Here are the top Internet strategy, marketing and technology links for the week of July 29, 2011…
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Jul
30
2011
Top Internet strategy, marketing and technology links for the week of July 29, 2011
Jul
29
2011
Digging in the Cache – Peanut Butter Jelly Time
Digging in the Cache is a series where we go back in time to look at fun tidbits of Internet and computer history. Up this week — another annoying, yet catchy tune, complete with a dancing banana…
Jul
29
2011
Creating Great Content for Today’s Social Web
Welcome to an increasingly social landscape on the Web. Social media started this shift from information to conversation, and now with the search engines increasingly using social signals to determine what to show searchers it’s a trend that, as a publisher, you have to get on top of to write and promote great content.
This post will discuss the movement of Bing and Google towards social search, and how that affects the organic search landscape. Then I’ll provide some tips on how this impacts your writing and promotion of your content. – Creating Great Content for Today’s Social Web
Jul
28
2011
6 Ways to Increase Word of Mouth Referrals with Social Media
Many small businesses rely almost entirely on word of mouth referrals for new business. People are much more likely to trust a colleague, friend or relative over what a business has to say about their products or services. Social media, when used properly and consistently, can help small businesses increase referrals. Since social media makes it easier for people to connect one-to-one, it makes it easier for people to see what other people have to say about a company. Besides helping increase reputation as an expert in your field, social media also provides the opportunity to increase the conversations that people are having online about your company (which, if positive, can lead to an increase in referrals). Here are some ways social media can help increase word of mouth referrals. [Read more...]
Jul
28
2011
Social Media Gets Mixed Reviews From Small Business
Small business owners are still lukewarm about social media: 53% say they use social media for business, but only 12% say social marketing is a must for their business, according to a survey from Hiscox.
Social media adoption varies by company size, however: 62% of businesses with 50-249 employees use social media for business, compared with 46% of those with 1-9 employees. – Social Media Gets Mixed Reviews From Small Business
Jul
27
2011
How Social Media Activity Affects Sales
Measuring social media ROI can sometimes be difficult. Metrics like followers, fans, and site traffic are easy to measure. What’s not so obvious is how your efforts on social media are affecting your bottom line (sales, revenue). While there are ways to directly measure certain campaigns (clicks on a specific link, visits to a landing page, etc.), how does social media activity affect sales? One way to take a look at the effects are by plotting social media activity (number of posts) and how it’s affecting the traffic to your website (or to a specific landing page) and the number of sales (another metric to look at would be number of mentions). [Read more...]
Jul
27
2011
If your news site isn’t social, great design won’t matter
There’s been a lot of sound and fury in the media sphere recently, sparked by a blog post from web designer Andy Rutledge that tore apart the New York Times website for being ugly and cluttered. This caused a firestorm of sorts on Twitter, as defenders of the site argued that most of his criticisms and proposed solutions were unrealistic — which many of them arguably are. But the biggest blunder Rutledge commits is when he argues that news sites should avoid social-recommendation elements, when the opposite is true. – If your news site isn’t social, great design won’t matter
Jul
26
2011
Social Media and Increasing Website Traffic
Finding decent web hosting and building a website is only the first step to successful Internet marketing. This isn’t a matter of if you build it they will come; you need to attract customers and potential customers to your site. One of the most efficient and cost effective ways of doing this is with social media.
Internet marketing isn’t like traditional marketing, where you create a series of ads and customers sit in their living rooms and watch them. The new age of marketing is about participative marketing. – Social Media and Increasing Website Traffic
Jul
25
2011
Find Out What’s Trending by Demographic on YouTube with YouTube Trends Dashboard
Wondering what’s hot on YouTube? Need to know what the latest video craze is for a certain demographic or geographic segment? YouTube provides this information with their YouTube Trends Dashboard and lets you compare one segment to another (both by most shared and most viewed). YouTube also curates content for newsworthy posts every weekday (this is aimed at bloggers and news outlets) on their YouTube Trends blog. YouTube has recognized that their content is often used in news reports and is taking steps to make it easier for publishers to find quality content. Hopefully, they’ll also add the ability to segment on topic. [Read more...]
Jul
25
2011
Why Dependability Is the Most Important Quality for Businesses
If You Can Be One Thing, Be Dependable
Finding a vendor, employee or partner who will consistently play their part is one of the great challenges in business. Want to win in this world? I’ve found that the most simple and effective tactic is to be the most dependable. Unfortunately, that’s a quality that’s often severely lacking in the service industry. – Why Dependability Is the Most Important Quality for Businesses
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