The U.S. Justice Department is reportedly investigating Google's digital books settlement with publishers, which Google claims will make millions of volumes accessible to all but which has critics crying antitrust issues. Google's books project has run into opposition from a number of groups arguing that it gives the search engine company too much control over content with little oversight.
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Thursday, June 25, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Social Media - Maryland Style
A few weeks ago I attended the Maryland Chamber of Commerce session on Social Media and Online Marketing with guest host Mario Armstrong from XM radio. The panel consisted of Greg Cangialosi, CEO of Blue Sky Factory, Matt Goddard, CEO of r2integrated and Leah Messina, CEO of Sinuate Media.
The panelists spoke about various topics such as; online tools, social marketing and challenges their clients face. Some good points were made throughout the session however, as most panels go, they were all intertwined and scattered. I have highlighted some of the main items that are beneficial to all businesses either as a refresher or as new information.
Communities
How are your customers currently buying items or services? Social media outlets such as Twitter don’t work for everyone or every business. Let’s take a business such as a local plumber or heating specialist. When do you need a plumber? Typically when something is wrong! Most people will more than likely pick up a phone book or do an online directory search. It’s doubtful that anyone will follow a plumber’s business on Twitter. On the other hand, if you are looking for a recommendation for a plumber, Twitter or Facebook might be the perfect place for you. According to Goddard, “Social media is really about reducing a risk by reaching out to like-minded peers. It’s our way of saying, how do I not make a bad decision?” We go get advice and it’s sitting inside these communities, we are getting the information when the conversation is happening and it’s all about reducing the risk. The social tools that exist are about streamlining the process.
LinkedIn.com has been around longer than Twitter and it isn’t getting as much hype. LinkedIn is a risk reduction and helps members make better decisions on how to build relationships. It’s Quality over Quantity. Your business should be tied to your area of expertise, local community or industry specialty. If you are a local business in a specific trade industry try to focus on what you do and important topics that are relevant.
The Clutter
There’s really no need to tweet about the peanut butter and jelly sandwich you just ate. According to Cangialosi , “THERE’S A LOT OF A LOT! “ There is no way we are paying attention to everything you have written. There is so much white noise that it is crucial for businesses to stay focused. Try to use important keywords or tags that can be searched for easily.
Blue Sky Factory leverages social media technology by using Hubspot. The Hubspot tool looks at web analytics and takes all the keywords you want to optimize and ranks the conversations that are really important. Blue Sky’s goal is to engage the community, cut through the clutter, and sharpen the focus.
Tools and Tracking
Messina recommended several different tools which keep a watchful eye on what people are saying about your product or who might be interested. Search.twitter.com – Twitter’s basic search toolGoogle alerts – a great way to have information pushed instead of searching with the other tools icerocket.com - a social and search tool radian6 - a monitoring source for your brand across the webChi.mp – helps steam line across multiple accountsDragon Search - social media calculator
One tool that was not mentioned was Twitter Analyzer, which is a tool that is fun to explore.
Rule of Thumb to Execute Social Media
Mario’s last question to the panel was, “How much time do you have for all of your social responsibilities? We all know that owning a dog can be free, but don’t you have to nurture it?”
Leah recommends before you update your Twitter account to spend 2 hours researching and compile a list of daily social media updates. Update once in the morning and at the end of the day. Leah typically puts aside 1 hour a day for updates.
Greg doesn’t use Twitter to update his Facebook account. The Twitter stream is primarily used for business and he separates his personal account from corporate account. He does his tweets in spurts. He recommends that your conversations grow into one on one dialog. You should pick and choose from one platform to another because it is not relevant between the two socials. Try not to use hash marks in your Facebook account – it may be Greek to many of your friends.
Final Words
Matt states, “The Internet is a buying engine – not a selling engine. You have to be a part of the buying process.” You can’t force the buying moment. Experiment with the tools available to you and evaluate the outcome.
Leah – “When you reach out you can tease out the most important people that are the influencers. They can help you be a bridge to the community. Be genuine and use it methodically.”
Greg – “The influencer in today’s social world has a very wide footprint so you need to be very authentic, transparent and methodical.” The long term strategy for social messaging is making sure your messaging is exact. What’s the right story to tell your audience; is it compelling and why?
The panelists spoke about various topics such as; online tools, social marketing and challenges their clients face. Some good points were made throughout the session however, as most panels go, they were all intertwined and scattered. I have highlighted some of the main items that are beneficial to all businesses either as a refresher or as new information.
Communities
How are your customers currently buying items or services? Social media outlets such as Twitter don’t work for everyone or every business. Let’s take a business such as a local plumber or heating specialist. When do you need a plumber? Typically when something is wrong! Most people will more than likely pick up a phone book or do an online directory search. It’s doubtful that anyone will follow a plumber’s business on Twitter. On the other hand, if you are looking for a recommendation for a plumber, Twitter or Facebook might be the perfect place for you. According to Goddard, “Social media is really about reducing a risk by reaching out to like-minded peers. It’s our way of saying, how do I not make a bad decision?” We go get advice and it’s sitting inside these communities, we are getting the information when the conversation is happening and it’s all about reducing the risk. The social tools that exist are about streamlining the process.
LinkedIn.com has been around longer than Twitter and it isn’t getting as much hype. LinkedIn is a risk reduction and helps members make better decisions on how to build relationships. It’s Quality over Quantity. Your business should be tied to your area of expertise, local community or industry specialty. If you are a local business in a specific trade industry try to focus on what you do and important topics that are relevant.
The Clutter
There’s really no need to tweet about the peanut butter and jelly sandwich you just ate. According to Cangialosi , “THERE’S A LOT OF A LOT! “ There is no way we are paying attention to everything you have written. There is so much white noise that it is crucial for businesses to stay focused. Try to use important keywords or tags that can be searched for easily.
Blue Sky Factory leverages social media technology by using Hubspot. The Hubspot tool looks at web analytics and takes all the keywords you want to optimize and ranks the conversations that are really important. Blue Sky’s goal is to engage the community, cut through the clutter, and sharpen the focus.
Tools and Tracking
Messina recommended several different tools which keep a watchful eye on what people are saying about your product or who might be interested. Search.twitter.com – Twitter’s basic search toolGoogle alerts – a great way to have information pushed instead of searching with the other tools icerocket.com - a social and search tool radian6 - a monitoring source for your brand across the webChi.mp – helps steam line across multiple accountsDragon Search - social media calculator
One tool that was not mentioned was Twitter Analyzer, which is a tool that is fun to explore.
Rule of Thumb to Execute Social Media
Mario’s last question to the panel was, “How much time do you have for all of your social responsibilities? We all know that owning a dog can be free, but don’t you have to nurture it?”
Leah recommends before you update your Twitter account to spend 2 hours researching and compile a list of daily social media updates. Update once in the morning and at the end of the day. Leah typically puts aside 1 hour a day for updates.
Greg doesn’t use Twitter to update his Facebook account. The Twitter stream is primarily used for business and he separates his personal account from corporate account. He does his tweets in spurts. He recommends that your conversations grow into one on one dialog. You should pick and choose from one platform to another because it is not relevant between the two socials. Try not to use hash marks in your Facebook account – it may be Greek to many of your friends.
Final Words
Matt states, “The Internet is a buying engine – not a selling engine. You have to be a part of the buying process.” You can’t force the buying moment. Experiment with the tools available to you and evaluate the outcome.
Leah – “When you reach out you can tease out the most important people that are the influencers. They can help you be a bridge to the community. Be genuine and use it methodically.”
Greg – “The influencer in today’s social world has a very wide footprint so you need to be very authentic, transparent and methodical.” The long term strategy for social messaging is making sure your messaging is exact. What’s the right story to tell your audience; is it compelling and why?
Monday, June 1, 2009
Bounce Rates and What They Mean to Your Business
In my past life at Advertising.com/Platform-A, I worked with large retailers and big businesses that watched their web analytics religiously. They looked at everything from conversions to keywords and in particular, the bounce rate. My assumption was that most businesses were keeping an eye on what is actually happening, if not daily, at least weekly on their website. But, in speaking with many small to mid-size companies, I discovered that really is not the case.
Your website, in its most basic format, is an intelligent interactive brochure for your business ,no matter how a potential customer found you. A semi-social networking conduit. As we all know, analytics is a key part to understanding what is happening with your business and having analytics connected is simple and easy. It astounds me that so many businesses are not looking at data that is right at their fingertips.
Let’s start with the home page. If a customer finds your website with a search engine query and they don’t stick around that’s an issue! This is called a “bounce” – Someone who visited your website and left for an undefined reason. You should try to determine WHY?
Bounce Rate measurement determines the visit quality. A high bounce rate generally indicates that an entrance page/home page may be not relevant to the visitor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_Rate
Is your site content useful enough to capture that visitor and keep them? If not, there could be multiple reasons why.
1.) Poor design - Your site may be poorly designed and not captivating or compelling enough to make them want to stay. You have limited time to get a visitor to take a walk through!
2.) Improper SEO – So a visitor got to your site by using a highly ranked keyword/phrase in a search engine and when they arrive they feel your site was not what they were looking for. Maybe your site messaging and content, title tags, and meta information are optimized with the wrong goal in mind. You need to eliminate the stranglers and focus the page content to hit those searchers meant to make a conversion.
3.) Paid Search – Change your paid search campaign to eliminate those 100% bounce rate terms. Obviously you don’t want to overspend and waste money in this economy. Focus on exact match and limit broad terms to improve overall bounce rate.
Bounce rates typically are not determined by length of time spent on the site with Google Analytics. So, if a site visit occurs and that visitor stays on the entry page for 10 minutes and does not go to any other part of the site; That technically is a bounce. Someone that might have come in and stayed on that page for 10 seconds and went to another page will not be categorized as a bounce. http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81986
Your business needs to determine why a bounce occurs, and evaluate that rate on a page by page basis and a keyword by keyword basis. You need to direct them from start to finish and provide an easy to use solution for why they entered your site in the first place.
You should also be mindful of the entry points that are driving traffic. If it is a social networking site or link then don’t worry about the bounce rate and be thankful that other sources are driving traffic. On the other hand, if you can determine the bounce is coming from a paid search campaign, especially in the content network, you should try to analyze whether that site should be part of your paid strategy.
Last but not least, if you are a business owner, CEO or CMO and you have marketing people on your staff be sure to set monthly site analytics review meeting! You can learn a lot about your business based on what is driving people to your website or in the case of the bounce rate scenario - what's driving them away.
Your website, in its most basic format, is an intelligent interactive brochure for your business ,no matter how a potential customer found you. A semi-social networking conduit. As we all know, analytics is a key part to understanding what is happening with your business and having analytics connected is simple and easy. It astounds me that so many businesses are not looking at data that is right at their fingertips.
Let’s start with the home page. If a customer finds your website with a search engine query and they don’t stick around that’s an issue! This is called a “bounce” – Someone who visited your website and left for an undefined reason. You should try to determine WHY?
Bounce Rate measurement determines the visit quality. A high bounce rate generally indicates that an entrance page/home page may be not relevant to the visitor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounce_Rate
Is your site content useful enough to capture that visitor and keep them? If not, there could be multiple reasons why.
1.) Poor design - Your site may be poorly designed and not captivating or compelling enough to make them want to stay. You have limited time to get a visitor to take a walk through!
2.) Improper SEO – So a visitor got to your site by using a highly ranked keyword/phrase in a search engine and when they arrive they feel your site was not what they were looking for. Maybe your site messaging and content, title tags, and meta information are optimized with the wrong goal in mind. You need to eliminate the stranglers and focus the page content to hit those searchers meant to make a conversion.
3.) Paid Search – Change your paid search campaign to eliminate those 100% bounce rate terms. Obviously you don’t want to overspend and waste money in this economy. Focus on exact match and limit broad terms to improve overall bounce rate.
Bounce rates typically are not determined by length of time spent on the site with Google Analytics. So, if a site visit occurs and that visitor stays on the entry page for 10 minutes and does not go to any other part of the site; That technically is a bounce. Someone that might have come in and stayed on that page for 10 seconds and went to another page will not be categorized as a bounce. http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=81986
Your business needs to determine why a bounce occurs, and evaluate that rate on a page by page basis and a keyword by keyword basis. You need to direct them from start to finish and provide an easy to use solution for why they entered your site in the first place.
You should also be mindful of the entry points that are driving traffic. If it is a social networking site or link then don’t worry about the bounce rate and be thankful that other sources are driving traffic. On the other hand, if you can determine the bounce is coming from a paid search campaign, especially in the content network, you should try to analyze whether that site should be part of your paid strategy.
Last but not least, if you are a business owner, CEO or CMO and you have marketing people on your staff be sure to set monthly site analytics review meeting! You can learn a lot about your business based on what is driving people to your website or in the case of the bounce rate scenario - what's driving them away.
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