Tag Archives: Online Marketing

Deals are not Enough, Social Followers want More

Primary motives of any social media campaign are buzz creation and engagement. But social followers want something beyond the regular.

A recent Marketing Sherpa survey showed that discovering a great deal (sale, special offers or discounts etc.) remains the top motivation of those who befriended or followed a brand online. Looking for savings is followed closely by learning about new products, features or services.

The survey results support the findings of another study by Razorfish, that listed searching for exclusive deals and offers as the primary motivation of US Internet users for following brands on Twitter.

The tip for marketers here is that only by sharing interesting content that users care about, along with exciting deals and discounts, they can engage and motivate customers to spread marketing messages further.

12 Must Know Digital Marketing Forecasts for 2010

Internet marketing continues to undergo a rapid transformation every year. Areas that will be affected in 2010 may include: future monetization models, the effect of transparency on advertising, social and search, mobile, social commerce, public relations, social advertising, Twitter, video and mom/pop internet usage. And, we are only in January! Here’s a great compilation of some of these trends from data at eMarketer. Here are some useful insights on what digital marketing may would look like in 2010. What would the future monetization models look like? What will be the effect of transparency on advertising? Read on to know this and more.

Introducing Google Sidewiki: A Boon for Marketers

What is Google Sidewiki?

Google Sidewiki is the latest Google offering that can be developed into a potential touch point between marketers and customers. This Google toolbar application enables you to put in helpful information next to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page. Anyone who uses the FREE Google toolbar with Sidewiki enabled can use this application. You can also download this application from the following URL:

http://www.google.com/sidewiki/intl/en/install.html

How Can Marketers Leverage it?

By writing Sidewiki entries that are informative and relevant, marketers can leverage the space for interacting with their customers and prospects. Moreover, since Sidewiki allows visitors to submit their comments, it becomes an excellent platform for promoting a service or products and gaining feedback at the same time! In addition, the Sidewiki space can also be used for guiding visitors about your website, upcoming events/offers, industry trends and much more.  Another advantage is that the comments or information that you share vie Sidewiki can be directly promoted through Twitter and Facebook.  The way you use Sidewiki would vary with the type of website or blog you have, however, the application certainly presents a unique opportunity for interacting with your audiences directly from your websites.

How Add Google Sidewiki to a Website?

Here are a few simple steps that would guide you through the process of    adding Google Sidewiki to your website:

Install the latest Google Toolbar with Google Sidewiki. The tool bar would look something like this:sw11 Visit your website or the web page where you want to run Google Sidewiki.

Ensure that Google Sidewiki is turned on in the Google Toolbar. You then need to log in to your Google account to be able to see the Google Wiki sidebar on the left side of your web browser.After signing in, you will see the name of your site, as well as the field to “Edit your name”. You can modify your display settings or add relevant keywords etc. here if you wish to.

sw223 Next, you make an entry about what ever information you wish to share  with your audiences and click the Publish button.

The entry can now be seen on your website.

sw44From instigating discussions, to prompting offers, marketers can utilize the Google Sidewiki space in multiple forms to spur interaction with their audiences directly from the website. The application promises not only increased web traffic, but also ensures multi pronged benefits for marketers.

Top 10 Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking is an integral part of all social media campaigns. Social bookmarking allows you to save and organize web pages by using popular tabs or meta data.  Raging popularity, ease of use and low cost has made social bookmarking a sought after marketing metier. Here’s a collection of top 20 popular social bookmarking sites that you can consider for promoting your business across social media.

Twitter

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StumbleUponofficial_stumbleupon_logo_postcard-p239476427170395189qibm_400

RedditredditYahoo! buzz

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Del.icio.usdel

Mixxmixx

Technoratitechnorati-fav

Propellerprop

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Most Popular Social Media Icon Sets

If you are considering boosting your website traffic through social media, you can give some icon-ic touch to your social presence. You can add popular social media icons to your social media sites and jazz up your social visibility. Here is collection of popular social media icons sets for your own use.

Dellifeed: A Free Icon Set
Dellifeed: A Free Icon Set

Heart: A Free Social Icon Set

Heart: A Free Social Icon Set

The Leaves Fall: A Social Icon Set For Bloggers

The Leaves Fall: A Social Icon Set For Bloggers

Social Icons Hand Drawned

Social Icons Hand Drawned

6 Free New Social Icons

6 Free New Social Icons

Free Twitter Bird Icon Set

Free Twitter Bird Icon Set

Free Hand Drawn Doodle Icon Set for Bloggers

Free Hand Drawn Doodle Icon Set for Bloggers

Cheers: A Free Social Icon Set

Cheers: A Free Social Icon Set

Set of Sociial Icons

Set of Social Icons

Go Social…Internet is No Longer Only for Geeks!

With the whole world flocking to the social media sites like Twitter, Digg and LinkedIn, making your business visible on them has become extremely challenging. Social Media Optimization (SMO) is your only chance to remain afloat in a swarming pool of competitors. SMO is novel marketing strategy that has rapidly gained popularity in recent times. The concept is simple, get your website refurbished so that it is easily linkable to social media sites, is found on all popular blogs and podcasts and is extensively bookmarked.

Why Social Media?

A marketing study conducted by WhitePaperSource.com reveals that marketers are increasingly drawn towards social media marketing because it yields better results with lower investment. According to the report, the primary benefits of promoting your business through social media are:

  • enormous attention from prospects
  • increased number of qualified leads
  • fruitful business partnerships
  • reduced marketing expenses

Who doesn’t want to see their business grow by leaps and bounds in minimum cost? Social media is a fabulous opportunity for doing this and you should just not miss it!

However, only knowing about it and creating accounts on Twitter and LinkedIn will not get you the desired results. Marketing through social media needs extensive planning and effective SMO to ensure that your business is visible wherever your clients may look for it.

How do I make my SMO activities effective?

The answer is simple- proper planning and a well executed SMO strategy. Optimizing your website to ensure that it qualifies all parameters of social media marketing, coupled with effective management and maintenance of the same is what will get you maximum eye balls.

Here are some tips for a perfect SMO that will get you maximum attention on the Internet:

1.    Increase your linkability – Mobilize your website. Update it regularly and imbibe blogs and whitepapers to enhance its linkability.

2.    Make tagging and bookmarking easy – Tag and bookmark your pages with all popular websites.

3.    Help your content travel – SMO goes beyond modifying structure and content of your website. If you have content that is in portable formats like PDF, audio-video files, PPTs etc, the same can be submitted to sites like YouTube, SlideShare, etc..

4.    Make web friends – Go ahead and exchange content and videos with other websites. Experiment with RSS and facilitate others in driving more traffic towards your web content.

Give your website the SMO power and see its presence grow in every corner of the World Wide Web!

Marketing Insider: Social Media & Lead Generation

The latest issue of the Marketing Insider focuses on bringing you some of the latest developments at the intersection of business marketing and social media for effective lead generation. The newsletter provides interesting links to some of the best practices being followed by marketers in the lead generation and social media industries.

Catch the latest buzz, read what the Gurus of the industry are saying, take the poll to see how you match against your peers in terms of your social media expectations of 2009.

Read the latest issue here: Marketing Insider

Online Marketing to Succeed the Economic Downturn

World economy is going through one of its worst crisis in history, with many experts predicting a global economical recession, countries approving multi-billion dollars bailout programs to help their economies to survive and companies having to cut down their costs to avoid bankruptcy.

When companies start to think about cutting down on their expenditures, one of the first things that comes to CEO’s and Managing director’s minds is to reduce or even cancel their marketing campaigns budgets.

On the other hand CMOs (chief marketing officers) think the opposite; they believe that during an economic down turn is precisely the time when marketing plays an important role. By stopping a marketing campaign you lose contact with your clients and you stop understanding your costumer needs.

An alternative to all these problems is Online Marketing, as the name already suggests Online Marketing is any type of marketing that is done via the Internet; email marketing campaigns, search engine marketing or search engine optimisation campaigns, social media marketing, blog marketing or any other form that you could think of that involves the use of the Internet as a source to promote your brand, products or services.

Why is Online Marketing so important during an economical downturn?

I’m far from an economic expert but there 4 factors that put online marketing ahead of other marketing techniques during a down economy:

1 - Measurement

One of the biggest problems with traditional marketing campaigns is the lack of good measuring methods, with online marketing is a completely different ball game. All you need is a good web analytics package, Google Analytics for instance, to track, measure, document the effect and justify your marketing investments to you boss.

2 - Immediate Effect

It is almost impossible to know how effective a TV commercial or another type offline advertisement is. While online marketing methods have a direct value on sales; especially when we talk about search engine marketing and search engine optimisation.

3 - Good ROI

The success of a marketing campaign is measured by its ROI (return over investment); the higher the better; and there are few things beating online marketing nowadays. For every dollar spent on online marketing, marketers are making more than a dollar through sales or other conversions on their sites.

4 - Small Budgets

With online marketing you can start with a small budget and gradually increase it as you succeed, and believe me many multi-million dollar companies are basing their economic strategies around this simple principle nowadays.   The  DMA  estimates that expenditures with  online marketing  will maintain a significant growth in the coming year with more than 50% of U.S marketing dollars directed to Interactive marketing.

Author: Seo Bedford