WEB MARKETING MUSINGS

To crowd source or not to crowd source...

2010-12-13T11:36:00.000-08:00

How does a web agency manage to remain objective enough to ensure a great web design when we're talking about our very own website?

Well being a strategic online marketing agency we of course had to play it by the book.

We spent several weeks gathering feedback via interviews with our (lovely and accomodating) clients & suppliers.
We spent a further 2 weeks using this valuable intel to refine and re-define our core proposition, values and USPs and answer the simple question: "why do our clients work with us?" (More on this in due course - I don't want to ruin any suprises later!)
We set up a wire frame website and started writing significantly more concise, client-focused copy. We even had input on things from an NLP expert.
We developed a (tight) design brief and sent it to a couple of our regular design experts.

Here's where things got interesting.

We tried the brief with our regulars but it would seem that a) they were perhaps a little too close to us and b) we're a pretty demanding client to have!

This left us with a series of initial concepts that for one reason or another simply didn't quite work, and nothing for our trusty developers to get their teeth into.

So. What next?

We'd been following developments in the recent phenomenon of crowdsourcing, in particular crowdSPRING, DesignCrowd, eLance and 99designs to name a few and we had been looking for an excuse to find out more.

It was with a combined sense of academic curiosity and semi-desperation that we signed up with the latter on Friday 10th December 2010 to get our first hand experience.

How does it work?

Submit your brief
Set & pay your 'contest' fee (refundable if you're not 100% happy unless you choose to guarantee your prize)
Launch your 7-day contest (extendable for an additional fee)
Provide feedback
Choose your design (there's a handy "invite your friends to vote" tool)

We know from first hand experience what to expect while managing 1 or 2 designers on a single project but nothing could have prepared us for the (literally) 24/7 onslaught of enthusiastic designers from across the globe wanting feedback on their designs.

Within literally hours we had our first submission, and they haven't stopped since. 3 days in and we've had 17 submissions so far, of which the majority are iterations of 6 or 7 original designs. Not bad but I'd have expected more halfway in.

Where are we at now?

We've had quite an interesting mix of designs submitted for review ranging from pretty good to pretty awful. Some have clearly read through our brief, others haven't. Some have used copy from our development site, others have made it up!

How do we feel about the process at this point?

On the plus side crowdsourcing offers potentially good value for money. On the down side there is a huge requirement for your time, even with a very tight brief in hand.

In short make sure you have the available resource on hand to manage the required daily feedback. I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to clients directly without ensuring there was a dedicated manager for this project on hand.

Watch this space for an update on how things turn out...

Legitimately increase page impressions to increase ad revenue

2010-11-01T09:42:00.000-07:00

If you're managing a blog or even a media website, chances are you're being funded by advertising revenue. If so, the metric that the majority of advertisers are interested in is your number of Page Impressions.

Here are 9 proven, white hat ways to help you boost your Page Impressions, increase advertising revenue from exsiting advertisers and make you more attractive to potential advertisers.

1. Keep your content fresh
Regularly post new articles related to your niche to help attract more visitors

2. Write quality content!
If you write quality content your readers will want more of the same. Anything useful, original and interesting should boost interest and, with interest comes more traffic and more page impressions.

3. Add keyword links to related articles
Add links on important keywords to link them with other related articles. This can be done on a keyword basis or even via categories of articles. List out categories next to your articles to let visitors know there’s more for them to read.

3. Display popular & random posts
Create "popular" and "random" post lists and add links to previous articles to encourage visitors to view articles, and therefore generate more page impressions.

4. Write articles in multi-part
Create articles containing multiple parts (even as a series) and include links on each part to create connections between them.

5. Include links on your social websites profiles
Share links to your website or blog on Facebook, Twitter and other websites & forums to generate traffic, and page impressions.

6. Use email updates
Use email marketing to keep your website visitors updated with the latest articles and news and also include links to specific pages and articles

7. Back-links
Get more backlinks to your site by submitting the site URL in bookmarking sites such as Delicious, and submitting articles with backlinks to your site on social sites like Digg, Reddit, Propeller, Mixx etc, participating in discussion forums and exchanging links

8. Excerpts on main pages
Include excerpts or precis from your articles on key pages of your site, such as your Home page.

9. Search Function
Include a search feature to help users to search using keywords. This will help readers locate other posts on your site and therefore increase the potential for multiple page views per visit.

Have you had success with any other (white hat) methods in the past? I'd love to hear your thoughts here or get in touch via www.viedigital.com.

Cobblers and their shoes

2010-10-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

What is it with how accountants manage their own money, how cobblers don't seem to look after their shoes and (more closely to home) web agencies manage to have bad and often poorly-maintained websites?

As part of a wider strategy development exercise for Vie Digital, my agency, I've been gathering general input from far and wide - everyone from clients, friends and successful entrepreneurs to neighbours' cats have been welcome so far!

Well it is right here, with exciting trepidation that I find myself, staring down the barrel of Vie's very own branding 'shotgun', looking for answers to the awkward questions I'm so used to asking our clients - for example the classic 'spot the difference' between these questions...

- How do YOU think you are different to your competitors?

- How do OTHERS (clients, customers, internal stakeholders, etc.) think you are different?

More often than not they don't agree, but therein lies the value.

I'm sincerely looking forward to hearing more from the research my colleagues are currently conducting, and using this to develop our existing website into something more suitable than at least 2 respondees have described as "an online business plan"!

Watch this space...

How can I grow my business using Facebook?

2010-09-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

With the growth of social media, in particular the meteoric rise of Facebook over the last year (a reputed 500 million users as of this Summer!), we're finding more and more of our client base looking to capitalise on this and embrace Facebook as an important part of their marketing communication strategy.

The 'social' aspect of this helps retain existing customers and, as anyone controlling the marketing purse strings will no doubt agree, it's significantly cheaper to retain customers than it is to acquire them!

So, what are the obvious opportunities for a brand to cost-effectively engage with a consumer audience on Facebook?

facebook advertising
Facebook Advertising enables advertisers to reach a highly-targeted audience and connect real customers to their organisation. With it you can advertise something on Facebook like a Page or an Event or even promote external web pages using their pay per click (CPC) or their impression (CPM) based model, although it can be easier to 'convert' someone within Facebook (by persuading them to 'Like' you) and encourage web visits from there. Performance can be tracked in real-time, and you can also gain insight into who's clicking on your adverts.

facebook pages
Facebook Pages are essentially public profiles for businesses, brands, products, services and celebrities and, as they're visible to search engines they're good for SEO. It's relatively straightforward to create a presence that looks and behaves like a user to connect and engage with customers. With Facebook Pages you can start conversations, encourage interactions, promote content on & off Facebook itself, and the added bonus is that when fans interact with your Facebook Page, stories linking to your Page can go to their friends via a News Feed. This means that each time these friends interact with your Page the news feed keeps driving word-of-mouth to a wider circle of friends. You can also add custom Tabs to your Page including welcome pages, email registration tools, shop pages, blog feeds and the like to increase engagement and up-sell from there.

facebook lexicon
The Facebook Lexicon tells marketers what people are saying on Facebook. Facebook counts the aggregate number of occurrences of terms across Profile, group and event Walls every dayand then allows you to customise queries to view results in multiple ways. A fascinating insight into what people are talking about right now.

facebook share
Facebook Share is a button added to your site that enables visitors to share your content with their friends on Facebook. It empowers your visitors share your site with their friends on Facebook and bring new users to it.

facebook connect
Facebook Connect allows users to share your content with their Facebook friends who click back to your site, generating more traffic. More impressively it also enables a site owner to increase qualified registrations by allowing new users to register for your site in just two clicks using their Facebook credentials, giving the site owner access to name, profile, photo, location, gender, age and more. Facebook Connect also allows site owners to include and show social context content on their site, such as what a user's friends are doing, helping to increase user engagement.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts and/or success stories on Facebook marketing either here or on our Facebook Page.

Remember to 'Like' us at http://www.facebook.com/viedigital to keep up to speed on some of the cool stuff we're doing with our clients on Facebook.

Google appears to be experimenting further with social search...

2010-04-26T16:10:00.001-07:00

Has anyone else noticed how Google's BETA testing showing search results from within your social network...?

Is your retail business missing out on social media?

2010-03-01T09:12:00.000-08:00

A recent article on Brand Republic revealed that 60% of retailers do not have any kind of social media presence.

The study of 100 UK retailers suggests that retailers are missing a huge opportunity to boost sales and generate loyalty through social media.

For those using social media, Twitter has taken over from Facebook as the social media platform of choice despite Facebook having a considerably larger user base.

Retailers using Twitter were mainly using it for push marketing with 73% using it for announcing product updates, 62% for marketing and 58% to promote company news.

Blogging proved least popular with 8% of retailers including a blog on their website, while only 6% were using other social media channels such as YouTube and Flickr.

People (i.e. potential customers) want to be engaged with, not just shouted at.

They want added value relationships not just sales banter.

They want to interact on their terms and in their space.

It's not so much redrawing the rules, it's really about going back to 'Marketing 101' and getting out there to find out where your customers are, what they are looking for, what they want to hear and how often.

If would like some help making sense of the world of social media and want to realise the commercial opportunities available online, get in touch with the strategic online marketing experts today at www.viedigital.com.

New look Facebook but does it cut the mustard for marketers?

2010-02-09T13:16:00.000-08:00

Well a new-look Facebook is upon us. Seems like their last update was only a few months back, but maybe time's moving faster than I realise!

On initial impressions it seems a little more user friendly, with the recent activity stuff all neatly in the top left of the page, and the less-frequently used (but nonetheless important) account info on the right.

The newsfeed, messages, events, photos and other primary features are all easily accessible too, with the secondary stuff (apps, games, etc.) further down the left hand side.

There's even a nice on-page skype/messenger-style "Friends Online" feature.

Ads still sit on the right hand side, as do suggestions and events.

Well, it's all looking good from a user point of view but, from an agency perspective, where's the value-add?

For a start I'd love to be able to move the "Ads & Pages" bookmark out of the depths and up to my top links.

I for one run multiple Facebook Pages and Facebook Ad campaigns for a number of clients so (as this is Facebook's main revenue stream) when is this going to become easier to use? When will we be able to separate clients so that we can more easily manage the invoicing side of things?

And finally, when will we be able to set up standalone company accounts to not only separate personal and business activity but also to enable multiple users to manage the account?

Some help for us poor, poor online marketers Facebook, please...

In the meantime, take a look for yourself at www.facebook.com/sitetour/homepage.php

The opportunity for bricks & mortar businesses online

2010-01-03T12:46:00.000-08:00

Ebay's recently published Online Business Index Autumn 2009 report has revealed that 79% of small high street retailers believed the introduction of online trade had helped save their business.

Their OBI report suggests that small high street retail businesses are able to match and even beat the performance of other online firms when they set up on the internet and that shops perform at least as strongly as other online businesses on sales, prices and profit margins.

The report’s findings show that, far from being threatened by the rise of online shopping, high street shops are able to compete on a level playing field if they branch out online.

Far from undermining the high street, the online economy is increasingly propping up struggling bricks & mortar businesses.

Entrepreneurial high street retailers are joining savvy online entrepreneurs by setting up their businesses online to support their offline income. In fact half of all online businesses also have a bricks & mortar presence, with 80% seeing an online presence as making their offline business more sustainable.

So what are the opportunities for you?

The opportunity online is for retail and service-based businesses alike.

1. Reach new customers

Having a traditional bricks & mortar shop can limit your customer base to a particular geographic location.
Going online escapes all the usual confines of location and allows retailers and service providers to attract customers in other towns, counties and even countries!

2. Reach & engage with your existing client base online

Your existing customers are online.

This means that they are susceptible to your competitors in that space, including online-only competition as well as bricks & mortar operators.
By engaging with your customers via digital channels including a website, email and social networks such as Facebook you can build your brand and ensure that you are front of mind when they are looking to buy.

In these uncertain times when better than now to explore the online opportunity?

The digital channels can quickly and easily help you to engage with existing customers while attracting new customers and it's being proven again and again every day.

To take your business to the next level, contact the online marketing strategists via www.viedigital.com.

Got customers? Get social.

2009-11-26T15:08:00.000-08:00

A recent study by LexisNexis has revealed that, with the rise of social networking, people are more likely to share negative feelings than they would even a year ago!

Two-thirds of respondents said that when they had shared bad feedback about a company online, they had not had a response from the company in question.

The consumer is evidently changing and this researhc highlights why every company should have a social media strategy in place.

Read more at
http://www.revolutionmagazine.com/DigitalPM/News/969874/Social-networks-making-people-likely-complain-online/?DCMP=EMC-Media-PM-Bulletin

Luxury brands doing better online

2009-10-28T05:07:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading a very interesting study relating to how digital marketing is a must for luxury brands.

Scott Galloway of Luxury Lab (http://luxurylab.org/) has published a fascinating study looking at how some of the world's best-known luxury brands are using SEO, translating their brand online, leveraging the digital medium as a whole and, of course, using social media.

The more obvious tech and automotive brands (Apple, Sony, BMW, Audi, etc.) dominate the top positions but what's interesting is how some of the big fashion brands including Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren and Gucci are hot on their heels.

Fashion brands doing well incorporate on-site e-commerce, offer engaging content and striking imagery, tweet about new collections, and utilise Facebook and YouTube to inform, educate and stimulate.

Have a read now at http://luxurylab.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Digital-IQ-Index_2009_hyperlinks4.pdf.

Oops a daisy, but still good news for digital!

2009-10-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

According to recent reports, the IAB & PWC may have been slightly out in their online ad spend figures for the first half of 2009 that suggested that the Internet had overtaken TV to become the UK's biggest advertising medium.

How much was this oversight I hear you ask? Well, only £50 million out!

The topline figures however do remain unaffected, with the revised figures revealing a 3.6 per cent decline for classified advertising to £335.8m. The total online ad spend figure for the first half of 2009 remains unchanged at £1.75bn.

That's of course still great news for us digital marketers, particularly as we start (I hope) to be coming out of a recession.

Guardian goes local

2009-10-15T08:51:00.000-07:00

The Guardian is launching a new "Guardian Local" service next year in Leeds, Cardiff and Edinburgh and are looking to hire qualified bloggers who could cover community news and report on local developments.

While they're not the first, they're certainly one of the highest profile entrants.

Does this suggest a shift for national media into regional offerings, where smaller areas are served with community and user generated content?

WWW adspend leapfrogs TV at last

2009-10-06T10:28:00.000-07:00

Recent reports from the IAB indicate that Internet ad spend has overtaken TV for the first time with online now has accounting for 23.5% compared to TV's 21.9%.

Big news in itself, but it also appears that total UK spend fell by £1.5bn in the first half of 2009, compared with the same period last year...

It's likely that advertisers as a whole are looking for quicker and more accountable ways to spend their budgets but it's unlikely that this alone will have had such a marked effect.

What's likely is that rather than the larger advertisers reducing TV spend, this sway is in fact down to the huge number of small businesses who would never spend ad budget on TV venturing into online advertising through Google and Facebook's CPC programs.

While as a digital marketer I couldn't be happier, does this mean that TV programmes are going to get worse?

Google's first wave

2009-09-30T10:28:00.001-07:00

Google has finally opened up its in-development tool combining email, instant messaging and wiki-style editing to 100,000 people today.

There have been suggestions that Google Wave could revolutionise the way people communicate, but some of us still remember how long it took for email to catch on!

Sadly I'm not one of the chosen ones but I look forward to hearing all the feedback...

How much????

2009-09-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

Having recently secured $100m (£62.4m) in funding, Twitter has recently been valued at a whopping $1bn!

Er... no comment.

www.twitter.com

small business execs ahead of the big guns in the social media

2009-08-04T15:02:00.000-07:00

according to a brand republic article back in may, smaller companies are demonstrating more social networking nous than the top ftse 100 firms.

linkedin is of course a popular one - for many their only social media marketing channel of choice - but others are having great success using a combination of facebook, blogs, twitter, plaxo and xing to promote their companies.

as one executive points out, "there's a generation of consumers growing up with social media, and unless you truly understand the culture there's a real danger of losing touch with them.""

read more at http://www.brandrepublic.com/DigitalAM/News/908249/Smaller-companies-demonstrate-social-networking-nous/?DCMP=EMC-Digital-AM-Bulletin

Thoughts on "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell

2009-07-20T08:21:00.000-07:00

So what is the secret of success?

Malcolm Gladwell in his informative, thoroughly enjoyable and easy-to-digest book suggests that success is not simply down to IQ in the traditional sense - it's also very much about practical intelligence, i.e. an individual's ability to spot and capitalise on an opportunity.

Drawing on a variety of statistics and analysis he argues that, as long as you do enough to get by (i.e. into college), having a high vs a higher IQ really doesn't make that much difference to your success.

Luck also plays a big part of success. When you were born, both during AND even within a year can determine the age you are at when particular opportunities arise as a result of social, cultural, technological and political changes.

How you were brought up and even by your inherited socio-cultural background also make a big difference. A lot of this can be influenced by an individual's social class but, for instance, can come down to how comfortable a person is around authority, how well they manage certain situations, whether or not they are 'trained' to look for and recognise opportunities and also how easily they can affect changes in their environment to suit their needs.

No surprises to many but hard work and effort is also a big factor in success. Gladwell suggests the 'magic number' of 10,000 hours or 10 years is about how much time you need to spend in a particular field to become an expert in whatever it is you want to be successful in.

In essence success is a gift, but it requires opportunity, the ability to recognise opportunity and having the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

A great book and I thoroughly recommend a read.

great woolies news

2009-07-06T10:25:00.000-07:00

a former client of mine, woolworths has been reborn as a purely online retailer.

new parent company shop direct group (owner of littlewoods among others) has opted to include a "click 'n mix" (a sticky fingers-free version of one of my favourite childhood pastimes) as well as toys, CDs, DVDs and partyware.

i'm off to http://www.woolworthsparty.co.uk/Pick_N_Mix/

getting to the top of google: lessons learned

2009-07-03T05:14:00.000-07:00

here is a recap of my lessons learned while on my quest to get to the top of google for my name, james vanderzee.

so what have I learned?

first google's own must-dos:

• focus on what’s best for the visitors to my website
• use unique, accurate page titles across my website
• make good use of the description meta tags
• use “friendlier” page URLs
• make your site easy to navigate
• offer quality content and services
• write better anchor text
• use heading tags appropriately
• make effective use of robots.txt
• be aware of rel="nofollow" for links
• take advantage of web analytics services
• make use of free webmaster tools - definitely worth checking back on
• optimize use of images - I could do with some images in the first place! one for later.
• promote your website in the right ways - one for later.

some thoughts based on lessons learned:

> seo is extremely hand-on. to put it simply: you can't leave things to run themselves when it comes to seo!

> seo takes a VERY long time indeed.

> if you want google to take you seriously you MUST ensure that your on-site 'housekeeping' is in order - on a daily basis! so... use google's webmaster tools and submit an xml sitemap (or more). at least the tools here will let you know where you may be going wrong!

> keep updating your website content. while you may see some benefit of the doubt from google for having a new site, if you don't keep your website content regularly updated you're likely to be punished for it. blogs, news, rss and so on are an effective and easy-to-manage way to do this - but avoid plagiarising!

> include keywords in your domain, page titles, descriptions, links and image alt text as well as across the editorial of site: no real surprises here, but google loves keywords and the higher up your website's heirarchy you put them (and the more places you include them) the better. nb try not to over-include keywords or you risk being perceived as a keyword spammer which will give you the opposite result.

> create a google profile: for now google may be being inconsistent for now with whether or not they actually appear, but there is no doubt that in time these will be important should you want your name on page 1 of any search.

> having multiple profiles across a range of different websites is certainly beneficial from a personal seo point of view but they are very time-consuming to maintain, particularly as you need to try to avoid replicating content across them.

> keep your blog regularly updated, and I mean at least once a week: google expects blogs to be regularly updated, so neglect yours at your peril! if you know you're going away, schedule in some posts for while you are away, even if it's a simple 'wish you were here'.

> keep on tweeting! channels such as twitter are designed to be updated regularly and as such, for now at least, google expects you to use them accordingly.

good news from the states?

2009-07-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

according to emarketer, the future of online retail isn't looking too bad.

refreshing news after 6 months of a wider economic slowdown, and it's apparent that people are even more keen than ever to bag a bargain - often turning to the WWW instead of the high street.

the fact remains that the online channels continue to offer highly effective, easily manageable and highly trackable sales opportunities - when done correctly of course!

fingers crossed!

read more at http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007142.

habitats online marketing going twits up?

2009-06-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

according to recent editorial following on from habitat's recent twitter blunder,
the furnishings giant has now sought to rest the blame firmly on the shoulders of an "overenthusiastic intern".

what i'm wondering is whether or not a well-established consumer brand like habitat is well advised to leave their (very public) consumer communications in the hands of a work experience kid?

read more at http://www.brandrepublic.com/DigitalAM/News/915903/Habitat-blames-Twitter-faux-pas-intern/?DCMP=EMC-Digital-AM-Bulletin

the first commercial case of twitter spamming?

2009-06-24T06:43:00.000-07:00

furniture chain habitat has been accused of hijacking global interest in the bloody protests in Iran to market its spring collection via twitter.

they were caught using online hash tags connected to the violent clashes, including #iran and #mousavi in "tweets" about new products on the site.

more on this at http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Business/Habitat-In-Twitter-Row-UK-Furniture-Brand-Used-Iran-Election-Protests-To-Plug-Its-Sale-Online/Article/200906415315145

some recent twitter success for businesses (in the us)

2009-06-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

datamonitor's report 'The Rise of Social Networking and Emerging Channels in Customer Service' provides concrete examples of how some companies have been successful in using social media including magic curry kart (@magiccurrykart), mountain view police department in california (@MountainViewPD), whole foods (@WholeFoods), virgin america (@VirginAmerica) and comcast (@Comcastcares).

so, what are they using twitter for?

> primarily as an inexpensive yet evidently effective outbound comms channel
> keeping an eye-out for mentions of their brand
> handling customer service issues, immediately, personably and informally
> managing a local presence despite being a global player
> pushing new products & services
> promoting offers, events and other relevant information

there’s bound to be something applicable to your business among these, as long as your audience is on there of course!

read more at http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/912484/Examples-companies-successfully-using-social-media/?DCMP=ILC-SEARCH
follow me on twitter @jamesvanderzee

linkedin the main choice among business execs

2009-06-20T10:56:00.000-07:00

according to digital agency bigmouthmedia, 25% of ftse100 senior executives use social networking to promote their business, compared to 85% of the executives recently named in the sunday times fast track 100.

linkedin is the most poular, and often the only social media channel used by executives.

other channels proving popular for businesses to promote themselves include facebook, twitter, plaxo and xing.

more at http://www.brandrepublic.com/DigitalAM/News/908249/Smaller-companies-demonstrate-social-networking-nous/?DCMP=EMC-Digital-AM-Bulletin/D5F869F4B4BB36F577D687D2E78BB1B0/

copy & paste (among other things) now available on the iphone

2009-06-17T12:02:00.000-07:00

at last I hear me (and others) cry!

new features great for business include:

Cut, Copy & Paste
Landscape Keyboard
MMS
Spotlight Search
Improved Calendar
Internet Tethering

don't forget to download your update today...

http://www.apple.com/iphone/softwareupdate/

facebook vanity urls went live this weekend

2009-06-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

facebook's much-anticipated vanity urls, which went live this weekend at http://www.facebook.com/username/ and are free to users, will enable users to personalize their facebook link, making it easier to distribute to others and self-promote.

a vanity url it is also better for search engine optimization purposes: when a person searches your name on google, it's likely your vanity url-infused facebook page will be among the top results .

companies with trademarked or otherwise protected names have been asked to contact the facebook team in order to avoid transitional issues via http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_rights

more at http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130

have you got yours yet?

why get into social media marketing?

2009-06-11T10:40:00.000-07:00

highlights from a great article at ducttapemarketing.com.

benefits of social media marketing:
> content creation & discovery
> lead generation
> networking

nb even if you're not ready to embrace, make sure you create and optimise your compnay profiles across these channels as a way to control your web real estate and, in some cases, create high value links back to your primary web pages.

some suggested essential social media sites for sme's - all of which are great for building optimised links in:

> mixx – allows you to submit and vote on content
> linkedin – add links with your own anchor text through the “other” selection for your links in your profile.
> flickr – images are increasingly important on search results. you can also add links on your profiles.
> mybloglog – a real-time blog tracking tool
> business week exchange - very high profile media sites can be very valuable.
> google profiles – google’s personal profiles are showing up in yahoo searches and allow full follow anchor text list of links.
> twitter – twitter profiles allow for (sadly 'nofollow') links, but profiles are showing up very high in google searches
> facebook – google seems to be shutting them out of page one for search, but you can still add a number of URLs to your contact information in your personal profile, which will soon be optimisable.

more at http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2009/05/26/social-media-profiles-as-tools-for-links-and-traffic/

fun with the iphone 3gs upgrade

2009-06-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

upgrade costs for the new apple iphone 3gs are outrageous to say the least, and I'm not the only one to feel that way!

the recently announced iphone 3gs (launching 19th June) is the next step in the evolution of the ipod from music player, to video player, app runner, softphone and now something that looks a lot like a real phone.

it includes an array of new and improved features including improved speed, a 3mp camera, video support, spotlight search, a compass, mms, bluetooth, tethering (for using your phone as a modem for internet access), voice control, text-to-speech, and (at last!) cut and paste.

sounds great, but I've got to wait or pay.

boo!

communicate & collaborate with google wave

2009-06-09T04:39:00.000-07:00

google wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later in 2009.

it combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client, giving a range of uses within both business and social circles.

there's a really good write up of the key features at mashable and you can see a full demo and sign up for updates at http://wave.google.com/.

bing hot on the trail of google

2009-06-08T03:25:00.000-07:00

msn's latest search engine "bing" was launched last week and, do you know what, I like it!

run a search for james vanderzee and while I am yet to beat wikipedia from an seo point of view, I'm there on page 1, in both 2nd and 3rd positions.

nice.

aside from the vanity trip of course, I'm also really keen on the way that this engine enables users to preview the content of the target site without leaving the page.

from an seo point of view it also seems to like pages with links on.

in terms of ppc marketing, bing offers a range of search terms related to your original key words which is great for helping refine user searches. not only is this great for the user, it should also mean better response rates for advertisers as users are steadily qualified as their terms become progressively 'long tail'.

could this be a serious rival to google's domination of the ppc market?

mp announces resignation via twitter

2009-06-05T04:52:00.000-07:00

tom watson, minister for digital engagement and the first MP to blog has resigned, first breaking the news to his followers on twitter.

although embroiled in the recent mp expenses scandal, allegedly using his parliamentary allowance to furnish a shared flat in london, this was not cited as his reason.

social media marketing: it's not about advertising, it's about interacting.

2009-06-04T12:14:00.000-07:00

an interview with scott monty, head of social media at ford about their approach to social media.

twitter not selling out...yet!

2009-06-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

in an interview with industry mag revolution, biz stone has revealed that twitter will be launching a range of tools later this year aimed at helping big brands and small businesses alike to use the microblogging service.

it will no doubt come as refreshing news to the majority of 'tweeters', myself included, that they are keen to avoid selling ads alongside tweets, and instead offer added-value services.

http://www.revolutionmagazine.com/DigitalPM/News/908651/Twitter-founder-reveals-business-plans/

getting to the top of google, pt 31.

2009-05-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

DAY: 194.
GOOGLE POSITION: 6th (page 1).
another personal best!

> 6th (and 22nd) my jamesvanderzee.co.uk website (up 3 places);
> 29th my twitter profile (up 10!);
> 30th my linkedin profile (down 3);
> 32nd my james-vanderzee.com website (down 9);
> 33rd my profile on brandrepublic (up 8);
> 88th my fashionindustrynetwork profile (up 4);
> 94th my e-consultancy profile (up 4)
> 97th my webmarketingmusings blog (down 42 place!);

profiles appear to be off the agenda again, at least they are today!

also, there are evidently harsh penalties for neglecting one's blog... a mere 2 weeks offline and it drops a whopping 42 places?!

I've added a few random posts to get things moving again here and made the following
mental note:

when I know I'm going away, schedule some content for posting in the interim, even if it's a simple 'wish you were here'.

;-)

topsy or flopsy?

2009-05-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

a new search engine topsy launched today (27 May 2009) is building on google's link-based pagerank system and putting power in the hands of the general public by creating an online currency out of retweets, blogs and user influence.

with pagerank, google's search results are scored and indexed depending on a number of dynamics including 'links in' and keywords, giving a value to each individual page.

topsy uses this same idea, but instead scours social networks including twitter, blogs, flickr and others and assigns influence to users on those sites through retweets or blog comments.

when one twitter user retweets another, it acts as a vote of confidence for the latter user.

could this be the next big thing in human-influenced search engines or will search spammers corrupt good intentions by creating false conversations for it to index?

see for yourself at http://topsy.com/

a sign of the ny times

2009-05-25T12:05:00.000-07:00

the new york times has hired its first social media editor, a new role aimed at expanding and promoting the 157-year-old newspaper's presence twitter, facebook, youtube and digg (among others).

the role will entail working closely with editors, reporters and bloggers to help them use social media to find sources, contacts and information, to gather and break news and get tweeting.

some other well-known papers such as the wall street journal have gone the other way, taking a much less liberal approach but could this appointment and their adoption of social networking be a wake up call for other media publishers?

7 tips to getting started on facebook for businesses

2009-05-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

a client recently asked me the quickest and easiest way to get their business on facebook.

here's a pretty good starting point and well worth a read:

1. register your own page on facebook
2. consider your keywords
3. create your about page
4. set your default page
5. 'pimp' your profile
6. set your provacy settings
7. find some fans

more at http://socialmediatoday.com/school/95991

anti-social media?

2009-05-20T12:04:00.000-07:00

only the other day I was at a table for lunch where 2 of the 6 'lunchees' took the opportunity to remotely check and even update their respective statuses on facebook...

now, to protect the innocent I won't say who the guilty parties were but it got me wondering:

it's all good and well embracing the newest-of-the-new media but are we really being that social with our networking?

my how marketing's changed!

2009-05-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

an interesting animation on the dramatic shift in marketing reality.

sme's need to spend, spend, spend!

2009-05-15T01:20:00.000-07:00

the idm reported this week that, according to a lloyds tsb poll, marketing and advertising are vital to help small and medium-sized businesses weather the storm of the recession.

hotels, caterers and leisure firms were found to be the most committed to marketing followed by manufacturers and retailers.

that's great news for us working in marketing for sme's but the key issue here (even more so than usual) is getting a good return on investment or 'roi'.

so, how does an sme get the most bang for his or her buck?

for me the best starting place is existing customers... you (should) know who they are, where they are and how best to contact them, so why not start there?

next, if you've got a happy customer base, who better to start shouting about how great you are than they?

as I'm sure you're already aware, email is cheap as chips these days, while the plethora of social media channels including blogs, facebook, twitter and so on are mostly free (except that is for your time) so there's plenty of easy ways to attract and hang onto customers.

a couple of words to the wise though, have a look around and see what your competitors are doing (remember just 'cos they're not active doesn't mean you don't need to be!), oh and make sure you plan your approach before you hurtle off into the unknown!

getting to the top of google, pt 30.

2009-05-13T10:49:00.000-07:00

DAY: 180.
GOOGLE POSITION: 9th (page 1).
google profiles are back, and so am i!

> 9th (and 26th) my jamesvanderzee.co.uk website (up 2 places);
> 23rd my james-vanderzee.com website (no change);
> 27th my linkedin profile (down 2);
> 39th my twitter profile (down 2);
> 41st my profile on brandrepublic (up 8);
> 55th my webmarketingmusings blog (down 1);
> 92nd my fashionindustrynetwork profile (down 2);
> 98th my e-consultancy profile (down 1)

first there are no profiles, then they're back... one day i'm off page 1, then i'm back...

the good news at least is that i'm back, the question is 'for how long?'

hard to know, but google's definitely up to something!

getting to the top of google, pt. 29.

2009-05-12T06:40:00.000-07:00

DAY: 179
GOOGLE POSITION: 11th
the relevance of blogger & twitter (oh and google's playing with profiles)

> 11th (and 84th) my jamesvanderzee.co.uk website (down 3 places)
> 23rd my james-vanderzee.com website (previously awol!)
> 25th my linkedin profile (up 1)
> 37th my twitter profile (up a whopping 29 places)
> 49th my profile on brand republic (no change)
> 54th my web marketing musings blog (down a whopping 27)
> 90th my fashion industry network profile (up 7)
> 97th my e-consultancy profile (up 4)

off page 1. boo.

2 weeks of inactivity has dropped jamesvanderzee.co.uk down to 11th (well excuse me for going on holiday!), but what's more worrying is that my google profile has also disappeared... why is that?

yesterday (may 11 2009), barry shwartz of seoroundtable.com reported his profile had gone awol but received a post from joe kraus at google declaring the possibility that his name was being caught in their new 'celebrity filter'.

i'm pretty confident that i haven't quite hit celebrity status just yet but it is possible that the fact that i haven't yet verified a non-google email address to relate to my google account could be to blame.

now this is definitely new, and wasn't part of the original sign up. i also haven't received any notification about this from google, so why the no show AND the lack of notice? could this be another opportunity for google to grab a bigger bite of the privacy apple?

what's odd is that i've already associated my hotmail address with my gmail account, but anyway, i've (somewhat reluctantly) associated yet another email address so let's see what happens...

also of interest is the fact that my blog has dropped significantly down the rankings while, on a more positive note, my twitter profile has gained some momentum. looking at the huge difference over a short period of time it's clear that google holds both of these channels in high regard due to the timely, regular and therefore relevant nature of their usage. it would seem that if channels such as twitter or blogger are both designed to be updated regularly then google expects you to use them accordingly.

duly noted!

getting to the top of google, pt.28.

2009-04-29T03:29:00.000-07:00

DAY: 166.
GOOGLE POSITION: 8th (yes that's page 1!).
success at last!

> 8th (and 59th) my jamesvanderzee.co.uk website (up 12 places, overnight!)
> 26th my linkedin profile (no change)
> 27th my web marketing musings blog (up 1 place)
> 49th my profile on brand republic (no change)
> 68th my twitter profile (no change)
> 97th my fashion industry network profile (up 1)
> 101st my e-consultancy profile (up 2)
> "awol" my james-vanderzee.com website (last seen at 27th!)

as you can see, overnight success for my jamesvanderzee.co.uk website - up 12 places overnight onto page 1 - great news, particularly after a 5-month slog!

oddly I haven't made any updates to this site in the last month or so. the only updated content is the dynamic feed from this blog so it could be that the name change on my webmarketingmusings blog has begun to filter through and have a positive effect.

could it be that we also have witnessed (yet) another google algorithm change?

whatever the reason I'm over the moon, but we're going to have to keep a close eye on this and see what else google has up its sleeve...

success at last, but for how long?!

getting to the top of google, pt. 27.

2009-04-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

DAY: 165.
GOOGLE POSITION: 20th.
a google profile mystery and twitter out of favour?

> 20th (and 59th) my jamesvanderzee.co.uk website (down 1 place)
> 26th my linkedin profile (up 2)
> 28th my web marketing musings blog (up 24 places!)
> 48th my profile on brand republic (down 6)
> 68th my twitter profile (down a whopping 35 places!)
> 98th my fashion industry network profile (down 4)
> 103rd my e-consultancy profile (down 4)
> unknown* my james-vanderzee.com website (previously 27th)

okay so technically my google profile is still there on page 1 of the google.com search, but interestingly it's only there for people who are signed in.

could this be a two-pronged approach by google to encourage users to create google accounts both in order to appear on google AND (more fundamentally) in order to enable more advanced features of their search experience?

whatever the reason this wasn't really an honest part of my seo mission so let's move on, but agree to keep an eye on that!

my web marketing musings blog is clearly this week's best performer. this HAS to be down to the recent addition of "james vanderzee" in the title, coupled with the semi-regular updates. great news.

also of interest is the fact that my twitter profile has dropped in performance so massively. the fact that I'm perhaps not the most active tweeter in the 'twittosphere' may be in some way to blame for this poor show, but could it also be that google is not giving twitter as much 'seo kudos' as it has been previously?

no suprises why my james-vanderzee.com website, previously performing well, is now off the radar... google had clearly given the site the benefit of the doubt for its recency and the relevance of its domain but, as I haven't actually done anything to the site since launch, it swiftly punished my complacency!

I'm clearly going to have to get on top of that ASAP...

getting to the top of google, pt. 26

2009-04-22T03:31:00.000-07:00

DAY: 159
GOOGLE POSITION: PAGE 1 (kind of...)
google profiles prove to be just the trick!

> page 1 for my new google profile (a new entry)
> 19th (and 59th) my james vanderzee co uk website (down 3!)
> 27th my james-vanderzee.com website (up 2)
> 28th my linkedin profile (up 9)
> 33rd my twitter profile (up 7)
> 42nd my profile on brand republic (no change)
> 52nd my web marketing musings blog (a re-entry, presumably based on the recent title change featuring 'james vanderzee')
> 94th my fashion industry network profile (down 34 places!)
> 99th my e-consultancy profile (a new entry)

as you can see from http://www.google.com/search?q=james+vanderzee there I am... on page 1, abeit 11th out of the top 10 results!

so how did I do that?

well, as of yesterday (21st april 2009), google search queries for names now feature a section dedicated to google profile results at the bottom of every page. these profiles allow people to fill out their basic information, like current employer and links to various web presences, without having to maintain a personal website and try to struggle to maintain a high page-rank.

according to google, "a google profile is simply how you present yourself on google products to other google users. It allows you to control how you appear on google and tell others a bit more about who you are. with a google profile, you can easily share your web content on one central location. you can include, for example, links to your blog, online photos, and other profiles such as facebook, linkedin, and more. you have control over what others see. your profile won't display any private information unless you've explicitly added it."

what's interesting, not only for the purposes of this exercise, is that some anticipate that this may even overtake linkedin as the professional 'people finder' tool, although the connections side of things is evidently missing.

from a privacy point of view it seems to me that not everyone is going to want to show every facet of their online profiles, i.e. social as well as business, as this sort of coverage may blur the line between the two. that said, as someone who is actively trying to get my business profile up the list AND keep it there, this could be just the trick.

with regard to my mission to get the top of google, even though my new http://www.google.com/profiles/james.vanderzee profile has got me onto the first page, this is technically 'paid search' (albeit for free) and I still want to get on there for my organic listings.

let's see if this makes any difference to those!

getting to the top of google, pt. 25.

2009-04-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

DAY: 151.
GOOGLE POSITION: 16.
a post-easter update.

> 16th (and 77th and 113th) my james vanderzee co uk website (no change - and down 39!)
> 29th my james-vanderzee.com website (a new entry - not bad for a site set up only 4 days ago!)
> 37th my linkedin profile (down 3 places)
> 40th my twitter profile (up 3 places - I would have expected this to be a bit higher)
> 42nd my profile on brand republic (down 5 places)
> 60th my fashion industry network profile (down 10 places)
> my web marketing musings blog (previously at 133rd), however, is nowhere to be seen!

sadly my blog has disappeared off the radar, despite tweaking the title to include my name. now either I've done something wrong here or it's a case of unfortunate timing.

on a brighter note, it's nice to see my new james-vanderzee.com site on google so quickly, particularly as it's doing so well. it does however seem like the majority of my other profiles are struggling a little.

that said, my twitter profile is picking up pace a bit, but I haven't been particularly active on that in recent weeks so I'm going to have to remember to keep on top of that now.

I have high hopes for my james-vanderzee.com site and twitter profile but I'm going to have to keep them regularly updated!

getting to the top of google, pt. 24.

2009-04-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

DAY: 146.
GOOGLE POSITION: 16.
a brief pre-easter update.
it's been a week now and we're back down to 16th, but the good news is that everything else is on the up!

> 16th (and 38th) my james vanderzee co uk website (down 1 place - and up 12!)
> 27th my linkedin profile (up 3 places)
> 35th my profile on brand republic (up 3 places)
> 43rd my twitter profile (a new entry, keep an eye on this one if last month's tech crunch article is anything to go by)
> 50th my fashion industry network profile (up 38 places, wow!)
> 133rd my webmarketingmusings blog (another new entry)

at last, my blog is there, despite all that great keyword-rich content it's certainly taken a wee while to get this high up the google charts... and my twitter profile is up there too so that's good

interestingly it looks like blogger doesn't include a meta description so I may be missing a trick here. I've, perhaps somewhat belatedly, tweaked the title to include my name so this should help a little.

in all everything's on the up and I can only assume this is down to the reduction is duplicated content. definitely a lesson learned.

I've also now sorted an appropriate global domain, www.james-vanderzee.com, so my next task is to make an appropriate keyword-rich site - remembering to avoid using any content that I've used before!

channel 4's reportage of the controversial new google ads

2009-04-09T06:04:00.000-07:00

behavioural targeting online is certainly nothing new, but it is the scale of the google ad network that makes this so significant, particularly in light of recent controversies relating the the google map street view.

it works like this...

google sets a cookie to identify you and uses that to record your interests. unrelated sites (on their ad network) will then serve adverts targeted to your recent interests.

ok there's an argument for showing content relevance to the consumer, but is advertising really 'content'?

the other concerns is that you need to actively opt-out, although it's not quite as clear as it should be and you need to do it on ALL browsers and computers.

whatever your thoughts, it seems to be enough of a concern for the information commisioner to get involved and I'm sure this won't be the last time we hear about this!

A good overview of a Social Media Marketing Campaign

2009-04-08T08:56:00.000-07:00

Check out the diagram at the bottom.

http://www.personalizemedia.com/the-future-of-social-media-entertainment-slides/

getting to the top of google pt.23

2009-04-02T09:26:00.000-07:00

DAY: 139
GOOGLE POSITION: 15
a series best!

I don't usually post this frequently about progress but I have good reason to...

> 15th (and 50th) my james vanderzee co uk website (up 2 places - and my best performance to date)
> 30th my linkedin profile (down 3 places)
> 38th my profile on brand republic (up 1 place)
> 88th my fashion industry network profile (up 7 places)

a definite improvement on the results in my last post, I'm sure you'll agree.

that said, even though progress is being made, my recently-amended, search engine-friendly twitter profile still hasn't been updated on google and my blog is nowhere to be seen!

I think a little more time is in order before I get me one of those global domains and start looking to generate more links in.

until then!

getting to the top of google pt.22

2009-03-31T09:51:00.000-07:00

DAY: 137
GOOGLE POSITION: 17
a quick progress report...

> 17th my james vanderzee co uk website (up 2 places)
> 27th my linkedin profile (up 6 places)
> 39th my profile on brand republic (down 23 places! what's going on there?)
> 95th my fashion industry network profile (down 36 places. again, what's going on there?!)

still doing ok in the grand scheme of things but my brand republic profile is suffering a little, as is my fashion industry network profile.

but where on earth has my econsultancy profile got to?

and where's james vanderzee on twitter?

and where's my blog?

hmm. let's hope this is down to google having not yet indexed my updated profiles.

before purchasing a global domain and generating any other links in, let's leave this for a few days and see how we get on...

getting to the top of google: pt 21

2009-03-26T04:25:00.000-07:00

DAY: 132
GOOGLE POSITION: 17
could twitter be the way forward?
just been sent an interesting piece by a client (thanks Leigh!) about how twitter has improved its seo by including full (real) names the title tags of the profile pages.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/24/twitter-tweaks-its-title-tags-for-better-google-juice/

following a quick update to my profile today, rather than reading “Twitter / jamesvanderzee”, it now says "James Vanderzee (jamesvanderzee) on Twitter”.

although a very minor change this could have major implications for people and businesses alike as it's a quick and easy way to improve your ranking on google et al.

could this be the one to help tip the balance and get me onto page 1?

watch this space to see how "James Vanderzee (jamesvanderzee) on Twitter" fairs against my more established profiles...

getting to the top of google: pt. 20

2009-03-25T06:17:00.000-07:00

DAY: 131
GOOGLE POSITION: 16
back on track - for now!

here's where we're at as of today, pop pickers....

> 16th my profile on brand republic (up 3 places)
> 19th my jamesvanderzee.co.uk website (up 92 places!)
> 33rd my linkedin profile (down 1 place)
> 59th my fashion industry network profile (up 5 places)
> 96th my econsultancy profile (no change)

it could be that the repetition of my profile text may be affecting things so I've made a few tweaks to my profile and "about" pages just enough (I hope) to ensure google doesn't penalize me.

let's see if that makes any difference before looking at purchasing a global domain (as suggested by our friends at BarnesGraham) and of course getting on to generate those all-important links-in...

fly on the wall marketing

2009-03-20T09:30:00.000-07:00

how service-based businesses are starting to use twitter
imagine living in a world where you could informally reach out to complete strangers within seconds of them thinking about terms relevant to your business.

assuming of course that your target audience is in fact on twitter, then being a part of twitter and using tools such as http://www.tweetdeck.com/ (among others) enable you to do just that!

powerful stuff eh?

only today i received an email notification from twitter letting me know that someone new was now following my tweets.

was this someone I knew? I certainly didn't recognise the name so, being the curious chap I am, I went over to their profile to check out who this person was.

it turns out that this guy runs an adwords-qualified company and he started following me literally within seconds of posting a fairly innocuous tweet mentioning google adWords qualification.

coincidence? I think not!

now there is of course a balance that needs to be considered here - I certainly wouldn't recommend any of my clients overly automating this sort of "monitor and follow" strategy.

in my opinion it would prove much more effective to keep an eye out for tweets containing keywords & phrases relevant to your services and then follow (and indeed thereofre notify) those that are of interest to you.

the other side of this approach is that, in addition to those of your target market, the twitters you come across will include those of people in the same marketplace as you, i.e. your competition.

is it a good idea to follow these guys (and gals) too?

I'd say 'why not?'. besides broadcasting what they had for breakfast they're going to be talking about things relevant to your business anyway, and how better to monitor what your competitors are doing?

this is true 'fly on the wall' marketing!

the twouble with twitter?

2009-03-20T07:53:00.000-07:00

an entertaining look at the trouble with twitter...

the trouble with twitter

happy friday!

:-)

getting to the top of google: pt 19

2009-03-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

DAY: 126
GOOGLE POSITION: 19
a brief update.
everything (at least according to google webmaster tools) is in order, but not a great result just yet - in fact my primary james vanderzee-related site has dropped all the way to 111th!

here's where we're at as of today....

19th my profile on brand republic
32nd my linkedin profile
64th my fashion industry network profile
96th my econsultancy profile
111th my jamesvanderzee.co.uk website

hmmm.

getting to the top of google: pt. 18

2009-03-17T04:43:00.000-07:00

DAY: 123
GOOGLE POSITION: 20
what google giveth they taketh away!
the good news is that my brand republic profile is doing ok but...

despite the recent addition of optimised imagery to the site (not to mention all my other efforts to date), one tiny discrepancy in my sitemap - one minor redirect issue - and my jamesvanderzee.co.uk site has dropped from 28th to 40th in the course of a couple of days.

now that raises some important questions for commercial site owners. what if we were dealing with a more competitive subject set of terms, and a drop in traffic means the difference between profitability and loss?

there's an essential lesson to be learned here:

if you want google to take you seriously you MUST ensure that your on-site 'housekeeping' is in order - on a daily basis

...and as you can probably tell that's no easy task. even with a 5-page site!

linkedin in plain english

2009-03-15T11:53:00.000-07:00

a great reminder of all the benefits of using linkedin for business and networking.

Is Facebook missing a Twitter trick?

2009-03-13T06:45:00.000-07:00

It would appear that www.Facebook.com has opted to spend a chunk of its VC money on refreshing the home page.

The new features include filters that enable you to stay updated on what the friends you care about are posting. Create your own filters using Friend Lists. You can also filter by applications, like Photos. The stream area shows you all the posts from your friends in real-time, keeping you up to date on everything that's happening. And the Publisher area enables you to publish your status, photos, notes and more into the stream which in turn show up both in your Profile, and on your friends' home pages.

Despite all this new functionality surely Facebook are missing a trick here...?

Why haven't they included the ability to post your "What's on your mind" status on other social media channels?

With the existing ability to post your status updates via mobile, much the same as you can on Twitter, perhaps they could look to nip this 'upstart' in the bud.

getting to the top of google: pt.17

2009-03-12T10:35:00.000-07:00

DAY: 118

GOOGLE POSITION: 20

not keeping on top of things

as of today, after a mere couple of weeks of mild complacency regarding my quest (despite adding my http://twitter.com/jamesvanderzee profile to the site) it appears that my performance on google.com has wained a little...

> 20th place: my brand republic profile

> 28th place: my http://www.jamesvanderzee.co.uk/ site

> little sign of my other profiles, but I can only assume they're out there somewhere!

some good new though - I at last have some new "imagery" on the http://www.jamesvanderzee.co.uk/ site, a logo and a banner, both of which are "alt texted-up" mentioning "james vanderzee". this, at least as a recent update, can of course only be a good thing!

in addition, with a view to speeding things up a bit, I've also added some of my profile links to the main template of the blog.

let's see if any of these changes / updates make a difference...

2009-03-02T10:13:00.001-08:00

skittles have somewhat bravely opted to replace their website with a social media mashup...a sign of things to come? www.skittles.com

getting to the top of google: pt.16

2009-02-25T13:40:00.000-08:00

DAY: 103
GOOGLE POSITION: 19
i'm back!
more than 100 hundred days in and i'm back in familiar territory - in the first few pages - which means the recent google webmaster housekeeping work did its job.

here's where we're at:

19. my brand republic profile
21. my jamesvanderzee.co.uk site
64. my jamesvanderzee.co.uk site again

...and we seem to have misplaced my www.linkedin.com/in/jamesvanderzee and www.fashionindustrynetwork.com/profile/JamesVanderzee profiles.

so what's next?

well if you recall, i'm following best practice search engine optimisation guidelines as published by google themselves. from this list there are 2 remaining areas that require my attention:

• include & optimize images on my website.
• promote my website in the right ways.

promotion is one for later, so let's start with the imagery!

there is of course the option to add all sorts of imagery across the site but let's start with the obvious stuff, i.e. the images i can create and name that closely relate to my target search term: "james vanderzee".

so what imagery do i have to play with?

the most obvious ones I can start with are a 172 x 131 pixel space for a 'logo' (which would sit nicely in the top left of every page) and a 616 x 87 pixel header image or 2 (which would sit at the top in the middle of each page).

these are being sorted now, and appropriately 'alt texted' up, so we'll get them onto the site shortly and see what happens.

so, until next time...

using twitter as a marketing channel

2009-02-25T04:12:00.000-08:00

a recent article in marketing magazine announced that twitter was planning to charge brands for commercial use.

how they are planning to do this at present is unclear, although some experts have suggested it could charge advertisers for display advertising or for access to consumer information.

however the plan to commercialise twitter it does raise some interesting questions, the biggest of which, to an online marketer at least, is: what are the marketing opportunities available on twitter?

first of all, a brief introduction:

probably the simplest of all the social media marketing channels, this 'micro-blogging' phenomenon gives users 140 characters to describe their thoughts to their followers via 'tweets' - all sent and received via the www and via mobile phone.

similarly, as a follower, you can create a stream of information from the people you follow. you can also directly contact and follow people you know as well as those you don't.

there may also soon be an option to group users which, for instance, would allow you to keep work-related followers in a different category from your social followers. probably for the best for some of us! ;-)

a tweet on its own can seem dull, out of context and irrelevant. however, with many 'twitters' sharing links to things they’ve found on the web that they’d like to share (or promote) immediately as well as tidbits of personal and/or business information, over time, tweets can in fact offer a greater insight into the 'twitter'.

so what sort of commercial opportunities for businesses and brands are there on twitter right now?

> promoting (often time-limited) special offers: http://twitter.com/woot (US)
> property market: post new properties the moment they come on the market
> spreading your politics: http://twitter.com/BarackObama
> spreading the news: http://twitter.com/bbcnews

it's certainly not for everyone but, whatever your plans for twitter, if you are seriously considering using it for commercial purposes it's a worthwhile exercise (as with all marketing communications) to keep an overall objective in mind as you decide what kinds of personal information, links to useful resources and promotional content you are going to post.

here's a useful and succinct list of do's and don'ts from Carlos Granier-Phelps (http://red66.com/2007/10/using-twitter-as-a-marketing-tool/)

1. Do use Twitter to sell your products, ideas, offers, insights, etc.

2. Do publicise your Twitter account on your website, business card and marketing literature.

3. Do create a conversation. Add your users to your Twitter account. Let those who listen to you, talk to you.

4. Don’t spam. Really. You don’t have to post everything to Twitter… your important messages will get lost amid the junk. If yours is a high-volume Twitter channel, let users know beforehand.

5. Don’t rely on Twitter 100%. Twitter’s service has been down a lot lately. Use Twitter as one more tool in your social media toolbox.

n.b. if you are going use twitter commercially and 'tweet' links, make sure you keep an eye on who clicks on them and when using a tool such as tweetburner (http://tweetburner.com/).

my final thought on twitter, for now at least:

'tweeting' (in my opinion) is a great opportunity for social media-savvy organisations wanting to extending their reach if they already have a blogging strategy in place, and want to deepen or further ties with their community. with this in mind, don't start microblogging until you've explored 'blogging proper'. you'll undoubtedly learn a lot of important social media-related lessons utilising the wider blogosphere - even more so maintaining your own blog.

follow me via http://twitter.com/jamesvanderzee

getting to the top of google: pt.15

2009-02-17T09:41:00.000-08:00

DAY: 95
GOOGLE POSITION: 61
it's been a while, i know.
...and i'm paying for it! just under a month with my attention firmly focused solely on client projects and look where it's got me... waaaaay down the list. boo!

despite my last round of tweaks (some bug fixing and a new sitemap.xml) i'm now 61st with www.fashionindustrynetwork.com/profile/JamesVanderzee, 71st with www.jamesvanderzee.co.uk, 92nd with www.linkedin.com/in/jamesvanderzee and only the 'google gods' know where the rest of my web presence is hiding.

so how come my performance has wained?

yet another check of google's webmaster tools reveals that my sitemap still isn't quite what's required so it's tweaking time. again.

there's definitely a lesson to be learned here - and that's one relating to complacency. to put it simply: you can't leave things to run themselves when it comes to seo!

with this in mind i'll be setting a reminder for this time next week to see if the latest round of sitemap tweaks have been okayed by 'madam google' and whether or not they've made the slightest bit of difference...

pr web in plain english

2009-02-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

the benefits of using prweb to get your message out there, neatly summarised.

more at http://uk.prweb.com/sharenews.php

getting to the top of google: pt.14

2009-01-20T10:14:00.000-08:00

DAY: 67
GOOGLE POSITION: 17
a little new year cheer
sadly i'm not yet first page, however my recent changes appear to have to had some positive effect on my results. i've equalled my best performance with an encouraging 17th.

checking back on google's webmaster tools it would appear that there are still a couple of minor issues with the page urls not being 100% perfect: can you believe the trouble googlebot had differentiating betwen "Home" and "home"?

anyway, these bugs have now been resolved (i hope) and the cms has been set to automatically update the sitemap.xml each time it is reloaded.

i've also resubmitted the sitemap to google so let's see if today's tweaks cheer 'em up.

once this is all good i'll be able to start looking at adding some optimized images and a doing a spot of promotion.

ciao for now...

getting to the top of google: pt.13

2009-01-13T02:14:00.000-08:00

DAY: 57
GOOGLE POSITION: 18
new year strugglings
it's been a while I know. i could say that it's all been down to the xmas / new year break and the fact that every single one of my clients has remembered they have a website but, to be fair, i did want to give google some time to index my seo content... and it has! that is of course a good thing, but it it doesn't appear to have made much of a difference to my ranking. in fact I've dropped a place, edging taking me further away from my top 10 / page 1 objective.

so what next? well it's back to basics, and another look at google's seo starter guide...

done:
• focus on what’s best for the visitors to my website
• use unique, accurate page titles across my website
• make good use of the description meta tags
• use “friendlier” page URLs
• make your site easy to navigate
• offer quality content and services
• write better anchor text
• use heading tags appropriately
• make effective use of robots.txt
• be aware of rel="nofollow" for links
• take advantage of web analytics services

to do:
• make use of free webmaster tools - definitely worth checking back on
• optimize use of images - I could do with some images in the first place! one for later.
• promote your website in the right ways - one for later.

first things first - a quick look at google's webmaster tools indicates a problem with what was my old home page before I renamed it. basically, on 25th December 2008 of all days, google was unable to follow www.jamesvanderzee.co.uk/home.html which could have had a detrimental effect on my indexing.

the quickest fix is to rename the current home page ("james vanderzee") back to "home" (and change "more about me" to "about james vanderzee" because I still wnat my name in the navigation) and see what difference this makes. hopefully this new blog post will help too.

fingers crossed please!

An opportunity for fashion brands online?

2009-01-10T11:04:00.000-08:00

The pre-Christmas edition of the Hot Shops List revealed rises in event tickets, fashion, groceries and computer websites, while travel sites fell even further than was expected at this time of year as the credit crunch bites.

Robin Goad, Hitwise's director of research said: "Despite the economic slowdown, online spending is predicted to increase by 15% this Christmas. Fashion continues to be the fastest growing online retail sector, and all of the apparel retailers on the list have moved up the rankings and reached new highs this quarter."

The consistently good performers such as Amazon, Argos & Tesco which offer a wider variety of products.

...is this a case of better performance by the fashion brands or just a decrease in that of other sectors?

IMRG-Hitwise Hot Shops List, November 2008

Amazon UK - www.amazon.co.uk
Argos - www.argos.co.uk
Play.com - play.com
Tesco.com - www.tesco.com
Marks & Spencer - www.marksandspencer.com
Amazon.com - www.amazon.com
Next - www.next.co.uk
Dell EMEA - www.euro.dell.com
Tesco Direct - direct.tesco.com
Ticketmaster UK - www.ticketmaster.co.uk
Currys - www.currys.co.uk
easyJet - www.easyjet.co.uk
John Lewis - www.johnlewis.com
ASOS - www.asos.com
RyanAir - www.ryanair.com
Expedia.co.uk - www.expedia.co.uk
HMV.co.uk - www.hmv.co.uk
lastminute.com - www.lastminute.com
Ebuyer - www.ebuyer.com
Apple Computer - www.apple.com
GAME - shop.game.net
Thomson Holidays - www.thomson.co.uk
PC World - www.pcworld.co.uk
Comet UK - www.comet.co.uk
ASDA - www.asda.co.uk
Woolworths UK - www.woolworths.co.uk
B&Q - www.diy.com
Debenhams - www.debenhams.com
Boots - www.boots.com
Topshop - www.topshop.co.uk
Screwfix Direct - www.screwfix.com
River Island - www.riverisland.com
Odeon Cinemas - www.odeon.co.uk
Littlewoods - www.littlewoods.com
Sainsbury's - www.sainsburys.com
Toys 'R' Us UK - www.toysrus.co.uk
LOVEFiLM - www.lovefilm.com
British Airways - www.britishairways.com
QVCUK.com - www.qvcuk.com
HP - www.hp.com
Seetickets - www.seetickets.com
Vue Entertainment - www.myvue.com
Thomas Cook - www.thomascook.com
The Orange Shop - shop.orange.co.uk
IKEA - www.ikea.com
New Look - www.newlook.co.uk
O2 Shop - shop.o2.co.uk
Travelodge UK - www.travelodge.co.uk
Carphone Warehouse - www.carphonewarehouse.com
M and M Direct - www.mandmdirect.com

ho ho ho - a very clickety clickmas!

2008-12-18T05:43:00.000-08:00

why, in this day and age of advanced search engine marketing, is it so difficult to shop for a specific branded product online?

it's christmas and I'm shopping online (of course).

I'm looking for a set of nike running weights for my significantly-more-active-than-me girlfriend.

while a load of results appear for "nike running weights" in the uk, my subsequent clicks take me to all sorts of sports-related websites but not one of the landing pages I arrive on takes me to a product-specific page. many of them didn't even give me a category-related page to land on!

what's going on?

surely pay-per-clickers by now have evolved to appreciate that it's not just about how much you want to pay per click and the quality of your advert itself - it's about the quality of the landing page. this must be costing them a fortune!

ppc marketing aside, the piece de resistance of my search was the nike shopping experience itself. surely I would easily be able to find the required product within that magical 3-click rule?

hell no!

here's the sequence of events I went through from arrival at http://www.nike.com/...

1. specify language (click!)
2. specify location (click!)
3. select "shop"
4. select "women"
5. specify language again (click!)
6. specify location again (click!)
7. go to shop / women / running (click!)
8. select "equipment"
9. no response!
10. search for "weights" - no results
11. leave the site

hardly the ideal customer journey is it? looks like I'll be off to westfield tonight...

bah humbug.

getting to the top of google: pt.12

2008-12-12T10:26:00.000-08:00

DAY: 25
GOOGLE POSITION: 17
feeling optimistic
the new jamesvanderzee.co.uk website may be somewhat lacking in quality content (aside from the blog feed of course!), but that doesn't mean I can't start optimising what I do have.

first things first I'm going to sort some meta tags and add keyword-rich content to my pages (using this great content management system), including the window title, some meta keywords, descriptions and tags and see where that gets me.

watch this space!

getting to the top of google: pt.11

2008-12-12T08:35:00.000-08:00

DAY: 25
GOOGLE POSITION: 17
a long-time coming...
well i'm not yet on the first page but there has at least been some progress.

my new http://www.jamesvanderzee.co.uk/ has quickly overtaken my other efforts and is now at no. 17 of 102,000 results for "james vanderzee" on google.com.

it's safe to say that helping google to index the new james vanderzee site has had a positive effect - all pages have now been indexed, including the xml sitemap.

thanks barnes graham internet marketing! but what of my other listings?

my fashion industry network profile is now at no.29 (oddly the slightly more search engine-friendly version of the same page is listed further down the list at no.37) while my brand republic profile is at no.33.

…and where is my linkedin profile? I thought linkedin was supposed to be all about web 2.0, social networking and, ultimately, search engine optimisation?

sadly it would appear that this has all but dropped off the radar completely - I gave up looking shortly after spotting my webmarketingmusings blog in at no.161.

time for some on-site optimisation I think!

getting to the top of google: pt.10

2008-12-01T03:23:00.000-08:00

DAY: 14
GOOGLE POSITION: 27
at last - I'm on google!
as you can see below, over the weekend my good friend the googlebot finally found me and added me to the google search engine listings.

was this sudden appearance a coincidence or was it all down to the xml sitemap I added on friday? I would suggest so but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions…

the most important thing for now at least is that I’m now on there so, what sort of effect has my new james vanderzee website with its relevant url and brief but relevant “james vanderzee”-related content had on my search engine results?

well, as you can see from the below, my brand republic profile is now 27th while my fashion industry network profile is now 28th. but where’s my new website?!

further investigation shows my new jamesvanderzee.co.uk website at no. 38.

not bad for a new site with little content, but now it’s time to start optimising the site and see what effect that has…

getting to the top of google: pt.9

2008-11-28T09:48:00.000-08:00

DAY: 11
GOOGLE POSITION: 28
losing my position!
evidently google still hasn't indexed the new http://www.jamesvanderzee.co.uk/ website, despite having used the addurl tool.

next step is to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools to get the site verified.

to do this I needed my helpful friends at barnesgraham internet marketing to add a verification meta tag as supplied by google to my home page.

once this was done, I needed to add a sitemap.

the idea behind submitting a sitemap within the webmaster tools is to let google know about pages on your site that they might not otherwise discover - it's also a good way to remind them to check back for any updates!

anyway, this required an xml feed of the sitemap which again barnesgraham internet marketing were able to help me with.

processing sitemaps can take some time so I'll need to check back at google's webmaster tools again later to see if pages from my sitemap have been included in google's index.

hopefully that'll get things moving with google and I'll be able to start looking at optimising the site!

google's search wiki-mystery

2008-11-25T08:41:00.000-08:00

you may have already noticed a few new features on your google search engine results.

the key features of the new google search wiki are:

sites you always go to that don't feature at the top of your SERP can be moved to the top

if a site doesn't appear in results you can add it

if a site does appear in results that you don't want, then you can delete it

you can add notes to any result about what you found on that site and why you thought it was useful

for now at least, any changes you make or comments that you add won't make any difference to anyone else's results (or yours unless you're logged in) so, while this is an interesting development, I find myself asking "why?"

in particular:

why would you be searching for a site you always use - surely by now we've all learnt to bookmark?

why go through the process of adding a site to google that would be easier to add to your favourites?

why remove a site from your search results (how often do you make the same search?)?

there may be some benefits to this but perhaps I'm too skeptical about the previous 3 points to warrant spending too much time thinking about it?

these queries are of course taking this new functionality at face value, but what if things are not quite as they seem?

looking ahead these new features suggest that:

a) google wants to monitor what you are looking for and what you feel is more important, and

b) google is exploring human-edited collaborative search results, and looking to add weight to those deemed more important by its actual users (similar to DMOZ.org but on a significantly larger scale and with no section editors)...

if these assumptions are correct then we're looking at a whole new chapter in search marketing.

with google looking for new ways to get the best sites up to the top of the the list, how might this affect 'established' search engine optimisation practices?

read more about this at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/searchwiki-make-search-your-own.html or check out the video below.

getting to the top of google: pt.8

2008-11-25T05:39:00.000-08:00

DAY: 08
GOOGLE POSITION: 27
some progress
the new http://www.jamesvanderzee.co.uk/ website still hasn't been indexed by google but the good news is that my brand republic profile is now up to no. 27!

could this slight improvement be due to a recent update to that page as a result yesterday's post about a juror being dismissed after posting a facebook poll about their court case?

could it be the feeds from my blog and others that are featured on my profile?

interestingly I spotted that while my fashion industry network profile (which was updated on 19th november and also features a couple of 'fresh content' feeds) is now appearing at no.64, but where on earth is my linkedin profile?

being relatively active on linkedin, with a reasonably complete profile, I would have expected this to be considered significantly more up to date and relevant than any of my other profiles across the www but a closer inspection reveals that my linkedin profile doesn't even appear within the first 600 results!

is google really giving such little relevance to linkedin and, if so, why?

trial by facebook?

2008-11-24T05:41:00.000-08:00

according to an article on brand republic today a juror was thrown off a trial in Lancashire after she posted a poll on facebook asking friends if they thought the defendants were guilty.

she wrote: "I don't know which way to go, so I'm holding a poll."

although by law jurors are not allowed to discuss the details of cases with anyone, including friends and family members, this really isn't a million miles away from the televised trials in the USA that we see more and more of.

perhaps with the increasing use of social media in today's society we're not that far away from a virtual platform allowing defendants to be tried by their peers online...?

getting to the top of google: pt.7

2008-11-24T05:02:00.000-08:00

DAY: 07
GOOGLE POSITION: 28
I'm back!
today's position of no. 28 is my best performance to date, despite the fact that the new http://www.jamesvanderzee.co.uk/ website hasn't yet been indexed by google.

as I didn’t make any further changes over the weekend I can only assume this improvement is again is something to do with the fresh content updates on my brand republic profile including a feed from this blog, among others.

as this is an academic exercise, I’m keen to see what sort of difference simply having the new domain name and basic website will make to my performance, before making any further changes.this means that, until google picks me up at least, I’m going have to wait again.

if one thing is clear so far, it's that search engine optimisation is most definitely a slow-moving process!

getting to the top of google: pt.6

2008-11-21T04:46:00.000-08:00

DAY: 04
GOOGLE POSITION: 64
a bit of a downer...
well look at that - a quick search on google this morning tells me that my best performing search engine listing so far, my brand republic profile, has dropped a few positions.

my reckoning is that this is something to do with google's algorithms giving preference to recently updated content (if you recall I created that profile on 18th november) and, as I haven't made any changes to it since, my position has dropped.

also, another quick check on google indicates that, even though my newly-created http://www.jamesvanderzee.co.uk/ website has begun to propagate the world wide web, it hasn't yet been indexed by google so, for now at least, I need to sit and wait again...

getting to the top of google: pt.5

2008-11-20T23:41:00.000-08:00

DAY: 03
GOOGLE POSITION: 31
step 2: tell google I’m here!
if google doesn’t know I’m here then I could be waiting ages to be found, but that means I’m waiting for other people to link in to my site, and who out there knows I’m here?

with this in mind my best option was to add http://www.jamesvanderzee.co.uk/ directly via google’s “add url” tool.

hopefully that’ll do the trick but, as with many things google-related, I’m probably now just going to have to leave this bit, cross my fingers and see what happens…

getting to the top of google: pt.4

2008-11-20T09:43:00.000-08:00

DAY: 03
GOOGLE POSITION: 31
step 1: set up a website
so, it’s back to the plan.

before I could do anything else, I needed a website!

with this in mind I also needed a relevant domain name so I bought jamesvanderzee.co.uk from http://www.123-reg.co.uk/ (unfortunately.com was already taken).

then I needed to set up a simple website, with a decent content management system (cms) *.

* in spite of my career experience to date, I’ve cleverly avoided the “art of tech”. FYI there’s quite a skill in learning what a certain type of code does and doesn’t do, without actually knowing how it works (!) but the long and short of it meant that if I’m going to be responsible for my own website I needed a system that will allow me to create pages on the fly, with minimal technical input…

fortunately for me my good friends at barnes graham internet marketing were able to help me out with this.

bearing in mind google’s no.1 rule, i.e. focusing on what’s best for the visitors to my website, the next thing was to write some content and I needed to make damn sure that everything in the site was relevant to the right james vanderzee, i.e. me!

I started with the basics, as I had no doubt that I’d be complicating things later!

a single page
some basic biographic information (I already had this covered as I could use the info from my linkedin profile)

so here we are with http://www.jamesvanderzee.co.uk/…

it’s nothing too glam, but it's a start so let’s see where this gets us.

next I’ll be able to develop the content and add a few links and eventually even some contact details!

ps I added some google analytics tracking code, with a view to (hopefully) shedding some light on any progress I may (or may not) make!

getting to the top of google: pt.3

2008-11-20T08:02:00.000-08:00

DAY: 03
GOOGLE POSITION: 31
a pleasant surprise
well look at that – I managed to get myself up to number 31 on google within 24 hours by simply creating a profile, with my actual name, on the brand republic website.

not a bad start at all, eh?

thank you brand republic!

getting to the top of google: pt.2

2008-11-19T11:20:00.000-08:00

DAY: 02
GOOGLE POSITION: 162
where to start with my seo?
first things first, some research, so it’s off to google itself…

google recently (13th november 2008) published an seo starter guide pdf via its webmaster area.

inside it details a dozen or so common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing, including improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and so on.

in summary it suggests that I:

focus on what’s best for the visitors to my website
use unique, accurate page titles across my website
make good use of the description meta tags
use “friendlier” page URLs
make my site easy to navigate
offer quality content and services
write better anchor text
use heading tags appropriately
optimize my use of images
make effective use of robots.txt
be aware of rel="nofollow" for links
promote my website in the right ways
make use of google's free webmaster tools
take advantage of web analytics services

this list seems as good a place to start as any, so watch this space!

getting to the top of google: pt.1

2008-11-18T07:54:00.000-08:00

DAY: 01
GOOGLE POSITION: 162
a brief introduction…
allow me to introduce myself. my name is james vanderzee. not a very common name I’m sure you’ll agree.

if and when people go to look me up on google they’re often surprised to find a very different james vanderzee, as you can see below.

as you can see I’m not on the first page. I’m not even on the second page… do you know what?

as at 18th November 2008 I don’t appear on google for my own name until the 17th page, 162nd of about 95,300!

now this james vanderzee is a 30-something, digital marketing professional with more than 10 years' combined academic and commercial experience in his specialist field. that james vanderzee was an african american photographer, born at the tailend of the 1800’s, was (and still is) best known for his portraits of black new yorkers.

this james vanderzee is still very much alive and kicking. that james vanderzee died in the mid 1980’s.

so what? I hear you ask.
now I know in the grander scheme of things I’m certainly not as significant a contributer to society as my name sake, but it got me wondering nonetheless…

surely, with my professional experience and industry contacts, and as a purely academic exercise, I could change all this and get myself up to the top of the search engine rankings.

okay, we’ll entertain this – how are you going to do that?
well as I’m sure you already know, there are 2 ways to get onto the first page of google:

pay for it
get there organically

my first option is paid (pay per click or ppc) advertising on google’s adwords programme. to do well you need a budget to pay for those clicks, plus the time to manage your campaigns.

as you can see from my first screen grab, this would be a pointless exercise as, at time of writing this, there is only one competitor. with that in mind I’d be looking to pay around 5p per click, and where’s the skill in that?

exactly. I want a challenge!

my second option therefore is the one that interests me more and relates to what marketers call “natural” or “organic” search and, according to big mouth marketing at least, this accounts for up to 70% of all search engine-generated traffic.

okay technically this “search engine optimisation” (SEO) option isn’t free, as it needs time and/or money on this too (in terms of allocated people hours, content development, link generation, etc.).

it’s also supposed to be a very long, drawn-out process, but therein lies the challenge:

whether you’re doing ppc or not, it’s evidently beneficial to be top of natural search!

my quest begins…

recession-busting online marketing

2008-11-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

...or "digital marketing on a shoestring"

in these tough financial times businesses are firmly focused on their survival, but is that really enough? to compete effectively, the focus needs to be on growth. this got me thinking about how organisations can beat the economic turndown without literally breaking the bank and raises a fundamental question:

how do you boost your sales and marketing efforts with a restricted budget?

here are some pointers to get you moving in the right direction...

> good house keeping:

first things first, you really must get your website in order.

make sure everything works as it should - you've got a very small window of opportunity to get your message across and get that conversion before they're off spending money with your competitors.

optimise your site by adding valuable keyword-rich content about you, your brand and your products or services.

if you can't easily add new content to your current site, look at blogging as a cheap & effective alternative (more on that below)

> engage with your customers:

what do your existing & potential customers really want? find out by inviting feedback (both online and off) and ensure that you monitor industry news, blogs & forums. sign up to google reader to help you keep an eye out.

> exploit the cheap (and often free) marketing channels:

if you're already paying a monthly subscription for your email broadcast system, make sure you're taking full advantage! most systems will only be charging a few pennies per email so it's worth the nominal cost of keeping in touch with them.

generate some links in! make sure your site is on the major search engines and key online directories: hotfrog, yahoo, google, dmoz and the google directory, and so on, and ask any trade associations and governing bodies you are involved in to set up some reciprocal links with your site.

blogs and forums are another great way to disseminate information about what's going on at your organisation. you can quickly and easily publish news and events information, and invite interaction with your target audience. if you have something to say then why not set up your own free blog using blogger, wordpress or typepad?

for a b2c organisation, facebook can be a great way to interact with your audience. using facebook pages & perhaps even facebook adverts to drive traffic your way.

if you have loads of video content relating to your organisation, products & services then consider setting up a youtube channel of your own. upload your own content and invite your customers to do the same.

for a b2b organisation, linkedin is a great way to keep up to date with industry issues, see what your competition is up to and explore opportunities with contacts both old and new. if, like me, you're a consultant in your chosen specialist field, linkedin can be very good for informally offering guidance to potential customers out there. check out my profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesvanderzee.

to conclude...

generally speaking, for many of the above, the process is essentially the same:

1. generate some content
2. get it out there

all of these options are cheap, effective and highly targeted ways to stay in touch with your target audience as well as acquire new customers. in addition, this sort of activity also generates mentions of your brand(s) across the wider internet which, when coupled with links in to your main site(s) also means better search engine rankings - a veritable win/win.

there are a evidently number of effective ways to market while avoiding spending that hard-earned cash but please, please note - this is an ongoing process and MUST be setup and managed properly going forwards.

this means that you're going to have make up the difference by investing time.

but look at it this way, with even a few days' pro-active marketing per month, you could be achieving a whole lot more.

good luck!

how to start your social media marketing campaign

2008-10-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

hopping on to the social media marketing (smm) bandwagon
so you’ve decided that social media marketing (smm) is the way forward, but what happens next?

clients often ask which social media marketing channels should we focus on? do we dive straight in or do we take a softly softly approach?

personally I favour the strategic and structured approach to all methods of online marketing – which means that much needs to be considered before you can actually do a thing.

while getting started may therefore take a little longer, it means that everyone involved is 100% clear what we’re trying to achieve, how we’re going to get there and who’s doing what and when. ultimately that’ll save everyone involved both time and money.

for social media marketing (smm) the following strategic approach works well:

1. listen up and listen good

a key part of your situational analysis (and indeed your ongoing strategy) is to take time to listen to the conversations going on across the world wide web by monitoring what is happening in blogs, forums, social networks and other social media channels. try to establish:

where are your target audience already active?
who is saying what about you and where?
what is being said about your industry and competitors?
what is the compeition doing in the social media space?
who are the key influencers in your sector?
what do your customers like/dislike, what they want and need?

2. establish some key objectives

the only way to measure any marketing success is to know where you were to start with, have a clear idea of where you wanted to be and, of course, know where you are now. so, what are your objectives?

are you looking to increase the percentage of positive brand mentions?
do you want to drive an increase in traffic to your main website?
do you want to generate conversions such as new site subscribers or even new customers and sales?

always try to be “smart” with your objectives: they have to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based. for example: “to generate a 10% increase in email subscribers via smm channels by december 2008”.

one of the great things about the internet and online marketing is that it’s usually quite easy to monitor performance, so if you’re clear about where you’re going you can check your progress.

3. join in

when you know where to engage and with whom, the next step is to participate. there are varying degrees of involvement and it’s generally a good idea to start simple.

introduce yourself: be transparent about who you are (include a company name where applicable, and even a url – that’s great for search engine optimisation!)
show some personality – noone wants to hear bland corporate claptrap.
thank people for positive comments and reviews. even if you can’t resolve an issue there and then, it at least shows you care.
manage any crises by responding quickly to any negative comments, reviews or feedback
build relationships with the influencers out there – ask them to review your latest product
generate your own positive word of mouth about your brand, products & services
request feedback about your brand, products & services

4. get your own blog

creating your own social media marketing channel can be a bold but positive move and, although they can be free to create, will usually require a lot of time to setup and maintain going forward – who’s going to create and add all those weekly posts? all that aside, blogs are incredibly powerful tools for:

showing how much you know and care about your industry
encouraging dialogue with new and existing customers and employees
sharing new brand information and new products & services with new and existing customers and employees
influencing media coverage – the first stop for a lot of journalists these days is the good old internet.
getting input and feedback for new product and service development
improving search results (think of all that keyword rich content!)

5. are you facebooking at me?

there are already several hundred million facebook users all over the world, in several languages and that’s one hell of a captive audience. that said, far from being a place to push corporate messages, facebook needs to be seen as an opportunity to engage and add value. there are a number of opportunities for businesses on facebook (the majority of which are free to use), including:

facebook pages
create a free dedicated brand or product page and (with a little persuasion) people will sign up as “fans”, and help you to generate content by adding comments, uploading pictures and video. you can even send out news and event updates to fans.
facebook platform
create new (or use existing) custom interactive tools for your users for free, to improve their user experience while on your page, including video, reviews, games and so on. interactions also show up as user activity or ‘social stories’ which act as a powerful member-get-member function.
facebook insights
facebook’s in-house tracking solution reports on activity metrics, demographics, ad performance and trends.
facebook polls
a quick way to get answers to business-related questions from a highly targeted demographic sector (based on gender, age, location, interests and so on). you can set up and get responses to a poll in as little as half an hour!
facebook ads
quick and easy to set up, facebook ads are paid-for, text-based adverts, targeted to a specific audience, and managed on a daily budget basis. they appear contextually within the news feeds as well as in the right hand ad space. you can pay on a cost per click (CPC) basis or on an impressions (CPM) basis. in conjunction with this you’ll get facebook insights’ performance reports.

6. success? what success?

well you’ve been running your social media marketing (smm) campaign for a while now, but how are you getting on? have you achieved any of your objectives?

as I mentioned earlier, one of the great things about the internet and online marketing is that it’s really easy to monitor performance, but you must do it and do it frequently:

track your website and campaign activity
tracking solutions such as google analytics canidentify where traffic came from and what they did when they arrived. for instance, did your blog drive new email subscribers?
monitor online mentions of your company, products and services
using technorati and google blog search, check out how many there were? what percentage were positive vs. negative? how many negative comments were successfully resolved? how many happy punters were thanked?
measure interactions with your own blog
again, how many were there? what percentage were positive vs. negative? how many negative comments were successfully resolved? how many happy punters were thanked?
check your blog’s ranking
technorati is a leading authority on smm and watching your performance on their ranking is a good way to see how popular your blog is.

some final thoughts

if you are considering social media marketing for your business your first question has to be whether or not your target audience are even mildly interested in social media. if they’re not, and are unlikely to be in the near future then you have to ask yourself is smm really worth the effort? personally I would recommend at least dipping your toe in, even if it's simply creating a profile on linkedin for now.

assuming you do want to go ahead with more involved social media marketing activity, and you’re serious about it, be sure to promote your presence elsewhere: on your website, and even in your offline marketing materials. there's no point creating something wonderful for people if they don't know it's there!

it’s definitely a good idea to allocate responsibility for your social media marketing (smm) to a dedicated internal team or agency as this can prove to be a highly labour-intensive process.

check out google blog search and technorati to find blogs and other social media relevant to you. get yourself a blog/rss reader such as feedburner too so you can keep up to date with websites, blogs and so on that are relevant to you. but, don’t simply focus at blogs, also check out facebook, myspace, youtube, linkedin and so on.

please note – and this is worth re-iterating again and again:

whatever level of activity you choose, make sure you’re 100% transparent! as well as being considered best practice from an ethical point of view, by including a company name and url where applicable, it will generate links to your website and that’s simply great for search engine optimisation (seo).

happy sailing!

a duffers guide to social marketing media

2008-10-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

what are the main social media marketing and social networking channels open for business?
there are a number of smm channels (otherwise known as social networking and ‘user-generated content’ platforms) available for businesses to utilise. the majority of smm channels should be familiar as they include a number of well-known household names.

here’s a brief overview of the key social media marketing channels:

blogging (or “weblogging”)
there are literally thousands of blogs out there on the “blogosphere” (just like this one) and whatever your industry sector there will be at least one that’s relevant to you!

the typical varying degrees of involvement for businesses when it comes to blogs are:

1. find them (via google reader and bloglines)
2. read them
3. comment on them
4. create & go blog yourself! (blogger, typepad and wordpress are among the best)

really simple syndication (or rss)
rss is a great way to get your brand, product or service news and updates in front of interested people without the need for sending costly mass email communications, in real time.

they allow users to aggregate & group content around particular subjects (using feedburner or google news) as well as re-purpose, re-publish and create content.

due to the simplicity and lack of formatting of rss, they work really well across many media including various browsers, pdas, mobile phones and so on.

they’re relatively easy to set up on your website or blog and even easier to sign up for.

check out feedburner or google news to get started.

social bookmarking
social bookmarking is all about flagging web content (yours and others) as interesting and/or relevant to particular keyword ‘tags’ or groups.

it’s an excellent (and easy) way to save content for when you have more time, or indeed ‘forever’. social bookmarking is a great way to save interesting press articles, important industry websites (competitors, suppliers) and so on in a single place. This is great for people who work remotely as it can act as a virtual ‘favourites’ on your browser, although you will need to remember those all important login details!

as well as acting as a good online resource for your use (and anyone else who appreciates your tagging), social bookmarking also provides lots of nicely targeted links to your website which is always good for search engine optimisation (seo).

check out del.icio.us, digg, reddit, stumbleupon, mixx and (for those in the seo category) small business brief.

social search
keep a keen eye out for customer reviews out there, both good and bad, and respond accordingly. deal with the negative ones but don’t forget to thank people for positive reviews too. remember, you can’t please all the people all the time but it’s better to show you care – this is called “social” marketing after all!

note that this isn’t just about firefighting customer issues, it’s also a great way to help with search engine optimisation (seo). the more mentions of your company, brand, product or service across the wider internet, and the more links to your website, the better you are likely to perform on the search engine rankings.

check out yahoo local, local.com, google maps to start with but remember there will be places specific to your business sector, e.g. tripadvisor for the travel industry.

social networking
if you’re not on facebook or linkedin by now then you’re definitely missing out on business opportunities. you can set up a personal profile as well as a wider organisational or brand/product-specific presence and these offer an additional channel for existing and potential customers and business partners to engage with you and your brand.

that said, you certainly don’t want to approach this lightly! setting up a presence for your brand on facebook, for example, will require a significant level of management (depending on the size of your brand of course) as it needs to be monitored regularly and constantly developed, with new content (editorial, imagery and video) needed regularly to keep it looking fresh and up-to-date.

check out facebook, linkedin and myspace. if you’re looking for something more specific (and, trust me, there are a lot of specific networks out there!) then take a look at http://mashable.com/2007/10/23/social-networking-god/.

blogging in plain english

2008-10-15T04:04:00.000-07:00

what's all the fuss about blogs?

a duffers overview from lee lefever...