Receiving organic traffic via the search engines is a wonderful thing – especially given that it’s free. However, problems can arise if you rely solely on search engine traffic. Your website may rank well today, but what happens if you wake up tomorrow and your site’s rankings have suddenly dropped? What if you suddenly can’t seem to get new visitors? Will you be able to communicate with most of the people who’d previously visited your online business? Stay Connected You would be very wise to diversify your traffic sources for your website and, more importantly, find a way to keep in touch with the visitors that you have attracted in the first place. One way to do that is by offering a free product, such as a report or an exclusive E-newsletter to anyone who visits your site in exchange for his or her E-mail address. Be mindful, though, that a freebie that has little value will only encourage people – Read the full article
Google offered another preview of the upcoming Chrome OS Tuesday in a media event in San Fransisco, introducing a fourth option for operating systems – after Windows, Mac, and Linux – while opening the doors to the new Google Chrome Web Store. The event also launched the Chrome OS pilot program and highlighted the search giant’s ongoing efforts to build “an operating system that is essentially a browser, (which helps) make computers faster, much simpler, and fundamentally more secure.” An open-source, lightweight operating system, Google Chrome OS leverages the Internet by delivering a speedy operating system in which all applications are Web applications (instead of hard drive-based). It is scheduled for release in the middle of 2011. Chrome Web Store and Cr-48 Chrome Notebook Along with these developments, the company introduced the Google Chrome Web Store, which features apps, extensions, themes, and collections for users of the Google Chrome OS. Developers have already started uploading apps, and one of these – Read the full article
Google-Groupon Deal? Search giant Google is reported to be offering as much as $6 billion for leading e-Commerce coupon site, Groupon. According to a number of media sources, the deal’s initial payment will be worth about $5.3 billion, with the remaining $700 million to be used as an incentive for keeping Groupon’s employees. The deal, if it happens, is going to be Google’s largest acquisition yet, much bigger than its successful $3.1 billion bid for DoubleClick and the $1.65 billion price tag of the company’s YouTube deal. Launched in November 2008 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, Groupon is a social shopping network that delivers daily deals to users in cities across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. While the price of the rumoured acquisition seems high – Groupon only has an estimated $600 million in revenue – industry observers say that the coupon site is the clear leader in a rapidly growing new category on the Internet. Its overwhelming success in – Read the full article
There’s a high-potential marketing platform that’s slowly and surely attracting corporations, small business owners, advertisers, and marketers alike. Observers say that this is a big one – an avenue through which one can reach a good portion of billions of consumers. It’s called SMS. You know: text messaging. No, you’re not reading an article from our 1998 archives. This is 2010 all right, but you know what? In the age of tablet computers, flashy apps, smartphones, and social media, SMS marketing has indeed become one of the most viable and important platforms for businesses today. Here are some numbers: An estimated 3.5 billion text messages are sent and received every day. 57 percent of all cell phone subscribers use SMS on a regular basis. According to the New York Times, 97 percent of text messages are opened, and 83 percent of these are opened in less than an hour. Despite the explosive growth of smartphones and mobile technologies like the – Read the full article
Forgive us? We’re feeling kind of guilty that we’ve written a number of Twitter articles that provide a lot of tips on how to use the popular social media site – without providing an equal number of examples. So let us make it up to you with these great examples of how today’s biggest brands and businesses are using Twitter. Starbucks (@Starbucks): The Seattle-based coffee giant offers “freshly brewed tweets” to a loyal following of over 1 million Twitter users. Check the brand’s profile out, and you’ll be surprised by the number of @replies/mentions they tweet in a day. That’s what engagement is all about. All too often, companies misuse Twitter by spamming their followers with relentless sales talk and ads – without caring to respond to mentions or direct messages. Sure, while Starbucks does post the occasional promo or new offer, the brand’s use of Twitter is mainly to connect intimately with fans and customers. It listens, and as – Read the full article
We’re sure you’ve heard of The Social Network, this new movie about the founders of Facebook. It opened earlier this month and so far, from what we’ve been hearing, it sounds like this 120-minute thriller-docudrama-comedy will be making plenty of noise at next year’s Oscars. You should see The Social Network if you haven’t done so yet. Not only is it a thrilling closer look at what went on behind the creation of today’s biggest social networking site; it’s also a really, really good movie. You don’t even have to be a Facebook fan to enjoy it. Directed by David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club), written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, A Few Good Men), and starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Brenda Song, Rooney Mara, and huge pop musician Justin Timberlake, The Social Network – as Rolling Stone describes it – “brilliantly defines the decade”. Of course, if you’re a startup, small business owner, or marketer, you also might want – Read the full article
A Facebook Page with lots of fans can do wonders for your brand. Not only is Facebook a naturally “viral” online channel for engagement; its Fan Pages are also a pretty flexible Internet marketing platform, with space for lots of apps, optimization opportunities, multimedia content, social sharing, and trackable information. Of course, to maximize Facebook’s power, you actually have to get people to officially “like” your page. Without enough “likes”, you may be wasting effort on something that’s not reaching anyone at all. You’d be like a chef preparing 30 starters and 50 main courses for a restaurant that has less than 10 customers. The product/service/brand may be good, but no one knows enough about it. Want more Facebook fans? Need more people to like your Facebook Page? Here are 11 really effective tips: Comment and reply. If someone posts on your Wall, don’t ignore it. Respond in a timely manner. Say thank you or write a meaningful comment that – Read the full article
A viral marketing campaign is one of today’s best (and most cost-effective) ways to let people know about your business. It can take on many forms, like videos, pictures, interactive Flash games, e-books, and even text messages. If done properly and executed creatively, your viral marketing campaign can excite immediate word-of-mouth enthusiasm from people. It can be viewed, read, “liked”, and bookmarked countless times, spark memes, remixes, and spoofs, generate tons of links, and shared on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, etc. With viral marketing, your campaigns will suddenly get a life of its own – and you won’t have to spend so much money for advertising placements. But how do you do it properly? Is there a formula to achieving a million hits on YouTube? How do you make sure your viral content gets passed around by friends and strangers on Facebook? Because of the wide variety of viral campaigns found on the Internet these days, – Read the full article
