 |
 |
 |
| Top
News |
Yahoo
Search Marketing Blog Launches
As promised by Steve Mitgang promised earlier this week, the Yahoo Search Marketing
Blog has launched. With a focus on Yahoo's new search advertising platform, it
will, among other things, "include contributions from our executives and
managers working on all the new products and features, from geo-targeting and
analytics to customer service."
Four
Keys To Brand Monitoring
Forrester Research reiterated the importance of being aware of what people say
about your brand online, and noted the four key parts to successfully evaluating
potential brand monitoring solutions.
How
Consumer Online Research Impacts Sales
A June 2006 joint study conducted by Yahoo and the Consumer Electronics Association
asserts that seventy-seven percent of all consumer electronics purchases were
influenced by online research.
Google
Named 3rd Most Valuable Tech Company
Google's moving up in the world, and it just passed IBM. The search engine giant
now holds the title of "world's third most valuable technology company,"
and is only about $2.5 billion behind Cisco. Microsoft is still the far-and-away
leader of the pack...
|
 |
|
Thursday, October 26, 2006 |
How often have you left the house or picked up a phone in search of a salesperson?
Is it less often than you seek out friends, colleagues, or relatives? How often
do those networks lead to a salesperson via recommendation? More often than your
own initiative? If so, you'll understand what the Web is becoming.
Editor's Note: The integration of social networking, blogs, and
search will be paramount to survival in the ecommerce future.Bloggers drive more
and more qualified traffic than major news sites. That's because of the relationship.
Find a way to harness those relationships and you're sitting pretty. How do you
plan on doing so? Let us know at WebProWorld.
A brief introduction to the theory: The relationship between social networks,
search engines, and blogs mirrors what we already know about the word of mouth
function in the real world, except it is much more efficient in cyberspace.
The way people bounce from home to work to lunch with friends to dinner with family and on to the mall is a behavior replicated online. Jointly, an entire system of relationships is a system of influence that directly impacts consumer behavior.
The power the online social network yields, then, is staggering. Expect the next generation of Internet users to embrace social networks the way the present one has embraced search.
Combined, the two magnify their ecommerce power exponentially. Beyond the current hype surrounding the prices Google and News Corp. are willing to pay for these networks should be recognition of that power, as well as careful attention paid to who owns them.
Search is already a market cornered and MySpace is the early leader for that prize in social networking. But watch out for Second Life, World of Warcraft, EverQuest and other more interactive otherworlds as they evolve. The addictive quality of these sites is compelling enough, but when the numbers start coming in as to their impact on peripheral sales, people will begin to take notice.
Let's use mothers as a case study. Did you know that mothers represent a $1.7 trillion market? Moms account for 55 percent of consumer electronic spending; 51 percent of food spending; 49 percent of health and beauty spending; 48 percent of home furnishings spending; and 47 percent of apparel spending.
That's a powerful grouping. And 95 percent of them are online at least once day - 85 percent of them clicking on an advertisement - 86 percent of them buying something. And only 20 percent of them say that advertisers really know how to connect with them.
Recent research shows that moms don't really care what celebrities are selling, though celebrity endorsement has been a staple of advertising since the beginning. Part of this, you could say is due to a concept called "demystification," which applies to political leaders too.
Consumers know celebrities are paid handsomely to recommend a product and have learned not to trust them. They ultimately turn back to those they trust before buying anything. Sixty-seven percent said they'd rather get information from a peer rather than a celebrity.
This phenomenon is mirrored online. Blogebrity Robert Scoble
expressed a desire on his blog that some algorithmic genius develop a measure
of engagement, or likeability, to better represent the impact of bloggers. He
speaks from personal experience to illustrate the power of the online relationship:
I've compared notes with several bloggers and journalists and when the Register links to us we get almost no traffic. But they claim to have millions of readers. So, if millions of people are hanging out there but no one is willing to click a link, that means their audience has low engagement. The Register is among the lowest that I can see.
Compare that to Digg. How many people hang out there every day? Maybe a million, but probably less. Yet if you get linked to from Digg you'll see 30,000 to 60,000 people show up. And these people don't just read. They get involved. I can tell when Digg links to me cause the comments for that post go up too.
A friend of the Scobleizer concurred. Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of Active Words, received 32 whole visits from USA Today, but 400 upon the recommendation of Scoble. People trust Scoble more, most likely because of the relationship he has with his readers.
So how are moms, bloggers, social networks, search, and ecommerce all interwoven? There is an emerging pattern that shows online journeys begin with social networks or search, move on to visiting blogger friends, who direct them to good places to spend money. Bloggers blog, tell their blogger friends about it, all of whom have friends or visitors that like to email instead of blog.
In the UK, the market share of blog traffic is driven evenly by social networks
and search, according to Hitwise.
Over 25 percent of blog visits in the UK originated from social networks or chat
rooms. Search engines sent 22 percent of that traffic. But what was more interesting
is where British consumers were going after blogs.
Continue
Reading
About
the Author:
Jason Lee Miller is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
|
The
Rules Of PR 2.0
 By
Sally Falkow
Expert Author | WebProNews
PR Professionals need to be trained so they avoid the pitfalls of online PR...
Over the past two years the internet has been changing from a depository of static information to a vibrant, live conversation. Now referred to as Web 2.0, the live web is a very different place. Instead of using online photo albums we now have Flickr and YouTube. Instead of the Encyclopedia Britannica online, we have Wikipedia. And as Fortune Magazine said, we have blogs - for better or worse.
Web 2.0 has given the average person the power of voice. The barriers to online publishing are gone. Anyone can set up a blog in mere minutes and have their say online. In text, images and video. They can podcast and videocast. They can syndicate their thoughts and ideas in an RSS feed, making their comments visible to the entire world. And unlike print, it won't disappear in a few weeks or months. It's there for the duration.
What does this mean for public relations? No longer are we crafting one way messages that we can control. We are not doing media relations anymore - it has indeed become public relations. There is a public conversation going on and as a PR practitioner you need to learn how to be a part of this conversation.
What works in traditional PR does not always work in PR 2.0. Of course the basic
rules of communication are still the same, but the online world has its own set
of rules.
About
the Author:
Sally is the author of Website Content Strategy blog: Information about the shifts in media consumption and the use of
technology in marketing and PR so business can stay in touch with
their rapidly moving audiences.
|
|
Make Your Customers Feel Good
Having security and comfort in the site you are looking to buy from goes a long
way in securing your purchase, does it not? How can we apply this rationale to
our ecommerce sites? How can you make your potential customers feel good about
themselves and the purchase they are debating on? What techniques do you use or
endorse to accomplish this goal? Take a look at what's being said in our feature
post and let us know
how you feel.
Subscribe
to the WebProWorld Feed 
|| Chris||
 |
|
Discover how to produce more sales from every marketing dollar you invest.
Register today!
|
The
"Feel Good" Factor
The “Feel Good” Factor We don’t talk about it here very often. But, Tubby brought
it to mind in another forum and we decided to break it out here. We see “The Feel
Good Factor” all around us, especially in audio-visual presentations such as TV
Commercials.
If a “purveyor” of any product can make us feel good about ourselves…that’s a
great topping (gold) accompanied with well presented material (Content). Somehow
the ever-smiling faces (that rarely have any association with the company or it’s
employees) on that ever-blue Site leave me (us maybe) high and dry there.
How do we go past the overuse of “smiley headers”, and get there with our own
and our client’s sites? One way is of course present content at your targeted
audience's expected voice. Another suggestion was humor. Are we too staunch or
clinical with our approach. When and where does humor fit in?
|
|
|
|
View
Profile
,
Inc. 2549 Richmond Rd. Lexington KY, 40509
