Feb 7, 2010 /
Acaba de lanzar nuevas páginas para Michael Foods en México
Acaba de lanzar nuevas páginas para Michael Foods para promover los productos de huevo disponible en México. La información está disponible en Inglés y Español y el motor de búsqueda optimizado (SEO) para los huevos revueltos, huevos enteros, las yemas y claras de huevo y Hytex.
Just launched new pages for Michael Foods to promote egg products available in Mexico. Information is available in English and Spanish and search engine optimized (SEO) for scrambled eggs, whole eggs, yolks and egg whites and Hytex.
Feb 3, 2010 / / Brand Marketing
Successful Brands Satisfy Basic Desires
Brian Martin's article in Ad Age is a primer on what make successful brands. "The most-successful brands don't focus on what we need; they focus on what we want." So according to Brian, what do people want, exactly?
- To feel safe and secure.
- To feel comfortable.
- To be cared for and connected to others. (think social networking
- To be desired by others.
- To be free to do what we want.
- To grow and become more.
- To serve others and give back.
- To be surprised and excited.
- To believe there is a higher purpose.
- To feel that they matter.
Successful Brands Do a Good Job of Satisfying People's 10 Basic Desires" by Brian Martin
Click on the image to enlarge it. The image illustrates Maslow's hierarchy of needs which provides an understanding of what motivates consumers to interact with a brand. Hmmm... similar.
Jan 25, 2010 / / Search Engine Marketing
SEO Tip - Separate Web Sites for Different Parts Of A Business?
Would it be better to create a separate website for each part of a business, ie: networking, membership, boutique, or would it be better to build everything new under the same Web site?
There's just no one answer for every situation. It depends on your objective and target audience.
For reputation management you want multiple Web sites appearing in search engines to push the "bad stuff" off the first page of results. This can be accomplished by using different sub-domains for each section of a site, or with separate domains for a corporate site, brand marketing site(s), store site and/or blog. Add various social media sites including Twitter and Facebook and throw in some directory profiles including Wikipedia and the first page is filled with "good stuff".
If you have distinctively different audiences for products under the same brand then you need different sites for usability purposes. The look and feel of a consumer focused site may need to be different from the commercially targeted site and also from the investor site.
For globalization and localization you should consider using different country code top-level domains (ccTLD). If research finds that your customers prefer to buy local or if your product line is very different by country then distinctly different sites are warranted. If a searcher specifies "Pages in Mexico" then the ccTLD is the best way for the search engine to filter the results. Of course you can always use Webmaster Tools to tell Google that your dot com sub-directory is country specific but the results don’t look local to your customer.
So determine…
- your objective
- your target audience(s)
- tactics that will move each target audience toward your objective
Jan 21, 2010 / / Social Media Marketing
Marketers Investing Heavily in Social Media in 2010
The seventh annual survey on marketing investments was released today by integrated marketing services provider Alterian.
The survey covered 1068 marketing professionals - 98% in North America and Europe and 2% in Asia Pacific and other regions.
Results highlights
- 66 percent of respondents will be investing in social media marketing (SMM) in 2010.
- Amoung those planning to invest, 40 percent said they would be shifting more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget towards funding their SMM activities.
- More than a third (36 percent) of respondents are investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools.
- Nearly half of respondents (42%) said they don’t currently incorporate clickstream and web analytics data into their customer and e-mail database.
- The research also found that over half of respondents (51 percent) are placing a ‘fair’ or ‘significant’ amount of effort on moving from a campaign-centric direct marketing model towards multichannel customer engagement – in fact only 7 percent make no effort at all.
Jan 19, 2010 / / Social Media Marketing
Twitter Growth Declining
Today Hubspot released its third State of the Twittersphere report, which shows a significant decline in the growth of Twitter users but also indicates the average Twitter user is more engaged.
- Twitter user growth peaked at 13% in March 2009 by October it was down to 3.5%
- Traffic to Twitter.com has declined but may be an indication that more people are using third-party applications such as TweetDeck
- Today the average Twitter account has 300 followers; in July, it had 70
- The average account now follows 173 accounts; in July it was only following 47
- The average account today has posted 420 updates; in July that number was 119
- Peak tweeting time is in the evening between 10 and 11pm
- The highest usage days for Twitter are Thursday and Friday. The lowest usage is on the weekend.
Download the full January 2010 report. Or download the July 2009 and December 2008 reports.
Jan 16, 2010 / / Google, Search
How Old Is That Web Page?
One method of for determining the last modified date uses Javascript. Type javascript:alert(document.lastModified) into the address bar and press Enter. A pop-up window will appear with the date and time of the page's last update.
Unfortunately this does not work if the page has any dynamic elements that automaticly update on page load. Many modern pages are dynamic but for the true cobwebs this function will work.
Another way to filter out older Web pages is on Google.com. Under "Show options" you can choose to filter results as follows:
- Latest
- Past 24 hours
- Past week
- Past year
- Specific date range
If you search in the "Past 24 hours" the results will display how many hours ago the page was found by Google. Of course this is accurate only for the major sites that are frequently indexed and can be very helpful when searching for current events.
This functionality can also be very useful for finding recent changes to competitor sites or for monitoring timely posting by your own content producers.
Jan 9, 2010 / / Mobile
Mobile Web Use Small But Growing
Web traffic from mobile devices remains low with 1.3% of all page views in December for North America. But a new study by Quantcast found that the share of Web traffic attributed to mobile devices has increased 110% in North America and 148% globally in the past year.
Quantcast suggests that the accelerating development of devices, operating systems and browsers is driving the growth.
While Apple's iPod has a dominant 60% share of mobile page views this is being eroded by emerging competitors in the smartphone market. The Motorola Droid captured almost 4% share in its first full month, overtaking the Palm Pre. The Droid has also helped Google's Android operating system surpass the BlackBerry OS with a 12% share of North American mobile Web traffic.
Quantcast is predicting that mobile's share of page views in North America will increase to 2.3% in 2010. Globally, mobile's share will increase from 0.95% to over 1.8%. A host of new devices from manufacturers Motorola, HTC and BlackBerry will fuel that growth this year.
So Where Do Mobile Users Go?
According to the Nielsen Company, Google Search was the top mobile property in December:
- Google Search - 28 million unique visitors
- Yahoo Mail - 23 million,
- Facebook - 19 million.
- Gmail - 18 million
- Weather Channel - 14 million
Watch for Google search to gain even more as their efforts to provide search suggestions based on location and click-to-call mobile ads mature and gain acceptance.
Jan 6, 2010 / / Brand Marketing, Search Engine Optimization
SEO Tip - No Registration Marks ® in Page Titles
Special characters are not always supported in browser window title bars and they can appear poorly in search engine results.
The last example above from the Lowes site can be blamed on a poor content management system that allowed the error through. Below is an example of another page on the same site where the registration mark is displayed correctly in the search results.
The point is why risk hurting your search engine click throughs with a poorly displayed result when it isn't necessary?
Registration marks are not legally required in page titles. For example none of the major companies place registration marks in title tags on their sites. See trademark guidelines at Microsoft and IBM.
A general best practice for offline communications is that registration marks should appear in the first or most prominent usage of the mark. Typically a Web site will cover all the trademarks in a legal statement on the site. Again, see Microsoft and IBM for examples of best practices.
While we're talking about marks, be sure that you understand the differences between ®, ™ and ℠. This should be detailed in your Web Site Style Guidelines and/or Brand Guidelines:
The registered trademark symbol, designated by ® (a circled R) is a symbol used to provide notice that the preceding mark is a trademark or service mark that has been registered with a national trademark office. Trademarks not so registered are instead marked with the trademark symbol ™, while unregistered service marks are marked with the service mark symbol ℠. The proper manner to display these symbols is immediately following the mark in superscript style.
Jan 3, 2010 / / Domains, Search Engine Marketing
SEO Tip - Benefiting From Multiple Domains
How can you best utilize multiple domains to benefit your main Web site?
For example, you have a Web site called colorfulanimals.com. You have also collected domains that each describe a different parts of your business that appeal to different people. They could be greendogs.com, redcats.com and bluebirds.com.
How can you best use these domains to benefit your main site without diluting your SEO values or confusing your target audience?
If you want to avoid the time and expense of creating distinctly different sites for each domain - with no duplicate content - then use 301 permanent redirects. The redirects should point each domain to the appropriate section of your main site.
These targeted keyword rich domains can then be used for off site promotion:
- links in appropriate directories
- links in paid search ads
- links in social media postings
- links in online yellow pages
- links in print ads
Dec 30, 2009 / / Social Media Marketing
Can Social Media Help Small Biz?
Lead generation/new customer aquistion should be the top business benefit derived from social media for small businesses. But in a survey from Citibank, the majority of small-business executives found social networks no good for expanding their business.
But contrast this with the “Small Business Marketing Forecast 2010” from Ad-ology - lead generation is the biggest benefit of social networking for US small businesses, cited by one-half of respondents. Social networks were also considered a good way to keep up with the industry and monitor online chatter about the business.
Small businesses rated Facebook the most beneficial social networking site, with one-third of respondents reporting it was at least somewhat helpful. It was also the social network most likely to be used. Use of LinkedIn was less common, but the business-oriented site was claimed as beneficial by 21% of small businesses, compared with 19% that said the same of Twitter.
While awareness of social media is high among small businesses, education is still needed. Nearly one-half of respondents wished they knew more about the channel, and some of the biggest obstacles to doing more with social networking included a lack of knowledge.
The No 1. roadblock, however, was the perception that “our customers do not use social networks,” claimed by 31% of small businesses. Nearly as many complained that they did not have the time or staff available to do a good job with social network marketing. I'm sure this is true. So what would be the ROI if they outsourced this activity to a profressional? Is anyone willing to be paid based on performance? How would performance be measured?
Dec 20, 2009 / / Social Media Marketing
Social Media Facts: Blogs
Facts:
- In the past 24 hours, 54,300,000 pages on Blogspot.com were created or modified.
- In the past 24 hours, 21,300,000 pages on Wordpress.com were created or modified.
- There are 112 million blogs, with 120,000 new ones appearing each day.
Businesses can post stories that might not warrant posting in the News Release section of the main Web site i.e. local news and events. They can link to good publicity on other sites. All of these increase the chance of your pages showing up in the search engines.
Dec 19, 2009 / / Social Media Marketing
Social Media Facts: YouTube
Facts:
- In the past 24 hours there were 507,000,000 pages created or modified on YouTube
- YouTube will serve 75 billion video streams to 375 million unique visitors in 2009
- Every minute, ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
- User base is broad in age range, 18-55, evenly divided between males and females, and spanning all geographies.
- Fifty-one percent of users go to YouTube weekly or more often
Dec 14, 2009 / / Social Media Marketing
Social Media Facts: Facebook
Facts:
- In the past 24 hours 262,000,000 pages on Facebook were created or modified.
- More than 250 million active users
- More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day
- More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college
- The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older
- About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States
Some media campaigns will direct customers to a Facebook page rather than the main Web site. This can dilute the audience base. One excuse for doing this is that Facebook is often easier to update than the Web site. Another excuse is that the main site does not have Web 2.0 capabilities. Hmmm... seems like a poor content management system (CMS) selection.
Dec 12, 2009 / / Social Media Marketing
Social Media Facts: Twitter
Facts:
- In the past 24 hours, 68,900,000 pages were either created or modified on Twitter
- 72.5% of the 44 million Twitter users joined during the first five months of 2009
- 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people
- More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.
- There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
- Twitter age demographic (% of total) Ages: 25-34 - 20%, 35-49 - 42%, 55+ - 17%
Individuals, customers, can use Twitter to tell a company, or anyone else, what they think about your product or service. It could be that they’ve had a great, or disappointing, experience with your business. It can also be used to suggest product ideas and to learn about great offers.
Twitter needs to make changes soon or slowly decline in popularity. They need to be profitable to fund their growth and enhancements. They either need more robust data relationships, an advertising model, or a premium subscription model. They will likely be bought by someone who understands how to do all three.
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