tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13305946777290867662024-02-02T05:10:49.454+02:00Marketing FrenzyFor marketing and communication franticsAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-20307756882384026122013-12-27T09:20:00.000+02:002013-12-27T09:20:00.458+02:006 Personas You Are Obliged as a Designer to Include in the WebDesign ProcessIt seems that a lot of businesses are re-designing their site lately, and considering that the technology in this field has changed significantly (think of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design" target="_blank">responsive design</a>), I see this as a good step in the direction of having a UX World Wide Web. But, unfortunately, from my experience when re-designing a website, there are people who should most definitely be involved in the process and mainly aren't, or if their recommendations are taken into consideration, this is usually done way down the design/development process.<br />
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If you are a designer, like it or not, the power is in your hands: you are most definitely involved early in the process, so if you aren't put into contact with all of the following people, you should definitely ask at least for a short meeting with them. Of course, this means a lot more work for you, but trust me, it is easier to take things into consideration from the start than to have to change your design later. The following are the people you should talk to before starting the design and who you should ask for feedback after you have a wireframe and/or actual design in place (not necessarily in this order):<br />
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<b>1. Business Owner</b><br />
Of course, if we're talking about a big site it doesn't necessary has to be the business owner/CEO, it has to be someone who can tell you the goals of the site (both micro- and macro-goals) and what tactics that are being used by sales to close leads. If the company you're designing for is small, the business owner is the best person who can tell you such aspects of the business.<br />
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<i><b>Limitations: </b></i>Do note that usually business owners will agree to any design you propose, as they trust you as being the expert. Which you are, but part of being the expert is to know the people who can give you a better insight into what the website needs to do and how it should do it.<br />
<br /><b>2. Customer Support Representative</b><br />
It is crucial to talk to a Customer Support Representative, as they can give you detailed information on customers' behavior, their preferences, the problems they faced with the old site and so on. <br />
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<i><b>Limitations:</b></i> Customer Support Representatives usually don't know what they should tell you, being in contact with customers each day they probably have information which they take for granted or about which they assume that it is only logical and that you probably already know. Thus, make sure you are prepared with a set of questions when you first talk to them.<br />
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<b>3. UX expert</b><br />
A UX expert is especially helpful when you already have a wireframe in place, to point out possible usability issues. Of course, after years of experience you will probably have a handle on usability and other UX aspects.<br />
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<i><b>Limitations:</b></i> UX experts are usually pretty hard to come by, so if you don't have a proper budget a UX expert's opinion will probably be the first thing that you will consider as being redundant. If this is the case, at least take Nielsen's Ten Heuristics into consideration.<br />
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<img alt="Webdesign - UX ten heuristics" height="371" id="docs-internal-guid-17838140-2e5b-010d-9f44-92f505e1c26f" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/fOOPenSzpMQRri7KPW6s6AA0tfH2mts58CR2b0jPp5k1Wz9ksBdSN-MDAj-b3XZACqxkC5AEH7F0lfp7ktiWBUUCK8sKXPMZZTN-CGwRRJ82N8ADQdplkrLQzg" title="" width="400" /> </div>
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<b>4. Online Marketing Specialist</b><br />
Marketing will be an essential part of any website, that is why it is important to consider it in the design from the start. A specialist can help with call-to-actions (which will help achieve the goals set out by the business owner) and information design (which is highly important for SEO).<br />
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<i><b>Limitations: </b></i>Marketing is pretty complex on its own, so <i><b> </b></i>you might find yourself that the online marketing specialist will come up with ideas along the way. Although, continuous feedback and improvements are necessary, you have to know where to draw the line. Thus, everything that is needed should be put down in writing, so that when new ideas come up you will be more or less covered.<br />
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<b>5. Developer and Development Project Manager</b><br />
Talking to a developer and to the development project manager is highly important, as they know from the start how the website will be programmed and the technical limitations of a particular CMS and so on.<br />
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<i><b>Limitations:</b></i> Sometimes what makes sense from a UX, design and marketing point of view, might be hard to implement from a development perspective, but you should try to do your best and together to come up with the best solution possible. If needed, you should also discuss the issues and limitations with the client/business owner.<br />
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<b>6. Clients</b><br />
Clients are very important, the most important actually. But it is last on my list as unfortunately usually the budget allocated won't cover a user quantitative and/or qualitative research as well.<br />
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<i><b>Limitations:</b></i> Setting up user research is not only costly, but a decent amount of other resources is necessary as well (expertise, time and so on). In any case it is your obligation to ask the business owner/client if talking to a real user would be possible. If not, you should at least base your design on the feedback of a customer support representative.<br />
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Who else do you think should be included in the design process? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below!<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-66785961360014701222013-12-01T23:29:00.001+02:002013-12-01T23:29:04.371+02:00Steps to Take if You Think You Have Been Hit by a Google Algorithm UpdateThere are many great articles out there about how to find out if you have been hit by the Panda, Penguin or any other Google Algorithm Update, and what to do if you discovered that you have been impacted by an algorithm or the other. But experience has taught me tips that I haven't come across in other articles on this subject. And these are what I want to share with you today.<br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Analysis phase</b></span></span><br />
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Everything in SEO starts with analyzing your data with the help of the tracking software of your choice. And with this purpose you should analyze as much data as possible (at for least the past year). Apart from looking at monthly organic traffic coming from Google, to figure out approximately the period in which you started having problems, it is important to look at daily search traffic as well. It is normal to see some fluctuations in your daily traffic data, but you might notice that after a particular update the fluctuations slowed down, or that traffic slowly started to decrease and never recovered.<br />
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Let's take for example a clients who in the past period hasn't registered major increases or decreases in his search traffic, but if we looked back for the past 24 months we found the following:<br />
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<b>1.</b> Organic traffic coming from Google has a couple of drops in the analyzed period and even if traffic eventually recovered from the first 2 decreases, it never recovered from the last big one (November 2012-Janaury 2013).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEZDrFwVEZ6Q6YfbGi1RRP1-KfX3GQd6IgWq9O9ju-J8RPy-2lUTm_GhU0XAUZJz7duTZyEOTpcY9eIz_celaCMytWiT91ndSyzCeFJrydkgN0iKaibvSGH11Yv45hXisowX62b8yAUo0/s1600/Organic_monthly_traffic.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Drops in Monthly Organic Traffic in Google Analytics " border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEZDrFwVEZ6Q6YfbGi1RRP1-KfX3GQd6IgWq9O9ju-J8RPy-2lUTm_GhU0XAUZJz7duTZyEOTpcY9eIz_celaCMytWiT91ndSyzCeFJrydkgN0iKaibvSGH11Yv45hXisowX62b8yAUo0/s640/Organic_monthly_traffic.png" title="Drops in Monthly Organic Traffic in Google Analytics " width="640" /></a></div>
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<b>2.</b> When we looked at daily organic traffic we noticed that all the drops can be connected to one of the Panda updates. If we would have analyzed the data only on a per month basis it would have been virtually impossible to figure out which update affected the website, as especially in the past period Google puts live a <span style="font-size: small;">lot of different updates each month. To help you with the analysis Moz created the "</span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change#2011" target="_blank">Google Algorithm Change History</a>" page which you should definitely use :) </span>As you can notice in the example below, slight drops have been registered both in August 2011 and January 2012. The first one isn't that important as it came after a sudden increase, so that might have had an impact as well, thus we are going to let is slide. The second one (January 2012) impacted the site as a general decrease can be noticed together with the reduction in traffic fluctuation, although after a couple of months traffic seemed to recover. But starting November 2012, the fluctuation scaled down (again) and when it seemed that traffic is recovering at the end of January 2013 it got hit again. Of course, it is pretty time-consuming to notice these effects, some might be even more subtle. It might help at this stage to create a separate View in Google Analytics, which you would use for the only purpose of analyzing the effect of Google Algorithm Updates on your site - in this View you could keep only organic traffic coming from Google and add annotations corresponding only to Google Updates as per Moz's reports. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8FQ1vHa0bBpnsMeNX6RZFhgzLsLyZf30wWpgIl0ooHF6H75y-kK9ecFvqNYjknbKeZATszOH59m8ca4XVSyUiBf9c9BL53xxI36Hp5I8Pu5nFY3xFAxgPzAhbT1PCWOYhhqQammu8Jks/s1600/Organic_daily_traffic.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Panda Google Update effect on organic traffic from Google Analytics " border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8FQ1vHa0bBpnsMeNX6RZFhgzLsLyZf30wWpgIl0ooHF6H75y-kK9ecFvqNYjknbKeZATszOH59m8ca4XVSyUiBf9c9BL53xxI36Hp5I8Pu5nFY3xFAxgPzAhbT1PCWOYhhqQammu8Jks/s640/Organic_daily_traffic.png" title="Panda Google Update effect on organic traffic from Google Analytics " width="640" /></a></div>
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Whether Google Panda or Google Penguin hit your site, this type of analysis should do the trick in identifying the direction you should go from now on, which we will discuss in the following.<br />
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<span style="color: #351c75;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Action phase</b></span></span><br />
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So you figured out which algorithm update impacted your site. Now what? Well, depending on what hit you you should start looking at the following:<br />
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<b>1. Google Panda</b><br />
Each update is relatively complex, but what you have to know is that this particular update focuses on what content you have on the site. Thus, you should analyze the following:<br />
- duplicate content issues: having unique meta tags set up for each of your pages can be a tremendous help in this case, as you can see the number of Duplicate Meta Titles and Duplicate Meta Descriptions in Google Webmaster Tools, which usually gives you a hint if you have a problem in this direction due to programing.<br />
- thin content: you should have valuable and, of course, unique content on each of your pages and on your homepage as well. For example on your homepage you could include why you are the best choice or what benefits you offer. If you are an e-commerce site, having unique content on your product pages is extremely important, but hard to do at the same time. I hope I don't even have to mention that you should have a blog, which should be updated every week or so :)<br />
- if Google indexes user profiles from your site, you should take a look at these with a magnifying glass as well<br />
- for ideas on content you can take a quick peek at what your competitors are doing (especially those who are outranking you). Of course, every idea you get from them should be carefully considered if it could apply in your case as well.<br />
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<b>2. Google Penguin</b><br />
Google Penguin is a synonym with webspam and having over-optimized low quality links. Getting hit by Google Penguin could be a little bit harder to recover from than Panda, as it is always easier to modify your site than cleaning up what "link building" has been done in the past or to get others to modify theirs sites. But do not despair! Look at the following:<br />
- who links to your site: use Google Webmaster Tools for this purpose. Analyze the quality of these sites: look at domain authority (should be at least 30) and the ratio of their <i>Total Links/Total Linking Root Domains</i> (should be as close to 1 as possible) in <a href="http://(January 2012) " target="_blank">Open Site Explorer</a>, and maybe even Page Rank, although it's not as accurate as it used to be.<br />
- how many links do they have to your site and how many pages do they link to: thus the Links/Linked Pages (taken from Google Webmaster Tools) ratio should be as close to 1 as it can get. If you have thousands of links which lead to the same page on you site, that is a definite alarm signal. <br />
- what kind of link it is: where it's located on the site which links to you (blogrool, footer and other sidewide links are a definite no-no), if it is a paid/affiliate link (these should all have the "nofollow" attribute attached) and so on.<br />
- the anchor text of your links: use Open site Explorer and <a href="https://ahrefs.com/" target="_blank">Ahrefs </a>to analyze this aspect of your links. Branded anchor text should obviously dominate and you should be careful if some non-branded keywords have a high percentage in your anchor text profile. <br />
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Now that you analyzed your backlink profile consider the following tips:<br />
- If you have sitewide links from authoritative domains in your industry (to the same page on your site), then you are in somewhat of a pickle. You should consider that if you add the nofollow attribute to all of those links, you might get hurt as it won't pass any potential link juice and in the end a link from an authority site in your field is a definite plus. Thus, if possible, you should keep the link from the homepage dofollow and to the rest add the nofollow attribute. Of course, this means that you are in good relations with the respective company.<br />
- links from low quality sites, which don't bring you a significant amount of traffic, should be removed. Contact the webmaster of the respective site, follow-up, document everything in a Google Drive spreadsheet and if the links is still live, use Google's Disavow Tool (but do use it with precaution!). If a low quality site does bring you converting traffic, adding a nofollow attribute might be the best solution.<br />
- if you notice that you have an over-optimized anchor text profile, you have some work cut out for you. You need to identify the site from which you have links with that particular anchor text and either change the anchor text or remove the link.<br />
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<b>3. Other updates</b><br />
Even though websites have usually been hit by the above updates, there are some other updates you should consider as well, as on the long-term you might be effected:<br />
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<b>a. Hummingbird</b><br />
Although not an algorithm update like Panda and Penguin, it is in fact a "redesign" of the algorithm. Thus from now on:<br />
- use responsive web design (easier said than to implement, but even if you don't start redesigning your site now, do plan for it in the near future)<br />
- instead of focusing on keywords, focus on queries and the questions of your potential customers (your blog will come extremely handy in this regard)<br />
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<b>b. Knowledge Graph</b><br />
Although very different from the other Google updates, this is still very important as it represents the start of Google's switch to semantic search (which is somewhat what Hummingbird represents as well). Thus: <br />
- implement Rich snippets (apart from Google Authorship; company, product and blog post related snippets should be implemented)<br />
- offer content which doesn't simply answer a question, but which offers in-depth knowledge as well, which leads us to the next point<b><br /></b><br />
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<b>c. News and In-Depth Articles</b><br />
You might have noticed that some SERPs contain a News and/or In-Depth Articles section. Even though the first has been around for quite some time, the second is relatively new. In order to try to capitalize on these:<br />
- concentrate on creating news that are worth covering by major media outlets. Use press releases and media pitches in this regard<br />
- write articles that discuss every aspect of a particular topic that might be of interest to your prospects<br />
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<b>d. Exact-match domain</b><br />
Google changed the way it was handling exact-match domains back in 2012, thus reducing the presence of low quality EMDs.Thus, those site which have exact-match domains aren't favored anymore. In this case everything we talked about in this article holds true: work on having a great site and this sort of updates won't effect you that much even if you have an exact-match domain.<br />
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<b>e. Google Plus</b><br />
You might think that I went cuckoo, but bear with me. Even though Google Plus is a separate product, it does have an impact on SERPs (<a href="http://moz.com/blog/using-google-plus-to-appear-in-the-top-results-every-time-whiteboard-friday" target="_blank">watch this Whiteboard Friday</a>) and it does have an important role in Google's process to personalize search results. Thus:<br />
- do true social marketing on Google Plus as well, not just Facebook and/or Twitter; automate as much as you can but do not forget about interactions <br />
- ask your writers to set up Google Authorship and encourage them to have an active Google+ profile<br />
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"> Well, that's basically it. I'm looking forward to hear you thoughts and experiences with Google algorithm updates and everything that impacts Google SERPs in the comment section below!</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-21080724099575849462013-07-17T08:10:00.000+03:002013-07-17T08:10:00.018+03:00How to prevent Negative SEO or How to prevent your competitors in harming your websiteSome time ago one of my work colleagues left in order to go to another, much bigger Online Marketing company and at one point when we met up we started talking about how things are working for her at her new employer. And what she told me left me speechless. At my current company, we pride ourselves in being an online marketing firm which, apart from working according to white-hat SEO practices, abides by ethical and moral rules when it comes to providing services to our clients. So when I've heard that my colleague's new company was buying links by the dozens, not to their clients' websites, but to their clients' competitors' sites, I was astonished.<br />
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This is a big online marketing company I'm speaking of. So this shows you two things: 1. That you have to be very careful of what online marketing company you choose to work with, because if they have absolutely no problem in doing this, who knows what they are able to do to your own website and 2. That even if you work hard in building up your site and everything you do is 100% according to Google's Quality Guidelines, if your competitor buys tons of questionable links to your site, you can still get hurt.<br />
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Before Google Penguin people didn't really talk about negative SEO. Of course, buying links was a black-hat practice long before, but I don't believe websites were negatively influenced by these sort of practices, not in the way they are currently anyway. If you still don't quite believe in negative SEO, you should definitely check out <a href="http://www.tastyplacement.com/infographic-testing-negative-seo" target="_blank">this experiment from Tasty Placement</a>, which shows the impact of low quality links on rankings. It will make a believer out of you.<br />
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So what is there to be done in order to prevent competitors to buy links to your website? Well, you can't really do much to prevent it, but what you can do is to implement a process through which you can catch such a practice on time and do what you can in order to fix it. Below is a short guideline in order to help you get started (please use this before crying out for your MAA' :).<br />
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1. <b>Monitor.</b> In order to catch such practices you have to monitor your link profile. You could start implementing the following steps only when you notice something odd going on with you rankings or organic traffic and so on, but you should do it constantly. In any case, as you might know, there are a couple of great tools, which can help you in doing so. The main one is Google Webmaster Tools. So after you have logged on to GWT and go to the<i> Search Traffic</i> section to the <i>Links to your site </i>area, click on <i>More</i> to see the whole list of <i>Who links the most</i>. Here you will find the <i>Download latest links</i> button with which...you guessed it! You can download the latest links to your website :)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixPsr2qMrKQIH5-GP0RGK-SmAYQfJZfCBGnUnbESg_WTdv708Q_pPDPCwbIcoSD1HDFQjAVqf4WKyrTz2wDG1WDgrAWLCntgYec-CsrajWqlyZEGg8VW-S4qPBaBsutdL_F3zEmfE-QYE/s1600/download_latest_links.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixPsr2qMrKQIH5-GP0RGK-SmAYQfJZfCBGnUnbESg_WTdv708Q_pPDPCwbIcoSD1HDFQjAVqf4WKyrTz2wDG1WDgrAWLCntgYec-CsrajWqlyZEGg8VW-S4qPBaBsutdL_F3zEmfE-QYE/s400/download_latest_links.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Now, depending on the amount of links you receive in a given time frame, you should do this periodically and not only with the sole purpose of preventing competitors in harming your website.<br />
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An additional tool you can use is Open Site Explorer. Even though you can download a similar report containing inbound links as from GWT, I like to use the <i>Anchor Text </i>report (unfortunately you do need a paid Moz account to have access to the complete list) and I'll tell you how I actually use it in a minute. What is important to note is that you should download this report often, as you will need a previous <i>Anchor Text</i> report to do the necessary comparisons later.<br />
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2. <b>Analyze. </b>All the tools in the world cannot help you if you don't analyze your data properly. So, the first step would be to analyze the <i>Anchor Text </i>report from OSE (don't worry if you don't have this one, you can still figure things out, but it could take more time than with this particular report). So if you do have the <i>Anchor Text</i> report you should compare it to the previous one you downloaded (this is why you have to download this report often). You should be looking for abnormal increases in a particular anchor text. Why? you ask. Because when competitors buy links they buy a bunch and I don't believe that they will take the time to "diversify" the anchor text the links will have. That way, apart from pointing paid links to your site they will also create an unbalance in your anchor text profile, which can likewise gain the disapproval of the Mighty Google.<br />
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The reason I said having the <i>Anchor Text </i>report might save you time, because it is much easier to spot if something odd is going on with your anchor text profile, than going directly to the next step.<br />
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So if something is not quite right with your <i>Anchor Text </i>report you have to take the link report you have downloaded from Google Webmaster Tools and identify any spammy links that started pointing recently to your website. Again you can use a couple of tools for this. What we have recently tried is <a href="http://www.linkdetective.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Link Detective</a>, which you can use to take a look at the domain and page authority of the links you uploaded, together with their type. If you notice a bunch of low authority sites (an authority under 30 for example) pointing to your site and you are more or less sure that you or your team didn't build those links, then you might have gotten a nasty present from one of your competitors.What is there to do next?<br />
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<b>3. Act. </b>Be prepared because a lot of work awaits you. There have been many articles on how to clean up your link profile, which are perfectly viable in this case as well, so I will not get into more details here. But, an additional thing you can do is try to identify the service which was used by your competitor. Try searching for clues on the pages you are getting harmful link juice from, for example. If you are able to identify the company, you should contact them and try to get those particular links removed.<br />
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There it is. MAA coming to the rescue when your competitor is bullying you :) Have you ever thought that your competitor could be buying paid links to your website? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-76879006112901404042013-06-10T10:04:00.000+03:002013-06-10T10:04:00.660+03:00Taking Google Analytics With a Pinch of SaltI just came back from the <a href="http://iceefest.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">iCEEfest </a>(Interactive Central & Eastern Europe Festival), where I had the pleasure to meet several giants of the internet. During a presentation on YouTube Advertising, one of the lovely ladies from Google asked the audience if the data provided by AdWords and Google Anlaytics are different (regarding the data which theoretically should be the same), which data set should we trust? Even if I was saying "AdWords" as loud as my comfort zone permitted, she made the following comparison: "Should you trust Google Analytics, which is a free product or AdWords for which you pay and for which we work very hard to make it as accurate as possible?". This got me thinking about the discrepancies I've noticed along the way, not only between the data offered by AdWords and Analytics, but within the Analytics data set as well.<br />
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The following two glitches stuck to mind (until now) and I wanted to share them with you, in case you have encountered the same problems, you need to know that you are not alone :)<br />
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1. Traffic coming through non-branded keywords. No one can argue with the fact that this metric is plays an important role in measuring result based SEO efforts (even though (not provided) gives us headaches almost each day). What I've noticed is the following: if you apply a filter to filter out a particular keyword form organic traffic, and than you filter only the organic visits that came through the same keyword, the sum is actually not equal to total organic traffic. Lets see an example. I took a dating site, which has not many organic visits, and excluded the keyword "date" from the organic visits:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrDY-kDN3PICN6-TIyCVx2bpP5ySed-Ffew2mS3cm7RZ3uhLLHdx52Gze56mpvwLhBBs5okMsfXeP6d_ZExlF9yOcp8YBnMkbP7i8fgsiA7sFgS1m2-g27bl7MbxVAltHYsEQLqDNNJLg/s1600/exclude_date.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Google Analytics | Organic traffic being applied one exclude filter" border="0" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrDY-kDN3PICN6-TIyCVx2bpP5ySed-Ffew2mS3cm7RZ3uhLLHdx52Gze56mpvwLhBBs5okMsfXeP6d_ZExlF9yOcp8YBnMkbP7i8fgsiA7sFgS1m2-g27bl7MbxVAltHYsEQLqDNNJLg/s640/exclude_date.png" title="Google Analytics | Organic traffic being applied one exclude filter" width="640" /></a></div>
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After, I applied a filter to see only the visits coming through the keyword "date":</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh32ybNPfZ9uxrQEeNgvmZFEuALWmlb8kNmurE7KlCLfcmDg821MBVyKWcGzWrnKLD38m_rFf7OZQKPmtnXre-Tql58xgI7QJoh6KqyfzfKateODyHyhISBYw-K3S9MAZTFxXlP8WQoV24/s1600/include_date.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Google Analytics | Organic traffic being applied one include filter" border="0" height="332" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh32ybNPfZ9uxrQEeNgvmZFEuALWmlb8kNmurE7KlCLfcmDg821MBVyKWcGzWrnKLD38m_rFf7OZQKPmtnXre-Tql58xgI7QJoh6KqyfzfKateODyHyhISBYw-K3S9MAZTFxXlP8WQoV24/s640/include_date.png" title="Google Analytics | Organic traffic being applied one include filter" width="640" /></a></div>
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The excluding filter gave the result 662,925 visits, the including filter gave as a result 831 visits, which totals 663,756 visits, while without any filters the organic traffic is of:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ9J2fg4pZxz2xrIo9Z3wealXmkS-n5CfUGDqGw3uHH8zAGqLA8iE8E2so3Mwdvqc857CoAPGBuygAtHL53_3bLPmJ3ASg6JX_hRUVO2Y5qaceysuNdDuDETfpbSbhRtSphZLpuKWy0VI/s1600/organic.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Google Analytics | Total organic traffic" border="0" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ9J2fg4pZxz2xrIo9Z3wealXmkS-n5CfUGDqGw3uHH8zAGqLA8iE8E2so3Mwdvqc857CoAPGBuygAtHL53_3bLPmJ3ASg6JX_hRUVO2Y5qaceysuNdDuDETfpbSbhRtSphZLpuKWy0VI/s640/organic.png" title="Google Analytics | Total organic traffic" width="640" /></a></div>
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You realize that the issue here is not about those 22 visits, but the higher organic traffic one site has the higher the difference. And I know that Google does not recommend using more than one filter, which in this case is not the case. If anybody can tell what I am missing please do.<br />
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2. Paid search traffic. We all know how important it is to attribute conversions to traffic channels, especially when we are investing money in paid search campaigns. This Google Analytics glitch confused me even more than the previous one. As you know you can see your PPC campaigns in 3 places in Google Analytics, that is if you <a href="https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1704341?hl=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">connect your GA account with your Google AdWords account</a>, under:<br />
1. Traffic Sources -> Sources-> Search-> Paid;<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi_Mq9QpR0DCoLasiolDL-oAU8s4Ywv4kDbGSkWLlUAv-CtwFjhB8Q8T4ef5LXZH1qdppzmxBmOZgttO7TN4ZczHDvzltZzPrf5AkggxBVs8b37-tRv13AtXKJ1b1MuAyRRX9-MpSVJhI/s1600/paid.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Google Analytics | Paid campaigns screenshot" border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi_Mq9QpR0DCoLasiolDL-oAU8s4Ywv4kDbGSkWLlUAv-CtwFjhB8Q8T4ef5LXZH1qdppzmxBmOZgttO7TN4ZczHDvzltZzPrf5AkggxBVs8b37-tRv13AtXKJ1b1MuAyRRX9-MpSVJhI/s640/paid.png" title="Google Analytics | Paid campaigns screenshot" width="640" /></a></div>
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2. Traffic Sources -> Sources -> Campaigns;<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyHHmjVR9436BAAcJMJgmcugUqJO9ET-6ktj6yeYUe4bxSR1-ei9FX-zk4WHbOrXOBq_uyln5UTyI90hYi85u1Z_cbmpuJGvmH1yNCS44z7TKXCgHlTWK2iS5dNEoF7hv72R2cDsK2zNM/s1600/campaign.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Google Analytics | Campaigns screenshot" border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyHHmjVR9436BAAcJMJgmcugUqJO9ET-6ktj6yeYUe4bxSR1-ei9FX-zk4WHbOrXOBq_uyln5UTyI90hYi85u1Z_cbmpuJGvmH1yNCS44z7TKXCgHlTWK2iS5dNEoF7hv72R2cDsK2zNM/s640/campaign.png" title="Google Analytics | Campaigns screenshot" width="640" /></a></div>
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3. Traffic Sources - Advertising -> AdWords -> Campaigns.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYkOi3SaZtM3nxKCIipCg0r6G7umO8NCc82Xh1r_67Jep1ytEpF77TLc03FutV4SFcsltEXMA488fqFQGCYEeYYPjgn2_BKdQrWJ-Wr2wJwagGUT2IB0F4T59ucgxC-tOWopbZr0n0gdE/s1600/adwords_campaign.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Google Analytics | AdWords campaigns screenshot" border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYkOi3SaZtM3nxKCIipCg0r6G7umO8NCc82Xh1r_67Jep1ytEpF77TLc03FutV4SFcsltEXMA488fqFQGCYEeYYPjgn2_BKdQrWJ-Wr2wJwagGUT2IB0F4T59ucgxC-tOWopbZr0n0gdE/s640/adwords_campaign.png" title="Google Analytics | AdWords campaigns screenshot" width="640" /></a></div>
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It is important to note that in the following example, the business only had AdWords campaigns running and that all links pointing to the site were compiled with the help of Google's URL builder. As you can see under the Paid Search Campaigns all visits are show, although the campaign parameter came through only for a very small amount of traffic. Due to this fact only a small amount of traffic is shown under Campaigns. Where AdWords Campaigns are concerned, the 17 visits for which the campaign parameter did not come though are not shown, although the tracking platform does recognize that the source of those 17 visits is Google. So when applying filters and attributing conversions, you have to be careful and check that the whole amount of traffic is take into consideration.<br />
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What other Google Analytics glitches have you encountered? Would love to hear your stories in the comment section below :)<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-56484852728194373002013-02-17T20:33:00.001+02:002013-02-17T20:55:08.180+02:00How to Monitor the WWW for Business Growth<br />
I know you agree that the interaction between prospects, clients (former and actual), partners, industry leaders and even competitors is highly important, especially if the topic of discussion is your brand and your products/services. This has always been the case, but with the dawn of Web 2.0 the way Word-Of-Mouth works has changed. And with this change new daily/weekly tasks were added to the online marketer's job description. Apart from blogging and managing social media, monitoring what internauts say about your brand and other topics of interest became mandatory. Fortunately, the way we do this became easier thanks to the tools available to us now.<br />
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<b>Why do you need web monitoring?</b><br />
Before we cut to the chase it is important to recognize the benefits such a monitoring activity can have for your business. In my opinion the benefits can be separated into 2 main categories. Firstly, monitoring the web has a role in brand reputation management: where the good, the bad and the ugly of your business will come to surface. This includes you listening to what your prospects and clients are saying about you and thus getting to know them better (what motivates them, what are they actually looking for in your product/service and so on), information if used properly can benefit your business to a great extent. Secondly, when monitoring the web, opportunities may arise that might have less to do with your blogging and social marketing activities, but it can influence your public relations activities, product/service development activities and so on.<br />
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<b>Step One - Establish Goals</b><br />
The second step would be to establish your goals - as always :). Think about what you would like to achieve with this task. For Brand Reputation Management, goals that you could set could be to offer customer support on social media channels, discover customer complaints early and fix them, maybe turn unsatisfied customers into true evangelists for your brand, which leads us to building a relationship with possible brand evangelists, crisis management and so on. Discovering complementary opportunities could regard discovering possible newsjacking topics for press releases and other PR opportunities, developing a new product/service even better than the one your competitors launched and so on.<br />
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<b>Step Two - The Tools</b><br />
There are quite a couple of tools that you could use for this purpose, both free and paid.<br />
The obvious and free tools would be <i><a href="http://www.google.com/alerts" target="_blank">Google Alerts</a>,</i><i> <a href="http://socialmention.com/#" target="_blank">Social Mention</a> </i>and the <a href="https://twitter.com/search" target="_blank">search function from <i>Twitter</i></a>. Another tool that I like is <a href="https://en.mention.net/" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">Mention</a>, especially because it has a free version, a desktop app and I believe it to be highly accurate.<br />
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<a href="http://www.elisabethhubert.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/magnifying-glass.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Monitoring the web for brand reputation management" border="0" height="320" src="http://www.elisabethhubert.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/magnifying-glass.gif" title="Monitoring the internet for brand reputation management" width="217" /></a>I did notice a flaw in a couple of these tools: if you have an abbreviation for a brand name or if your brand name can be abbreviated (for example SD4M), and believe me most of your customers will shorten your brand name if they can, then some of these might give you results when that string of characters appears in unfriendly URLs, as <span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrG0qV-<b>Sd4M</b>&feature=youtube_gdata</span> for the previous example, which might have nothing to do with your actual brand. This might not be the case thought for notorious brands.<br />
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Another service I really like using is HARO (aka <a href="http://www.helpareporter.com/" target="_blank">Help A Reporter Out</a>), as it is a great way to build up relationships with journalists and maybe even be mentioned in a piece. Of course, sometimes they are looking for your customers and not you. In these cases, what I usually do is to post on our social accounts that such an opportunity is available for our fans/followers. If we do get some positive feedback from our fan base regarding that particular post, than I let the reporter who submitted the query know what we did to help and mention that if any additional help is needed we are at his/her disposal.<br />
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When looking for a tool to use, depending on your budget, remember one thing: no tool is perfect, but you do have to search for the best tool that will work for your business.<br />
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<b>Step Three - Setting Up </b><br />
What keywords should you monitor? Here are a couple of ideas:<br />
<b><i>Brand related keywords:</i></b><br />
- brand and company name, with all of the variations this might take<br />
- name of your CEO<br />
For these I would monitor every result possible.<br />
<b><i>Non-brand related keywords:</i></b><br />
- the main keywords from your industry, in order to monitor if any subject arises, which you might need to approach in a press release or blog post (this is the way )<br />
- the brand names of your main competitors<br />
For these keywords monitoring only the best result would be sufficient.<br />
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In order to practice newsjacking you must keep your eyes and ears open for any topics, which have potential, outside of your industry.<br />
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<b>Step Four - Act</b><br />
All the monitoring in the world won't have any results if you don't act on it. Thus here are a couple of pointers:<br />
* When it comes to bad comments, it goes without saying that you have to be tactful. You should analyze if the person who posted the particular bad remark is doing it to troll around. If yes, then do not answer. If you believe that he/she is not a troll, then answer politely. It is a good rule of thumb to never answer when you're angry. I've read it recently in an article (I'm so sorry I couldn't find it again, if you do know which one I'm talking about please let me know and I'll link to it), in which it was advised not to use your brand's name when responding to a complaint, especially when this is on a complaint site. Instead use generic wording like "the company". The reasoning behind this is that the more your brand name is mentioned on that particular page, the chances are higher for it to appear in the first SERs (Search Engine Results) for your brand name, which prospects will most likely search for when thinking of buying from you. So if you want to avoid bad impressions appearing on the first results for your brand name this is a great tip.<br />
* Respond to the good tweets or comments that come up regarding your brand. You will probably not be able to answer all of them, but try to respond a couple in one monitoring session.<br />
* If someone is asking a question regarding your field of expertise do not hesitate to answer, but remember that trying to sell your product/service at this point is a huge no-no.<br />
* If someone is complaining about your competitor, be there for them (favorably, before your competitor can respond to the complaint :) )<br />
* If a topic comes up that could be a great subject for a blog post or press release, forward it to the person responsible. If someone has a problem that Customer Support can handle, forward it to them and so on.<br />
* If a competitor launches a new feature or product, you might consider forwarding the press release to your Product Manager.<br />
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In any case the greatest advice that you probably already heard is to act human and listen to your instincts. Think about it this way: if someone said or asked something, how would you have reacted, if you would have been there in person?<br />
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In case you are saying to yourself "This looks like a lot of wrok, Csilla. I don't have the time for this". Remember: with the right tools all this can be done in 15 minutes a day and the benefits are definitely worth it :)<br />
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Did you monitor the web until now? What's the biggest success you had from it? Do you know of any other tools that can help in the monitoring process? I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-4380927451332776522013-01-10T00:03:00.000+02:002013-01-10T00:03:23.122+02:00Are your fans getting notifications from your Facebook Page?There has been a lot of anger from online marketers regarding Facebook's EdgeRank change, especially because this happened coincidentally about the time Facebook launched its Promoted Posts. These modifications caused the reduction of reach for the updates posted by Business Pages (in any case for some businesses). Off course, Facebook "issued" a response for all the negative feedback it received, one of which being a magical place called "Pages Feed", where a user can find all the posts that come from the business pages they liked (which by the way is nowhere to be seen in the Facebook mobile app). I won't discuss the "efficiency" of this move from the perspective of businesses (have you even noticed the tab before I mentioned it?), but I do want to discuss a feature that might help in reaching the attention of your Facebook fans.<br />
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You actually might have heard this before from blog posts like <a href="http://allfacebook.com/notifications-pages-feed-brands-shoutlet_b104193" target="_blank">this on AllFacebook.com</a>, as after the big change many posts flourished advising you to do this and that in order to maintain or even increase the reach of your Facebook posts.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGNoy0aXqkzRUOltVeDeI0YaIBZhY6-_UXJ9vBru9SUB6_6wDSbLEt7-6zXXo1mgOS174OaB6M3Nz3duiH-H9NK-hjvAobnt5gf7Ou6S1j5Kqy4RiNrR4tHi9T3ptBhFgas4fTJfwDAyg/s1600/notif+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Facebook Notification from Business Page" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGNoy0aXqkzRUOltVeDeI0YaIBZhY6-_UXJ9vBru9SUB6_6wDSbLEt7-6zXXo1mgOS174OaB6M3Nz3duiH-H9NK-hjvAobnt5gf7Ou6S1j5Kqy4RiNrR4tHi9T3ptBhFgas4fTJfwDAyg/s320/notif+1.jpg" title="Facebook Notification from Business Page" width="221" /></a></div>
So, what am I talking about? Well, if the title didn't tip you off (wink), I'm referring to the option of users getting notifications from your business page(s). What I found a little bit strange is that after the initial rush in November 2012, nobody really talked about it (please correct me if i'm wrong here). Honestly, this feature didn't really work uptil the last couple of days, at least not for me. I enabled it in November for one of the pages I like and only yesterday I received the first notification regarding the activity on the page.<br />
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In any case, the question remains: Are your fans getting notifications from your Facebook Page?<br />
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Well, there are mainly 2 steps in achieving this:<br />
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<b>1.</b> <b>Create </b>an awesome page and <b>share </b>great content that your fan base can relate to and wants to interact with. I know that this is more easy to say than done, but with a lot of listening, experimenting and measuring, which will lead to really knowing your customers, you will eventually get there. Why is this important you ask? Well, apart from the obvious reasons, you have to keep in mind that users usually like tens of pages, and if they opt-in to get notifications from each of them their notification box (or whatever it's called) will eventually overflood and the whole purpose of the feature will be lost anyway. So, the most probable scenario is that they will enable this option for the pages they really like. In such a case, your page will be included on the list if it provides true value. Although you have to keep in mind that the probability of inundating their notification box still remains, but at least until this goes mainstream, you can reap the benefits from it.<br />
<a 1em="1em" 200="200" center="center" float:="float:" height="50" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhujrLGrdyJBvh8AvJUAQE3uxbUv3iUv3vc4heGqPc56KliThz48SXaEbmE5kLjBRkgEoWLYw9m1psZbRHp0Iq9JDwlkXISGwilcP72bYJOq9EgPus4L4dGG3dCQ-iiBADYQzTZ7qWWxoo/s1600/get_notif.png" imageanchor="1" margin-bottom:="margin-bottom:" margin-left:="margin-left:" right="right" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" text-align:="text-align:"><img alt="Get Notifications Option on Facebook Business Pages" border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhujrLGrdyJBvh8AvJUAQE3uxbUv3iUv3vc4heGqPc56KliThz48SXaEbmE5kLjBRkgEoWLYw9m1psZbRHp0Iq9JDwlkXISGwilcP72bYJOq9EgPus4L4dGG3dCQ-iiBADYQzTZ7qWWxoo/s200/get_notif.png" title="Get Notifications Option on Facebook Business Pages" width="162" /></a><br />
<b>2.</b> <b>Ask </b>them to enable the option of getting notifications from your page and <b>show </b>them how. After earning their interest, you have to educate them. Besides notifying them that this option exists (one time might not be enough, but do not overdo it though) you have to show them the steps they have to take in order to achieve this. And of course, ask them nicely with cream and cherry on top :)<br />
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I'm curious: if you did enable this option in the past, did it work for you immediately? What are your thoughts on this?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-9081243374449618632013-01-06T20:54:00.002+02:002013-01-09T22:30:59.400+02:00What 2012 meant for Online MarketingLooking back at all the changes that took place in 2012, I can say with certainty that 2012 was a great year for Online Marketing. And I'm not just affirming this because it was the first year which I spent entirely in this industry or because the Mayans launched the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PzSniQYVSgY" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">"2012 Apocalypse" marketing campaign</a> :) (which I really enjoyed), but because a great number of industry updates shaped how we will do online marketing in 2013.<br />
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Below are the major modifications (in no specific order) that I believe will have an impact on the industry at least for the upcoming year:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEvjwtMOQPN8fbNRESJlEsJC7Ov_oIrlMnxlSefA_hGiJIKer3akW-Xtd7T1v1q26KkLT_iUVC7tXOCQeE93RLItg-zW7TvAgexTR5gYeQQHUNWP_1tGGPHTWGmZM8zKq8bh47u-b8Lm0/s1600/Untitled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEvjwtMOQPN8fbNRESJlEsJC7Ov_oIrlMnxlSefA_hGiJIKer3akW-Xtd7T1v1q26KkLT_iUVC7tXOCQeE93RLItg-zW7TvAgexTR5gYeQQHUNWP_1tGGPHTWGmZM8zKq8bh47u-b8Lm0/s320/Untitled.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<b>1.</b> <b>Google Authorship</b>. I wanted to list this first because it is my personal favorite and it shows Google's attempt to model its search engine algorithm after how we trusted information in the "real world before Google". What I mean is that we all trust what experts in certain fields tell us regarding particular topics, right? And even if the majority of us often don't remember their names, we all remember faces. In any case AuthorRank will have somewhat of an impact on SEO as well, because AuthorRank will be 2013's PageRank. I found this <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-prepare-for-authorrank-and-get-the-jump-on-google" target="_blank">article on SEOMoz</a> particularly interesting on this subject.<br />
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<b>2.</b> <b>Google Penguin</b>. I believe you'll agree with me when I say that this Google update created a lot of fuss in the SEO world. Google's little black furry creature changed a lot of things in the line of Search Engine Optimization, which lead to increased focus on Content Marketing, especially in the second half of 2012. So I expect this trend to grow wings in more businesses in 2013.<br />
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<b>3.</b> <b>Facebook IPO. </b>Even if this is more a business decision than a product related update, Facebook being listed on the stock market gave birth to more than a couple of product changes, in order for the company to better monetarise its "social network". Sponsored Posts and the EdgeRank algorithm change, Global Pages, Facebook Nearby, the announcement of Video adds and so on are all the result of the company trying to get better quotations on the stock market. Some even speculate that the company will <a href="http://www.johnhaydon.com/2013/01/my-social-media-predictions-for-2013/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">release Premium Facebook Pages</a> in the near future. Although, I have to admit, as a user, I kind of like the Google updates I mentioned, but where Facebook is concerned the user really had to suffer from an experience point of view. So I wouldn't be amazed if users will emigrate to other social platforms, especially if Facebook keeps this up.<br />
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<b>4.</b> <b>Google+ Local</b> <b>and the focus on local. </b>I think we will see more changes from Google in this direction (especially because we are still waiting to be able to answer reviews as businesses - it would be about time). Additionally, local has got a big role when it comes to ranking in SERPs. And this takes us to the next item on the list ...<br />
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<b>5.</b> <b>Mobile Marketing. </b>The number of people owning a smartphone and using it to navigate the World Wide Web has skyrocketed and we started to see great marketing campaigns that integrated mobile. I hope to see more businesses having mobile-optimized sites and great apps in the upcoming year. If you want to get ideas in this direction, check out the <a href="http://www.themobileplaybook.com/" target="_blank">MobilePlayBook</a>, a great mobile guide with examples put together by Google. Apart from advice it has a couple of great examples of how businesses designed their mobile website or how they used apps successfully. Some are really creative.<br />
Even though 2012 has been the year of mobile, 2013 will probably be the year of the tablet, so keep that in mind when you put together your marketing strategy for this year.<br />
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<b>6. Search Plus Your World. </b>Social is starting to be even more intertwined with SEO, and SPYW is definitely a sign of this. If you think about it, it does make sense, apart from the fact that a particular piece of content has been written by experts, the buzz it creates on social media platforms is another indicator of its quality. And in the end the AuthorRank is supposedly measured taking social signals in consideration as well. So, this fact adds to the pressure of having to be successful on social networking sites.<br />
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7. <b>Focus on data.</b> I left this for last, because every year there is more and more focus on data than in the previous one. Thus, 2012 brought the inclusion of the Social tab in Google Analytics, to help measure the ROI of social media marketing, together with focusing on conversion, instead of more mediocre metrics. In 2013 I hope to see more ways to measure multi-channel conversion, including offline touch points.<br />
<br />
What are your thought on this list? Which change you like the most and which do you dislike entirely? Both from an user's and an online marketer's perspective? Do you think semantic search will have a significant evolution this year, I mean Google's Knowledge Graph is just the first droplet in the glass.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-90427466903432360742011-11-05T20:09:00.000+02:002013-06-15T13:23:12.619+03:006 essential skills for newbies in marketing There are a number of skills that a newbie must possess to get a job in any domain, not just marketing. And the following soft and hard skills are important if you want to storm your way into this particular field. Do not worry, the majority can be easily learnt and assimilated, but others make up the passion for marketing and are part of who you are as a person. I'll start with the former. So let's jump right into it, shall we?<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1XSotvqeRvHcN8Z-OzqMEUftTo55GiZEvwwCuzX4NaUfgqdyv98VOlJn9UmhRYzX__jkm-aNj69Xx9JJ79lL11_Zp2nTi0aK_GVNIEEzDc0xG7awCyZm3ZS8qu29lucv1qU8tI4IooFc/s1600/Analytics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1XSotvqeRvHcN8Z-OzqMEUftTo55GiZEvwwCuzX4NaUfgqdyv98VOlJn9UmhRYzX__jkm-aNj69Xx9JJ79lL11_Zp2nTi0aK_GVNIEEzDc0xG7awCyZm3ZS8qu29lucv1qU8tI4IooFc/s200/Analytics.jpg" width="200" /></a>1. <i style="color: #741b47;"><b>Analytics</b></i> or statistics, as you might want to call it, both words hide more or less the same concept. And they are important because in my opinion marketing is a combination of science and (let's call it) feeling. And analytics is the science part of it.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKI4SdAP7W3Pf4loDigKR2rpMUJwTtvRHWXWEN3QoAbhPDPuFVCashJ3_wgvzwvmQopS8A7PJ-BoY0_kCat1ebrFwZ1r-SVghYbq2wT7uhGp172W4JGQ-rCoeLzqeOUOUkoMC-aD934oo/s1600/SEO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>2. <i style="color: #741b47;"><b>SEO</b></i> is a significant part of the XXIst century's marketing and I foresee a major increase in the role it will play in marketing, as search engines have become the most important source of information in today's society. Of course, we have to consider the fact that access to internet does not cover the whole globe just yet, and decades will pass until it does. But the majority of the target market of many-many businesses, first action in the decision process is to search.<br />
<br />
3. <i style="color: #741b47;"><b>Photoshop</b></i>. Oh yes! The time when Photoshop skills weren't needed passed approximately when the Adobe started developing it. The only person who doesn't have to know how to create breathtaking images is the CMO, but you can't actually get there if you do not know Photoshop. Although it's probably something you learn so you can forget it latter, for newbies it is a necessity.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoUcqsgz9aYNr7955MVBUpuxdvnEhNYMWKrV-XjdMKnhdBfKe9C_5yP601Gnu6wsTqsBObLesTBeIQ4j1QAWutBrIvZTfvdh19OPsX_LvwKfz6R1nZ18fr0vhkCo8lqpV_2agjBmErW1E/s1600/smiling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoUcqsgz9aYNr7955MVBUpuxdvnEhNYMWKrV-XjdMKnhdBfKe9C_5yP601Gnu6wsTqsBObLesTBeIQ4j1QAWutBrIvZTfvdh19OPsX_LvwKfz6R1nZ18fr0vhkCo8lqpV_2agjBmErW1E/s1600/smiling.jpg" /></a>4. <i style="color: #741b47;"><b>Creativity</b></i>. Although you probably need to creative in any position, you have to be ultimately creative in the marketing field, because you are in charge of making your brand memorable, and only the shocking "advertisements" (and here I do not use it solely in the traditional sense) are unforgettable. In one hand your interviewer cannot measure you creativity, so let's say you can get a marketing job without being creative, but creativity will keep you from being dismissed latter on.<br />
<br />
5. <i style="color: #741b47;"><b>Smiling</b></i>. Although this is an action, for me being able to smile with all your heart and soul to a customer or potential customer is a sign of having great people skills. But, do be careful, Pan-Am smiles won't get you nowhere, I am talking about crow's feet causing smiles.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUDDR7WnrKZ8fIY49iyMTO2-Lq_ASvZQOn6-cci1a93lgzCW8fqQ578GyINYnZQpNW6C1SmwI3xTLEDjCkWnwK_a_808rXGLaRCxaw4c6OKW04v4SeDezlS_D6zecvW6JfnG2V7yhoRus/s1600/listening.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUDDR7WnrKZ8fIY49iyMTO2-Lq_ASvZQOn6-cci1a93lgzCW8fqQ578GyINYnZQpNW6C1SmwI3xTLEDjCkWnwK_a_808rXGLaRCxaw4c6OKW04v4SeDezlS_D6zecvW6JfnG2V7yhoRus/s200/listening.gif" width="169" /></a>6. <i style="color: #741b47;"><b>Listening, understanding and acting</b></i>. Although it is the sixth skill on my list, listening is the essence of marketing. If you cannot listen to what people say, to what you customers are saying, to what your competitors' clients are saying, to what those employees are saying who get in touch with the customers on a daily basis, and understand theirs feelings, motivations, dissatisfaction and so on, and act based on these, you will probably get fired (best case scenario) or bankrupt the company (worst case scenario). I do believe listening is a very hard thing to do for some of us, because the human nature is built in such a way in which it's primary concern is him/herself. So it is difficult to switch off our primary instinct, but with a little self-discipline nothing is impossible.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3WGbxN-sZ80ZNqsT2qoxC0ApVoNm2LJvJXYBoMXHoOJm_4-OzXBfjhuGWYFBjLnuqCbCn8oCW3sa0iWc7VlRay83mBMhPd5Lbrpc4mMXIw1qbuPf0frWXwz2M8fJdojMbNWR15z62c-Q/s1600/sociability.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3WGbxN-sZ80ZNqsT2qoxC0ApVoNm2LJvJXYBoMXHoOJm_4-OzXBfjhuGWYFBjLnuqCbCn8oCW3sa0iWc7VlRay83mBMhPd5Lbrpc4mMXIw1qbuPf0frWXwz2M8fJdojMbNWR15z62c-Q/s200/sociability.jpg" width="200" /></a>7. <i style="color: #741b47;"><b>Social Media</b></i>. I left SM for last because I consider it to be a combination of hard and soft skills. There are some aspects of social media that are basically science, you can easily learn it, but some aspects are related to your sociable side. In contrast with our "listening problems", humans are sociable by nature (yes, everything comes down to our monkey instincts as I like to call them). But the real challenge is to be popular on the world wide web, which is a totally different thing compared to real life, so not everyone got a hold of it, but we all will. Eventually.<br />
<br />
Now all we have to do is to identify our weak spot and start building it up. For example my weakest spot is ... you guessed it: Photoshop :) If you're like me start reading this<span style="color: blue;"> <a href="http://www.trainingtools.com/online/photoshop6/index.htm" target="_blank">Photoshop manual</a></span> (it is indeed for an old version, but the basics are the same and the information is fairly organized).<br />
<br />
If your weakness lies in the first 2 points I highly recommend Hubspot's <a href="http://www.inboundmarketing.com/university" target="_blank"><span style="color: blue;">Inbound Marketing University</span></a>. But if the 6th point is giving you trouble check out Carnegie's <a href="http://www.dalecarnegie.com/secrets_of_success/" style="background-color: blue;" target="_blank">Secrets of Success</a> for tips :)<br />
<br />
If you would add some other skills as well, and you probably would, please do.<br />
<br />
All newbies in marketing, I salute you! :D <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-42835262765151976152011-10-30T10:19:00.001+02:002011-10-30T10:54:15.302+02:00Google's new "user privacy" protection policyYou probably noticed that there was a big hype in the marketing
blogosphere the past couple of weeks regarding Google's new privacy
policy. This involved the decision not to reveal analytics programme
users the keywords some of www surfers used in the search engine to get
to their particular website.<br />
<br />
As in any situation the
glass is half full and half empty in this case as well. On one hand
keywords appear as "(not provided)" in the analytics programme if the
internet user was logged-in on a Google account the moment he did the
search. This means Gmail, Youtube, Google+, and other accounts that are
or will be under Google's ownership (see <a href="http://www.searchenginejournal.com/googles-third-quarter-acquisitions/35416/">new acquisitions made by the giant</a>).<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6UbKMQys5sdyNFC7h_StUlTSHK3GZfIJ5ETxEj3Ex347oZEDIJ5EuITkU0xrjMS8gPbPpnKQMY099DMkLu06FMi1XGBwr4DqkaUBr8KNRyjnYpCPyWthEpYbSyGW4XIlIETQcxHtR1w0/s1600/google+privacy.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="120" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6UbKMQys5sdyNFC7h_StUlTSHK3GZfIJ5ETxEj3Ex347oZEDIJ5EuITkU0xrjMS8gPbPpnKQMY099DMkLu06FMi1XGBwr4DqkaUBr8KNRyjnYpCPyWthEpYbSyGW4XIlIETQcxHtR1w0/s320/google+privacy.jpg" width="320" /></a>On
the other hand, Google AdWords users will have access to this
particular information, so the keywords are not provided where organic
search is involved. So the new "privacy policy" divides businesses in
superiors and inferiors. How to get from one category to the other? Just
pay Google, simple as that. Of course, there is an ethical issue in
place as well, Google trying to hide the unethicalness of the decision
behind the concept of "user privacy". Do not get me wrong, user privacy
is an important issue in today's internet society, but if the giant
would have really intended to protect users, he would have kept AdWords
in the dark too. Plus, Google already offers an <a href="https://www.google.com/">encrypted search functionality</a> to surfers from 2010, so if users decide to stay hidden they can, but now Google takes that decision for them.<br />
<br />
Furthermore,
for the moment at least logged-in users represents only a smart part of
searchers, but marketers should monitor the percentage of them
(compared to the whole of incoming surfers on their website) for a
longer period of time. Additionally, there still remain Bing and Yahoo
searches to consider.<br />
<br />
Marketers can just hope
that Google will take into account our disappointment and turn this
thing around. Until then, we can just express our opinion wherever we
can - blog posts or comments. So I encourage you to comment on this
issue on my blog or on <a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/">Google's official blog.</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-23838312853408191052011-10-27T09:12:00.003+03:002013-10-25T22:51:45.176+03:003+1 main differences between Outbound and Inbound MarketingThe first main difference between the two is essentially<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #741b47;"> <b>the way</b></span> you get your brand known to the potential customers. While outbound marketing about buying (advertising), begging (PR) or bugging (sales) your way in to customers lives, inbound marketing involves earning your way in, by increasing visibility through information or content related to your activity and industry, which is considered to be valuable to your target audience, which includes your target market. Sometimes in B2B targeting your audience might be a hard nut to crack, or it might seem that way, but the only thing you have to consider is the personnel of the department you'll have to be dealing with from start to finish and the person that will make the decision.<br />
<br />
While <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #741b47;">word of mouth</span></b> was considered important before as well, marketers couldn't really "get a hold of it", not to mention analyse it's effects and results. Now with the technology that's out there today it is easier to monitor the word of mouth activity that unfolds on the net. Of course this is just a part of the whole WOM phenomena, but we do have to consider two aspects in this case:<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkVbhOsFrof7mi8jsm21slLXHYPue_Gh6IWU1hbRcvT8k4KJlbohfX3vVXZL-HCeJTz1YkCPImAb9MDWR6KbFuqb7jL6Xyel_YbirVXbZpUVSQInf2YA_p7lD3d0O60nPcYYuN1EnNCEE/s1600/in+or+out.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkVbhOsFrof7mi8jsm21slLXHYPue_Gh6IWU1hbRcvT8k4KJlbohfX3vVXZL-HCeJTz1YkCPImAb9MDWR6KbFuqb7jL6Xyel_YbirVXbZpUVSQInf2YA_p7lD3d0O60nPcYYuN1EnNCEE/s320/in+or+out.jpg" width="320" /></a>A. The time spent on the internet - an eResearch Corp study shows that 71% of the questioned population (the study had included 16+ year old's in the Romanian urban environment) uses the internet in an average of 3 hours daily.<br />
B. The interaction happening on the world wide web - another study (sorry I don't really know who conducted it) shows that 95% of the respondents are unsatisfied with the real time spent with friends and family and 58% prefer meetings with F&F on the internet, due to time-effectiveness.<br />
As you can see the results are in favour of WOM that goes on the net, and I believe that these figures will increase in due time.<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #646566; font-family: Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span>
Inbound marketing is much more data driven than outbound marketing and this is thanks to, again, the technology out there, so do not forget to <b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #741b47;">analyse, analyse, analyse</span></b>. Of course outbound marketing uses and tries to monitor the impression of a campaign, but with inbound marketing it's much more easier to gather the data you need to, let's say, categorise you marketing activity of a given period as successful or stillborn. But, it is not enough to collect the data, it is vital to understand it and to act according to it. When it comes to data you might like to check out Avinash Kaushik's blog, as it is one of the essential <a href="http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/">marketing analytics blog</a>s out there.<br />
<br />
<br />
As you might have guessed it's<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #741b47;"> <b>all about tech</b></span> - inbound marketing being more technology based and technology driven than outbound marketing, although the latter is changing as well due to technology developments. This is mainly due to the fact that the majority of inbound marketing actions are linked to the world wide web and presume that the target market uses "technology platforms" (if we can call it that) that are more spread like the PC or laptop and/or the latest entries in this domain like smartphones, tablets etc. Additionally, it uses blogs, social media, QR codes while the reach and impact of paper-based newspapers and magazines, of the telly and other traditional channels is decreasing. It is important to note that I am not saying that inbound marketing will replace outbound marketing any time soon or ever in fact, a successful marketing campaign will include both in different rates, according to the end audience.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-73409966228050469012011-10-15T19:09:00.000+03:002011-10-15T19:12:40.419+03:00Top 5 Free Internet Marketing Tools<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh522jA3gH8weYmq76ptdK6NRjpoT5WHu3iK1pWjEzhG-TuzRc3-rAiM-BBk-vgZn6Lna2kt4tAR9NrOILAmWYkzVmzrYhm9rtXfzUq5YIKdN3VEJXK8YU-MAKAO7HZlpMuHIpqsCmuCbc/s1600/Free.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh522jA3gH8weYmq76ptdK6NRjpoT5WHu3iK1pWjEzhG-TuzRc3-rAiM-BBk-vgZn6Lna2kt4tAR9NrOILAmWYkzVmzrYhm9rtXfzUq5YIKdN3VEJXK8YU-MAKAO7HZlpMuHIpqsCmuCbc/s1600/Free.jpg" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The internet represents a a great platform for today's marketers and it also offers a variety of marketing tools to make marketing activities easier. I am always searching for new tools that can help in listening, research, content creation or any other marketing process, so I thought that noting some of these might be useful for you. Oh, and did I mention that they're free? Some of you might know a couple of them or all of them, and if you know some additional ones please share :) And here they are:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. <a href="http://www.google.com/insights/search/">Google Insight</a> - apart form providing alternatives for a given keyword (it also provides "hot keywords" - which have registered a high increase of searches), you can compare two or even more keywords to see the interest for them in a given period, and for a specific area. Even thought <a href="http://www.google.com/trends">Google Trends</a> uses the same data, Google Insight offeres much more information for marketers, so be sure to use it!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 21px;">2. <a href="http://websitegrader.com/">Website Grader</a>, <a href="http://blog.grader.com/">Blog Grader</a>, <a href="http://tweet.grader.com/">Twitter Grader</a>, <a href="http://facebook.grader.com/">Facebook Grader</a> - each of these generates a report for your website, blog, and social media accounts in which a multitude of aspects are graded. Additionally, if you are new to internet marketing you can figure out what you are doing right, what aspects you should improve or what to elements to further consider.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. <a href="http://www.google.com/alerts">Google Alerts</a> - a great monitoring tool, through which you can be up to date regarding content that incorporate certain keywords that you are interested in.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. <a href="https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=1000000000&ideaRequestType=KEYWORD_IDEAS#search.none">Google Keyword</a> - is part of Google AdWords and it offers you alternatives of the keyword you choose to introduce in the box at the beginning, together with other scores as competitiveness and monthly searches for the respective keywords. Considering these aspects you can better target the keywords you want to be ranked for or when you have to create a payed search campaign.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5. <a href="http://www.socialmention.com/">Social Mention</a> - it can be interesting for you to try it out, it is like Google Alerts only just for social media channels, it provides information on many aspects including sentiment and passion (which I personally found interesting), sources, top keywords, top hashtags, top users etc.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bonus: <a href="http://www.google.com/reader" style="line-height: 21px;">Google Reader</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"> - now even if this is not exclusively related to marketing processes, I advise you to use this tool in order to always learn about the trends and news in the marketing field, especially considering that internet marketing is changing as we speak, new tools, methods and platforms appearing every day.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;">Again, these are just the main free ones that you definitely should use, many more being out there and many more being developed. If you know of others please do share :)</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px;"><br />
</span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-88094780287527361102011-10-10T08:42:00.001+03:002011-10-15T19:12:16.605+03:00Leaders' Checklist<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've read a very interesting article the other day, although it's not about marketing, it is mainly about communication and leadership. The author - John Izzo -, transfers the idea of pilots' checklist on to leaders and comes up with a couple of items that leaders should check off at least on a weekly basis.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi24fKV4Y6NAnRxesgnDtFaC8UIifzXvGohgG42k6N19CeQ9qDzoPBkSuht_jnQZ_LxkBbOwXiOsm_OOr6aU3AYVnPj19vRNzM5p2DA6t-jCCpFFCm95AfITbbsHZpt1pslf9I17bTLjXg/s1600/Leaders%2527+Checklist.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi24fKV4Y6NAnRxesgnDtFaC8UIifzXvGohgG42k6N19CeQ9qDzoPBkSuht_jnQZ_LxkBbOwXiOsm_OOr6aU3AYVnPj19vRNzM5p2DA6t-jCCpFFCm95AfITbbsHZpt1pslf9I17bTLjXg/s200/Leaders%2527+Checklist.gif" width="181" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Probably you agree that leadership has become a buzzword in today's society, with very few managers becoming truly leaders. Maybe the reason behind this fact is that leadership is such an abstract concept in my opinion, I mean the definition ("<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;">Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen</span>" -<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; line-height: 19px;"> Alan Keith</span>) and everything else about it in books and speeches is idealistic. But I believe that any manager who "abides" by the respective list can get closer to being seen as a leader, because it is very practical.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With that in mind I invite you to read the original <a href="http://www.drjohnizzo.com/airline-pilots-have-checklists-maybe-leaders-should-too/">article about leaders' checklist</a> and I challenge you to check yourself off every item on the list every week.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-35029614046838597342011-10-07T08:31:00.002+03:002011-10-07T08:35:08.977+03:005 basic rules in Email MarketingEmail marketing has become one of the essential marketing practices in today's world and as simple it might seem, creating an email marketing campaign takes time and dedication. Below you have 5 basic rules that I consider mandatory if you want to get results.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf14vtaQnIAuM0XJx8cvAwjgBU9llvn-LqAfS2xmafgtWfEoUeGVXW3p1jgEQnXAzSoBrOhVMWFnFWXPD2QyGlvQNp71VMYYKc5b-sDLf6TGfTAwo5nlVvgkBV1PU3nQoanlScEPjj4ik/s1600/you%2527ve+got+mail.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf14vtaQnIAuM0XJx8cvAwjgBU9llvn-LqAfS2xmafgtWfEoUeGVXW3p1jgEQnXAzSoBrOhVMWFnFWXPD2QyGlvQNp71VMYYKc5b-sDLf6TGfTAwo5nlVvgkBV1PU3nQoanlScEPjj4ik/s1600/you%2527ve+got+mail.gif" /></a><b>1. Send out content that is valuable for your receivers. </b>Do not just send out promotional content, of course that is part of it, but it is definitely not all about it. But to actually know what is valuable to your customers, you first have to <b>listen</b>, which is the essential first step in any inbound and internet marketing strategy.<br />
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<b>2. Plan, plan, plan. </b>Don't just jump in head forward, you could for example send out newsletters periodically, but you can also plan what kind of content you send and in which order for the newcomers to your database.<br />
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<b>3</b>. This one is important, and I certainly hope you were doing this without reading this post. <b>Triple check your content for grammar mistakes or misspells and use pictures and graphics that are linked to the text. </b>Nobody reads emails from companies and suppliers if they are plain text, use pictures to make the receiver want to read it and to make in memorable. Additionally, it is highly important for the text to be correct from a grammatical and spelling point of view. Because if the customer or potential customer honors you with his or her time to read your content and finds mistakes of any sorts it will give the impression that you did not take the time to proofread it, which means that the email you sent is not valuable enough for you to invest your time in it, so the why should your customer waste time reading it?<br />
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<b>4.</b> <b>Analyse. </b>Now there are many email marketing products that gather the data for you (e.g. Constant Contact) - opening rate, click through rate etc., but the data alone does not worth anything if you don't understand what it means and you don't make good use of it next time you send out content to your list. The part of listening comes in at this point as well. The CTR gives you a hint which content was valuable enough for your reader to actually click on it to read the whole of it. Of course, you cannot get the data if the whole content is in the email. The whole content should be hosted on your website/blog, the email should contain only a part of it, which has the role to "sell" your content - so be careful what and how you say it.<br />
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<b>5. Constantly update and grow your database. </b>You have to find multiple ways to get new contacts every week - your website (which is probably the most used one), the social media tools you use, networking at different events, sweepstakes etc. And the updating part is essential as well. Maybe some contacts do not want to receive your emails anymore, so be sure to put an unsubscribe link at the end of each and every email you send. Maybe they changed their email address since they signed up, so telemarketing can help you with this part, and any updating need you might have.<br />
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Be sure to abide by these 5 rules, because they might make or brake your email marketing initiatives. If you are interested in other aspects of this marketing tool, there is an <a href="http://www.emacademy.ro/">email marketing event</a> coming soon in Bucharest organised by the Email Marketing Academy, you might want to check it out :)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-63239582017904119692011-10-04T00:00:00.000+03:002011-10-04T00:00:23.845+03:00Dos and Don'ts @ConferencesConferences are a great way to do some networking, to gather new insight in a domain you're interested in and so on and so on. Recently I participated in one of the most acclaimed business conferences in Brașov (and maybe even Romania) - Business Days, and during those 2 days I felt extreme disappointment and excitement,both of which led to this post. Let's start with the don'ts.<br />
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A more than appropriate example in this category would be a real-estate company's owner, who was a speaker at the conference and in his available 10 minutes he chose to "play a game" with the audience. He told us to give his team members one 10 lei bill, from our own wallets, in one minute, without asking any questions and other limitations. After the bills were collected he gave 4 rules in sales, one being ask the price of your product/service with courage (with which I do agree), and another would be to not let the customer to ask questions (yes, this did take place in the 21st century). Afterwards, he gave each audience member a printed out "infinite" bill (which supposed to represent the infinite amount of wealth you can gain)...and then...that was it. Me and some of the people I'd talked to were outraged, even more the next day when they announced that the "infinite" bill can be exchanged at their stand, where you had the possibility to reserve a patch of land (if you payed another 50 lei, of course).<br />
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Another do not example would be when speakers advertise their product/service or make everything they speak to you about their product.<br />
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But do not despair! There were conference/seminar/workshop speakers who did provide value or at least new information to their listeners, who answered their questions in a direct, concrete and applicable way, not just reciting theory megalomaniacally.<br />
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So the take aways from this experience can be applied in marketing in general as well:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB4J9fSrIgGHFaUZt4FhdnCdHPE0ULnBabgDgZxfRQzVqU1VLf9plXiD8tvNe4FPux_sTaRrdigUR5khVQmuw4fBh_XscqtO3NnaZVC_op0pDttdGP-BxiS7GqGjmndjtot9K-yx24G0Q/s1600/presentationl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB4J9fSrIgGHFaUZt4FhdnCdHPE0ULnBabgDgZxfRQzVqU1VLf9plXiD8tvNe4FPux_sTaRrdigUR5khVQmuw4fBh_XscqtO3NnaZVC_op0pDttdGP-BxiS7GqGjmndjtot9K-yx24G0Q/s320/presentationl.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>1. ALWAYS provide VALUE, not only in your daily activities, but in situations, like conferences, where you indeed have the possibility to make your brand knowledgeable, but this part is done with the fact that beside your name there is the name of your firm written as well. The hard part is getting the audience interested enough to read what is next to your name, and that is easy only if you offer value.<br />
2. Do not be an upstart, nobody cares what you did or who you are, if you do not provide insight in your experience/expertise. If not they will forget about you the moment you walked out the room.<br />
3. Do absolutely not try to scam people, because they will remember you and keep away from you. You might fool them once, but you won't fool them twice, and which is worse, you won't even get to fool their acquaintances, not even once.<br />
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So I guess, you have three choices, to fall into one of the extremes (to be hailed or to be scorned ) or to be just not worthy to remember. Which do you chose?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1330594677729086766.post-79489538105654689252011-07-14T22:00:00.002+03:002011-07-14T22:50:09.439+03:00Kuponiada.ro and the sorts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnOq2sYfh6I1JzaeyYQroSG8lrxiouSH3-8KlMLo1dRMRLU3tDDTlVJLz88zqzzNKrYFB053rCfwRpBngaRbWo1Mz0_d0NpjaSaTHtmMec0mGvUKI4V9GhEEqwWpVBhFg8p3t8_q4bi9E/s1600/Sales.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnOq2sYfh6I1JzaeyYQroSG8lrxiouSH3-8KlMLo1dRMRLU3tDDTlVJLz88zqzzNKrYFB053rCfwRpBngaRbWo1Mz0_d0NpjaSaTHtmMec0mGvUKI4V9GhEEqwWpVBhFg8p3t8_q4bi9E/s320/Sales.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Not long ago deal sites had arrived to Romania as well. Hurray!!! Good for the Romanian customers, good for the sites and certainly good for businesses, right? Well, let's analyse this a wee bit, shall we?<br />
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</div><div>First of all, you cannot argue the benefits it brings to customers. They get something (service or product) they wanted to buy anyway, but at a cheaper price. Well, that's partly true for Romanians though, because we react to sales in a more extreme way than other nations do, especially compared to Western peoples. This being an effect due to the prolonged communism, an era of "have not" that found it's way under people's skin, even after two decades from it's fall.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Secondly, it's good for the deal sites, no comment on that :)</div><div><br />
</div><div>But <i>is it good for the companies that offer these reductions</i>? Well it depends on the <i><b>type of business</b></i> they're running, their <i><b>target market</b></i> and the <b><i>structure of the database</i></b> the deal site has (age, gender, revenue and other characteristics of the subscribers to their "newsletters"). But of course, few sites can provide you with a structure of their database. For example, it might be effective for a beauty salon or a cake shop, but if your target market isn't the general public then be prepared to get a lower lead conversion rate. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Of course, it can be considered a way of getting <b><i>visibility</i></b> to a group of people, from which a couple of persons might be in your target market, but the question is, is it worth the time invested in it? The answer: you have to<b><i> try it out</i></b> to know for sure. If the results aren't the ones you expected the first time, then you should turn to another marketing instrument and not look back.</div><div><br />
</div><div>In order to do this, first you have to know the product and the reduced price rate, then describe the product and the offer as appealing as possible, find a deal site (the easiest part), contact them and sign the contract, after they send you the preview of the offer confirm (or modify) and your offer is up and going. After it expires, you will get a document with the names and voucher codes and you just have to wait for the customers to contact you and from there you know what to do :)</div><div><br />
</div><div>I would make a few modifications to this whole process, though:</div><div>- when they send you the list with the customers they do not send a <b><i>contact information</i></b>, which is OK for general products and services, but some businesses it might be useful to have these. Thus, they can create that WOW effect and if the customer forgets to use the coupon the firm can remind him/her of this close it's expiration date, which is a win-win situation. Of course, there is personal data protection involved, but if a person purchases a voucher then (s)he obviously has the intention of contacting the firm in question. </div><div>- why not offer a <b><i>description of your database</i></b> to the firm, so the person responsible can take an informed decision in choosing the right site for it's offer? Even if you loose that contact from the start, you have to consider that you will loose him anyway, because it's highly probable that he will be unsatisfied with the results. Plus, if only you do this, the firm will choose you anyway.<br />
- I would introduce offers different from sales, cause price decreases are an entrepreneurs worst nightmare, a simple 10% reduction can have a great negative impact on profits (up to -50% if not more). For example, why not give <b><i>something valuable for free</i></b> with a particular purchase or why not give an<b><i> upgrade</i></b>?</div><div><br />
</div><div>To conclude, these sorts of sites can be good or bad for business, it's for you to decide when it comes to your company.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03528756882180341461noreply@blogger.com0