How would your job (or strategy) change if they cured cancer tomorrow? AIDS? Heart Disease? What if everyone in the world had access to a computer and the internet? What if the government outlawed some portion of your business? What if Google just disappeared? What if everyone had the same amount of money? Would they still need your products? Would they still use your services? How would you survive?
Originally posted January 19, 2009
Developing your web site for mobile devices can be confusing. What screen size should you optimize for? What device is the most popular? What content do you keep in, what do you remove? There are many decisions to make, but allow me to make one suggestion. Save yourself some heartache and instead of using a separate domain such as a .mobi version, use a subdomain such as m.yourdomain.com or www.yourdomain.com/mobile. Using a subdomain keeps your brand strong, reduces customer confusion and better optimizes your site for search engines.
Additional Resources:
Mobile Plugins for WordPress – easily make your site viewable on mobile devices.Setting up a Google Analytics filter to track mobile visitors to your site
Designing for the Mobile Web
Originally posted January 15, 2009
As budgets get tighter, take 20 minutes today to update your paid search negative keywords. Negative keywords are those irrelevant or low converting keywords that you add to a pay-per-click campaign which tell the ad system not to show your ad when that particular keyword appears in a search.
To start, do some research for new negative and low-performing keywords through Google’s keyword tool or your web analytics data. Add your findings to your already established campaigns and adgroups.
Adding additional negative keywords optimizes and streamlines your campaigns’ effectiveness. They increases your quality score, improves your click-thru and conversion rates.
Originally posted Jan 10, 2009
Another brilliant online marketing campaign courtesy of Burger King. Burger King Sacrifice wants you to ‘unfriend’ 10 people on facebook in exchange for a Whopper. (http://www.whoppersacrifice.com/)
When you usually remove someone from your friends on facebook they are not typically notified. Unfriend them via Burger King’s application and it notifies your ex-friends that they have been delisted. To add insult to injury, it also reveals that it only took a free Whopper coupon to persuade you to make that decision. I’m lovin’ it….err, is that McDonalds?
Courtesy of @rachiley
Originally posted December 30, 2008
Everyone is making their 2009 online predictions these days, so I’d thought I’d throw my hat in the ring. Here are my online marketing and social media predictions for the new year. Tell me what you think will happen in the comments below. PS – I’ve made it super easy to comment. You can now login using your Facebook profile. No fuss, no mess.
1. Twitter finds a way to make money. I don’t think this will be through advertising. I envision a subscription model based exclusive content and features. This could be in the form of storage for music and photos or the ability to record and host videos.
2. Google will make a large acquisition of a TV network which will allow them to (1) further blur the lines between the different types of media we consume and (2) sell a larger market of TV ads on an auction basis.
3. Social networks become a thing of the past…..kinda. The web itself becomes a social network as sites take the first step with integrating Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect. Content will no longer live behind the walled gardens of Facebook and MySpace. I think Google will be the first to make significant strides in this direction.
4. Media companies will continue to pump out free content, but will look beyond advertising as a business model. They will tie-in more exclusive deals with content distributors, makers and services.
5. The death of the banner ad. As online budgets shrink, more and more companies will move away from the typical banner ad and move to better integrate advertisements as content. Companies will work to expand customer ‘experiences’ over simply advertising.
6. More advertisers will begin to negotiate on a cost-per-action basis (where the advertiser pays for each specified action linked to the advertisement such as a purchase or form submission) rather than the traditional CPM or CPC model.
7. Grainy, low-quality web video will finally see its demise. 2009 will be the year of HD web video.
8. YouTube becomes the new Google. Users (beginning with the younger crowd) will start their queries at YouTube instead of a traditional search engine. Advertisers will shift funds to this channel.
9. Hot job trend will be for companies to hire community managers more often as voices for their brand. People like Matt Cutts , Jerimiah Owyang or Dave Delaney will be the passionate individuals employed to help evangelize brands and serve as the main community figurehead. Smart organizations will realize that social media efforts come from all areas of the organization.
10. As more smart phones such as the iPhone, G1 and Blackberry enter the market, Google will work to control the platforms and mechanisms we use to surf the mobile web. This will lead to Google leading and controlling the mobile advertising market. Expect a big announcement in terms of mobile advertising before June.
11. As more advertisers shift budgets online, the PPC market becomes very crowded. Increased competition over the same keywords mean that companies will need to work on capitalizing (and customizing) every click and customer interaction. Marketers that fail to do this will see click cost and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) begin to erode and eat away their once stable profits.
12. Google project that fails in 2009: Knol
13. Second Life use plummets
