Kathy Neudorf – ADOTAT

2011-12-26

Content Marketing for Businesses 2012

Publish or vanish. The New Year will be bringing with it an understanding of the necessary shift that is critical for businesses. Becoming an internet publisher will become top priority and will bypass website creation.

What Does This Mean?

By using content marketing, a business provides high quality information for the customer and in return, the business gets their attention.

Marketing is all about getting the attention of the customer and keeping that attention.

Content Marketing Institute says that 93% of professional marketers have already created or are in the process of creating content marketing as a large part of their programs for 2012.

The shift from advertising in print to using social media is becoming highly important to success. Social media channels, videos, and blogs are in and newspaper ads and brochures are on their way out. Websites are static in nature.

How to Create Content Marketing

Create content that is entertaining and informative to grab attention. A company needs to ensure it is meeting this standard.

Develop some editorial high standards for every material produced, including videos, social media channels, and blogs.

Be an ‘expert’ in everything to do with your content.

Focus on topics rather than focusing on your business. Customers like to learn about things and people, not a company. When you succeed, the customer will return when they need your service or product.

Be patient. Building a community takes time and consistency in quality.

Videos and blogs have seen the highest jump this past year, as a business-to-business marketing tool. Over the past two years, there has been a significant drop in marketing through magazines and newsletters.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, the marketing tools for content in 2011 were:

– 79% posting articles
– 74% in social media, minus blogs
– 65% for blogs
– 63% in e-newsletters
– 58% in case studies
– 56% for in-person events
– 52% in video
– 51% for white papers

The hottest trend now is content marketing, but it takes resources and much thought to create it right. It was only a few years ago that having a website was necessary, now organizations and companies must focus on internet publishing for success.

This is now the world in which the choice is either, to publish or vanish.

2011-12-21

Google Does a High-Fiver with Product Ads

Recently Google included a spot in Product Ads for five single products to show. Users now have more pricing details and information about the products. This new addition allows advertisers to highlight more than one item of their inventory at a time.

In a Product Listing Ad, it is now possible to show the merchant name, image, and price without the bother of extra keywords.

When a user does a search online that is associated to an item in one of the Google Merchant Center accounts, Google will display images of the product in the same ad space, with all relevant information.

The change is taking place in every country that has Product Ads. The United Kingdom, France, and Germany were added to the list this month. Google’s program was launched in U.S. beta and the studies are showing that users were much more likely to move their mouse to ‘click’ Product Ads than plain text ads.

The leads were also higher quality, making a higher ROI. There has been an increase to the tune of 600% for retail sites using Product listing Ads, compared to last year. The mega search engine is expecting even more productivity this holiday season.

What Product Ads Actually Do
Data is drawn from Google Merchant Center accounts by the Product Ads. These recent changes are becoming extremely beneficial to retailers and any that have not hooked into Google’s Product Ads just may find that they are missing out.

The recent changes are:

Retailers can now use their entire inventory simply by selecting the “All products” option when you set up the product target. This will ensure that your entire inventory can be shown.

Check your quality control with the data Quality tab at the Merchant Center. This allows for reviewing to see that the right amount of data for lining up the products for Google to display when someone does a search.

Any copy can be improved to be more appealing and draw users to your products. Bid opportunities can be maximized. This is a competitive time, especially during the holiday season. You can place your bids with more budget firepower to compete.

It is now so much easier for the retailer to display the entire inventory they have. Product advertising is much more engaging and attractive. Users are becoming more educated and this new and improved way to advertise at Google puts retailers in a better position to market successfully.

Cost per Action or CPA is how advertisers pay for the listings. This makes for low risk in finding a large audience. The risk is low because the advertiser only pays for that ad when someone clicks on the ad and then buys something from the site. The fact that someone gets to see the image and price of the product before they actually go to the site, is making them more likely to be in a buying mode when they arrive at the merchant retailer’s site.

High five for Google`s ingenious add on!

2011-12-202011-12-21

Criminal TypoSquatting on Rise

By registering misspelled web addresses, cyber thugs are seizing innocent victims Sophos, the IT security and data-protection company, is warning internet users to take care when they type in web addresses, especially the popular ones. By a subtle misspelling, users are taken to these cyber-bandits websites instead of the one intended.

This new form of criminal use is called typosquatting. They simply register a popular website with a slight misspelling that can go easily unnoticed by web surfers. These characters have found an ingenious way to bring traffic to their websites in the hopes of making money. Unfortunately many of these people are affiliates trying to promote programs and offers, and the methods are not only questionable, but potentially illegal.

A study by Sophos reveals that there is a vastly large ecosystem behind typosquatting and they like to target high profile domains. They rate an 86% possibility of people misspelling the web address for Apple’s homepage that unknowingly re-routes the user over to their own web pages.

738 URLs (5.1%) of the 14,495 that were misspelled led to adult or cybercrime sites. A worse- case scenario would be to misspell an address that could land you on an illegal website specifically designed to destroy your credentials or steal your identity. Senior technology consultant for Sophos says that the safest thing to do is to bookmark all your favourite websites.

Facebook is suing a man from Alpharetta Georgia for having a website that is far too much like the social media giant’s.

The charge laid against John Paul Souza for using a name that is very close to Facebook’s own is typosquatting.

The lawsuit states that when a user goes to the site that is owned by Souza, they see fonts, colors, and assorted designs that are falsely suggesting that the website is approved and connected to Facebook. The website was offering awards and prizes that never actually existed to complete surveys. Souza’s website was also full of offers and advertisements that asked for personal information. The suit also states that he was paid every time someone clicked on an ad, bought something or gave out personal information.

Facebook is claiming that Souza took intentional advantage to make things similar and his domain name is typosquatter efficient enough to drive traffic there.

Facebook wants the cancellation of Souza’s domain name or to transfer it to them for ownership, and among other requirements, award them damages and legal fees. At this time, Souza’s site is blocked from any misspelling travellers falling unknowingly into his trap.

2011-12-18

Focus Your Efforts Where the People Go

The best way to attract an audience for your affiliate marketing efforts is to go where the people are. In that case, start with the 10 most popular websites and work your way down from there.

According to Compete.com, the top 10 websites are not only capturing the most overall visitors, but those visitors are actually increasing the amount of time they spend there.

Where once search engine giant Yahoo! held the top spot, Facebook is now the hands-down winner when it comes to Internet visits. They capture a whopping 11 percent of all Internet traffic. Somewhat of a surprise is that Craigslist.com is number two, with 5 percent. Then it’s Google (5), Yahoo! (4) YouTube (4) and eBay (2).

A decade ago the top 10 Internet destinations captured about 31 percent of page views. The number has gone up and down these past ten years and now sits at 36 percent.

As an indicator of how much things have changed, in 2001 MySpace was the most visited site, capturing a full 12 percent of the available audience. Obviously those numbers weren’t enough to keep MySpace in business.

It is not enough to put your affiliate marketing efforts in the top 10 Internet sites. You also need to keep track of trends in terms of time spent on the site, interaction levels and be ready to shift your efforts when the list changes. If you want to go where the audience is you need to keep tabs on their location.

Nielsen reported that the average American spent more than 28 hours online in September. Most analysts expect that number to grow larger as the Internet grows. Your job as an affiliate marketer is to stay ahead of the trends and carve out a niche in the most popular (and most effective for your purposes) sectors of the Web.

2011-12-16

C-Level Executives Don’t Understand Performance Marketing

A recent IAB Affiliate Advertiser survey reveals that although more than three quarters of everyone who responded said their affiliate marketing spending had increased in the past, and nearly the same number expected their affiliate marketing spending to increase next year, more than half these same people said that knowledge of affiliate marketing at the CEO level is practically non-existent.

It seems strange to consider that a marketing tactic which is showing proven results, so much so that spending in this area – which is already high – and is expected to increase would pass mostly unnoticed by the head of the company.

This lack of knowledge at the CEO level is astounding, but not so uncommon. Often the head of a company sees only the big picture and not the minute details which helped paint that picture. They are more concerned with bottom line numbers, not so much with how those numbers got there, especially when the numbers as good.

As an affiliate marketer it is your job to not only produce results but make certain those results, and the efforts put forth to achieve them are recognized. This can be accomplished through the use of a detailed quarterly report delivered directly to the head of the company.

Affiliate marketing is performance marketing. That means unlike relationship marketing whose results are fluid and less definitive, you can produce real evidence for the work you are doing. There are hard and fast rules for effective affiliate marketing. There is no gray area in affiliate marketing. By its very nature it produces results or it doesn’t exist. These results can (and should) be tracked, recorded and delivered to the boss. This is the best way to keep her informed about what is happening; how the affiliate marketing work you are doing is producing real results and what efforts were undertaken to produce those results.

2011-12-15

Mommy Bloggers Gain Influence

It might seem old-fashioned but blogging is not to be overlooked as an effective affiliate marketing tool.

Facebook has more than 800 million users; Twitter and LinkedIn have more than 150 million each, but at last count, more than one billion people reportedly visit one or more blogs each month. In fact, as a demographic, moms are more likely to frequent blogs and make good use of the information they find there, than any other group.

Fleishman-Hillard and ModernMom.com recently surveyed more than 700 moms about their brand interaction and the results showed that blogs were their prime source of information. More than half of all moms who visit blogs reported the blog reviews they receive from other mommy bloggers are the most influential when it comes to the decisions they make about what brands they are going to buy.

Mommy bloggers, as a whole, wield more influence than Twitter or the variety of online communities devoted to reporting crucial information for other moms.

Brands trying to reach moms need to have a social presence, sure, but this should not be the end-all, be-all of their marketing tactics. With more than one billion people actively using blogs for their own consumer research purposes it seems likely you would have a much better chance of getting exposure for your product through a well-placed review at a popular blog.

Approaching a blogger for a product or site review is very simple. Every blogger worth contacting will have their email address in an obvious spot at their blog. Send them an introductory letter, offer them a sample of your product and ask that they write a review.

With the audience for blogs exceeding record levels, the time spent securing blog reviews is a valuable investment that just might score you the exposure and response you are looking for.

2011-12-09

Study Shows Everyone Loves Social Media

Market researchers StrongMail recently reported the results of a marketing survey which shows that 92 percent of businesses contacted indicated that they plan to increase or at least not decrease their marketing spending in 2012.

Given the economy is showing some signs of life after a few dark years, this might not come as a complete surprise to many. However, of the companies that plan to increase their spending of marketing dollars a full 60 percent say their increased spending will be for email marketing, and 55 percent said the increased spending will go toward social media marketing.

It is now possible to reach more than one billion people using just three social media networks, namely Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, there is simply no reason to wait for the opportunities to improve. In fact, never before have marketers been able to reach a larger audience with just a few simple tools.

Even a 30 second Super Bowl commercial, the most valuable televised airtime available, doesn’t reach even half that number of eyeballs. By comparison a well-written Facebook ad, well placed, can reach ten times that many people at a much lower cost.

Email marketing as well stands a much better chance at targeting the specific demographic you are aiming for without the hit-or-miss of a television commercial.

The fact that social media marketing is now within reach of nearly anyone with a brand, product or service to sell it stands to reason that more and more companies are looking to capitalize on this reach.

Research has shown that the trend toward more social media marketing will likely continue as the networks expand their reach and more companies grow accustomed to the new paradigm. So far many companies (remember, only half said they were looking to increase the use of social media marketing, which means the other half is not) are still too unsure of how to use social media marketing to get their message out; too afraid of what the use of social media might mean for their systems, their secrets; or how to mitigate the risks often associated with the use of social media marketing to take full advantage of it.

As more companies come to accept social media marketing as the new way to do business in the 21st Century, many others will be looking to capitalize on the next frontier in social media; mobile. Companies that understand social media marketing today will surely be in a better position to integrate mobile marketing strategies into their marketing plans tomorrow.

2011-12-092011-12-09

Stumbleupon Gets a New Look

Stumbleupon is making a play for more users by revamping its color scheme, debuting a new logo, a new “Channels” feature and improving the effectiveness of its stumble feature by adding a new “Stumblebar,” the crux of its business model.

Stumbleupon was an early leader in the area of web content flagging social media services. It allowed users to earmark certain web pages for other users to note. This was a different take on social media that proved popular with regular blog readers and people who spent more time reading on the Internet than playing virtual games.
Last summer Stumbleupon debuted a new feature, the “Explore Box” which allowed users to find specific content by doing a simple keyword search. Prior to that they could only search for a general interest topic, not a specific theme. The “Explore Box” proved very popular and new users began flocking to the site. This spurred Stumbleupon to continue innovating and improving their site, leading to the most recent changes.

The “Stumblebar” lets users more easily share the content they enjoy most with their friends via email, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Sharing is the basis of Stumbleupon, it is what brings users around to the site in the first place, so anything which facilitates sharing is likely to be a welcome feature.

Stumbleupon did not use a complicated algorithm to determine what improvements to make, they just listened to their existing users and responded. In today’s quickly changing social media world where changes come and go based on what often looks like a random decision or one obviously meant to increase revenue in a specific area, responding to user requests seems like a radical idea.
But it worked for Stumbleupon. The site recently eclipsed 20 million active users and has been climbing steadily. The new look is brighter, the new logo is more exciting and the entire site is more visually oriented than it was before, focusing on a broad range of popular search topics, like music, movies and humor.

Not everything is wholly original, however. Their new Stumbleupon “Channels” look very much like Facebook Pages in that they allow businesses or individuals to create brand specific sites within Stumbleupon that promote their featured or original content. But given the success of Facebook Pages it is no wonder others are mimicking the feature. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.

It was not so long ago that many people were predicting the imminent demise of content sharing web sites, chief among them, Stumbleupon. But this recent slate of changes has proven vastly more successful than anyone might have predicted, thus proving once again that what we think we can expect from the future of social media is nothing compared with what we will actually get.

Check out CPAWAY

2011-12-082011-12-09

New Changes at Virgin America

In an effort to mitigate the difficulties involved in switching to a new online reservation system, Virgin America has been making good use of social media. In fact, they have sent out more than 11,000 direct messages via Twitter to customers upset about problems encountered during the transition.

Prior to the switch they sent out emails to fliers, over staffed their customer service department first by 35 percent then by 45 percent and thinned their flight schedule. They have also been monitoring the social media networks for complaints (hence the 11,000 DM via Twitter) of which there have been many.

Unfortunately, despite all this preparation, monitoring and management, Virgin America has found itself on the receiving end of an outpouring of ill-will from its tech-savvy customers who cannot seem to grasp why they are suddenly experiencing so many difficulties from the airline which is known for having re-invented air travel.

The fact is the reservation system change-over is a once in a lifetime event for an airline and no small thing. It represents a major change in the way Virgin America reservations are conducted online. The new system, called Sabre, is the industry-standard for travel reservations network. It started in the 1960’s and has seen numerous evolutions, some better than others. The Virgin America migration is hardly an earth-shattering move, or a signal that the airline is giving up on its philosophy of originality and joining the “good ol’ boys” network. Just the opposite.

Virgin America hopes the new system will represent a smoother overall experience for fliers once all the bugs have been worked out. The difficulty lies not in the end result they are hoping for but in getting from here to there without being abandoned by the very loyal customers they are hoping to improve service for. So far results have been mostly negative as angry fliers have taken to the social media landscape to complain fervently about the problems they are having with the new reservation system. As compensation the airline is waiving change and cancellation fees for passengers who experience trouble and some members of the airline’s frequent flier program who traveled during the switch-over and experienced problems received an email apology from the airline’s CEO and 5,000 bonus points.

How much the switch has hurt their business is still unknown, and still too early to tell. In the end it seems likely customers will find the things they love about Virgin America – Wi-Fi on all flights, power outlets at every seat and more leg room – far outweigh the inconvenience they experienced while the new reservation system came online.

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