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.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Chimney Sweep - Crossing The Line
Wow - I am completely shocked how businesses in today's "quick to the web world" can still cross the line. Don't they understand that everyone they do work for has the power to say the good, the bad and the ugly. This is what I would consider an ugly situation.
The other night I went to a friend's house and there was a chimney sweep that had just pulled off. My friend is selling her house so the inspection showed that she needed a little work done on her chimney. The Real Estate Agent Recommended A Chimney Sweep in Baltimore.
First off my friend was having a personal conversation regarding a family matter and the Chimney guy - said that he could give her relationship advice if she needed it (as if he were a friend). Then he proceeded to tell her his perception of her based on the clothes she had in her closet which he had previously relayed this information back to the Real Estate Agent on a prior occassion. Come on...can't you just do your job and wear an MP3 player and not get wrapped up in a customer's personal life.
The kicker was, after the services were performed the Chimney guy states, "I told your real estate agent that I would do this for you for free." My friend was curious - how can I get this for free? The Chimney Guy says "If you go out on a date with me."
I was blown away by this, but I imagine it happens. I'm sure it happens a lot less than it used to because now people speak out, and it's not the "Pass It On" game any more. Years ago you would call a friend and tell her/him the story and they told ten people and by the end of the story the chimney guy was doing more than the chimney. Viral marketing/reputation - was really exaggeration management.
Nowadays you can still have one bad seed exaggerating, let's say a direct competitor. In all fairness the web has become a pretty reliable source of information as long as reviewers police themselves. Reviews that direct competitors post are sometimes obvious, especially when those competitors will industry terms that a normal reviewer may not.
So back to the Chimney Guy, he is listed in most of the engines and directories including Angie's list and his reputation is now tarnished. The culprit was the owner of the company so in this case it wasn't a misdirected employee.
Mary Poppins would not have approved of this Chimney Guy's behavior.
The other night I went to a friend's house and there was a chimney sweep that had just pulled off. My friend is selling her house so the inspection showed that she needed a little work done on her chimney. The Real Estate Agent Recommended A Chimney Sweep in Baltimore.
First off my friend was having a personal conversation regarding a family matter and the Chimney guy - said that he could give her relationship advice if she needed it (as if he were a friend). Then he proceeded to tell her his perception of her based on the clothes she had in her closet which he had previously relayed this information back to the Real Estate Agent on a prior occassion. Come on...can't you just do your job and wear an MP3 player and not get wrapped up in a customer's personal life.
The kicker was, after the services were performed the Chimney guy states, "I told your real estate agent that I would do this for you for free." My friend was curious - how can I get this for free? The Chimney Guy says "If you go out on a date with me."
I was blown away by this, but I imagine it happens. I'm sure it happens a lot less than it used to because now people speak out, and it's not the "Pass It On" game any more. Years ago you would call a friend and tell her/him the story and they told ten people and by the end of the story the chimney guy was doing more than the chimney. Viral marketing/reputation - was really exaggeration management.
Nowadays you can still have one bad seed exaggerating, let's say a direct competitor. In all fairness the web has become a pretty reliable source of information as long as reviewers police themselves. Reviews that direct competitors post are sometimes obvious, especially when those competitors will industry terms that a normal reviewer may not.
So back to the Chimney Guy, he is listed in most of the engines and directories including Angie's list and his reputation is now tarnished. The culprit was the owner of the company so in this case it wasn't a misdirected employee.
Mary Poppins would not have approved of this Chimney Guy's behavior.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Small Business Blogging
Here is a great article on why small businesses need to be in touch with their customers. Check it out.
http://www.searchengineguide.com/mack-collier/small-businesses-can-no-longer-ignore-bl.php
http://www.searchengineguide.com/mack-collier/small-businesses-can-no-longer-ignore-bl.php
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Local Roll Call Launches
localrollcall.com was officially launched 
on April 16th 2009 and we barely made it by the skin of our teeth. Scott Dance from the Baltimore Business Journal wrote an excellent article about our little start-up. Although we don't consider it a true start-up since we've proven this to be successful before.
Thanks to this article LRC saw traffic jump to over 900 visitors and over 6,000 page views worldwide. The U.S. saw the biggest traffic especially from you know where. This may seem like blip on the radar from any campaigns we had running at Advertising.com but it is a great jump start.
We are working out the bugs and beta-testing the site and we expect to be rolling out some new features in the next few weeks. Video and social media are definitely tops on that list.
If you haven't added your business to our free directory....please do so. Hopefully by the end of the year, we'll get 6,000 page views an hour.
on April 16th 2009 and we barely made it by the skin of our teeth. Scott Dance from the Baltimore Business Journal wrote an excellent article about our little start-up. Although we don't consider it a true start-up since we've proven this to be successful before.Thanks to this article LRC saw traffic jump to over 900 visitors and over 6,000 page views worldwide. The U.S. saw the biggest traffic especially from you know where. This may seem like blip on the radar from any campaigns we had running at Advertising.com but it is a great jump start.
We are working out the bugs and beta-testing the site and we expect to be rolling out some new features in the next few weeks. Video and social media are definitely tops on that list.
If you haven't added your business to our free directory....please do so. Hopefully by the end of the year, we'll get 6,000 page views an hour.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Google Gathering Far and Wide - Why?
We recently started working on a website from a business that has been a Baltimore institution since 1971.This jeweler at one time had multiple locations but has since narrowed it's focus down to one location. That's it....just one.
If you take a look at Google local you would think they have stores all across Baltimore and Washington D.C. One would assume that proximity would help establish a better position within Google. In this case it's quite the contrary. The first listing is an outdated listing from Superpages.com that puts the store location directly in Washington D.C., which is a good 40 minutes from the true location(without traffic if you're lucky). The listing in Superpages is no longer there, so it seems Superpages deleted that listing but Google still has it displaying long after it was actually removed.
The second is a correct listing by is being served up by nearbynow.com. The problem with this listing is that it is (as well as all of the others) Conflicting with the true listing that the client has seen and requested modified. We are submitting a duplicate request deletion for this location.
Third listing is actually the store's corporate office which is off site. So even if someone wanted to stop in to buy a quick $20,000 engagement ring, they wouldn't be able to...unless Camilla or Debby jumped in their car and drive them over to the Mall.
The fourth listing is another store that closed some time ago and is still listed.
Finally number five somehow is also listing a location not even remotely close to the actual store. The address is correct but it's still a good 30 minutes away.
It seems Google is attempting to provide and append data and it's pulling in multiple source to get from one true location to having five. We will go in and dispute the duplicates, but it just goes to prove that even the biggest search engine in the world needs a hand or two to clean up the local data.
We'll check back on that listing in a few weeks.
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