Jeff's Online Marketing Thoughts

Facebook vs. Google - The Future Of The Internet

I heard many people talking about setting up an account on Facebook so I had to follow the crowd and see what the hype was about. I had thought of it as one of those sites where kids spend way too much time rather than getting out and talking with people face-to-face, or *gasp* get some exercise. But I have to admit, it is pretty intriguing. While I still have some work to do to get my profile up to par, looking at it from a business standpoint you can see why marketers are exploring Facebook more and more. The ability to connect with people, interact and share with your friends is turning the Web from a "You and the World" model and mimicking real life, your small group of friends that you share, talk and interact with on a daily basis.

John Battelle talked about how Facebook still seems to be turning down offers to purchase the company. This got me thinking in the difference that Facebook has that really gives it an edge over Google. Everyone has tried to take on Google at their own game, trying to improve on the process of search. Where Facebook is a more legitimate threat is that they are changing the game, much the same way Google changed the game when they came along. They are looking at it from the network you have rather than what you as an individual are searching for. After all, are you more likely to trust the results of the vast network of Google servers calculating what you want to see or the recommendations of your friends and family?

How To Use Video, Even If You Are Less Than Cool

I've talked in the past at how cool Video is and some possible ways to think about it. The hardest part with video that I hear many people talk about is that they don't have an exciting or viral product, so who would want to view a video. While that is the first answer that most people think of when it comes to video, it doesn't have to be the only answer. No matter what your product or service, you have to talk about it and you probably do on a daily basis, to customers, prospects and others. Why not put these words and thoughts on videos that can be viewed by many people? Ever feel like you've said the same thing a hundred times to all of your contacts? Why not make a video of it and make it available? If you are talking about your business you have subjects for video.

The other big stumbling block that many people run into is that they think they need to have these videos professionally shot and edited. Try it simpler at first and see if your users respond. My suggestion is to take a personal digital video camera (a fairly nice one that can get the job done is $300) and just shoot someone talking about a subject. Make sure the sound is good and you put the camera on a tripod so you get a good picture. From there you can edit the video down on any Mac, or if you need to most Windows PC's come with Video editing software now as well. Get the segments down to 10 minutes or less so your audience can consume them in bites. Now upload them to YouTube, tag them with your company name and other relevant terms and you have video online. If you want to take it a step further it is easy to embed the videos so they are served by YouTube but available on your own Web site. With very little money invested, mostly just time to create these videos and put them out for others to see you have video and appear that much more cutting edge.

Is this a viable solution for you?

Good Use Of Video Marketing

There is a set of videos on YouTube from Blendtec who make an industrial strength Total Blender. They put their blender to the test with things like blending a rake handle or turning marbles to dust. Seth Godin talked about it on his blog and says that if it is worth watching people will watch it. For me, when I watch the videos, suddenly I have a strong desire to buy one, and that is what good marketing is all about.

What fun things can you do with your products that will get people talking? One place to look, do your employees do anything fun/strange/different with your products around the office? Can you make a video of that to get people talking about your product?

Google Buys YouTube, What You Should Do Now

By now you've probably heard about Google buying YouTube for $1.65 Billion. It is interesting yes with the giant Google taking control of a well known brand on the Internet. There are some obvious implications about what is coming such as Google's Ad network showing up on YouTube to expand Google's main revenue stream. What you need to ask yourself is how you are using video in your Internet marketing strategy? Video is becoming another method to get the message out about whatever you need to say.

Some ideas, give a demonstration on how to use your product. Have someone become a spokesperson for your company and recite your articles in video format. If it is relevant on your site why not expand the ways your customers can get the message? What about customer testimonials? Video tape them and put them on YouTube for people to find. The easiest place to start is to ask yourself what you would say to your "customer" if you had 5 minutes with them to say anything you wanted. Record it and put it out for people to find.

3 Reasons to Attend a Conference

I was thinking back to why I started this blog and ways in which I'm helping direct people to the wealth of information available about online marketing. One topic I haven't talked about is conferences. Currently there are two major conferences going on, Search Engine Strategies and eTail. I attended the DMA's ACCM in May and Internet Retailer in June, two other good shows. If you are serious about online marketing I would encourage you to find a conference to attend once per year for the following three reasons.

1. New Ideas - People are not only talking about what works today, they are also talking about where things are going. You are guaranteed to come away with many things to try, usually too many to start on right away.
2. Sharing What Works - There are endless opportunities to talk to other people that face the exact same problems as you do. Not only do you learn from others, you can form networks of people to talk with throughout the year.
3. Re-energizing - I can be exhausted at the end of a conference, but when I get back to the office I am off and running, and probably annoying my co-workers. Something about being around some of the top minds in the industry and feeling like you are getting the inside scoop on things gets me going.

What I learned going to two conferences within 4 weeks is that they can be too close together. The industry changes fast, but most of what they talked about was very similar content. I also wasn't able to get through everything from the first show by the time I made it to the next. You are able to stay up on things pretty well because you learn whose blogs you should be reading and what sites to review to stay current.

Along with the conferences I mention above, here are some others that I haven't personally attended but give some more options for dates and locations. The content is similar in many but there are definite target audiences with each so look at their agenda and keynotes.
PubCon - From Webmaster World
eComXpo - Interesting Virtual Trade Show (Free to attend so why not give it a shot)
ad:tech - Multiple locations
eMarketing Association

All you need to know about a company Blog

Today is the official launch date for Debbie Weil's new book The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right. I was lucky enough to receive a copy early and have had a chance to read it. For many blogs are confusing and intimidating. If you keep hearing that your company should have a blog this is the book for you. It is a very concise book that gives lots of examples and ideas. It can be the road map to getting started or a reference for you to freshen up on the techniques of writing a good blog. Debbie not only gives you ideas on how to use your blog, she gives ways to prove the value, how to navigate the technology, writing tips, examples of corporate blogging policies to start from and much more.

Blogging doesn't have to be overwhelming and is something that you can probably get up and running in a day. If your interested you can see more on her companion Web site or you can order The Corporate Blogging Book today.

Day of the Long Tail

I just finished The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More by Chris Anderson, it is a fascinating analysis of the change in marketplaces. For example, he talked about how iTunes has changed the music industry and how Netflix has challenged Blockbuster in the movie rental business. I would highly recommend it because it will help you gain an understanding on how things are changing and start you thinking about what you need to do in your business to take advantage of this changing marketplace. There is an interesting video that was well done that summarizes this change. It is only a bit over two minutes called Day of the Longtail and was released on YouTube and Chris shows on his blog.

For those that are not familiar with The Long Tail, it refers to the natural curve that happens with the vast majority of purchases happening for a few products out of the vastness actually available. The shift that is happening is more towards the tail, which can be a source of revenue and often higher profitability than the head.

If you are in any type of Internet based business this is worth learning more about. The best place to start would be to buy a copy of Chris' book, The Long Tail.

So you want to raise your conversion rate

There was an interesting article in Internet Retailer about things that influence conversion in the past and what to think about today. I started thinking about this and consider it more of a stepped process on what you need to fix.

Step 1 is about the design and usability of the site. This is where you get into a lot of A/B testing with analytics review to see what works and what doesn't on your site. In the article it made it sound like that doesn't work anymore. It isn't that it doesn't work, it is that most companies have implemented the changes needed to raise the conversion rate as much as they can from those types of changes. The first place you need to start is tuning the usability of your site before you move on to the next step.

Step 2 that the article talked about was right, start targeting segments and think more about how different groups will want to shop your site. For each of those segments present choices and information that fits the persona they fall into.

Step 3 is what I think the future is going towards with a sort of the inmates running the asylum mentality. With the growth of sites like digg, flikr and YouTube the "Social Networking" side of the Web is becoming more prominent. Amazon for years has had a flavor of this where you can rate a product then others review to determine if they want to buy it. There seems to be a link with the top ideas or Web sites out there and the ability for people to share, comment and interact with the Web site.

You need to know who your customers are and how they want your site to be. Customers like to buy from companies they feel respect and listen to them. How are you capturing feedback from your customers today? What is your process to review the feedback? How do you implement the changes they are asking for that make sense for the majority of your customers? If you don't have a plan for this today, I would recommend starting something like it because your customers are the key. If you listen to them, they will tell you how to grow your business.

Blogs & RSS 101

I have had a number of questions about Blogs and RSS feeds and how to get started. The technology is not new yet now is when it seems to be catching on in popularity. It can also seem confusing, but hopefully I can remove some of the confusion for you.

Blogs
    Creating a blog is the easy part, what is harder is finding a topic you want to talk about. The key with having a blog is to not think of it as a marketing tool, even though it is, and just talk about what is on your mind on a subject. If you have a passion for a subject, you are ready to go. Now you just need a tool. I use TypePad, and I like it a lot. Very easy to use and has a lot of features built in to help you organize your content. There is a cost but it can be as little as $50 for a year. If that is too much for you, Blogger has a tool that is free. You can also move up to higher level services like WordPress or Movable Type as well, or contact James Tower and we can help you get started.

RSS
    Now that you have a Blog, you want people to read it. You can simply have them visit your site and read the contents, or provide an RSS feed to your site. To better understand RSS, I would advise to start reading other content via an RSS reader. There are multiple variations of readers out there that many people don't even realize that is what it is. My Yahoo is a site that acts as an RSS reader, pulling content from various locations. Google Homepage is the same concept but they also have a Reader site that can be separate or integrated into the Google Homepage. I go with this approach because all of my syndicated content is put into one section and I can have other segments of data on my Homepage as well. There are other sites like NewsGator and readers built into applications like the popular Web browser Firefox and some email clients. Readers are also being planned to be built into Microsoft's new Vista operating system. If you want the full list, RSS Compendium has put as complete a list as I've seen together. There is no best solution, just what fits your tastes and how you want to access the content. To find content, just look for an icon like this on a site:

    Once you get a better feel for RSS, you need to syndicate your content. Their are tools out there that can help with that process. I use FeedBurner, it is a good system, and it is free. They have a lot of nice features to help the people reading your blog get it in a format of their choosing, including email.  They also have some good stats as well as ways to get your blog in front of more potential readers on sites like, Technorati, Icerocket, Feedster, BlogDigger and more. Very easy way to get some more eyes on your site, and it is free.

For me, the setup took me about 4-5 hours over the course of 2 days to get setup. Now, all the time it takes is what it takes me to write the content for a post, generally 10-15 minutes per post. The other systems do the rest of the work for me.

RSS Growth

Here is an interesting post by Bill Nussey about a Jupiter Research study on RSS penetration. He mentions that 63% of large companies plan on developing an RSS feed in 2006. The fact that very few (less than 5%) of people are self reported users of RSS, is not important because many more are using it.  It will continue to grow as well. RSS readers are being built into browsers like Firefox, Email clients, sites like Google's personalized homepage and will be integrated with the next version of Microsoft Windows, Vista, it is no surprise that many companies are trying to prepare themselves when it becomes as common as email.

If you have a Web site, you should be thinking about what content you can make into an RSS feed. It is a great way to add another method to reach your customers, and they can select what they subscribe to, which means that you can speak to them in a different way because they are very interested in what you are saying.