Well I have got to the end of this challenge and posted 30 posts in 30 days. What a wonderful way to motivate us to write hopefully interesting posts and work in a community of writers and professionals that care and share.
I hope to continue every other day with this blog and post useful ideas and content to my readers . I thank both Dr Jeanette Cates and Connie Ragen Green for encouraging me and 240 or so others to participate in this modified skinner box experiment. I will not push the handle to get my emotional reward for completion but I will remember the habits that these two educators and mentors have instilled.
I am interested in my readers and their thoughts on the topics I have covered over the last thirty days. What topics interest you and which ones would you like to see more of? Leave a comment or suggestion and I will follow your desires, provided they are awful and decent.):
I note that a lot of the participants also exceeded the targets and I congratulate them for it. I have learned through this that simple act of having a writing ritual has help me with the organization and direction of my business which is helping small businesses and professionals get their message out and grow their business.Practice does make perfect and all marketers can always use more practice.
Listening is also as important as writing to a marketer, by doing your basic research and finding useful information that can help others we will grow ourselves and our businesses while having fun along the way.
I do hope that we can continue to connect with the MOM group and be of assistance to others going forward
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In an earlier post I described remarketing like getting a second kick at the can. In fact it can be a much more creative exercise when you are using PPC. The principle is simple, remarketing allows you to show ads to users who have previously been on your site.
You now have a way to match the right message to the exact people you may have been targeting in the first place but did not complete the desired action.
To make this concept work you tag each page that had a particular service or product on it. So if you were selling golf drivers you would put a tag or a pixel on all the pages on your site that offered golf drivers. This tag would then “cookie” the visitor for a period of time. Then you would create an Adwords campaign to show highly targetted messages for drivers or other golf supplies of your choice to visitors as they browse sites through the Google Display Network.
You may test keyword variables of your choice in a remarketing campaign by defining the audiences you want the ad to display for. See the Google Video below.
The Content Network delivers the ad that is appropriate when the user’s web browser with the tag cookied in visits a site. The variations can also be driven by tagging various parts of your site or shopping cart pages. Different ad variations could be delivered to different users based on a specific set of criteria. You can also retarget buyers who did purchas from you with a complementary product within a fixed period such as 21 days after the initial purchase of “A” show an ad for ‘B”. This is much like adding a different autoresponder message to those who did opt-in but did not purchase, or giving those that visited your opt-in page a second chance.
Brad Geddes of bgTheory , has two excellent detailed guides I can recommend. One is on the bgTheory blog titled Google Adwords Remarketing Campaigns and another on Search Engine Land Everyone Deserves a Second Chance:Using Remarketing to Reach Abandoned Shoppers.
The evolution of social networking has changed the world of Marketing forever.
If you are one of my regular readers, you will know that I have been writing about social media and books about it a lot in the last year. Perhaps because social networking is changing some of the established players in marketing or because it can be the most cost effective ways to promote your brand or build awareness and engage people on your values, the way you operate and why they might want to “Like” you in Facebook terms or be your friend in any number of social playgrounds. The author of the book Socialnomics, Erik Qualman has a You Tube Video which I have embedded below that outlines the massive channel change that is occurring. This video is an update with newer statistics on an earlier video which showed up on YouTube in 2009. It had over 2 Million views.
The next video filmed 2 weeks ago at TedXLansing continues on the subject:
The concept of social media being the engine of social commerce is not far away. As Qualman says we will have automated local search and QR codes to provide instantaneous discussion right at the point of sale linked to your friends opinions. His example of the reach and power of Social Media is clearly outlined with the You Tube video by the Sons of Maxwell musical group in “United Breaks Guitars” which has had close to 8.7 million views at the time I am writing this post.
Businesses that are not participating and listening to what is out there are acting at their own peril. Ignore the hype, embrace the channel change. It is of little wonder the number of new books and videos appearing today. If you are interested in learning more about the many no-cost ways you can use Social Media for your business or practice you can read Power Friending by my friend AmberMac who will give you a quick education on listening and acting to grow your business. I look forward to your questions and comments . Join the conversation below and let me know what your thoughts are.
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- Fortune 100 Companies’ Social Media Savvy (STATS) (huffingtonpost.com)
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- FIR Interview: New Media Author and Speaker Amber Mac (nevillehobson.com)
- How YouTube made superstars out of everyday people (guardian.co.uk)
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The modern day newsroom may not be the same as it used to be. Business promotion is in the same boat.
The growth of citizen journalism and self-produced video is exponential. You Tube is the most popular place to put your videos to provide news and useful information coupled with fantastic search opportunities. And it all can be done with a camera as simple as the Flip.
Even main stream media reporters could use little Flip cameras in case they catch a scoop. One rabbi certainly did last week when he caught Helen Thomas, a media icon, and eldest working member of the White House Press Corps and her controversial remarks about Israel that led to her retirement. The rabbi who filmed her remarks and put them on the Web did so with a Flip cam?
If you want to use video you should make sure it looks professional, if you are trying to highlight and idea or news story about your business or product. I came across an excellent post on Ragan’s PR Daily News by Lindsey Miller that gives you tips and ideas on how to assure you have good quality.
Tomorrow I am going to a Search Engine Strategy Conference in Toronto and see Greg Jarboe the author of a book that should help you do a good job with Video. The book is, a Sybex imprint, YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day
Filed under Internet Marketing, Marketing, Video by
Reading today in the Toronto Globe and Mail Report on Business. Headline “Hanging Up on the Phone Book”
The front page story goes on to announce that the Yellow Pages Group would no longer distribute phone books to customers unless requested. This would includeToronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver,Ottawa-Gatineau,and Quebec City. This includes the regular white pages also published by the group.
An interesting symbol of change in the marketplace and importance and growing use of online and personal directories on smartphones or cellular devices. A victory for the environment and greening and a tacit recognition of the move to digital. In the US the Kelsey Group predicts a decline of about 10% in readership. With a move to digital advertising like Adwords it is more important than ever for the business and professional community to be listed.
As I mentioned in my post yesterday there are the opportunities for free listing as well as paid pay per click advertising in local areas for extended reach, recognizing that the consumer now doesn’t reach for the phone book but Googles it.
While writing last night a post came into my RSS reader from David Mihm < a href="http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/google/local-search-ranking-factors/">2010- Local Search Ranking Factors Vol 3 It is a review orchestrated by David Mihm a popular Local SEO writer, from Portland, Oregon and includes collaborations from SEO thought leaders and practioners from all over.
This is a valuable contribution to the dialogue which should guide you in your Local Search Engine Optimization for the search engines.
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