If many who were expecting a blockbuster acquisition in the tech industry were disappointed with the recent Google-Groupon deal that never happened, well – a bigger deal just came through – to the tune of $8.5 billion in cash. In a definitive agreement announced Tuesday, software giant Microsoft Corporation has acquired Luxembourg-based Internet phone service and communications company Skype. The investor group, Silver Lake, which bought Skype from eBay in 2009, oversaw the transaction. The deal represents one of the highest-valued acquisitions in years, and is expected by both companies to soon increase market opportunity as well as benefit individual consumers and businesses. It will, in particular, integrate the Skype platform and connect its 170-plus million users to a portfolio of Microsoft products, including Lync, Outlook, Xbox LIVE, and Kinect. “Microsoft and Skype share the vision of bringing software innovation and products to our customers,” said Skype CEO Tony Bates, who will now become the president of the new Microsoft – Read the full article
From both a marketing and consumer perspective, Facebook is king. Few can deny the power of Facebook to pull and aggregate social data on a massive scale. According to an eMarketer report, Facebook has overtaken Google in “social sign-ins.” In Q1 2011, Facebook was the top network ID used to sign in to a website to share content, at around 35% of the user social login market share. The social sign-in is a new feature that online publishers love. Website registration is often times a daunting task and is attributed to high exit rates. Social sign-ins use pre-existing identities to login to a website, bypassing annoying registration forms. The most important benefit of social logins is to increase engagement and access more profile data. From a marketing standpoint, social sign-in allows marketers to aggregate crucial demographic data that was previously unknown. Marketers are able to understand what gender and age groups are accessing their materials, in addition to potentially rare – Read the full article
WordPress is arguably today’s most popular blogging platform – for reasons that the most brilliant Web programmers and developers or novice bloggers and startup business marketers can appreciate. Actually, WordPress is popular for reasons that even search engine giant Google can appreciate. Matt Cutts – the well-known SEO guru and Webmaster behind Google (which, by the way, has Blogger as its own blogging platform) – even went so far as to praise WordPress, saying that: “WordPress takes care of 80 to 90 percent of (the mechanics of) Search Engine Optimization (SEO).” But we’re getting ahead of ourselves – let’s go into more detail about SEO later. For now, let’s go through the list of highlights of WordPress as a blogging platform. Getting Started The process of signing up for WordPress is simple and easy enough. The most awesome part? It’s free. WordPress is open-source software, which means that you don’t have to pay any license fees to use the core – Read the full article
Over the recent years, consumers have been spending billions of dollars at e-Commerce sites. With the growth of online business, e-Commerce has become a very viable venture. Many people even begin an e-Commerce website as their main business. If you have a physical location where you operate your business from, beginning an e-Commerce website can provide an extra sales channel for you. Creating a site for selling coupons, services, or products online, however, involves a lot of research and planning. The following are steps you can take in starting an online business. Establish a business and marketing plan: Set up a meeting with your team members or business partners. Brainstorm together and write out all the plans in one document. The plan should include all startup and recurring expenses. Set up an overall sales forecast and expense budget. Choose a good domain name which will help customers find you: You need to choose a domain name for your website that – Read the full article
Now that the dust has settled after the farmer update, it should be time to take stock of what exactly happened to our sites and how they were affected, what happened to their traffic and their search rankings. I think it may also be time to look at a new link building strategy because it looks like article marketing – at least the kind that is applied in content farms – has been shot down, probably never to return. Has Google managed to shake up one of your most constant and reliable source of links? The first thing we learn as Internet marketers is this: you need links to your site and you can get links from the many thousands of article directories. The fact is that directories have been a staple of Internet marketing for so many years; and yet it seems now that the era of article directories has ended. But was it really such a bad thing? – Read the full article
While the concept of online marketing can seem strange and almost unnecessary for the food and drink industry, there are a whole range of benefits that can come from having a good online presence. In this post I want to cover some of the most useful options available and how these can be applied to your business to help increase your exposure and ultimately lead to more customers coming through your doors. You’ll need a website Before you attempt any sort of Internet marketing you are going to need a website. This shouldn’t be a problem as most businesses nowadays have realized the need to have a website and have already got this step covered. But after investing time and money into a website to represent your business, doesn’t it seem wasteful not to get it in front of your potential customers? That’s where the next step comes in. Try out search engine marketing Millions of people use search engines – Read the full article
Social media has garnered a great deal of attention for big business. Corporate budgets are able to integrate complete marketing campaigns and promote them on social media. If you are a small business looking to be the next social media influencer, you are probably finding out how tough it is to engage with users on social media. However, there is some good news for you and for other small- and medium-sized business owners. The 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report saw that SMBs who used social for local marketing saw boosts in exposure, traffic, and sales. Whether you are a late adopter or consider yourself a social media pioneer, chances are, if your business is doing some sort of social media marketing, you at least understand its significance. Over 90 percent of small business owners and Internet marketers believe that social media is important to their business. Depending on the industry you operate in and how “brand-heavy” you are influences – Read the full article
Whether your business has 100 followers or 100,000 fans, you’ve probably already realized that your community needs to be cultivated – and monitored – on social media channels weekly, if not daily. Recent news about the Taco Bell class-action lawsuit, which was filed against Taco Bell for “misrepresenting the contents of its beef,” is nothing surprising. I’m sure most customers don’t expect they are eating wholesome, organic meals at Taco Bell. However, it’s not the lawsuit that is interesting here; it is the way that Taco Bell warded off a potential crisis by being proactive and effectual on social media. Taco Bell has already gotten some previous press for their impressive works on Facebook and Twitter; but this is more impressive, and the way they turned this particular misrepresented beef crisis into something positive is a great lesson for Internet marketers as well as for online reputation management professionals. First step: Address the issue A confident and clear message doesn’t – Read the full article
