inquiry form whilst asking the inquirer if they would like to join the ‘More Than Money’ electronic newsletter offering educational articles on managing and growing ministries.
[ SEO ]
Visit The Site: MyChurchLoan.com
Audience Development and the Internet
Circulation and the Internet: Co-hosted by American Business Media and National Trade Circulation Foundation, Inc. — New York City
- The benefit of the internet to your circulation/audience development efforts, and how important it is to your company
- How to use email to renew or acquire new subscribers
- E-mail tests - what’s working, what’s not working
- Search engine marketing - what are you using and how is it working
- Banner ads - are they working, what have you changed, where do you have them
- How has can spam effected your subscription efforts? How has it effected your list rental activities? How has it effected your use of outside lists for subscription promotion?
- Web agents - are they still working?
- Blogs - are they a source of names? How can we get subscription information onto a blog?
- Email files - do you have separate files for circulation, web casts, eNL, or a combined database for all? Advantages and disadvantages for each.
Gloria Adams, Pennwell - Moderator
Laura Wilson, NEJM - Panelist
Sean Fulton, GCN Publishing - Panelist
Brian Klais, Netconcepts - Panelist
Spread the word:
Marketing Association
The Marketing Association, formerly the New Zealand DMA, is an industry body serving New Zealand marketers with professional development, networking, advocacy, government lobbying, and more.
Being on the leading edge of marketing in New Zealand, the organisation needed a website that conveyed that they understood the evolving model of the Web from passive publishing to participatory conversations. So the site was redesigned to have a very bloggy feel to it. Functionality includes a banner ad management system, content management system, and a members-only area.
[ database | client admin cms | SEO ]
Visit The Site: Marketing Association NZ
BVI Holiday
BVIholiday.com wanted to promote luxury motor yachts they have available for charter in the British Virgin Islands. Starting with keyword research, we created a site around the words people use to find Caribbean charter boats and, more specifically, BVI charter holidays. Offering a compelling introduction to the luxurious boats and charter inquiry functionality, this site allows our client to promote their boats to a prequalified audience of charter prospects.
[ database | client admin cms | SEO ]
Visit the Site: BVI Holiday
Related tags
Newsletter
Contact Us
HEADQUARTERS
2820 Walton Commons West, Suite 123
Madison, WI 53718 USA
Phone: (608) 285-6600
Toll-free: 888 207-1109
REGIONAL OFFICE
36 Anzac Rd., Browns Bay
Auckland, New Zealand
Phone: (+64) 9 476-4601
infodesk@netconcepts.com