Social Media Blog by Michael Brito
Insights into the social web & real
time community engagement
time community engagement
I started this blog in September 2006 and receive roughly 1,000 unique visitors, 2,100 page views and two new clients. Not bad for a blog that I only post entries in about once a week. The fact is that blogging is essential in today’s society. Businesses of all sizes are learning that having a presence on the internet is simply not enough. Importantly, having a site that is truly customer friendly, optimized for the search engines, and one that is regularly updated is not only essential to a website performing well, but it can also contribute to the overall success of your business. One area of website management that some businesses are overlooking is blogging. Let’s take a look at this relatively new medium phenomena and just how a well crafted and managed blog can go far in supporting your company’s marketing strategy.
Mention the word “blog” to some folks and [...]
I recently stumbled upon a cool social bookmarking tool. Rather than having a bulk load of buttons (similar to mine – see below), you can simply add this one button and save a ton a real estate on your web pages or blog. According to their website, “AddThis helps you promote your content (web pages, feeds, products, podcasts, etc) online by making it easier for your visitors to collect it, save it, and distribute it to social services (think “social SEO”, or SMO – Social Media Optimization).
Technorati Tags: social media, social media optimization, social media marketing, socialmediaoptimizaion, social bookmarking, add this, addthis
Google’s quest for taking over the Internet is continuing. They have released a public beta of its Website Optimizer, a new service that allows marketers to test various versions of landing pages to determine which one has the most effective conversion rate. The Website Optimizer allows marketers to test different variables on a landing page (i.e. different headlines, product features, copy, and creative to determine which configuration has the best conversion rates based on revenue or other metrics. According to ClickZ, Google is providing the beta service “on an acceptance basis” to AdWords and Google Analytics account holders who’d like to sign up.
Technorati Tags: website optimizer, google, conversion rates
I just spent all week at the DMA conference in San Francisco and I must say that Social Media was one of the hot topics of the conference. The two keynote speakers, Paula Sneed of Kraft Foods and John Battelle both placed extreme emphasis on Web 2.0 and Social Media; and how it will play an important role in the overall marketing mix. I am looking forward to seeing which big brands will start paying more attention to this growing channel. We’ll see…..
Technorati Tags: social media, social media optimization, social media marketing, socialmedia optimizaion, dma conference, dma, john battelle
Awareness and consideration are fundamental metrics used to measure the effectiveness of paid search. One of the most common ways to measure these two metrics is to simply monitor the impressions and clicks. Impressions are usually associated with awareness and clicks are associated with consideration. But using this methodology can be deceiving. Assuming that when a particular search campaign generates 100 million impressions, that 100 million eyeballs actually see the ad is misleading. There are, however, tools that can help measure the level of engagement with consumers when they click on the ad and arrive at your website; which I believe tell a much more compelling story of your search campaigns. One tool is called SEM Director. This tool allows marketers to assign values to particular actions on the website. For example, one page view can equal 1 point; signing up for a newsletter can be 2 points, watching a [...]
I realize that some have opted to call Social Media Optimization something different like Social Media Marketing and vice versa. Given that this is somewhat of a new concept, I understand the friendly debate. Based on a recent post from Rohit Bhargava, he states that SMO is simply “tweaking” a web site by “adding quick links for tagging, syndicating content through rss or submitting content to relevant sites”. Based on this definition, which I completely agree with, I believe that Social Media Optimization is a more appropriate definition.
However, I would also say that Social Media Marketing is somewhat of a different practice within the same space; where firms aggressively target the social media channels (like Myspace, Friendster, Hi5) by creating profiles (Nike, Cingular, Jack in the Box, Aquafina); and engaging in conversations with consumers in places where they frequent.
Technorati Tags: social media optimization, smo, socialmediaoptimization, social media, social media marketing
Many times, I read in various blogs and forum posts that a solid SEO strategy (with good rankings) is good enough to attract visitors to a website. I completely disagree with this view. While SEO is an important component of any integrated marketing campaign, paid search must not be overlooked when implementing an online strategy. According to Clickz, the paid search market generated approximately $10 billion in revenue in 2005 and is expected to grow 41 percent in 2006. How can any organization, marketer or blogger ignore these astronomical figures? Additionally, according to a study by WebSideStory that monitored twenty B2C e-commerce websites, paid search had a median order conversion rate of 3.4 percent, while organic search results produced a conversion rate of 3.13 percent. The data set included more than 57 million search engine visits.
Technorati Tags: paid search, search engine marketing, seo, search engine optimization, organic search
