Archive for the ‘Internet Marketing’ Category

4 ways to optimize your news and get in front of the media

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

press release optimizationAfter a flurry of work into some exciting and upcoming developments that are about to be launched we are back again. Enough about that though, that can all wait for the press for you to see elsewhere.

You won’t find us putting in Miracle’s upcoming news in our blog. This can be suicide for a company’s brand, transforming it into a faceless corporation. Let’s face it nobody is as excited about your new up and coming “state-of-the-art”, “revolutionary”, “groundbreaking” product/service as you are. So relax a bit with the sell, sell, sell mode that you are so good at and show your blog readers that you are a few human beings that make up your proficient company.

Blogs are a communication tool that builds brand awareness and nurtures a sense of engagement and not a medium to waffle on about your company; this will only make your customers turn away from you. This distinction needs to be made. Don’t follow the hype and “experts” that have made claims that “the press release is dead” and that they have made way for blogs. Blogs are becoming increasingly important, but they should hold a different communication strategy to the public then that of the press release.

The traditional Press release does need to altered, that much is true. The press release is still vital for company to get in front of the media, it just need to written with smarts so that it can be found through press release optimization and to grab the attention of journalists who see hundreds of press releases per day.

So many get this wrong and end up writing their press release so its looks and sounds like an advertisement. Be weary of this of doing this, the journalist could not care less about the product you sell, the amazing customer service. Instead there are a set of guidelines that should be followed to develop a press release that will be found, grab the attention of discerning journalists.

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Posted in Internet Marketing, Press Release, press realease optimization | No Comments »

What to do when people are talking about your brand on the web

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

What to do when people are talking about your brand on the web personal brand blog1 300x235
A brand’s online persona is the first impression for potential leads or clients, which counts for a lot in cyber space. Study after study demonstrates that web surfers have notoriously short attention spans. Failure to capture someone’s attention, or worse, if pegged with a negative association off the bat, odds are you won’t get a second chance to make your case. For this reason it is vital that you keep a positive online reputation intact.

The first step is to monitor your brand all over the internet. Make sure you find out about everything that is being said about your brand. First things first, you need to monitor all the keywords that are associated with your brand. This can be your brands, products, brand abbreviations, company director, public relations officer, also common misspelling of all of these variables.

Second step is to monitor your online reputation on a wide range of two-way internet mediums. This will be social networks, blogs, groups, forums, social media sites, consumer websites, and maybe most importantly on SERP’s. Use to RSS feeds to track these comment mediums with ease.

The most important step and technique is how to react to the negative comments. This can be described as damage control. The truth is that there will many different circumstances and not all negative comments will be the same.

There are the “trolls” and the “rager”, usually focused on degrading others, ranting, making jokes etc. These types of comments do not deserve a response, but mediums that host them should be monitored for information. Responding to specific comments could potentially exposure the comments more. Consumers hate being overly marketed to and a very aware of the marketing and PR practices that companies try to implement. Stay away from exposing your brand as being overly concerned with laughable comments it can only make your brand look worse in the eyes of consumers.

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Posted in Brand Management, Brand reputation management, Internet Marketing, Social Media Optimization | 3 Comments »

How to use social media in small business

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
How to use social media in small business 1211569560social media 29 300x274

Social Media in small businesses is becoming more common, many are aware of the potential benefits that can be developed. Many are still lagging behind as the recent survey by Citibank has portrayed (Reuters, 2009). 86% of small businesses in the US (under 100 employees) do not use social networking sites or do not find them useful in generating business leads or to expand business, can you believe that?! I sure can.

Small businesses that use social media correctly will be using it as a relationship marketing tool rather than a point of sale tool. To do this, it does take a considered effort and time to start creating the social networks that your business can benefit from. As within the physical world networks and relationships take time develop. Small businesses need to make time or hire SMO professionals to develop social media strategies that suit their business.

There are many social media outlets such as blogging, networking, and bookmarking. What is important is that a company does not get excited and start creating profiles all over the web and jump straight into writing a blog.

A business must get try and optimize the way they communicate their brands message through social media the first time. It is important that the message in which the company is communicating is integrated consistently with the current brand image and positioning. Social media has many mediums in which to communicate across; small businesses need to be made aware of how one should communicate consistently along these mediums.

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Posted in Customer Relationship Management, Internet Marketing, Social Media Optimization | 1 Comment »

Essentials on Findability

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Essentials on Findability search icon

Much is being said about Findability strategies for brands and websites. But what does it really mean to be findable? Findability could be defined, in its essence, by one straightforward phrase: The best way to find a user is to be found by him. In theory this can sound simple, but not in practice.

Morville (2005) point out that “Findability precedes usability. You can’t use what you can’t find”. Many marketers desire to have the ideal web design solution for their company, accompanied by an appropriate information architecture and usability structure. Of course this is important to be considered when having an online presence, but along with that, strategies to increase the users capability to find the websites they seek as well as being able to find relevant content within the pages must be put in practice.
There is a big difference between a customer’s behaviors when impacted by online media vs. mass media. For instance, when you are watching the television and a commercial break is on, the message that you receive turns to be totally invasive. In the web, things work in a different (although not opposite) way.

As much as a banner or pop-up ads can be invasive, the user usually accesses the url of the brand he/she is willing to see: they open a favorite browser and type the brand url or search for the brand name in a query box. That’s were we meet the concept of findability.

This strategy is connected with the keywords that are used to find the website, and they can present an excellent performance in search engines, as long as you know how to use them. The ideal scenario for a brand is to be among the top results in the search engines’ ranking. But you shouldn’t count on only this strategy for achieving results. There are other tools – such as web advertisements – that can be used to impact the consumer in several web locations. That’s why the digital strategic planner needs to think about the whole picture, in the whole digital project, and not only in website itself.

Findability strategy can be designed using frequent SEM tactics, Public Relations practices and keywords usage. Analyze the most researched keywords and find out which of those best suites with your website and brand. Simple keywords like Kitchen and Books – commonly researched words – can only increase traffic in the website. Findability concept is about increasing qualified traffic, to find people who are really interested in the brands, products or services that a company is offering. In this strategy – and in the whole digital project – it is always good to keep in mind that it is better to have 10.000 accesses with 5.000 conversions than having 100.000 accesses with 500 conversions.

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Posted in Internet Marketing | 3 Comments »

Link Baiting

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Link Baiting linkbait

Well, when talk about Linkbaiting, it is often written about in negative terms. ‘Baiting’ can be regarded as a sense of trying to trick or trap an unsuspecting person or thing into doing something that they don’t really want to do. While this is accurate with some forms of linkbaiting it is not true with others.

This is the area of the debate around the term ‘linkbaiting’ and some of the practices that people talk about it incorporating. Some argue strongly that it is just a by-product of quality content, others argue that many linkbaiting strategies border on spam, others seem to talk about linkbait as being the answer to all web promotional problems (increasingly SEO companies are offering linkbaiting services).
Quite frankly, its always been a difficult term to be definitive about as it covers a lot of different practices ranging from running awards or competitions, through to writing attacking posts on high profile bloggers in the hope of them biting back and linking to you, through to providing other bloggers or site owners with tools (with embedded links back to your own site) that they can put on their blogs… In reality the term ‘linkbaiting’ is a new term for something that webmasters have been doing for many years.”

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Posted in Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »

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