A recent news item caught my eye – Facebook now has over 500 million members, a figure that makes it the most populated community in both the real and virtual worlds. It is this immense popularity of the web that has made marketers tap its potential as a valuable tool in selling their products and services, and if you’re not on this bandwagon, you’re losing out big time. The secret of success in online marketing is that it’s not enough to just enjoy a good start; unless you’re able to sustain your momentum, you’re likely to bite the dust. And to keep picking up speed and continue to sustain your online marketing efforts, here’s what you need to do:

• Change with the times: There’s no doubt that the web is taking on new avatars faster than we can keep up. There was a time when most communication took place through email. Today however, most people have moved to social media – it was the blogs that took over at first, and now they’ve had to make way for social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Marketers who still enjoy success are those
  who made the switch to social media when they realized its potential – the viral marketing effect alone is every marketer’s dream. So unless you change with the times, you’re going to be left behind.
• Don’t forget your existing customers: Some people are still dependent on their email for most communication, so it’s not uncommon to find people who stay away from social media because of the lack of privacy. So if you have customers who are not socially active on the net and prefer to limit themselves to email, it is your responsibility to keep them updated on your offers and other relevant information. Always remember that it’s not wise to ignore your existing customers in the pursuit of new ones.
• Remember the situation: An online customer support staff member of a company I don’t wish to name here saw the short end of my fuse on a call one day – I was trying to secure a refund of my money which had erroneously been paid into someone else’s insurance renewal account, and in the middle of briefing me about the refund policy, the guy tries to sell me a new policy. I did not know whether to be astounded at the audacity of the chap or to suffer his foolishness at not knowing the first thing about customer mentality. Never try to sell to an aggravated customer before addressing the bee in their bonnet if you want to enjoy continued success in the online marketing world.
• Listen to feedback: And finally, listen to what your customers and potential customers are saying, both explicitly and implicitly. If you don’t bother to ask for and analyze customer feedback, there’s no way you’re going to meet their needs. And when this happens, they have no qualms about switching to the competition. So keep your eyes and ears open, and if you see a need that is voiced by most of your customers, you must try and see if you can do it. Unless you listen to the voice of your customers (who are the reason you are still in business), you’re bound to fail.

By-line:
This guest post is contributed by Bailey Digger, she writes on the topic of web design degree programs . She welcomes your comments at her email id: baileydigger189(@)gmail(.)com.

For an average individual to be offended by facebook is rare, but for someone like my wife (I love you), who spends more time on Facebook than with me, it’s easily possible. In fact, she spends more time on Facebook than most people spend  working at their day job (probably because they’re on facebook too!).

What Did Facebook Do To Piss Her Off?

Having only been married for less than a year, my wife was simply doing what any newlywed would do…try to see what it’ll be like to have a kid with her new last name (Russak). She picks the name “Layla Zehava Russak” (…solid choice if I may say so). As protocol, she decides to see if there was anyone on Facebook with the name already.

She enters in the search and find her result: Uncle-Semit.com’s Shitler’s List Vol. 18…

Facebook Anti-Semitic Search Result

I didn’t believe it myself, but there it was…a Bing! generated result that couldn’t have been any more irrelevant and offensive.

Freedom of Speech Applies To The Internet…

Now I’m facing a huge dilemma. My wife is pissed off at Facebook for offending her, while I’m trying to figure out how this happened and if it can be stopped from happening again. And the answer is simply “No!”.  The right to freedom of speech is recognized as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and recognized in international human rights law in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). International, national and regional standards recognise that freedom of speech, as one form of freedom of expression, applies to any medium, including the Internet.

Unfortunately, it seems as if search engines are not allowed to censor information in the US as it’s integral to upholding the idea of “Free-Speech”. As a result, Facebook using Bing! search results means anything goes.

…But It Still Pissed Off My Wife!

Whether or not it’s legal…doesn’t make a difference to my wife. It still pissed her off. And as I stated in my last article, “Facebook, thanks to you my wife is unhappy…and if my wife is unhappy, then I’m unhappy.” Yet another week on the couch. I should write an article “How Facebook Ruined My Sex Life” (…though they do have a Facebook group here)

In this case, Facebook may claim “Freedom of Speech”, but here’s the issue. Bing! is only a last result for when a Search Result can’t be located. Facebook needs to get smarter about the results Bing! pulls up. Otherwise, one day a child is going to try and find a name that doesn’t exist and  get XXX related search results instead.

Thanks a lot Facebook.

So here I am on YouTube…trying to watch an Awesome Drum Solo by Dave Weckl…and this Ad pops up out of nowhere. Now it would have been okay if it was for a pair of drum-sticks, maybe a Dave Weckl CD. BUT NO! Instead, I get an Ad for “Plenty of Singles Over 40″. And as the mother-cherry on top of it all…THERE’S A SPELLING ERROR!! I quote: “Met Older More Sincere Singles“. Either they’re speaking in past-tense or someone over at MatureSingles is about to get fired.

Take Revenge On Bad Ads: CLICK AWAY!!

So now what? You see a bad ad, you post about it on your blog…what’s next? I’ve seen countless blogs continue talking about bad advertising, but none take a stand. I’m sorry, but I can’t let them get away with this. I CALL ON YOU…THE PEOPLE….TO GO TO THAT YOUTUBE VIDEO AND CLICK THAT AD!!! That’s right…CLICK IT! Here’s the link: Dave Weckl Drum Solo w/ Bad Advertising. They can’t get mad at me…I’m promoting their ad They should be thanking me.

For those of you who are confused, let me explain how this works: Those ad’s you see on YouTube are being paid for by the advertiser. Every time you click that ad, they have to pay Google. Well, if they pay Google for clicks, yet nobody is signing up for their site, the logical decision will be to take down that ad and try somewhere else.

If the ad’s not there…then we’ve done our job and they’ve either run out of money or finally realized: “Placing that ad there was a poor decision!”

Conclusion: If You See A Bad Ad…

If you ever see a poorly placed ad…click it! Make them “pay” for it, literally. Just to show you how serious I am, I just set up a HootSuite account so I can get this blog-post in front of as many eyes as I can. I can’t stand bad advertising and hopefully some of you out there will agree with me.

Top 10 Down & Dirty Ways To Grow Your Web App:

Kevin Rose decided to bear all at the Future of Web Apps conference. Digg’s success is not due to expensive marketing techniques…everything was FREE. They used word-of-mouth and social methods to spread the word. If you want some of these methods, watch the video or simply read the summary below it:

Taking your Site from One to One Million Users by Kevin Rose from Carsonified on Vimeo.

As summarized by HighScalability.com, below you will find some of the secrets behind digg.com and wefollow.com explosive user growth. He covers ten unique strategies that turn passive users into passionate advocates.

1. Ego. Ask does this feature increase the users self-worth or stroke the ego? What emotional and visible awards will a user receive for contributing to your site? Are they gaining reputation, badges, show case what they’ve done in the community? Sites that have done it well:

Twitter.com followers. Followers turns every single celebrity as spokesperson for your service. Celebrities continually pimp your service in the hopes of getting more followers. It’s an amazing self-reinforcing traffic generator. Why do followers work? Twitter communication is one way. It’s simple. Followers don’t have to be approved and there aren’t complicated permission schemes about who can see what. It means something for people to increase their follower account. It becomes a contest to see who can have more. So even spam followers are valuable to users as it helps them win the game.

Digg.com leader boards. Leader Boards show the score for a user activity. In digg it was based on the number of articles submitted. Encourage people to have a competition and do work inside the digg ecosystem. Everyone wants to see their name in lights.

Digg.com highlight users. Users who submitted stories where rewarded by having their name in a larger font and a friending icon put beside their story submission. Users liked this.

2. Simplicity. Simplicity is the key. A lot of people overbuild features. Don’t over build features. Release something and see what users are going to do. Pick 2-3 on your site and do them extremely well. Focus on those 2-3 things. Always ask if there’s anything you take out from a feature. Make it lighter and cleaner and easy to understand and use.

3. Build and Release. Stop thinking you understand your users. You think users will love this or that and you’ll probably be wrong. So don’t spend 6 months building features users may not love or will only use 20% of. Learn from what users actually do on your site. Avoid analysis paralysis, especially as you get larger. Decide, build, release, get feedback, iterate.

4. Hack the Press. There are techniques you can use that will get you more publicity.

Invite only system. Get press by creating an invite only system. Have a limited number of invites and seed them with bloggers.  Get the buzz going. Give each user a limited number of invites (4 or 5). It gets bloggers talking about your service. The main stream press calls and you say you are not ready. This amps the hype cycle. Make new features login-only, accessible only if you log in but make them visible and marked beta on the site. This increases the number of registered users.

Talk to junior bloggers. On Tech Crunch, for example, find the most junior blogger and pitch them. It’s more likely you’ll get covered.

Attend parties for events you can’t afford. You can go to the after parties for events you can’t afford. Figure out who you want to talk to. Follow their twitter accounts and see where they are going.

Have a demo in-hand. People won’t understand your great vision without a demo. Bring an iPhone or laptop to show case the demo. Keep the demo short, 30-60 seconds. Say: Hey, I just need 30 seconds of your time, it’s really cool, and here’s why I think you’ll like it. Slant it towards what they do or why they cover.

5. Connect with your community.

Start a podcast. A big driver in the early days of Digg. Influencers will listen and they are the heart of your ecosystem.

Throw a launch party and yearly and quarterly events. Personally invite influencers and their friends. Just have a party at a bar. Throw them around conferences as people are already there.

Engage and interact with your community.

Don’t visually punish users. Often users don’t understand bad behaviour yet as they think they are just playing they game your system sets up. Walk through the positive behaviours you want to reinforce on the site.

6. Advisors. Have a strong group of advisors. Think about which technical, marketing and other problems you’ll have and seek out people to help you. Give them stock compensation. A strong advisory team helps with VCs.

7. Leverage your user base to spread the world.

FarmVille. tells users when other players have helped them and asks the player to repay the favor. This gets players back into the system by using a social obligation hack. They also require having a certain number of friends before you expand your farm. They give away rare prizes.

Wefollow. Tweets hashtags when people follow someone else. This further publicizes the system. They also ask when a new user hits the system if they wanted to be added to the directory, telling the user that X hundred thousand of your closest friends have already added themselves. This is the number one way they get new users.

8. Provide value for third party sites. Wallstreet Journal, for example, puts FriendFeed, Twitter, etc links on every page because they think it adds value to their site. Is there some way you can provide value like that?

9. Analyze your traffic. Install Google analytics, See where people are entering form. Where they are going. Where they are exiting from and how you can improve those pages.

10. The entire picture. Step back and look at the entire picture. Look at users who are creating quality content. Quality content drives more traffic to your site. Traffic going out of your site encourages other sites to add buttons to your site which encourages more users and more traffic into your site. It’s a circle of life. Look at how your whole eco system is doing.

I hate to say it, but the new Microsoft search engine “Bing” is absolutely stellar at aggregating and previewing XXX for the end-user. End-Result? A boom in the XXX industry! Article in Gizmodo.com, “Bing is so good at finding XXX and displaying it that Microsoft will serve all the adult-oriented content from an specific domain.”

“Bada-BING“…

Unlike Google, when you scroll over videos in bing, they play quick previews. No need to go directly to the site anymore. Seriously, Bing! supports XXX so much…that they even added a filter specifically for XXX. Just take a look at the image below. Turn “Safe Search” settings to “Off”…and that’s it.

Bada-Bing Bada-Boom! At this point, you will witness, in all it’s glory, Bing.com – The Ultimate XXX Decision Engine!!

Bing+XXX > Google

I hate to say it, but XXX basically leads the internet as some of the top visited sites are 18+. My prediction? This will put Bing way ahead of Google. Seriously! I’m not kidding. I’m not comfortable with knowing this, but feel compelled to share it with the world. In a year from now…I’ll reflect on this moment and see if I was right or not. I was right about Michael Jackson slowing down the internet…so maybe I’ll be right about this.

MJ Goes Viral: Top 10 List

Effecting almost every area of the net, here’s a detailed lists of how MJ’s Death has literally slowed down the internet…(*sources include BBC News, ABC News, and MTV)

1. GOOGLE: It’s true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page,” said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker. 
2. GOOGLE: According to ABC News, Of the top 100 Google searches Thursday, more than 50 were related to Michael Jackson, the company said, adding that as people searched for lyrics to favorite songs, “Thriller,” “Man in the Mirror,” and “Billie Jean” were three most popular.
3. TWITTER: According to initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts Thursday afternoon containing “Michael Jackson” totaled more than 100,000 per hour. That put news of Jackson’s death at least on par with the Iran protests, as Twitter posts about Iran topped 100,000 per hour on June 16 and eventually climbed to 220,000 per hour.
4. NEWS-SITES: Keynote Systems reported that its monitoring showed performance problems for the web sites of AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo.
5. BLOG SITES: Popular websites TMZ, Perez Hilton and other related blog sites reportedly blacked out continuosly
6. YOUTUBE: In Jackson’s honor, YouTube spotlighted Jackson’s memorable videos on its homepage and linked to the artist’s YouTube channel. The channel has garnered more than 9 million views. The “Thriller” video alone has attracted two million and counting.
7. iTUNES:In Apple’s iTunes store, Michael Jackson’s music quickly shot into the top 10 charts within a matter of hours.
8. NEWS WEBSITES: Full-blown memorial sites, such as MemoriesofMichael.com and Michael Jackson Memorial, have already been launched and invite fans to post videos, news and messages commemorating his life.
9. FACEBOOK: Less than an hour after Jackson’s death had been confirmed, more than 500 groups remembering Michael Jackson appeared on Facebook, some with more than 50,000 members. The fan page R.I.P. Michael Jackson (We Miss You) had attracted more than 220,000 fans by midday Friday.
10. WIKIPEDIA: Contributors  arewarring over official confirmation of Jackson’s condition and engaging in back-and-forth edits of the star’s entry eventually forced administrators to lock down all information related to Jackson until there was agreement among mainstream media outlets.

So yea…i’d say he took the internet by STORM On a final note, here’s Thriller with 61,348,893 views and still climbing:

I recently started web design/online marketing agency First Time Online, LLC. Our 1st motto is It’s Time to Get Online. Assuming that you’ve arrived at that same conclusion refer to our 2nd motto, It Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive In Order To Be Effective. Once you’ve made the decision to create a website, there are essential tasks that will define the overall success of your site. The best part is most of those things can be done for free!

The only reason this article exists is because of another article I wrote for HP back in January (Using WordPress To Grow Your Business). Interestingly enough, I received great visitor feedback which ultimately led me to start First Time Online, LLC. Based on popular demand, I was approached to write another article for their newsletter (which has a distribution of about 80,000+). You can also check it out on the HP Logoworks Small Business site,“Free Website Essentials 101?.

GETTING STARTED

Before you build a site, you need to register a domain name (i.e. www.MyBusiness.com) which also means the use of a personalized e-mail address. I would suggest using GoDaddy.com. It’s a tough economy which means “Coupons” and “Promo Codes” are 100% necessary. It’s easy to find coupon codes that will save you money. I found a pretty good list on FatWallet.com. Half the codes go inactive very quickly, but the forum is constantly being updated. Once you have a website name, you need to consider hosting your site securely. GoDaddy provides those services, but if you want to get a better deal I would suggest the use Blue Host, as they are affordable and you get a free domain name when you sign up with them. The key here is saving money and nothing is better than free.

SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY FORMAT

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the amount and quality of traffic to your site from organic searches within search engines. There’s no cost to get listed naturally in Google, Yahoo and MSN…your job is to try and rank correctly for any given search. For example, if you sell Shoes online, then when someone searches for Shoes in Google, your website would hopefully pop-up. In order for search engines to do this, they use crawlers to find pages to feed out as search results. If those crawlers have a hard time reading your websites code, then your chances of getting listed are decreased. There are free tools out there to help you optimize your website and I would highly suggest the use of Google Webmaster as a starter. I can’t stress this enough so I’ll repeat it one more time: Without good SEO, you’ll have to pay for people to find you. Your chance of selling a product to someone who is looking for you is higher than someone who is not.

UNDERSTAND YOUR TRAFFIC

Without a question, analytics is the double-edged sword of Online Marketing. The information you can collect about your visitors is extremely valuable, but the amount of information can be overwhelming. Set a benchmark for yourself and use analytics software to help define whether or not you’re reaching pre-assigned goals. Google Analytics has an internal feature to help track visitors and goal reaching. By understanding such things as, source of traffic and content-overview, you’ll be able to help your site evolve into a stronger source of business…and again, this software free.

BE CONTACT FRIENDLY

A business without a website is like an individual without a cell phone, they’re impossible to reach. If you’re a business with a website, then you should be very easy to reach. Unfortunately, that’s not always the cases. In order to increase visibility, a company should register for local listings on the major search engines. For Google, go to www.google.com/local/add and for Yahoo!, check out http://listings.local.yahoo.com/. When an individual searches for your company, your contact information will come up in the search, making it easier for them to reach you.

On another related topic, a few of my clients have expressed the fear of “e-mail spam” and have refused to lend out their contact information. There’s a very easy way around this: A “Contact-Us” page with a contact form and spam protection methods including a visual based key code that must be entered in order to send. Ask your web developer to put something like this together for you, or refer to free contact form services such as FreeContactForm.com. (Notice how it’s FREE!)

REMEMBER: EFFECTIVE ISN’T EPENSIVE

It doesn’t have to expensive in order to be effective. Your main objective is to stay focused on your goals, which by now, you should have an idea of what they are. If you’re trying to sell a product, then your goal is to direct traffic as far down the purchase process as possible. If you’re selling a service, then your goal is to get visitors to contact you. Want examples of what I mean? Take a look at Craigslist. The site serves over twenty billion page views per month, putting it in 28th place overall among web sites world-wide, and analysts value the site to be worth over $150 million. The best part is…their interface is simplistic and commonly referred to as “ugly”, BUT it’s effective.

SIMPLE METHODS TO INCREASE TRAFFIC

If you’re looking to bump up your traffic, then consider adopting some of the following trends: Company Newsletters, Blogging, Social Networking, Videos on your website and finding sponsors to host local events. Your goal is to create buzz, drive traffic and create loyal customers.

If you manage to do all of this, there’s no doubt that success will follow. Somehow “free” just smells, looks and tastes better!

According to the facebook blog, users will finally have the chance to create usernames for their profiles:

“From the beginning of Facebook, people have used their real names to share and connect with the people they know. This authenticity helps to create a trusted environment because you know the identity of the people and things on Facebook. The one place, though, where your identity wasn’t reflected was in the Web address for your profile or the Facebook Pages you administer. The URL was just a randomly assigned number like “id=592952074.” That soon will change.

We’re planning to offer Facebook usernames to make it easier for people to find and connect with you. When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your profile or Pages on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser. This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you. We expect to offer even more ways to use your Facebook username in the future.”

How will this change everything?

This really follows the whole idea of making the internet a more “Search Friendly” (ie: SEO Friendly) environment to help users find their way through all the crap being added daily. My question is WHY THE HELL HAS IT TAKEN THEM THIS LONG? LinkedIn and Twitter have been doing this for ages. In fact, most social networks adhere to the “user-name”.  Now, browsing for the correct user URL will be that much easier:

Room For Concern…

I am a bit concerned about the ‘you get 1 chance’ rule. They warn users to “think carefully about the username you choose. Once it’s been selected, you won’t be able to change or transfer it.” Now that’s just not fair! Why not step up their game and find a way to make it so you can choose multiple user names. Like “Keyword” for SEO, this will help expand the searchability of each individual.

Either way, this is a great move for Facebook and will definitely help them out in terms of increasing traffic and overall ease of use. Good job! As usual, I look forward to seeing a “We Hate Facebook Usernames” facebook group…though in this case, I’m not sure that will happen (though I wouldn’t be surprised).

Introduction to SEO/PPC, Banner Ads, E-Mail, Social Media (Web2.0) & Analytics

New to the online space? Not sure where to start marketing your business, or even how? Well that’s okay…because you’re not alone. This article is geared towards small business new to online space, bringing them up to speed on what’s out there and how they can take full advantage everything .

Unlike traditional marketing, the internet broadens the reach between businesses and consumers. Lower costs, mass distribution and instant responses are but a few benefits to taking your campaigns online. The beauty of the internet is that it provides many unique ways of capturing your audience by tying together both the creative and technical aspects of design and development. Below you will find a basic introduction to the many forms Online Marketing and what you should take advantage of. If you’re business is not online, you should look into testing some of the practices introduced below. For those of you familiar with the online space, consider this a refresher.

SETTINGS GOALS

Online marketing takes goal setting very seriously. Without a goal, how can you measure success? There’s so much information you can collect about your website users: Hits, Clicks, Views, Purchases, etc…but which of those are most important to you must be defined before you begin a campaign. For example, let’s assume you’re trying to sell shoes. If your site generates 1,000 hits a day, and you didn’t sell a shoe, then you weren’t successful. Now, let’s assume your website is an online newspaper and your goal is to get readers. In that case, a 1,000 hits a day is a great thing. Everything is relative. Set your goals early on so as to not get distracted.

SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING (SEM)

As the internet became more popular in the 90’s, search engines were created to help individuals locate information more efficiently on the internet. Considering the amount of new information published daily, search engines were relied more heavily upon in order to help direct traffic. Using “spiders” and “crawlers” sent into cyberspace, search engines were/are able to categorize websites and rank them. If you go to a search engine and type in “CAMERA”, what comes up is probably the most “relevant” result to that word. Unfortunately there are millions of sites competing to get to the top of that list. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes into play.  In what could be an entire article in itself, SEO is the process of improving the amount and quality of traffic to your site from organic searches within search engines. There’s no cost to get listed naturally in Google, Yahoo and MSN and your goal should be to rank high for any relevant searches. There are free tools out there to help you optimize your website and I would highly suggest using Google Webmaster as a starter.

Search Engine Optimization allows you to drive customers to your website simply by showing up in their searches.  However, there is another route you can take to drive traffic to your website, but you’ll have to pay for it.  Pay-Per-Click advertising was instituded by search engines to drive revenue on their sites. Businesses and individuals could sponsor links at the top of search results in order to increase the chance of someone clicking their link, and they would pay for every click. Yahoo! Search Marketing and Google AdWords are two popular examples of this type of marketing. This became the primary business model and source of income for search engines.

BANNER ADS

Another more traditional form of marketing is banner ads. Similar to driving down the freeway and passing oversized billboards, these ads are very visual and in-your-face. Located either at the top or on the sides of websites (aka: Skyscraper Ads), these ads follow both Pay-Per-Click and the more traditional Pay-Per-View models. With the advances in online technologies, these ads have been increasing the way audiences interact with them. For those of you who have seen the “click the monkey to win a FREE I-POD”, you know exactly what I mean. Not every banner ad is interactive, but there are many variations and the options are nearly endless.

E-MAIL MARKETING

If you are considering direct-marketing or have experience using snail-mail in some form, E-mail marketing is the electronic approach. Companies can benefit from e-mail marketing in many different ways:

• Low Cost- 1,000 e-mails costs a lot cheaper than 1,000 envelopes+stamps+paper
• Fast- Will arrive in their inbox within 30 seconds, depending on the service
• Mass Distribution- Global Reach
• ROI Tracking- You can track successful delivery’s, who opened the e-mails and what links they clicked
• “It’s Eco-Friendly- No trees will be harmed in spreading your message (as with this post!)” – Sam Shron, Acxiom Digital.

Considering most internet users check or send e-mails every single day, this is a highly effective form of reaching mass audience effectively. BEWARE!! This form of marketing is also highly controversial and must be done the right way or not at all. Please refer over to the CAN SPAM ACT OF 2003. The list of requirements are very specific including an unsubscribe button, who you send it to, how you send it and more. As a result, many businesses use Agency’s to handle their e-mail marketing efforts.

SOCIAL MEDIA (WEB2.0)

The popularity of social media created an entirely new type of effective marketing that has been increasingly growing stronger year by year. Why? Well, for one, considering the amount of personal information that users put online, advertisers are able to better understand who they’re advertising to and what is more likely to be effective. Within social media, you’ll find a vast amount of options:

• Social Networks (Facebook, Myspace)
• Online Videos (YouTube, MetaCafe)
• Blogging (WordPress, Blogger)
• Product Review/Comparison Sites (Amazon, cNET)

Your campaign can go from zero to hero all because one individual liked the ad and sent it to all of his friends. Just take a look at the recent Susan Boyle video which has gained global success, with over 145,000,000+ views online. The video was featured on blogs and social networks and it was all FREE marketing. That’s the power of the internet and Social Media. But it doesn’t stop there. You can use the social networks to interact with potential customers and gain insights unlike ever before. I highly suggest you research this type of marketing and get involved any way you can. Your efforts will be pay off and the results could be endless!

ANALYTICS

As I stressed in my last article for HP, Free Website Essentials 101: The information you can collect about your visitors is extremely valuable. The only downside is the amount of information can be overwhelming. Without a question, analytics is the double-edged sword of Online Marketing. Set a benchmark for yourself and use analytics software to help define whether or not you’re reaching pre-assigned goals. Google Analytics has an internal feature to help track visitors and goal reaching. By understanding such things as, source of traffic and content-overview, you’ll be able to help your site evolve into a stronger source of business…and again, this software free, so there’s no reason to pass it up.

“If you haven’t heard of Susan Boyle, it’s YOUR FAULT!”

Superior Viral Marketing

After a shocking performance on Britain’s Got Talent, Susan Boyle, a 47-year-old Scottish woman, broke all kinds of YouTube and online video records. According to ViralVideoChart, her video has over 143,389,133 views across all video networks. That’s a goal to be sought after. But how did they do it?

For one, they had the viral ‘emotional factor’ with her emotionally affecting TV performance of I Dreamed A Dream from Les Miserables. (<- For those of you haven’t seen it!) Dubbed the “Singing Virgin” (Crikey.com), the mix of her outdated fashion sense and a self-declared un-kissed church singer, you can only wonder about her YouTube life that is now heading toward 100 million views (the record is 120 million), including 20 million within the first 24 hours of its posting. That’s a record right there!

Susan Boyle has her own Wikipedia Page: Susan Boyle, and a Susan Boyle Fan-Site. Oh, did I mention she was on Twitter as well? Win or lose, it doesn’t matter because she is set.

In The Press

Many British newspapers carried articles on Boyle’s performance and subsequent Internet coverage. US & International news outlets also carried stories on her, including among others, The Times of India, Germany’s Der Spiegel, China’s Xinhua News Agency, Brazil’s Zero Hora, Israel’s Ynet, and the Arabic-language Al Arabiya.

On TV

Within the week following her performance on Britain’s Got Talent, Boyle was a guest on STV’s The Five Thirty Show. She was interviewed via satellite on CBS’s Early Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Today, and The Oprah Winfrey Show, and via a telephone interview on FOX’s America’s Newsroom. Boyle also appeared via satellite on CNN’s Larry King Live.

Still Going Strong…

Just to gain a sense of  how current all of this is, if you check out YouTube’s most popular videos of the week and the month, you’ll notice that most of the videos are from Britains Got Talent,  (including one of my favorites,  Mr. Methane).

Conclusion

Britain’s Got Talent left BIG SHOES TO FILL for America’s Got Talent (the US version). Either they’ll ride the wave of press, or fail horribly. In a sense, the real Talent show is “Which Talent show will prevail as #1 Marketing?” Ultimately you, the reader, will be the one to decide.