Archive for October, 2006
Should SEO Payments Include Royalties?
This question came up in a discussion today. Imagine that Blue Horseshoe hires your SEO company to optimize their web site. Blue Horseshoe sign a twelve month contract and you do your thing. You fix the indexing problems, add new content and implement a link building campaign. As a result of your efforts, Blue Horseshoe online sales skyrocket from $10,000 a month to $150,000 a month.
Renewal time comes around and Blue Horseshoe decides that they don’t want to pay for SEO services any more. They do not renew your contract. However, Blue Horseshoe continues to enjoy good rankings, traffic and conversions as a result of your work. In fact, over the next twelve months they sell an average of $100,000 a month.
Filed under SEO : Comments (13) : Oct 15th, 2006
Local Search and Social Networks
Interesting data from Hitwise recently about the growth in web site traffic to social local search sites. One overlooked segment of the social landscape is local search, and how that social networks and local search can work together.
The Hitwise data shows that
“the market share of visits to the custom category containing Yahoo! Local, Yelp, Judy’s Book and Insider Pages has grown by 44% when comparing August 2005 to August 2006”
While local search is dominated by traditional players like yellow pages, the social networks are closing the gap.
Who are the top local social network sites?
Filed under Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (0) : Oct 12th, 2006
Yahoo Needs A Purchase
With the Google purchase of YouTube completed Google now provides search for the number 1 social media site (MySpace) and now owns the number two site. What will Yahoo do to counter this move?
That is a $2 billion question, as that is what it might cost Yahoo to purchase Facebook. Is $2 billion too high a price to for Yahoo to pay? Probably, but Yahoo cannot afford to concede the social networks space to Google like they have regular search engine results. So they will pay whatever it takes, which will make the Facebook investors very happy.
Filed under Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (0) : Oct 10th, 2006
Burger King Does It The Social Way
Brilliant write up at Advertising Age about a speech that Russ Klein, Burger King’s president of global marketing, strategy and innovation gave at a recent ANA gathering. The theme of the speech was how social media marketing has helped Burger King close the gap on McDonald’s. Some of the highlights of Russ Klein’s speech were:
Turning your brand over to consumers is taking control,” said the president of global marketing, strategy and innovation for Burger King to the crowd of attendees that packed the grand ballroom at the Ritz-Carlton Orlando. “They’ll return it to you in better shape.”
Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (0) : Oct 10th, 2006
Google YouTube - Different Takes On The Deal
There is a lot of Internet chatter and postings around the Google acquisition of YouTube. The three most insightful postings I have read are:
Mark Cuban was and is still not in favor the deal. He foresees some potential issues with the integration of Google Video and YouTube as he asks:
“It will be interesting to see just how Google reconciles selling videos like Crazy in Love from Sony, when the same video is available as a user upload for free from youtube.”
John Battelle appears to have some questions about how the two companies will coexist after listing to the conference call Monday. ”
Filed under Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (1) : Oct 9th, 2006
Nikon and eBay Get Social Media
Unlike Wal-Mart, both Nikon and eBay get social media and understand how to use the power of social networks to help improve their brand awareness.
From business blog consulting:
eBay did when it created an admittedly cheesy 75 second introductory movie promoting an upcoming course they’re offering to the eBay seller community. They filmed the movie then simply uploaded it to YouTube and mentioned it on the eBay Chatter weblog to help drive more customers to the training course: check it out. Cool!
Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (0) : Oct 8th, 2006
Wal-Mart Fails At Social Networking
Wal-Mart’s attempt at setting up a social network aimed at teens was a miserably failure and was shut down after less than three months. Why was it such a failure you might ask? Well “The Hub” as Wal-Mart called it was supposed to let teens “express their individuality”. However, Wal-Mart screened all the content, informed parents when their children joined and forbade users to e-mail one another. Who great idea was this? There is no way that social site with these types of restrictions could ever be successful.
Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (4) : Oct 8th, 2006
Social Media Demographics - Part 2
The social media demographics analysis that comsScore released early this week hopefully will clean up the common misconception that all social media networks are alike. That there is no real difference from one user-generated (UG) site to another and thus marketers can employ a common tactic successfully across the whole network. The demographic data shows not only how each of the major social networks attracts a different demographic group, but that as the social network sites become more mainstream those demographics will skew upwards as a larger percentage of the general population joins in.
Filed under Brand Marketing, Demographics, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (2) : Oct 6th, 2006
Consumers Wary of Ads on Social Media Sites
According to the Jupiter Research report, “Viral Marketing: Beyond Social Media,” summarized by Internet Retailer, most consumers don’t trust product information they get on social media sites. The survey determined that 69% of consumers don’t trust the product information they get on social media sites. Consumers were twice as likely to trust product information on a company web site or professional review site.
Consumers don’t like ads to begin with, and they especially don’t like ads on social media sites that interrupt them. Fred Stutzman had a terrific post on this recently when he spoke about advertising on social networks. One of his points was titled Ads - or, the interestingness problem:
Filed under Brand Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (3) : Oct 6th, 2006
Social Media Demographics Different Than Expected
comScore Media Metrix released an analysis today that will surprise many people. The report revealed that while most people bundle the major social networking sites together, they actually appeal to quite different demographic groups. This is great data from comScore. Many marketing managers have the misconception that all social media sites are the same, and thus all they need is a cookie cutter approach that will work across all the whole social network. This analysis debunks that thinking.
Some of the reports highlights:
Filed under Brand Marketing, Demographics, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Optimization : Comments (4) : Oct 5th, 2006
