jeffreydemers.com

2010: The First Social-Media Election in the U.K.

Posted by apapenhagen in Social Media in Action on June 1, 2010

This is the first British general-election in the social-media age, meaning that it is influenced by Facebook and Twitter. Thousands of people, especially first-time voters, were watching the debates on two screens: the TV screen as well as their mobile phone or computer, which they use to monitor and respond on Twitter and Facebook as well as give instant reactions to the candidates' appearance, words and policies. The @Tweetminster account – which describes itself as "a media utility that connects you to the politicians, commentators, and news that shape U.K. politics" – says that in the third debate there were 154,342 tweets tagged "#leadersdebate," coming at 26.77 tweets a second, spread among 33,095 people. This doesn't include many hundreds – perhaps thousands – of others who didn't use the tag. (Some of them, such as @MTuckerNo10 – user name Malcolm Tucker – being imaginary.) Facebook was busy as well -- the social network has dozens of groups relating to the parties, such as the "Vandalised Conservative Billboards" group (123,000 members), the Conservatives' own (74,500 members), and the Liberal Democrats (74,000 members). As in the outside polls, the Labor party trails (33,000). After the TV debates, Facebook polls proclaimed Clegg the "winner" in a self-selecting sample of 10,000 users. Echo Research, which carries out "reputation analysis" for companies and organizations, found that while people think that talking in the pub is more influential (32%) than social media (19%), the latter is having a significant impact, especially among Liberal Democrat voters. Social media rank particularly highly among 18- to 24-year-olds (42%). The Internet is playing a growing role according to Echo Research, which found that almost half of the population has gone online for information about the parties and candidates. "Online shows the greatest increase as a source of information about the elections, ahead of all other sources, particularly for men," says Sandra Macleod, its group chief executive. Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC's technology and industrial correspondent, who has been its "digital election-correspondent" during the campaign, warns: "We may get a distorted view [via social media and especially Twitter] because people who engage with it are in general liberal-minded people." Macleod of Echo Research says: "As with the introduction of televised debates in this country, social media have now become an essential weapon in the battle for people's hearts, minds and votes. Those who ignore it or are slow to engage will truly be left behind." Paul Mason, BBC’s economics editor, put forward his own thoughts on Twitter's effect on the election, noting that it gives potentially perfect real-time feedback to any political event (through real-time searching). His conclusion: it "has the potential to partially or completely neutralize the ability of the corporate media to transmit the dominant ideology." One element is still missing, generally, from Facebook and Twitter: geolocation. The problem for parties is that voter tweets and Facebook pages don't generally give much detail about where they live, and so whether it's worth trying to persuade them. Cellan-Jones puts it simply: "I said [to my editors] that 'this is the one campaign where it might have a specific role, where we can concentrate on it specifically. Next time it will just be part of every political correspondent's job.'" By the next election, social media will be woven into daily life – and not just general polls, but indicators of how constituencies' mood is changing will be provided.

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Google's Tools for SEO

Posted by apapenhagen in Social Media in Action on May 31, 2010

Although there are several search engines that people use, none are even remotely as popular as Google (GOOG). People worldwide use Google to surf the Web. Google has become a facilitator of SEO, and it therefore makes sense to use some of the tools that Google provides to help SEO campaigns. Google likes SEO professionals to follow their guidelines, so using its tools helps in SEO campaigns. The first tool that seems like it would be the most obvious to use is the Google webmaster tools. This shows how a website is ranking in several different important SEO categories. It allows webmasters to perform a quick check of the index in Google, sets the rate of how many times that the googlebot will search a webpage, see the keywords that people are using to get to the website, and other important metrics for the website in general. The webmaster tools are essential for anyone that is serious about getting their website a proper ranking in the Google index. The Google Keyword tool is another useful tool that shows which search terms are the most popular in the niche that is being targeted. Using this tool, it is easy to set the direction of the online campaigns in a positive way. When examining the results of the tool, it is easy to find more keywords that can be used in campaign. These keywords might also start a whole new campaign that parallels the one that is already in process. It is also possible to place a competitor’s website into the tool and see which keywords they are targeting. Having that information can give a competitive advantage. Using some of Google’s office tools help to keep track of online campaigns. Tool such as Docs and Spreadsheets can ensure that the campaign stays on track. This is especially important when conducting more than one campaign a time. Google has a lot of tools can be used to help running an SEO campaign. If you are serious about SEO, it should really be checked out, together with an SEO company.

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Internet Marketing Conference (various venues for 2010)

Conference Location:

IMC Calgary March 16-17 2010

IMC Stockholm March 22,25 & 26

IMC Executive Vancouver April 14 2010

IMC Executive Copenhagen May 19-20 2010

IMC Helsinki September 15-16 2010

IMC Vancouver September 20,21,22&23 2010

IMC New York Mobile October 12-13 2010

IMC Barcelona November 3-4 2010

IMC San Francisco Creativity November 17th 2010

Speakers are invited to submit a speaker request via their website

http://www.internetmarketingconference.com/

2010 AMS (Academy of Marketing Science) Annual Conference

Conference Location:

Portland, Oregon, USA

Date:

May 26, 2010 – May 29, 2010

Speakers are to submit papers via their website

http://www.ams-web.org/cde.cfm?event=256278

OMMA Global

Conference Location:

Marriot Marquis, San Francisco

Date:

March 17, 2010 – March 18, 2010

Speaker proposals are no longer accepted

http://www.mediapost.com/events/?/showID/OMMAGlobal.10.SanFrancisco

Inbound Marketing Summit (various locations)

Conference Locations and Dates:

New Marketing Experience San Francisco, CA April 13, 2010

New Marketing Experience Dallas, TX May 26, 2010

New Marketing Experience Chicago, IL September 21, 2010

Inbound Marketing Summit Boston, MA October 6 - 7, 2010

No information is given on their website for interested speakers.

http://inboundmarketingsummit.com/

WOMMA SUMMIT

Conference Location:

Paris Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, NV, USA

Date:

November 17, 2010 – November 19, 2010

Speaker information not clear on website

http://womma.org/events/november-17-19-2010-womma-summit-10/

AUSTRALIA

ad:tech Sydney

Conference Location:

Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre Sydney, Australia

Date:

March 16, 2010 - March 17, 2010

Speaker info:

The ad:tech conference is 100% editorial content. Speakers are selected on their merit, insight, leadership and ability to share new research and metrics. ad:tech welcomes speakers from all brand categories, agencies, corporations and perspectives. An emphasis on case studies, whenever possible, is preferred and solution providers must bring a business or consumer-oriented brand client to be considered to speak.

http://www.ad-tech.com/sydney/adtech_sydney.aspx

SMX Sydney

Conference Location:

Sydney, Australia,

Date:

April 22, 2010 - April 23, 2010

Speakers are invited to submit a pitch via their website.

http://www.searchmarketingexpo.com.au/

The Internet Show

Conference Location:

Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre Victoria, Australia, 2060

Date:

April 13, 2010 - April 14, 2010

No indication on website is given as to if interested speakers could submit a pitch

http://www.internetshow.com.au/index.stm

DUBAI

Click Marketing Summit

Conference Location:

Grand Millennium Hotel, Dubai, UAE Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Date:

June 20, 2010 - June 23, 2010

No indication on website is given as to if interested speakers could submit a pitch

http://www.clickmarketingsummit.com/Event.aspx?id=281774

CANADA

SMX Toronto

Date:

May 17, 2010 - May 18, 2009

Speaker submission form available on the website.

This summit is also happening in:

Madrid – Sept May 31, 2010 (submission close date)

São Paulo – August April 30, 2010 (submission close date)

Stockholm – September 27-28 June 30 (submission close date)

Washington DC – October 19-23 June 30 (submission close date)

http://www.emetrics.org/london/

SMX Advanced London

Conference Location:

61 – 65 Great Queen Street, London London, United Kingdom, WC2B 5D

Date:

May 17, 2010 - May 18, 2010

Speakers are invited to submit a pitch via their website.

http://searchmarketingexpo.com/london

Online Marketing Show

Conference Location:

Grand Hall Olympia London, United Kingdom, W1F 7AX

Date:

June 29, 2010 - June 30, 2010

No indication on website is given as to if interested speakers could submit a pitch

http://www.onlinemarketingshow.co.uk/default.aspx

a4u EXPO

Conference Location:

Munich, Germany and London

Date:

Munich, Germany 17–19 May 2010

12–13 October 2010 in London

Speaker submissions to be handed in via their website

http://www.a4uexpo.com/london/

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Online-Marketing Strategies for Natural-Product Retailers

Posted by in Effective Online Marketing Strategies on May 20, 2010

The goal of online marketing is to increase sales by finding more customers and driving existing customers to spend more money. It sounds simple enough, but with all of the options, technologies, and Internet buzzwords flying around, it hard to find out what really works and what is just a waste of time. The main questions that companies need to address are:

Where are new customers looking for businesses?
Can they find the company there?
What do people have to do once they find the company?

Customers looking for businesses use search engines. According to the Nielsen and Webvisible research of January 2009, 63 percent of people looking for a product or service go to the Internet, and 83 percent of those use search engines. Acording to comScore, more than 93 percent of all searches are done on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Twitter and Facebook are still less prominent. Advertising on other websites is not that effective as well to reach potential customers looking for natural products. Search-engine optimization (SEO) is the process that makes a business and website easily found. There can be a lot involved in SEO, but the single most important thing is to claim or set up local business listings. When someone does a search for, "organic food store in Santa Clara," the search engines display matching local business listings, even before they show any website results. To claim or add a business, go to: Google: Google.com/lbc Yahoo: https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx Bing: http://listings.local.yahoo.com Once a visitor arrives at the company’s website, he needs to so three things:

To purchase or by the natural product;
To sign up for updates;
To tell other people about the company and product(s).

The first step is to have a professional, inviting website that is SEO-friendly. Whether or not you choose to sell products online, design it like an online store. It must be easy for people to see what products are available and have a feel for what the store looks like. It is essential to have the company’s address and phone number on each webpage along with a link to contact by e-mail and a link to a map. For selling online, the website must have a good, simple e-commerce system or something like Living Naturally or OrderDog, which directly integrates with inventory and POS systems. Website visitors should be enticed to sign up for e-mail updates so the company can market to them again and again. The e-newsletter signup must feature prominently on the site and offer a clear incentive to sign up. No one wants more commercial e-mail, but they’ll sign up if they get special discounts or offers that aren’t available any other way. In the physical store, collect e-mail addresses from everyone who comes in, using the same incentives. For most retailers, it’s best to send e-mail updates once per month with specials, coupons, information about upcoming activities, and maybe a tip or two. Here’s where social media comes in. Set up a Twitter account and Facebook fan page, and let people know they can also follow the company that way. Then when e-mail updates are sent, post that same content to Twitter and to Facebook and encourage people to share it with their friends.

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Amazon -- an Online-Marketing and Sales-Success Story

Posted by in Effective Online Marketing Strategies on May 19, 2010

Amazon (AMZN) emerged from the dot-com bubble as one of the few winners and continued to blaze a trail of impressive growth. One of facets of Amazon's high-profile success has been its unabashed embrace of transformational growth in its white space. Amazon survived the dot-com bubble because it had a viable and innovative business model built around a market-changing, customer-value proposition and a radical profit-formula that upended the staid book industry. Then it quickly expanded beyond books to include all sorts of easily-shippable consumer goods, growing from its core into near adjacencies. A few years later, the company seized its white space when it devised a new value proposition, offering a commission-based brokerage service to buyers and sellers of used books. Then it moved into its white space again by developing a model to serve an entirely-different customer: third-party sellers. By opening up its storefront to other retailers that were essentially competitors, Amazon transformed its business from direct sales to a sales-and-service model, aggregating many sellers under one virtual roof and receiving commissions from the other companies' sales. Then, Amazon identified a new area of potential growth by finding another new customer -- the IT community. Serving new online customers’ needs required different processes, different resources, and a different profit formula -- in short, another new business model. In 2002, Amazon launched a web-services platform, and within five years the site used by Amazon's web-services platform had grown into the seventh-largest in the world. In late 2007, it set up Lab126, whose first product, the Kindle e-book reader, came to market wrapped in a business model not only foreign to Amazon's DNA but also potentially disruptive to the entire publishing industry. To launch this high-margin, product-based offering, Amazon had to become an original-equipment manufacturer (OEM). The company wrapped this technology in a seamlessly-integrated, iTunes-type digital-media platform that combined both transaction- and subscription-based content delivery. It partnered with content producers in innovative ways and created an open back-end that allowed independent publishers to generate new content for the Kindle. In its first year alone, Amazon sold an estimated 500,000 Kindles. Amazon has greatly expanded the market for e-books and positioned itself for success not only in this market but in newspaper and periodical distribution as well. Amazon has the unique ability to launch and run entirely new types of online business models while simultaneously extracting value from existing businesses. The lessons here are valuable to any business looking to break into the online world.

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Why Twitter Matters for Business

Posted by in B2B Twitter, Social Media, Social Media Marketing on May 18, 2010

Many laugh off Twitter as a waste of time, thinking it is purely for social updates amongst friends. However, it is far more than just simple, 140-character messages. Although the size of the actual messages is limited, most tweets include a website link. To include a link in a tweet and not exceed 140 characters, the URL can be shortened using websites like bit.ly and tinyurl. Businesses should use Twitter for a number of reasons: 1. To Drive Website Traffic. Twitter messages tease readers into wanting to click on a web address. Twitter is not just a communication tool; tweets come up on search engines, like Google. 2. To Add a Tool for Free. There is no cost to create an account; the only expense is the time involved in creating and reading messages. 3. To Stay Up-to-Date. Breaking news can reach you faster, and there is no need to look for news online or in print. Almost every major news organization disperses information using Twitter. 4. To Stay Informed. Following thought leaders in a certain area of expertise is a great way to learn valuable, real-time, industry information and stay in touch with the latest trends. Following clients, competitors, and strategic alliances is an excellent venue to find out what they are saying. 5. To Reinforce a Brand. Showcasing tweets that contain ideas, opinions, and expertise will provide another communication vehicle to promote the brand. Many of those using Twitter regularly look for the right people to follow. By making a great first impression, loyal followers will be gained. 6. To Stay in Touch. It is a simple way to stay in touch with prospects and clients on a regular basis. Since others can retweet (or, forward) messages, it allows for viral marketing to occur. 7. To Share Others’ Information. It is very easy to retweet a message of something that followers would appreciate. This also allows for sending out valuable information without having to do much work. Another advantage is the ability to increase business intelligence. Monitoring what the competition is tweeting about is a great way to get ideas on how to improve own communications. These are just a few of the advantages that having a presence of Twitter can offer a company.

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The Keys to Successful Online Marketing

Posted by in Effective Online Marketing Strategies on May 13, 2010

In online marketing, reputation and perception is the key. Readers must get an idea of a company before they start reading and believing in what it says or offers. It would be hard to put faith and confidence in an organization they do not know. Here are some aspects to gaining a good reputation. Convincing authority When promoting a new product or offering on an online-marketing site, companies need to make sure that it’s noticed. Back up the product or offer introduction with credible information, sources, and testimonials. No matter how innovative and groundbreaking content may be, it is only as believable as its sources. Believable content In online marketing, it’s important not to exaggerate but to state the facts as they are. The honesty of a product should speak for itself. Unethical businessmen like to put big words on small things to make them more valuable, and consumers hate that. Testimonials Let the target audience know how people have benefited from the product -- comments and testimonials must be posted online. People and enterprises who have benefited from the product or service will gladly tell others about it. Remember that who believes in a company is just as important as the company itself. To have an edge over the competition in the online-marketing arena, organizations have to be convincing -- they need to be believable and have proof to show potential customers and clients.

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Twitter: the Future of Search Engines

Posted by in Social Media Marketing, The Future of Search Engines on May 12, 2010

Twitter has announced that it is going to incorporate search functionality into its site. This means that users can easily obtain trending data for popular keywords, take a deeper look at the topics people are discussing in real time, and find answers to questions that others have already posed in spite of which side of the fence one stands. Twitter has set its eyes on the search market. Yahoo has also announced its partnership with Twitter, which means that the search engine can make the most of the social channel’s search engine, including incorporating good SEO practices. Google and Bing have also formed partnerships with Twitter, and the search engines will be including Tweets in their respective searches (both keyword-oriented as well as branded). But the algorithms of the main search engines tend to work in mysterious ways, which is a challenge to make the most of both Twitter’s maximum 140 characters and SEO. For starters, an organization or entrepreneur must choose a Twitter username that incorporates the name of the business. It must be unambiguous in defining the exact nature of the (online) business as well as using primary keywords in Tweets. Google will rank results based on the relevance and quality of Twitter followers as well as the number of followers accrued itself. Therefore, it is the quality rather than the quantity of followers on Twitter that counts. So be choosy who to follow. Google has figured out that although hashtags are a good way for Twitter users to find a particular topic, they’re often irrelevant. Companies must be careful, and use hashtags judiciously on Twitter. Now, Twitter can easily tie content to a location by using user profile settings or GPS since technology is advancing on mobile phones as well. This will result in more relevant information and ads on Twitter. Since Twitter provides in 140 characters or less, it’s a great resource for quick information searches. Twitter local allows users to see tweets from other Twitter users based on location. This also allows for users to see breaking-news events in a certain location (unlike Google).

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jeffreydemers.com

Google Grabs Search-Engine Plink

Become a Speaker at SEO Conferences

SMX Advanced 2010

SES San Francisco

SMX East

Local Marketing Expo 2010

Marketing 2.0 Conference

Internet Marketing Conference (various venues for 2010)

2010 AMS (Academy of Marketing Science) Annual Conference

OMMA Global

Inbound Marketing Summit (various locations)

WOMMA SUMMIT

ad:tech Sydney

SMX Sydney

The Internet Show

Click Marketing Summit

SMX Toronto

http://www.searchmarketingexpo.ca/toronto/

SES Toronto

Great Indian Developer Summit 2010

SINGAPORE

Search Engine Marketing with Social Media Workshop

Internet World 2010

eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit

SMX Advanced London

Online Marketing Show

a4u EXPO

Online-Marketing Strategies for Natural-Product Retailers

Amazon -- an Online-Marketing and Sales-Success Story

The Keys to Successful Online Marketing

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