The first real step to anything is research, and lots of it. The most important step to any SEO campaign is keyword research.

The first step to consider is the niche you are in, and the products or services that you are promoting. You should come up with a list of potential keywords that your customers would use to find you on the web.

After that you could use the Google keyword search tool to analyze your list, checking the competitiveness, number of monthly searches and the strength of the competitors currently on page one.

A competitive market analysis is the next important step you should take. After you have your final keyword list, create a spreadsheet with all the keywords, and then list all the competitors from page one of Google.

You could use a program like SEO quake to collect some of the data that you will need, such as their page rank, number of indexed pages, inbound links, whether or not they have a site map and much more. This will tell you how difficult and how long of an SEO campaign you will be embarking on.

Next step should be the on page SEO factors of your website.

First and foremost is content, if you are not providing quality content that solves people’s problems then your efforts will be in vain. Great content will keep your visitors coming back on their own which will greatly assist your SEO efforts.

Make sure all the on page dynamics such as header tags, meta tags, alt tags for images and HTML code is done correctly.

These are the simple things that improve your ‘findability’. You also want to ensure that you have a proper site map created and submitted to the search engines, this will increase your chances of all your pages being properly indexed.

Number four is off page SEO strategies.

The biggest and most important overall here is back linking. Google views every back link your site has as a vote for your site from someone else. The best back links you can get are called one way links. One way links are where another website links to you without you having to link back. Good examples of this are article marketing, blog commenting and directory submissions.

Reciprocal linking is where you link out to website a and website a in turn links back to you. These are also good links but you should only focus on the ones targeted to your niche and those having a higher page rank than you. Good back linking takes time and effort, this cannot be accomplished over night.

You should also avoid any link scams, link farms or questionable linking strategies. If you have to stop and wonder if it’s ok to do it then it probably isn’t.

The last step that is very crucial to your SEO success is the overall promotion of your website. There are several ways of effectively promoting your products and services via the internet.

1) Video marketing
This can be promoted in conjunction with your website or separately for added exposure.

2) Email marketing
This allows you to keep track and communicate with your customers and potential customers.

3) Web 2.0
These are blogs, hub pages, wikis and such. Also a great source of quality back links for your site.

4) Article marketing
If done correctly this will establish you as an expert and help you to generate back links and additional traffic to your offers.

5) Local search marketing such as Yahoo local and Google places
If you have a business in the offline world you certainly want to use this method to promote your business. Google places for instance typically will come up first in the search results.

These are just a few of the strategies that you can use to begin a successful SEO and web promotion campaign. The most import step you will take is to take action. Everything you do should be with the intent of growing your business.

More money is wasted on advertising than any other business function. That is not to say businesses shouldn’t advertise but rather people should understand how advertising works. There are many ways to characterize ads, but for our purposes let’s make it simple and separate advertising into two distinct approaches: saturation and emotional.

One of the things I’ve learned over a long career is that business folk invariably take their lead from the wrong sources. Small and medium size businesses look to the mega corporations to learn their tricks and adopt their attitudes when they have little in common – advertising being no exception. Since our clients are mostly medium or small size companies we try to help put some of these issues into perspective.

If you’re big enough and have the money available, there are all kinds of marketing initiatives you can invest in, but if you have a limited marketing budget you need to be smart about how and on what you spend your advertising dollars. And the most effective and cost efficient place to spend those dollars is on your website. Yes you need to attract people to your site, but if once they arrive they find it lacks intriguing, engaging content, then you’ve wasted your money. So what tactical approach should you take to deliver your marketing message?

Saturation Advertising

The first approach is saturation advertising like you see on television. Anyone who has spent an evening sitting in front of the TV set is familiar with what I am talking about: the constant repetition of the same commercials over and over until the ads become an unwelcome irritation. The fact is no matter what you do to avoid commercials they eventually seep into your head. Even fast forwarding through commercials on a recorded program has an effect. Saturation advertising depends on repetition not quality, which is why some of the worst and/or stupidest commercials can still be effective.

There are some great commercials on television that do engage the audience with an entertaining, memorable, marketing message that enhances the brand and generates leads, but when push comes to shove, television advertising is all about repetition not quality.

Does Saturation Advertising Work?

Does saturation advertising work? The short answer is yes it does, at least for a television audience it does. Most people believe that it works on others but not on them, a phenomenon, psychologists call the Third Party Effect. The fact is, repeating something automatically makes it appear more believable.

The majority of people will respond that they don’t pay attention to commercials, but inattention does not protect you from the influence of repeated messaging. In fact bad commercials work better if the audience isn’t really paying attention, and fail when the audience is actually listening carefully. Careful attention brings to light all a message’s conceptual, technical and performance issues.

Will Saturation Advertising Work For You?

But saturation advertising is expensive because it relies on huge media buys in order to get the required number of repetitions needed to worm its way into an audience’s collective consciousness. It’s a messaging tactic that depends on deep pockets and that rules it out for most companies. Advertising that depends on constant repetition just won’t work on the Web unless it’s merely to supplement an existing extensive integrated television and print campaign.

Just as an aside, the music industry uses the same tactic. The constant repetition of a song, even of inferior quality but with minimum rhythmic value and a repetitive catchy chorus, can become a hit if heard often enough on the radio or on television in a music video. And like most saturation advertising it’s controlled by whoever has the most money available to purchase audience access. The same holds true for political advertising. Politicians can get away with the most incredible nonsense if they raised enough money to drown-out their opposition.

The Web is a different communication environment compared to television. Where television and the Web converge is with programming: your website is not an advertisement, or at least it shouldn’t be if you want it to be effective; your website is the equivalent of the program not the commercial, and that is why the key to success is the ability to turn advertising into content, and content into a memorable experience. You need to engage your audience with the same kind of techniques and messaging that is used in the programs you watch and not in the commercials you try to ignore.

If You Don’t Establish Your Brand, You Won’t Have a Meaningful, Memorable Message

If you can’t saturate the market with your brand then you have to find a better, more cost effective way to influence your audience. I use the word brand instead of product or service because that is where you have to start – you have to think ‘brand’ not product/service. What we’re talking about here is advertising intended to promote and grow your company within the context of a long term marketing strategy rather than a promotional ad intended to let your audience know about a particular sale or promotional event. Companies that stick exclusively to a promotional format are basically teaching their customers to only purchase goods and services when there’s a sale, and that’s a tough way to make monéy on a long-term basis.

We all know how popular the Google AdWords program is and we all know how expensive it can get in order to gain access to the keywords that trigger your ad placement. The Google system is basically relying on the same principle as television advertising: big audiences and lots of placements equals lots of leads.

The problem in addition to the continual expense is that even if you attract a large initial audience, that audience will not stick around long enough to get your brand story if that story is not at least as interesting and entertaining as the television programs they watch. And even if that audience manages to stick around a while, if your site isn’t interesting enough, they won’t ever come back and that reduces your chances of being remembered. Unlike television where the audience is captive to the commercials, a Web audience is not. Unlike television where the experience is generally a compromised gróup decision, Web viewing is not.

For most Web-based businesses their website is their best and potentially most effective advertising venue, but people only go to websites that interest them, and they will leave in an instant if a website doesn’t engage, inform, and entertain them.

Emotional Advertising

“People forget what you say, but they remember how you made them feel.” – Warren Beatty

Everybody likes to think of him or herself as a rational, intelligent human being, but in truth, we are all motivated by the same hardwired emotional triggers. Our brains are marvelous, malleable organs that absorb information without us even knowing it; they process information, massage it, and produce instinctive responses to external stimuli. Our survival and dominance as a species depends on this ability. Our brains are not cameras that just record input; they are interpretive instruments that produce gut-instinct. As a consequence, successful long-term marketing strategies depend on an emotional brand association with basic Maslowian needs.

No matter who you are or what you do your competitors will undercut your price, add new and better features, or come up with superior alternative solutions. The business world is littered with the corpses of once proud companies that owned their market until someone came along with something better, or cheaper, or just different. No one wants a Polaroid camera when digital cameras are all the rage. Once proud Kodak has been humbled and downsized considerably because they saw themselves as a film company and cameras as merely a way to sell more film rather than tools of human creativity. Products and services come and go, but brands are forever, and brands are defined by their emotional appeal.

How do you deliver a marketing message to a Web-audience that hates advertising? A few years back I proposed a solution based on short-form television-style programs: the “120 Second Solution,” two minute brand-story commercials formatted in a mini three act Web-video presentation. Today this concept is called Branded Entertainment: a two to seven minute commercial that combines content, advertising, and entertainment in a brand story format designed to attract and hold an audience’s attention while delivering a memorable core marketing message.

The concept has been a hard sell as it flies in the face of a lot of conventional wisdom about advertising formats, attention spans, and content credibility. Like most good ideas it seems that branded entertainment’s time has finally come. Various marketing blogs are all a twitter about Orbit Gum’s new campaign called “Dirty Shorts” featuring its first branded entertainment effort, a 5:17 minute branded video from Jason Bateman and Will Arnett. It seems these well-known actors have enough faith in this advertising format that they’ve formed DumbDumb, a branded video production company. Their first effort, “The Prom Date” was viewed 110,000 times in just three days.

Commitment To A Core Message

Of course not everybody has the deep pockets required to hire Jason Bateman, but with proper planning and implementation a branded entertainment video campaign is within reach of most successful small and medium sized companies.

The single biggest obstacle in implementing this kind of campaign is not the cost, but rather, the commitment to a style and format most business owners find hard to swallow: the need to focus on a single core reason why customers should purchase your product or service and to deliver that message in some bold or offbeat manner.

All too often entrepreneurs think of advertising in conventional terms like display, banner, and classified (e.g. Adwords). Even Web video has been pushed, prodded and crammed into pre-roll and post-roll television style spots. The Web isn’t television; it requires a whole new way of thinking when it comes to marketing presentations.

The Web is by nature an unconventional arena that demands bold content. You can say and do a lot of things on the Web, but the one thing that won’t be tolerated is boring your audience. Add to that the fact that we live in a product placement world where the line between advertising and content has been permanently erased and you have an advertising environment that demands something different.

You must stop thinking of your website as a digital brochure and start thinking of it as a total immersive multimedia advertising environment that connects to a target audience using standout, break-through communication techniques. The goal is quality engagements not shotgun traffic.

The Goal Is Quality Engagement NOT Traffic

For the average Web business it is important to remember that huge viral numbers don’t come from clever campaigns alone, but rather, are the result of great campaigns plus advertising support, extensive PR, and paid-blog placement. That is not to say that small and medium-sized companies shouldn’t pursue this approach but rather, the goal of these campaigns should be quality engagement not quantity traffic – a far more affordable and productive objective.

How To Deliver Break-Through Advertising

There are various ways to achieve what ad agencies call break-through advertising, but in every case those methods call for content that stands out from the crowd, be it humorous, offbeat, alarming or just plain entertaining, if it doesn’t standout it won’t make a connection, and your website presentation will be instantly forgotten.

The best and most complete example of branded entertainment that I have seen was the brilliant Shredded Wheat “The Palace of Light” campaign. It was very funny while delivering a powerful marketing message. Unfortunately the campaign is no longer running, but if you can find some of the videos on the Web, they are definitely worth seeing. They are great examples of how to turn advertising into content, and content into a memorable experience.

In a speech about break-through advertising, Chuck Porter, co-founder of Crispin Porter + Bogusky states the average person sees conservatively 1600 to 3000 marketing messages a day. That’s a lot of advertising. If your marketing communication doesn’t standout in some way, you are probably wasting your advertising budget.

Two Kinds of Advertising

In response to a question asking whether advertising was technology and data driven, or creatively driven, Porter explained that there are basically two types of advertising.

The tech-data driven ad is all about finding that person who needs what you sell at a time when he or she wants to purchase it and then delivering the message to them. This is the reason why so much of what you see, hear, and read in marketing journals and blogs is filled with statistics and analysis of who is doing what and where. All of which is perfectly fine if the only customer you want is the one that needs what you sell instantly or who is motivated by impulse.

This kind of advertising is all about immediacy; the customer needs or impulsively wants what you provide right now. The key is immediate access. If customers don’t have instant accéss, chances are the impulse to purchase will fade, or the prospect will find it more convenient to get the product elsewhere. In this type of advertising, timing and immediacy is paramount. The downside is no long-term relationship is established.

Digital products that can be downloaded instantly seem to be most appropriate for this approach, however that must be qualified by the level of cost and sophistication associated with the product or service: the higher the cost and the more complex or advanced the offering, the less impulsive the decision, and the more a client must be wooed. Advertising theory commonly suggests it takes seven engagements in order to win over a client.

The other kind of advertising is creative-based; it’s advertising built around brand awareness and identity. This is the kind of advertising that creates customers, and establishes long-term loyalty. This is the kind of advertising that can benefit from implementing a branded entertainment campaign.

Why Branded Entertainment Works

If branded entertainment is done right, it engages an audience, it informs and enlightens, it entertains and amuses, it’s meaningful and memorable and potentially viral. Branded entertainment is more than advertising, it’s marketing, and it is designed to influence attitudes, change perceptions, and prompt action.

Not to my surprise, I find mobile marketing has both a digital and traditional definition. The digital definition is as one would expect, marketing your business message through mobile devices.

In the traditional definition there are moving billboards that are associated with mobile marketing. We are going to be talking about mobile devices.

The mobile industry certainly has grown quickly the past three years. The iPhone coming to market was only the beginning. It didn’t take long for mobile applications to make these devices more useful to the consumer.

With the flood of mobile applications consumers were able to find many different uses for their mobile device. Games and entertainment were only the beginning. More useful applications like tools, utilities and resources also found their way to the mobile device.

As of December 2009 there were 285,610,580 mobile devices in the United States against a population of 308,505,000.

Basically 91% of the population has a mobile device. Feel free to look at the Wikipedia article for more statistics worldwide.

With 91% of the U.S. population having a mobile device, and these devices having considerable capabilities, it is undoubtedly the next significant source of information for consumers and businesses alike.

Using it as a phone is only the beginning. Email, Games, Entertainment, Texting, Instant Messaging, Browsing, Photos, Camera, Calculator, Calendar, Maps, Voice Recognition, News, Banking, Weather, Finance, Social Communities, and Radio are only a small fraction of what mobile devices are used for. Their capabilities will continue to grow as this mini-computer finds more use in our daily lives.

As an Internet and digital marketing agency we’re going to focus on how a business can use mobile marketing. We’ll focus on four specific areas and describe a starting point and a planned progression for the next few years. Each area has many details and this information is designed to be in summary.

Messaging Services

This is known as “texting” and includes SMS Texting (Short Message Service) as well as MMS (Multimedia Message Service).

For a business to tap into this marketing tool you have to begin by getting permission from prospects and customers to send them SMS or MMS messages. Begin by seeking out a service that provides SMS and/or MMS services. You will be assigned a text number that customers can send a subscription notice to. You can add this feature into your website, email marketing or display it in your business to promote how prospects and clients can get alerts from you by SMS or MMS. Because it will take time to build up subscribers you will want to start this sooner rather than later.

Mobile Websites

We have had discussions with clients in which they felt that as long as their website was showing on a mobile browser then they had a mobile website. Not the case. A website that was developed specifically for a standard computer or laptop monitor does not mean you have a mobile version of your website.

On a mobile version of a business website a user will not need to zoom in or out or pan left or right when viewing your website. The website will be a “lite” version of your primary website with specific call to actions that are useful to the users visiting your mobile website.

A good example is Delta Airlines. Go to their website on a standard computer. Then go to their website using a mobile device’s browser. You will see two very different websites. As a business you will want to budget and build a mobile version of your website as one of your very next steps.

Mobile Applications

At some point every business will have a mobile application and it’s even possible that mobile applications will diminish the need for domain names.

Mobile applications can be useful as a tool for your customers or you may decide to have an application for branding purposes, such as a simple game. There are certainly many possibilities for mobile applications and you will need to consult with a marketing firm to decide how to best utilize mobile applications.

Mobile application development budgets vary dependent upon creative content, interface functionality, database use and Internet streaming.

Mobile Advertising

Text advertising like Google AdWords and banner advertising is available directly for mobile devices. The difference is how they’re delivered.

For example banner ads will appear in free mobile applications and when the application is used at the bottom. You can push your mobile banner ads through mobile advertising networks like AdMob (acquired by Google) and Quattro (acquired by Apple). Development of your mobile ads requires a different approach since there is limited physical dimensions of your message.

By utilizing all four mobile marketing components for your marketing plan over the next couple of years you will be able to tap into a new marketing channel that happens to be well suited for local business marketing.

Waiting for two years to pass and then deciding to plan and adopt this technology is probably the wrong answer. You need to incorporate this process now and build it into your business marketing process otherwise you will be left behind.

Internet users are increasingly frustrated with flashing, shaking pop-ups and advertisers are showing equal concern over these forms of display tarnishing the image of display advertising.

Advertisers want to get the most out of their online advertising budget, therefore this article will communicate the methods through which a good display ad can be achieved and a bad display ad can be avoided.

The most commonly used ad formats being banners, skyscrapers and pop-ins are viewed positively. When working with the small spaces reserved for display ads, design elements are crucial as they can add or detract from an advertisement.

In these limited spaces, advertisers need to be able to communicate the benefits of a product to the target audience, a call to action or service information. Bold colours and differentiating between an image in the foreground and the background can help to clearly inform the viewer if executed wisely.

Another example of a good display ad is one with a prominent or repeated logo to reinforce brand messaging. Additionally, display ads need to hold a viewer’s attention and therefore distracting elements such as flashing, shaking and fast animations that communicate confusion rather than increasing interest need to be avoided.

A web audience can be quick to turn away from ad formats that they find intrusive or disruptive, like those mentioned prior, and can view the entire content of a page negatively if these elements are presented.

Advertisements that do not take full advantage of the space they have bought and instead have cut off, skewed or slanted images are generally received negatively. Some advertisers argue that having a model facing the viewer increases attention.

The appropriate placement of a display ad on a website however, can increase consumer’s ability to read or view an advertisement. Interactivity can also add to an advertisement and increase consumer’s attention if used well e.g. rich media content.

It is widely known that homepages generally receive the most traffic, however utilising the techniques of contextual advertising by placing an ad on another website where the subject matter is relevant, can provide a more targeted audience.

This also includes relevance of the landing page, i.e. the page that is uploaded when a user clicks on an advertisement. The advertisement needs to take the user to the most appropriate page of the website that will help the user to receive what the advertisement guarantees, e.g. the page with the specific product rather than the homepage.

To get a positive return on investment it is imperative that prices are negotiated upon to make the ad spend go further. Different publishers use different pricing strategies however these can be negotiated.

Furthermore, if appropriate measures are not taken in tracking the performance of an advertisement, the value will be unknown and important adjustments of the advertisement may be missed.

Therefore, appropriate performance tracking measures, such as those on Google Analytics, need to be in place so as to measure the effectiveness of a campaign.

When appropriate design and execution are employed, as well as correct placement of an ad, this generally will spark increased consumer interest. These coupled with pricing and performance factors in the development of display advertising will result in more relevant and appealing advertising.

It is hoped that more of this appealing online advertising will enter the industry so as to create well targeted, relevant ads that achieve objectives.

Author: Mel Chye

Twitter has finally unveiled its business model in the form of “Promoted Tweets”. The company refers to this as a “non-traditional” and “easy” strategy that “makes a ton of sense for Twitter.” Promoted Tweets are described as ordinary tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users.

Promoted tweets are clearly labeled as “promoted” when they are paid for by advertisers. However, in many cases, they will simply begin as regular tweets that are organically sent to the timelines of those who follow the account. When a tweet is promoted, it will still have the functionality of any other tweet, such as replying, retweeting, etc. This sounds similar to status promotion tests we’ve seen from Facebook.

To start out, Promoted tweets are appearing in Twitter search results. Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone says the company wants to make sure they’re useful to users so they’ll attempt to measure whether they “resonate” with users. Indications of resonation include engagement activities like replying, retweeting, and favoriting. If a promoted tweet doesn’t resonate, they’ll stop showing it.

Stone calls the launch the “first phase” of the Promoted Tweets platform, indicating that there will be improvements made as time goes on (and more partners added). So far, Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America are using Promoted Tweets.

“Before we roll out more phases, we want to get a better understanding of the resonance of Promoted Tweets, user experience and advertiser value,” says Stone. “Once this is done, we plan to allow Promoted Tweets to be shown by Twitter clients and other ecosystem partners and to expand beyond Twitter search, including displaying relevant Promoted Tweets in your timelines in a way that is useful to you.”

“Since all Promoted Tweets are organic Tweets, there is not a single “ad” in our Promoted Tweets platform that isn’t already an organic part of Twitter,” says Stone. “This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising. Promoted Tweets will also be timely. Like any other Tweet, the connection between you and a Promoted Tweet in real-time provides a powerful means of delivering information relevant to you at the moment.”

“There is one big difference between a Promoted Tweet and a regular Tweet, he adds. “Promoted Tweets must meet a higher bar–they must resonate with users.” This sounds kind of like Digg’s ad strategy.

If Twitter’s own promoted tweets don’t strike a chord with you, there are other options for advertising on Twitter. Sponsored tweets, for example, has been around for quite a while. Earlier this week, TweetUp was launched as an AdWords-like concept for Twitter. These are just a couple examples.

Of course Twitter also offers businesses plenty of ways to reach and interact with their audiences just by using Twitter in general. Here are a few tips:

1. Get in front of journalists. More of them are using Twitter and Facebook according to a recent study.

2. Use things like Twitter share buttons on content to promote sharing of content (once it’s been tweeted, it may get retweeted repeatedly).

3. Remember that brands on Facebook and Twitter are favored by consumers.

4. You can learn some things about audience engagement from Justin Bieber. Seriously.

5. Get found in real-time search (here are some tips for that).

More details about Promoted Tweets are expected to be shared by the company this week at an AdAge conference, and at Twitter’s own developer conference, Chirp.

Not so long ago, the relationship that brands had with their customers was a one-way street. The brand was the boss. They told their customers what to like and how to like it. The only say the customer had was the decision to buy. This is no longer the case. Customers are very publicly talking back and it is making the management teams of some brands very nervous. Web-based social networking platforms give customers power not seen before. Now one voice can be heard by thousands of people. Brands need to learn to deal with this evolution, so here is a primer.

First, some background on how the internet has altered consumer behaviour. The internet, and particularly the rise of social media, has allowed people with similar interests to connect. This becomes obvious when one trawls through Twitter, where the common social network model of simply connecting with people you know tends to give way to people connecting in groups according to interest. Indeed, people interested in any topic imaginable from all areas of the world are connecting. It’s like subject-based forums on steroids. People are forming tribes.

Humans have always formed tribes. Religion, family, sports and fashion are all examples of tribal behaviour. The difference now is that any interest group can form a tribe almost instantly. Social media has allowed any fringe idea to become the basis of a tribe and a movement. People want desperately to be connected, but, even more importantly, they want to be led. We are in a time of massive change, which is driven by everybody’s desire to do things in a new way and to be heard.

Barack Obama’s recent landslide victory is a good example of this. He promised change, he communicated differently and led with integrity. He connected to his audience through social media. He started a movement, formed a tribe and then he and his followers charged to victory. What the world discovered is that you can now make an ad campaign as slick as you want, but if the product is poor then it simply doesn’t matter.

So “advertising is dead” in the sense the old methods don’t work the same way they used to. Obama’s opponents didn’t fully understand the impact that social networking has had on society. They continued to use the old and trusted methods of marketing. These transparent methods are diminishing in influence as social networking begins to infiltrate every media touch-point. In two recent articles I wrote for Anthill I talked about how this is already happening to television and how the newspaper industry needs to change to avoid becoming irrelevant.

Social media is much more than a passing phase. Human civilisation is built around social interaction. It’s what the people want and this new media is only going to get bigger. It will eventually become part of everything. Individual social media companies might fade away (MySpace seems to be in that category) as better designed products come onto the market, but the world has spoken and it wants to be connected. Brands that don’t adapt to this reality will be left behind. They will become the guy at the party that no one wants to sit next to because he just keeps talking about himself.

Tribal Behaviour

Blogs have become socially and commercially influential. From what started out as individuals chatting on about their lives, blogs have become business tools and revenue producing ventures. They influence groups, buying patterns and fashion. They are modern tribal leaders.

Not so long ago commentators speculated that blogging was simply a passing fad. What these commentators didn’t realise was that it was yet to achieve maturation and once it had it would signal big trouble for the large media organisations. Now anyone with a camera or a desire to write is ‘the press’. This pattern is being repeated for micro-blogging, a category in which Twitter is the current market leader. Some commentators question the relevance of utilising Twitter to listen to people “drone on about their lives”. But Twitter, and other micro-blogs, are in the early stages of their development. They too will mature, most probably much quicker than the original blogs, and enable much bigger tribes to develop around even more specific subject matter.

The tribal leaders of these new social media can be reached and persuaded to support you, no matter what platform they decide to use. Unlike the old ‘one way’ approach however, they need to be interacted with on their own terms. Provided they have a group of true fans, they can influence hundreds of thousands of people – in a matter of hours. This is what gives them such power.

And this is what marketers in the current environment have to understand. The ‘mass-market’ model is on the decline. What is needed now is a pattern of marketing to the ‘early adopters’ – the ones at the front of the bell curve who have a true interest in what you have to provide – and form a base of evangelists that will market for you. You no longer have to aim to connect with everybody. This really leaves the field wide open for the smaller brands to break through – the ones willing to challenge.

The Age of the Challenger

In marketing speak, a ‘challenger brand’ is code for ‘the small brand’. A challenger brand is one that is meant to be fast, flexible and innovative in its communications. But in my view the word ‘challenger’ should instead be short-hand for ‘emerging leader’.

Emerging leaders challenge the status quo, they challenge themselves and they connect with others who have similar ideas – those people who need a leader to show what to do and inspire them. The market leader wants the status quo to remain just that. They want to speak and be heard in a mass market. No discussion thanks. The challenger realises that, in order to create a movement there needs to be systems in place for everybody in that tribe to be heard, and they commit to leading that tribe with everything they’ve got.

Traditional advertising is not about interaction with the individual. It is predominately a one-way conversation to a mass audience. But no one likes to be forced into making decisions. This is why the traditional advertising model is beginning to fail. It relies on mass media, and this media is itself being transformed by social networks.

What can Social Networking do for Your Brand?

All of this may sound a bit scary for brand managers. It’s true that it does take time and effort to build a community. And to be truly effective, you have to obey some rules. Even so, it is not a hard thing to do. It takes far more time and resources to build that fan base with traditional advertising. Be honest, be helpful and contribute to the community and you’ll get supporters fast.

Social networking is far more than having a Facebook profile. It is any platform that gives the end user an ability to contribute. Many companies have realised that developing an internal social media platform can aid in communication but have yet to work out how it can help shape their brand personality

There are many ways to market your business through Facebook. Some are obvious, and others not so much. One thing you can pretty much count on is that there are incredible masses of people on the social network that you can potentially reach, and in ways that will allow them not only to engage with your brand in a comfortable setting, but with other Facebook ecosystems they are already engaging with.

A perfect example of this was recently demonstrated by Microsoft in one of the company’s many marketing strategies for its “decision engine” Bing. I sat in on a Bing panel this week at SXSW, where some of Bing’s marketers talked about a variety of ways they have used social media to gain users. One of these ways was through none other than Farmville (if you’re a Facebook user, and don’t live under a rock, you’ve at least heard of it)
More people use Farmville than Twitter, according to Bing, and People are sharing all kinds of activities within Farmville itself. That’s why the company saw a great opportunity to experiment. What they did was offer a special offer inside of Farmville, that would give users free “farm cash” if they became a fan of Bing on Facebook, which would encourage continued user interaction with Bing. As a result:

- Over 72% of users who clicked on the engagement became fans
- 59,000 people published the story to their news feed
- Over 70,000 clicks were received on secondary feeds
- In 24hours, Bing had over 400,000 new fans to keep

Microsoft said its goals for engagement and social media efforts have been to:

- Add or create relevant value (stuff that’s not even necessarily a Microsoft property)
- Add depth to Bing’s personality
- Lead someone to a relevant engagement with Bing or each other.

- Yield passionate or emotional response from people

- Be intimate and/or scalable (can we be both)?
Bing’s Farmville experiment achieved all of these. However, the point of this is not that you should go out and immediately start a campaign through Farmville (although maybe it’s worth looking into if you think it’s a fit). The point is that there are more ways to harness a massive social network user-base (Facebook recently surpassed Google as the most-visited site in the U.S. for the week), according to Experian Hitwise). That’s a pretty impressive feat. Also consider that consumers favor brands who are on Facebook and Twitter, according to a recent study.

Really, it’s not even about Facebook or Twitter. It’s about getting out there wherever people are, and this is where they happen to be at the moment. That may change by this time next year, or the year after, but the principle will not. We’re at a point in history where it’s never been so easy for consumers and brands to engage with one another. Perhaps even better for brands, is that it has never been easier to reach customers in places they choose to entertain themselves, and I don’t mean just get in their faces, but actually reach them and get that engagement from them.

Unlike cold calls and direct mail, which are frequently viewed as intrusive or unwelcome, email marketing messages give recipients the freedom to read and review correspondence on their own time when it’s most convenient.

Less distracted by the day’s deadlines and tasks, recipients are better able to retain the information they’re given.

But, unlike calls and direct mail, there are a myriad of unpredictable obstacles your email message must travel through before the customer even has the chance to decide if they want to open it.

It must make it from the sender, through the Internet Service Provider (ISP), spam filters and ultimately to the inbox.

If your message gets through, it then must face the reader’s own screening process, during which the user typically scans decides whether or not to open a message in just a manner of seconds.

Studies show that nearly 95 percent of marketing emails are successfully delivered to their intended recipient. Of those, approximately 20 to 30 percent are opened.

Several factors influence open rate and escort email messages through various filters and obstacles along their path.

The first area marketers should concentrate on is the manner in which messages are viewed by automated ISP blocks along the delivery path. Senders can easily maximize delivery by eliminating spam phrases such as money-back guarantees, expressions of urgency or lines like “click here!”, “Why pay more?”, “Free!” or “Buy now!”

Email marketers should also avoid the use of caps lock and excessive exclamation points.

The subject line is arguably the most important part of your email, as it determines whether or not a message is opened. In your recipient’s inbox competing with hundreds of emails, you have approximately three seconds to grab a reader’s attention and entice that person to open your message.

Strong subject lines are short, approximately 35 to 45 characters, and they convey relevance, urgency and value.

Examples of good subject lines include:

* Ace Corporation Announces User Webinar on January 16, 2010
* Acme Services July 2010 Newsletter
* Exclusive Holiday Offers From Retail Giant
* How To Survive Tax Season With A&J Accounting

Clearly identifying your company, ideally in both the “from” address and the subject line (when possible), helps recipients recognize that your message is from a trusted source and someone they want to hear from. When your customers recognize the sender and expect the message, open rate is greatly enhanced.

When writing email message content, you’ll also want to engage customers with useful information they’ll enjoy receiving.

For example, customers respond well to geographic targeting. So marketers can capture interest by simply mentioning the recipient’s local region or providing directions to a local branch, office or shop.

To ensure relevance, a sports shop, for example, might want to promote snow boarding equipment to Vermont residents and golf equipment to their customer base in Florida.
Marketers should also consider seasonal or current topics of interest. If New Years’ is right around the corner, a women’s clothier could showcase formal attire.

Use humor to connect with readers, varying messages to ensure readers never feel inundated with repetitive content.

List segmentation and email triggers also provide a cost-effective means for delivering highly relevant and timely information to subscribers.

Finally, send messages on a regular and predictable schedule. Ideally this means a customized schedule the customer selects, but at least monthly delivery is an acceptable rule-of-thumb for many industries. Email marketing campaigns sent too frequently can overwhelm busy customers and waste company time, money and resources. This can also increase spam complaints and opt-out requests.

On the flip side, infrequent campaign delivery tends to confuse readers, as some forget who you are and assume that you don’t care enough to stay in contact with them more often. This sentiment, in turn, boosts spam reports, and companies tackle more and more hard bounces due to obsolete email accounts.

Launch, test and repeat to garner strong response and results. Companies that are able to pinpoint the ideal timing, content, send schedule and relevant message can maximize their open rates and build their corporate brand and ROI.

Video: Do-It-Yourself Search Engine Optimization Part 1

So you want to develop a Web video campaign to put on your website and add to YouTube and all the other Web video directories. Maybe you even want to create a new video micro site to promote that hot new product or service you’re about to launch. You want it done right, professional, slick, and you want it to be effective. Well of course you do.

You know you need to hire a firm that has the creative staff capable of not just shooting video but professionals who can write, direct, edit, and add all the post production elements you need, including signature music, sound design and on screen text. But are there other things you need to be aware of in order to maximize the return on your investment? You bet there are.

There are lots of production companies that just want to crank out the work at the lowest cost without providing any marketing guidance as to what works and what doesn’t. Perhaps these firms don’t know the difference or perhaps they just don’t care. The company you hire should be willing to provide some advice as to the best way to present your message so that it delivers the best return on your investment. Too many Web videos are technically proficient but lack any marketing impact. The last thing you want is a bland, boring, lifeless presentation that goes in one ear and out the other.

When you’re ready to add video to your marketing and sales tool kit make sure you avoid the following seven deadly video development sins.

Doing It Wrong – 7 Web Video Mistakes To Avoid

1. The need to get it all in.MM
everybody wants his or her money’s worth. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that as a general principle, but getting your money’s worth means more than hiring the cheapest bidder or cramming every possible product, service, benefit and feature into a single video.

You’re better off creating a series of shorter videos each about two to three minutes in length, and each focusing on a particular aspect or sales point. Ten minutes is generally the maximum you can hold someone’s attention, but it will be more effective if you break that ten-minute presentation into a series of shorter segments. By creating a presentation that flows from one focused video to the next, you lead your audience logically through a voyage of discovery that is far more interesting and memorable than a single over-stuffed information-onslaught that overwhelms the audience. Each video becomes an chance to re-enforce your marketing image and embed your brand personality by consistent use of color, style, format, and message.

2. The desire to appeal to everybody.
Whatever you sell, not everybody is going to purchase it. No matter how good your offering is there are people that you aren’t ever going to convince. We believe a properly implemented video presentation is the most effective method of delivering a marketing message, but no matter what the evidence, there are some people who just won’t buy into the idea. If you try to appeal to everybody you will end-up appealing to no one and you will waste a lot of time, money and effort in the process. Trying to appeal to everybody merely dilutes your message.

By concentrating on the most appropriate market segments allows you to fine-tune your message. And if you create a series of videos each highlighting a different aspect of your offering as described earlier, people will be able to pick and choose what they are interested in and what they want to watch. In this way your audience won’t get bored or frustrated by listening to things they may already know, or are just not interested in hearing.

3. The fear of commitment.
Marketing is all about creating an identifiable, unique identity, a personality that people will recognize and remember: a brand. It’s what will set you apart from your rivals and give you a competitive edge; if done right, it’s the one thing your competitors can try to copy but won’t ever be able to duplicate.

Success requires a commitment to your brand image and to the marketing strategy from which it flows. Strategy is the big idea that guides everything related to your business, and it should not be confused with tactics. Tactics are the ways you implement strategy. If you confuse strategy and tactics, you will find yourself running in circles not accomplishing anything.

If you commit to and successfully target one market segment, you not only establish and enhance your brand image but you also create a ‘drag effect.’ For example, the success of Apple’s iTunes and iPods dragged their computer sales along with it. Once people became Apple customers for one product they were more likely to purchase another; and even though iPod advertising was originally aimed at a youth-oriented market, it’s success dragged both younger and older consumers along for the sales ride.

4. The need to accommodate everybody’s agenda.
As companies grow they hire new people, and wherever there are groups of people there are opposing opinions, and opinions can very easily turn into agendas. Your sales people want lower prices, your accountant wants higher prices, and your advertising people want something new; everybody has an agenda and they all conflict with each other. The result is compromise. And compromise kills brand personality and corporate identity.

Even big companies with deep pockets and access to any and every expert in the world are susceptible to agenda creep. Take the fast food giant McDonald’s for example. Their television advertising is all over the place. They use different themes, different approaches, and even different music in almost every commercial, each aimed at a different market with a different product offering. The only thing that seems to be consistent is the logo and signature jingle that is slapped on to the end of each spot. As individual commercials they my stand up, obviously they have high production qualities but as a marketing message strategy they become mere advertising noise rather than building on each other to form a coherent approach and brand message. What they seem to want to say is that McDonald’s is for everybody no matter what age or food preference, and that kind of approach only leads to a muddled message. McDonald’s may get away with it in the short term because they are McDonald’s and have a long history of effective advertising. Whether McDonald’s simultaneous multiple campaign approach is the result of a desire to accommodate different agendas, or just designed to appeal to everybody doesn’t matter, the result is the same – muddled messaging.

5. The lack of vision.
And speaking of corporate identity, do you have one? Do you have a vision, a point-of-view, an attitude; a perspective on how you can best serve your clients. The idea of a corporate vision is something that is easy to ignore, after all, how much is a corporate vision worth? It’s not like you can go on eBay or Amazon and download one for a few bucks.

I recall seeing a documentary on a very successful clothing manufacturer. The founder of the company was reviewing the company’s latest line of running shoes. He looked at the shoes, looked at the product manager, and said, “Where’s the logo?” to which the product manager answered, “We can add it anywhere.” The company CEO in no uncertain terms told the executive that that wasn’t good enough. The logo represented the company and the company represented a particular lifestyle. The shoe being presented was just another shoe and that was not acceptable. The shoe needed to fit the ideal for which the company stood. The CEO had a vision and everything the company did had to conform to that vision. Developing and presenting a unified corporate vision is how you create a brand and how you build a business.