Archive for CEO's Lessons
3 Cool Facebook Market Research Tools
As one of the largest - and the most progressive social media site in the world, Facebook is a great mine of information. They have all of the data broken down and segregated. However, much of it is hidden behind the “facebook wall” - facebook doesn’t publicize all of their information. So here’s 3 interesting tools to use:
Facebook Lexicon - Facebook Lexicon is an interesting service that analyzes the amount of times a keyword (Company, product, service) has been mentioned on Facebook. So for example, below is a faceoff of Mccain vs. Palin vs. Obama vs. Biden
The 3 Series Punch to Marketing your website and Blog
3 Steps - Credit to #freelance
Many people want to just start their online marketing campaign - be it SEO, Paid search or Social Media Marketing, without doing any previous marketing analysis. However it’s much more important to have your business plan down pat when you are marketing online, over when you are doing offline marketing.
To give you an understanding why, I’ll give you 3 different “case studies” with a lawyer who is trying to grow their business. They are an experienced attorney.
Blogging for Yourself, the User and the Search Engine - a 2008 resolution
As you may or may not know, I am a big believer in blogging. It is a valuable way of
1)expressing your personality,
2)creating a connection with your users, and
3)getting valuable SE ranking.
The question is which one comes first? You might think this is a trivial question. It’s not.When I started blogging on About Results Marketing, I had merely bought a cool expiring domain for something I had wanted to do in the future - consulting in SEO, SEM and online marketing.
Facebook (Stupidly) Takes the Heat from Moveon, while Yahoo and Ebay laugh to the bank!
So we all know about the Facebook Debacle with Beacon - and the horrible mistakes stupid 24 year olds make (We really do love you Mark Zuckerburg) it’s just that young kids shouldn’t be running $15 billion dollar businesses.
Moveon.org and the EFF have been decrying the privacy issues. As I’ve stated in a previous post, I think that behavioral targeting is inevitable and coming soon. In fact, I wasn’t happy that Mike Morgan from Tacoda was being apologetic about it.
Should an Ecommerce Website Have a Blog?
(Disclaimer: I am extremely biased towards blogs. I have already come to the conclusion that blogs are always beneficial. Consider yourself warned!)
Here are the issues:
- What are the pro’s and con’s of having a blog on your ecommerce site (The Theory)
- What are the other experts in the field saying about having blogs on your ecommerce site
- What are the big guys doing?
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What are the Pro’s and Con’s of having a Blog on your Ecommerce site?
Is the LA Times Getting Closer to “Getting It”?
This is a follow up to my first post on the LA Times’s efforts to go “Web 2.0″, after meeting with Eric Ulken at a blogger’s event.
First off, a little disclaimer… My site is ugly, doesn’t convert, and definitely is not “cool”. So I really should have no right to criticize other companies’ efforts to “get it”. Especially since the LA Time site isn’t to badly designed. It has a pretty minimalist design, and very easy to find links.
A Sad Day - A Legal Decision Puts BroadFirst Out Of Business
Sheri Archidiacono in Sedo’s Newsletter (they don’t have it available online) sais this about “Website Terms and Conditions are Considered a Contract”:
“In the case of Southwest Airlines Co. v. BoardFirst, LLC, a Texas court held that a user of a website was bound by the terms and conditions of that website where the user has actual knowledge of such terms and conditions.
The Plaintiffs, Southwest airlines maintained a first come, first served, open seating policy, where passengers are arranged in groups. The Defendant, Boardfirst.com was an internet company that provided a service to Southwest customers whereby for a fee, a passenger could check in early and BoardFirst would attempt to get the passenger into the first boarding group.
LA Times Getting Social Media? Candid Discussion with Eric Ulken
Today I happened on the Mashable “Top 10 Blogger Events Post“. I noticed that BarCamp is having an event in LA today. Oops, good timing! I figured, what the heck, I’ll check it out.
I came down, and found an interesting setup. The goal is to have a conversation with the crowd instead of having presenter’s merely talk to the crowd. In other words, the focus of the sessions were wherever the participants took it.
The session that I found really valuable was the one from Eric Ulken from latimes.com. He was hosting a presentation on mashups - how layering data together can create a valuable experience for users. Eric identified three parts of a mashup:
Beware!!! Biased Companies “Research” Supports Product - Part 2 - Pay-Per-Call?? The Click Fraud Solution???
I was going to do a post on Yahoo’ s smartads press releases, as well as the Atlas’s Research that conveniently came up right beforehand. Hmm… both services not in as much in the SEM field as much as in the…. you got it - banner and rich media advertising… Hmmm correlation?
(Unfortunately, that idea seems to have fallen flat. The sad part is, that although the concept was a good one - someone in PR at Yahoo just doesn’t know how to promote it. It will remain a little gold mine for the marketer that cares.)
Beware!!! Biased Companies “Research” Supports Product…Part 1 - Click Fraud
In recent times, I’ve noticed two major companies that have put out press releases about “itches” (things that bother advertisers), just to get focus on their products… I don’t have any issues with them doing that - I think it’s a brilliant marketing plan.
1) Find an “itch” - an issue, challenge or market opening
2) Create a solution (under wraps)
3) Scratch the itch (blow the issue, challenge or market opening up as much as possible- but appear unbiase, because you don’t yet have a solution)
4) Rake in the money - become the “authority” on the “issue, challenge or market opening”
In House Agency vs. Outside Agency…
We are currently doing PPC inhouse. Our SEO however, is out of house. Here is something that I’ve been mulling over. What is more valuable - doing as much of the advertising and marketing in-house, or to hire an agency?
Advantages of doing in-house:
1) Accountability - Anything get’s screwed up you bring in your employees in and just give it to them over the head!
2)Â Increased ROI- Agencies fees are generally pretty expensive. They charge you through the nose. You know you are spending alot more. Contrast that with hiring an employee, many times it’s much cheaper to hire an employee.
RE: “Social Media Advertising: The Publisher Is The Consumer” by Joe Marchesse…
Joe Marchesse just posted a beautifully articulated article about “pull advertising” on social networks - and how it necessitates a paradigm shift for marketers.
I believe that he has touched upon a crucial concept that us marketers (yeah, me too. I’m stuck in a company that is thinking 2001) need to understand, and merely applied it to the social media world. With the start of search, the consumer (you and me) are being taught to expect information that is useful to us.
Getting Back to the Basics - There’s a right way and a wrong one…
At work in the past couple of weeks, our battle plan has been changed - to have my boss work on the PPC management, and I would work on expansion. However, some of the expansion things have had their hangups- as they rightfully would. My boss’s new mantra now (his original one - to be honest) is about going back to the basics… Test test test.
The truth is, that that is a great strategy. However, it really goes back to what you are testing for. If you test random things without a plan, you are going nowhere. You start with a vision, then you can kick ass.
6 Steps to Taking Your Marketing Team to Ultimate Creativity…
This week I was asked to present a marketing plan… Hehehe… I don’t think my boss was ready for this!
Some of the challenges we have been facing (my boss hasn’t realized) is that there is a large disconnect between our sales department and our marketing department… as well as our IT department… (creates alot of politics - god). My boss asked me to create a marketing plan for the team - and this is what I came up with.
CEO’s Who Don’t Understand Search Rant…
Wow… today was a crazy day. I am the “online marketing specialist”. Typically, I get orders of stuff to do, and I just do them. I don’t get into meetings with the CEO and make decisions. Hey, I’m happy that way, it frees me from responsibility.
Well, today I got invited into a meeting, where our department got chewed. Now, it wasn’t really our department. It was my boss- the VP of marketing, that the CEO was frustrated with.