Increasing traffic to your blog with Trackbacks

I am a newbie when it comes to blogging. So, I just found out what a trackback is the other day. I am sure there many more tactics used for successful blogging that I will end up finding out about in the coming months.

In short, a trackback is a url at the bottom of a post. Below that would be a list of Bloggers that tracked you and links to their posts(for a visual on this check out seth godin's blog). If someone wants to trackback to your blog post they copy the url and paste it in a specified field in the back-end of their blog admin area. They would also make a link in their post directly to your blog article, which should relate or comment on your post. Once they post you would receive an email saying that you got a trackback and then it is up to you to ok the trackback. Note that some spammers try to do trackbacks, so check out the material before you ok it.

Once I found out about trackbacks, I wanted to know how to set it up. Well, it is not currently available on blogger.com. They do have backlinks though, which seem to be similar. I have enabled them as of yesterday, so we just need some eyeballs and people that want to link to some of our posts.

If my short explanation left you confused check out this video at Friday Traffic Report. I am a visual person and it cleared the air for me.

Now time to make a backlink of my own to a post on our company blog of course. Predictions for 2008 by Ryan is entertaining. It made me think of how Google is taking over the online world anyway. Their new street view is kind of cool, but kind of alarming at first. Anyway, my little prediction is that they will have a GPS app that gives you a street veiw in the near future. It would be a free service of course, accessed by your cell or car computer maybe?

Anyway, get your trackbacks accepted by some blogging gurus to get the most out of it.

Why html emails are an integral piece of an online ad campaign

Design trends come and go, but certain aspects of good design always hold true. Content is king as it’s been said, and with that, the crux of good design is the balance of that all important information in an aesthetic wrapper which seamlessly ties it all together. As a designer, the challenge is to stay true to the brand, define a clear message and present a visual story personalized to your target market. To that end, I try to incorporate these essential key elements into every campaign.

The all important tagline and message! Clearly defining the message while captivating the reader enough to actually READ your message.

Getting creative about your topic increases your chances of engaging a reader enough to actually view your message. When developing a landing page we try to come up with catchy phrases and unique messaging to capture a reader’s interest. We’re also able to track various versions to see which specific message brings a higher rate of turnover which can be invaluable tool when targeting a specific market for your client’s campaign. This allows us to revise and custom tailor an online campaign on the fly to make the biggest impact possible.

Message placement is also of key importance. After getting down just what you want to say, making sure it’s placed above the fold and at the top of your layout ensures that those using a preview pane are able to view your message and be more inclined to follow through. Sounds easy enough, but it can be quite challenging to layout your graphics and message without it becoming too much, and too cluttered. That being said the first couple of inches are the most crucial in identifying your message. You should be captivating your audience and providing an action for more information so your reader isn’t scrolling to the bottom of the page in frustration – if they bother to go that far to begin with.

Personalization can also boost a campaign’s performance. Reaching out to your reader in more focused, personal, and significant point, beyond just “Dear Mr. Smith!” can heighten their interest, thus increasing your chances on that all important call to action increasing. This also ties back into what I referenced previously in being creative in your messaging. You can take this one step further and make it personal by incorporating a few different targeted points of interest in your messages. The ability to track and measure them for its success rate helps you get that much closer to culminating interest with your reader while gaining important information about exactly what is most important to them.

Achieving the right symmetry of graphics that flow in harmony with your message.

So I’ve touched on some important aspects of what should be included in your message, but graphic layout is just as significant and essential. Personally I find this the most challenging as I love to design an eye-catching, unique and distinctive layout for every campaign. The great, and at times most difficult, part of my job is being creative in how I approach a campaign in my designs to make it stand out from the others. Less can definitely be more in an email campaign, but too little can make for a bland and unappealing presentation. It’s been proven that graphics make more of an impact than those that are text based only, however the importance lies in the balance of the two. In essence you are creating a visual narrative of your message.

In regards to that aspect you must achieve a delicate harmony in your graphic arrangement which complements your topic or theme, the creative palette, and of key importance, also incorporates your client’s branding. Making the logo a focal point and your message clear and prominent is crucial in the arrangement of complimentary graphics in your layout.

Once I’ve decided on a layout I try to keep in mind that not everyone will actually see any of it. Being a designer I always hope that someone views my work the way I intended it to appear, but I also realize a lot of the time that is not always the case. The fact that some either have chosen to set their email programs to not display any images or just plain text, making sure that the actual message is still clear and all of the information is presented and readable in the event that graphics are not being displayed is critical. As much as I loathe that possibility, it is a very real and fundamental aspect that I fulfill the whole point of creating the html email in the first place – and that goes back to the all important message.

Following these guidelines and principals helps to ensure and increase the success of a campaign. So when the day is done and the client is happy because of it, I can still derive some satisfaction that the goal of accomplishing a winning campaign was achieved, graphics or not, the way I intended it or not, the message was still delivered.

We built it - now what?

When a brand builds a social media environment to meet a business goal or many, they typically set out to build a community or an environment that will improve their business. Most wish to improve their customer's communication and open a meaningful dialog with them such that they haven't had before. They envision the newly spawned community using this tool and spreading the good word about their products or services amongst themselves and with others. They see this new environment, this new business tool as a marketing investment that will bring a return and make them better - and get them recognized for stepping into the social media circle.

If they are wise, they've done their homework. They are consulting with professionals who have been there/done that and they are reading, reading, reading, as much information as they can get their hands on, about the brands that have embarked on such projects before them and learning from the pioneer's missteps and wins. And they are constantly reevaluating and considering the risks as they weigh the rewards.

Ideally, through due diligence, those charged with the brand's and the project's success will realize that a branded social media tool will not improve the brand's business on its own. The project needs for everyone involved to be on board and in sync with the objectives they are setting out to accomplish and for key champions of the cause to be in place, to be informed and to have a plan of action.

Social media tools serve as platforms for customer's to reveal their perspective of that brand's product or service - and the brand will either enjoy buzz building glory or buzz building agony. To prevent the latter, a company needs to plan ahead for the support their new social initiative will need.

The best examples of social media marketing done right are those done by the companies that chose to support their initiative with ambassadors for the brand and their business objectives. Those ambassadors are the moderators of their customer’s conversations and the active and recognizable “voice” of the brand. Their approachability and their responses to the customers within the community, reveals the company’s engagement and expresses the value the brand places on their customer’s experience with them. They show the customer that they matter and that the community or tool that they have introduced is an investment in their customers – and one which they are vested.

And this is what makes the difference – the brand’s commitment to engage and get better as a result from what they learn. If you rely solely upon the “build it and they will come” philosophy – you will be sorely disappointed. Additionally, you’ll probably learn very quickly that your company’s reputation offline for a bad customer experience will now be broadcast online. And with no plans in place to provide the strategic support necessary to turn that collective frown upside down – all of the investments you’ve made in your brand to date, as well as in this social media initiative will be jeopardized.

So get together at the executive level and get honest with one another. Listen to your customers before you build. Work with experienced professionals (designers, developers) to create a tool that magnifies what you’re good at and put the tools in place - and the brand ambassadors in place, to reply to and learn from your harshest critics. Build something worth talking about and make it easy for users to tell your story. Above all, act quickly and consistently to take advantage of every opportunity you get as a brand, to show your customers that they matter above all else.

TIMA - 2/20/08- Predictions for 2008

TIMA -
So while it’s still fresh in my mind I figured I’d write a little blog entry about the TIMAs (Triangle Interactive Marketing Association) “lunch and learn” and before I start writing down the random and sometimes convoluted thoughts that go on in my head I would like to premise this MediaTwo blog with this… Being a recent college graduate and new to the interactive advertising world, this is the first blog I’ve written that didn’t have anything to do with college life, music, or sports. And also the thoughts and opinions expressed in the following do not necessarily (but probably do) reflect the thoughts and opinions of MediaTwo.

The topic this month was what trends to look out for in 2008 in the upcoming months. The speaker Howard Greenstein http://howardgreenstein.com/ who discussed being an avid blog reader (we’ll see if he sees this) and has accomplished a tremendous amount from what I could tell. One of the topics hit was Second Life and how it was “too hard” in case you didn’t know Second Life is for those who have failed miserably at maintaining a social life, and can now fail miserably in a virtual world. Here is my prediction for 2008 I see a strong virtual need for virtual suicide counselors, so if you’re going to send your Second life character to virtual college and you want to be a virtual success make sure he/she is well versed in virtually talking other virtual jumpers off virtual buildings,… or save yourself the crushing disappointment when virtual girls, much like real girls, tell you they just want to be friends. Don’t waste REAL months of your time creating another disappointing version of yourself. Don’t get me wrong I like video games as much as the next guy but if you’re going to waste your time play something a little more gratifying, like Donkey Kong, or Mario Brothers, so what if you’re not a short Italian plumber with a goofy mustache and red pants in real life, At least you know that you’ll most likely end up with princess toadstool, cause she’s totally easy.

Another topic that was hit was Google owns everything! OK! I get it! Google is huge and could buy and sell me. Does that mean I’m not going to Google my name just because they are the empire in the nerdy star wars reference that is my life? No! Because it’s kind of fun and it’s fun to say… GOOGLING… plus I’m afraid that if I did write something negative about Google that I may disappear, and no one would ever be able to find me… not even by Googling “where is Ryan Oakley” this scares me far worse than the inevitable squirrel revolution… don’t act like you haven’t thought about it! But I digress...The event was catered and I made the poor choice of the tuna sandwich with the fruit salad side instead of the pasta salad, I know, Rookie mistake. Overall it was informative sort of and it pumped me up for next month’s lecture where the topic will be Video, in my head I imagine an hour of watching hilarious youtube videos, but have the sneaking suspicion I’m going to be disappointed. At least ill get a little brownie with my lunch and at the end of the day that makes me happy...

Local Search Engine Marketing

A common question I hear marketers ask is how to set up effective local search engine marketing campaigns. From what I have seen, most business/site owners do the bare minimum…and often see mediocre results because of it. Local search engine marketing carries with it some irony..."local" makes people think it is on a smaller scale than national; however that couldn't be further from the truth...in SEM world, local campaigns tend to have more keywords than national ones, not to mention you could have hundreds of local campaigns, increasing your keyword base exponentially.

Local search campaigns take quite of bit of thought and planning. You are in essence building an online road map for your potential customers…and you don’t want any speed bumps along the way. Below are the steps you need to take to launch an effective SEM campaign that will increase your brand’s awareness and drive online users to your physical business locations:

Step 1: Keyword Development

As always, it all starts with keyword development and strategy. You can use keyword research tools that are out there to assist you in identifying keyword phrases your potential customers may utilize, or you can use good ol’ common sense…I prefer a mixture of the two. Keep in mind, the more relevant and specific to your product/service, the better. For example, if you have a business that sells footwear, don’t bid on the keyword “shoes” (unless you have an unlimited budget, which most companies don’t), rather try “men’s dress shoes”, “women’s flats”…you get the idea.

Step 2: Localized Keyword Development

Now that you have your keyword base and you have organized them into groups based on commonality (i.e. all your “women’s flats” phrases in one group and your “men’s dress shoes” in another) the next step is to create your localized keywords. The best and most effective way to do this is to utilize Excel and create a tab for each and every city in which you have an existing business location. For simplicities sake, we’ll stick with one location for purposes of this blog. Let’s say your first location is in Atlanta. Take your keyword base and copy them in a single column in your worksheet then in the next column enter and copy down “atlanta” so that you have the word “atlanta” entered into every cell next to your keywords. Finally, in the next column you are going to concatenate the keywords + ‘atlanta’ by using the formula: =a1& “ “&b1. Copy this formula all the way down so you now see keywords that read, for example, “men’s dress shoes atlanta”. Now, in order for you to copy these newly generated phrases into Google (which should always be your search engine sandbox of choice) you’ll have to copy the entire column then select “paste special values”…this gets rid of the formula and copies in the actual phrases.

Step 3: PPC Campaign Creation

Using AdWords Editor, create your campaigns and ad groups and copy your new localized keyword phrases into their respective ad groups. The key part of this step is to make sure you are only using Phrase or Exact Match. You do not want to bid on broad variations of your phrases as it defeats the purpose of localizing them. Next create your ads…just make sure that the location (ex. Atlanta) is mentioned somewhere in the ad, preferably the headline. I would also test enabling “Local Business Ads” to appear as well, which displays the exact address of your business location within your PPC ad. I have found that having the address location appear alongside your PPC ad increases its effectiveness, CTR and, in turn, CPC-efficiency…plus it pushes your competitor a little further away from you :)

Once you have your ads created, make sure you set the regional targeting in your campaign to only the geographic location in which you want your ads displayed.

Step 4: Choosing your Landing Pages

The last step is to ensure that your new online visitors are going to be directed to the appropriate page within your site. Anyone who clicks on your Atlanta PCC ad should see information about your Atlanta location and not be forced to dig any deeper than they have to to find it. Also, if your technology is capable of providing dynamic phone numbers to online visitors, I would recommend you show a unique phone number so that you can track calls and associate them back to your PPC efforts for measuring success.

Conclusion:

Depending on the number of your business locations, this process can be quite lengthy and time consuming, but spending the time at the on-set and developing your search marketing strategic plan, will pay dividends in the long run. My opinion has always been that SEM account and campaign set-up (i.e. the strategy or plan behind your campaigns) is much more important than simply launching it. Anyone can launch a paid search campaign, but not everyone is successful.

My next SEM blog installment will go through a more advanced strategy of how to integrate national brand awareness with local goals. For example, if you have a product or service that has physical locations throughout the US and you not only want to increase consumer awareness in general nationally, but also drive foot traffic to your ground-based business locations…how do you accomplish both while keeping with cost goals and still be effective? ... stay tuned.

~John

Ellie Johnson's take on the MIXX: Small is the new big

It is 2007, the Internet as a consumer medium is a dozen years old and has reared four generations in this short time: the early adopters, Gen X, Gen Y and now the Millennials. In the last decade or more, the Internet has led the life of an immortal youth – big on dreams and short on rationale - catapulted from their big man on campus status into the real world – the world that said, Oh yeah? Prove it. After the gold rush and the bubble of youth burst - reality set in with demands from the establishment for business models, standards and measurability. The brands and companies that wanted to find success online looked to the portals for the model to match. The model was get big, partner, offer it all to everyone.

Similarly, interactive agencies wishing to get their hands on the gold rush budgets, sprang up like the new brands online did - either as start up experiments by exiles from the traditional agencies or as the online wings of those traditional agencies. They too, wanted to get big, bill big revenue, create big brands including their own, create big minds – figure heads in the industry.At the Mixx 2.7 conference, it was fun to see a number of familiar big heads from the web’s adolescence were on today’s stage, directing panels and presenting today’s big advertising ideas.

This year, small is the new big idea. AOL is less an avenue to the web and more a content play now via sites like TMZ and with their branded API’s for Facebook and other social networks. The change is coming so quickly, even MySpace, the social networking phenom that launched just a few years ago and now rivals Yahoo! on a monthly basis for greatest number of unique visitors, finds that even their formidable size is a deterrent for marketers who fear the message gets lost among their masses. The masses are what we were once all after! Today however, the mother ships and the revered interactive agencies, who have survived the digital age thus far, are practicing fragmentation, creating verticals even as they consolidate and partner. The bigs are forced to keep up with the transparent, nimble, specialized smalls. It’s all about the niche, the vertical, the individual.

Seth Godin, who was interviewed by Charlie Rose at the event, said social media is the assembly line of interactive’s industrial age and marketers, brands and corporations alike are feeling online shift and charge in a whole new direction. He challenged marketers to develop the remarkable and predicted that big companies like MSFT cannot come up with anything remarkable or worth talking about. (Side note: MSFT sponsored the event. Awkward!) Mr. Godin gave us our assignment: marketers must navigate the masses and find the individual, deliver a message that the individual wants to interact with, share, snag and use to define them selves. The consumer wants a relevant message, that doesn’t trap them in a branded experience or simply monolog to them but rather, opens a conversation with them.

This is scary stuff for a lot of consumer brands and their fears resounded in the halls with talk of, “We’re lost. We’re not in control any longer – the consumer is.” A lot of consumer brands will find that social media will not make sense. Can anyone really be friends with a box of Kleenex brand tissues? Probably not, but the Let It Out campaign from Kleenex shows that the CPG brand understands that it’s not about their tissue – it’s about their consumer and how their consumer relates to their brand and it’s working for them. The campaign exploits the emotional and pushes the rational, the practical use of Kleenex tissues. Smart.

Media Two is smart. And our small agency is well-positioned to act as the map for our clients and for consumer brands that make sense for today’s uncharted new media opportunities. Our concepts for social, digital environments that expound upon the valuable knowledge we’ve extracted from the exchanges that our client’s are having with their consumers today, are exactly what this shift in the industry will be propelled by. Our agency lives by the idea that online is the first critical touch point between the brand and the consumer and that online campaigns should drive the entire cross-platform campaign. Not the other way around. And we have the data to back up this approach. We’re a small, nimble agency with the ability to foster the critical dialog that brands are looking spark with their target audience. And our creativity is tapped to create the platforms that will enable the conversation and track the return on investment. I left Mixx 2.7 feeling completely in control in the face of these exciting new challenges and thrilled that we have generated the body of work we have to pull from and the creativity and resources – and clients – that will enable us to take the challenge and do something remarkable.

The Big Story is not the $5 Billion part…

Interactive Advertising Revenues surpass $5 Billion in Q2 2007. Yes – it’s a huge story (see IAB press release here), and yes, it’s 25+% growth over last year, but I really don’t think anyone is surprised by the fact interactive advertising is continuing to grow. We at Media Two Interactive have been saying this for years: “Interactive is an important part of the overall marketing mix”. We actually took that statement one step further about 5 years ago by saying we thought interactive would be the marketing mix leader that all other mediums would test out first before rolling out full campaigns (let’s face it – it’s cheaper, faster and easier to track – so why wouldn’t you?).

I believe that the rest of the (agency) world has finally caught up and is no longer looking at interactive as something that’s going to steal budgets from traditional; rather it is just another medium to deliver their marketing message on.

What I do believe is more of a story from the IAB is where that growth is actually coming from…

If you look at their breakout of dollars, 41% is coming from search while 32% is coming from display ads… Again, nothing surprising there – but then look at the pricing models. CPM buys dropped 3% while performance based deals increased 3% - a huge 6% swing in buying styles. This tells me that not only have large advertisers/agencies improved their outlook on interactive, but they’ve improved their technologies and reporting capabilities – and they are becoming more Direct Response driven!

This is music to our ears! Even when clients come to us for the first time, we talk about accountability and ROI and a lot of times that goes right over their heads… This swing in pricing models tells me that the interactive education is over – and now it’s time for the best performing advertisers and agencies to step forward and show case their capabilities. This to me – is 5 billion times more exciting than hearing that interactive ad spend is catching up to traditional.

Dot Com Bomb 2.0?

Having personally survived and thrived during the first “dot com bomb”, it appears to me that we could be heading for a version 2.0… A lot of what’s happening in today’s marketplace seems eerily similar to 2000 – just with different terminology… I’d like to think we have all learned our lesson from back then, but something tells me we haven’t. Flash back to March 10th of 2000 when the NASDAQ composite index surpassed 5,000 points. Business was golden, everyone thought they were a day-trader, everyone’s stocks were soaring and then all of a sudden 5 days later the market loses 9%, hits a couple peaks and valleys, and then promptly bombs…

People pointed out obvious flaws of inflated stock prices due to prices being based on potential and not profitability – and therefore the mega dot com IPO’s were doomed from day one. Well now here we are 7.5 years later, and all we’ve done is removed the three letters I, P and O and inserted the letters M and A. Yes – we have learned that profitability is the king to the stock market, and as I write this Google has just surpassed $600/share and is a glorious example of a profitable company with a skyrocketed share price (correct me if I’m wrong – but Google’s value just went up $25 BILLION in the last month), but what about all of the mergers and acquisitions that are going on?

I’m far from an accountant – but I’m pretty sure that acquisitions are treated separately on the books than a standard operating expense – so does that make recent acquisitions look less appealing? The likes of Google, Yahoo, WPP and many more have been gobbling up anything to do with interactive with the vision that interactive is the future. I completely agree with their thoughts and ideas, and I believe that at some point in time interactive will be the dominant marketing piece – but when you drill down a little deeper, yes, interactive seems to be growing at a 30% clip each year, but interactive is nothing more than a mere sliver of the marketing medium. The overall marketing dollars are only increasing 2-3% each year – and yes, that includes interactives mammoth 30% growth… So companies like Google are paying $3.1 billion for DoubleClick, but can DoubleClick actually add those kind of incremental returns in a marketplace that really isn’t growing more than 2-3% a year?

I’m sure they’re smarter than I am and the answer is yes – it can – but to me, it seems a lot like the IPO days where a few people got really rich and cashed out…

Amy Boaz on AdTech:2007 – The “Carnival” of the Interactive Marketing Space.

As I sit here and reflect on my recent three day whirlwind trip to New York to attend AdTech, I can’t help but compare it to a Carnival. Fluorescent lights, bright colored booths, and sales people who just stopped short of saying “Step Right Up” Call me a cynic, maybe it’s the media buyer in me, but I almost have to laugh at the ploys the booths had to pull people in to their booths. I saw a slew of tchotchkes, a massage chair and even glowing oxygen tanks. That being said, it’s still the show that everyone criticizes, but everyone in the industry should attend. Where else can you find three floors packed full of every online media opportunity in the industry under one roof?

My objectives for going to the show were two-fold, to scout out new media outlets and to meet with some of our current media publishers. In media planning seeking out new publishers to use in your campaigns is an ongoing process. Not only are there new websites being born continuously, there is also new technologies coming out of the closet to communicate to people in every possible aspect of their lives. It is essential to break out of the four walls of the office and discover new possibilities. Where better to do that then by attending AdTech? One of the interesting things I noticed was the abundance of Affiliate Marketing companies, some even disguised as CPA networks. On the other hand, I don’t remember seeing any email marketing list brokers or nearly as many technology solutions as in previous years. Is affiliate marketing taking over where email marketing left off? That’s a whole other blog entry altogether… However, the lack of technology companies makes me a bit disappointed. Have we already reached the summit of new technologies to research, plan, measure, track and optimize interactive media? I’d like to think we haven’t…

As I said, my other objective was meeting with current publishers. If there is one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that our industry is based on relationships. Putting a face with a name and getting away from the distractions of IM, email and phone calls to discuss current campaigns and future possibilities was a productive part of the trip North. Thanks to everyone for their hospitality and lots of great NY food!!

Now, back to the daily grind and the pile of business cards and literature that I still need to sort through..