It’s Time To Fix the Banner Ad Problem
They’re ubiquitous, obtrusive, and sometimes excruciatingly annoying, but banner ads have been the primary advertising vehicle of the web for more than a decade. Most are seen and ignored by the viewer. Some are as irritating as a carnival game hawker, trying as hard as they might to get your click-through. We’ve all learned, either from confirmed suspicions or experience, to avoid them at all cost, and as a result, they’re not the most effective vehicle for getting your message out. Read more
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8 Essential Steps To Writing Great Articles
You might love to write or perhaps you write because it’s a part of your job. Conversational writing has exploded in importance since the advent of blogs and the love that search engines show toward original content. Not everyone is a natural storyteller, but anyone can learn to write great articles. Follow these 8 steps and you will be well on your way to writing articles that people enjoy reading and learning from.
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Who Is the Top Social Media Expert?
Today I tried an interesting experiment. I googled “social media expert”. I wanted to see who would take Google’s #1 spot.
It wasn’t Chris Brogan, whom I would have guessed. Today’s top dog is Giovanni Gallucci. I had never heard of Giovanni, and unless you’re from Texas, it’s probable that you never have heard of him either. Read more
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Tags: Brian Solis > Chris Brogan > Facebook > Flickr > Giovanni Gallucci > google > Peter Shankman > seo > social media > twitter
ShoutNow is Group Voice Messaging for the Rest of Us
It’s an idea so simple that you’ll wonder why it isn’t already used by everyone from your mom to your best friend. Go to a website, create a contact list, record a voice message, send it to all of your contacts in the list. You pay by the minute and the number of calls, but the service is not at all costly. Sending a one minute message to ten people costs less than a dollar. Sending a message to 150 people costs less than $10. Longer messages cost a little more, but not much. Read more
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The Incredible Shrinking Internet
There are now 183 million domain names registered around the world, a 17% increase over last year, but it is very likely that the web you experience is getting smaller and the reason is simple. The pace of internet growth has far out-scaled human proportions. It’s so big that without the familiarity of a consistent place, the internet would be overwhelming. Our natural response is to cull from the internet and make our individual experiences familiar and manageable. We find the places that we like, the sources that we trust, the communities that we feel affinity with, and we stick to those. This explains the fundamental reason for the success of Facebook and other social media sites. Read more
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Use Long Tail Marketing to Increase Visibility
Anyone who builds a new website today quickly realizes that it’s nearly impossible to get noticed without making some substantial efforts. You can market your website using traditional marketing promotions, but these only work while the program is running. Using the web to grow your long tail visibility will increase your exposure long after the campaign has ended. Long tail marketing requires time and effort, but the lasting benefits provide great value to your web presence. Read more
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Brand Search Optimization: Part 2
When I focus on search engine marketing, I generally concern myself with 3 major search engines: Google, Yahoo, and MSN, because I like to start by following the 80/20 rule and give my attention on the top 80% of the search traffic. Acording to J.P. Morgan research, Google is the most popular search engine with 59% of all search traffic. Yahoo comes in second at 20%, and MSN is in third place at 7.7%. These numbers are important because they tell where people go to search, but they’re also important for a formula I created to rank search engine competition on a given term. This formula can be described as follows: Read more
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Optimize your Brand site for Product Category, not your name
It’s easy to optimize brands for their name. Type Berkley Fishing into any search engine and you’ll see www.berkley-fishing.com at the top of your search results. Optimizing for a product category can be much more challenging, as you have to compete not only with other sites that mention your product, but sites who talk about the category in general as well as every other brand with a similar product. Read more
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How to Build Great Campaigns
As I continue reading David Ogilvy’s “Confessions of an Advertising Man”, I find well-constructed ideas that everyone involved in advertising should consider and several are especially suited to those engaged in social media. Here I have taken his 11 points on what makes a campaign great, and added my own abbreviated explanation of what Ogilvy means. Read more
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Confessions of an Advertising Man
In 1963, David Ogilvy published “Confessions of an Advertising Man. In his own voice and speaking from his uniquely experienced perspective, Ogilvy talks about how to manage an advertising agency, how to make great advertising, and how to manage great client relationships.
Given that agencies have propelled a half century forward from his “Mad Men” era, one would expect that much has changed, and it has. But there is ageless insight into the nature of business relationships that any reader can gain from Ogilvy’s tome. Take, for example, these 10 questions he suggests anyone ask before firing their current agency. Read more
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