Techipedia has given the web “a great gift” by releasing a compilation of the “Best Internet Marketing Posts” of 2008. Wildly popular from the previous year, the comprehensive list is categorized into different subjects:
In the Internet Marketing Best Posts “series,” I take posts that are typically timeless — they’re not confined to a specific event or news occurrence — they’re valuable for the long haul in terms of Internet Marketing and creative strategy. Hopefully, you’ll see that these posts are still relevant in a few years down the road.
Some notable posts that I’ve seen while browsing the collection:
It’s been a wonderful and successful year here at Lifecapture Interactive, and what better way to end 2008 than receiving a certificate from MARKETING (www.marketingmag.ca). We were honored to receive a media certificate for our piece “Who do you think you are?” in the Digital Marketing Awards of 2008.
In case you are unfamiliar with the project, LCI teamed up with Barna Alper Productions and the Bell Fund in 2007 to promote the 13 episode TV series on the genealogy of 13 famous Canadians, airing on CBC using highly advanced Flash Actionscript mixed with traditional web development. The site offers one of the most advanced family tree applications developed to date and received hundreds of thousands of searches through Library, Archive Canada’s Genealogy databases and to Ancestry.ca.
Its success for all parties has set standards at LCI that we put toward all major cross platform projects, and we would like to thank MARKETING for recognition on this piece.
Children today have never lived in a world without the Internet, without being constantly connected through some device. They’ve got peer to peer file sharing, social networks, mobile phones, and then portable music and gaming devices. I remember when I would spend hours on the phone talking to friends, when now you can simply message them instantly or leave a message on a user profile somewhere. What has this done to this new millenium generation? Everything is at the click of a button, and can be found with little to no difficulty. When do they go offline? Certainly it has creeped into us as the older generation, the generation that was at the beginning of it all, but still we have a sense of going offline when needed.
Social networks have given this younger generation an outlet to meet people good and bad from around the world. They can share and discuss topics that they might not neccessarily do with real life friends. As always, safety is a huge issue. If parents can monitor who their child talks too, what’s the point? Can’t they just wait until they see them at school or when they hang out? Maybe even give them a phone call. Introducing this new form of media to children is great, and beneficial–I mean, they’ll be the ones so heavily involved in it as they get older. They’ll be the ones living in a world that is based around these networks. But when is too early? And what’s the point if it’s so heavily monitered?
School Together Now is a UK based social network for kids and parents to chat with others in surrounding school districts. We see here an evolution in the way people would interact. When I was growing up you would have to wait until you got to school to discuss something. But is elementary school to early to be immersing your child into the Web 2.0 world?
Blackbird was developed on the simple proposition that we, as the African American community, can make the Internet experience better for ourselves and, in doing so, make it better for everyone. Primarily we believe that the Blackbird application can make it easier to find African American related content on the Internet and to interact with other members of the African American community online by sharing stories, news, comments and videos via Blackbird.
This is really interesting. A browser geared specifically towards African Americans, and all for the purpose of building a better community online. For the most part it is a fully customizable Firefox 3, and is only available for the Windows platform. Regardless, it customizes search, news, and other content to an African American perspective.
The feature that peaks my curiosity the most is “Do Good”. A charity content channel that connects users with African American focused organizations. The browser was developed by 40A, Inc., and is attempting to harness what they claim to be 20 million African Americans online. Though it’s not that different from FIrefox, the browser is a step towards harnessing niche demographics, tailoring to their specific content needs.
The Financial Post has a great little article about a group of independent social media people–mainly bloggers–who want to be a part of covering the 2010 winter games in Vancouver. It’s great that people are starting to realize the importance of grass roots independent coverage from the likes of every day people. It certainly came to the forefront when candidates from the recent U.S. general election utilized the web to reach a wider demographic of voters.
The only problem is that a body like the IOC relies on major networks and broadcasters because of contract deals and sponsorship obligations. They need someone to foot the bill, and regardless of the buzz that people can stir by twittering, can it foot the bill for a costly enterprise like the modern Olympic games?
The International Olympic Committee is just starting to recognize the importance of online media, but like most mainstream organizations, hasn’t yet figured what impact the new media will have.
Yahoo Sports, the first major organization to have a Web-only presence at the Olympics, took 19 reporters and editors to the 2008 Beijing Summer Games. It recorded more unique visitors to its site than NBC Online, whose parent company, a major source of revenue for the IOC, is a longtime broadcast rightsholder.
But even Yahoo Sports faces a much more nimble and aggressive competitor: so-called “indie” or independent media such as those who met in the loft of Raincity Studios last week.
Helping the bigwigs to understand the importance of social connectedness in a global event like this can prove beneficial. The Olympics are huge, but slowly we are seeing the popularity of the games dwindle as the mass audience is alienated from the huge media buy outs, scandals, and soaring ticket prices. If the IOC can accept a fair compromise between major networks and grass roots social media, then the organization can only expect a return to glory of the games that represent modern mankind.
When i first heard that i had to go somewhere for, “Take your kids to work day,” i was expecting to go with my dad. I had already been to his work place a million times so i wanted to try something new. My name’s Dillon and on Wednesday November 5th, 2008 i went to work with my brother, who’s a copywriter here at LCI, to see what his job is all about.
The half an hour TTC ride lead me to a residential building downtown. The company is split up into two lofts. When i first walked in, the atmosphere was so different from what i always thought an advertising company office would be like. I was expecting everyone to be serious, and in suits. Over here, everyone’s so chill, and they work at their own pace. All the people here were so welcoming and nice, when i asked them questions about what they do. I never really found advertising and marketing so interesting, but from actually experiencing it, it’s actually pretty damn cool. I always thought advertising companies just had people that sit in a board room all day thinking of ideas for a client that they are working with. It’s different here, yes, they do have a boardroom, but everyone works at their desks doing what they have to do.
When i walked into the downstairs office, it was so cool. The downstairs office is the place where they do all the video production and a bunch of other stuff. The guy that i was talking to there, seemed like he had a really interesting job. All in all, this whole marketing and advertising thing seems really interesting to me. I was never really exposed to this kind of career, but when i look at how all of this is done, it’s pretty cool. I always wanted to be a surgeon, but for anyone out there that’s looking into working for an advertising and marketing company, i say go for it. This whole experience has really been great. I look forward to visiting here again.
Transform your browser into a full-screen, 3D experience for online photos and videos. Share, discover, and shop. Compatible with Google, Youtube, facebook, and more. LCIers are always passing around good stuff like this in office; part of the culture is to be current with the online landscape, new trends, etc. Anyways, cooliris is worth the download, see what it’s about, see if you like it, determine for yourself how useful this will be in the (keyboard-less) future.
This post may be a little longer than usual, but I figured that the point must come out.
You can troll almost any of the major social media ‘Aficionado ‘ websites and find great revelations about this new space, this new community, this new buzz, many are absolutely amazing. The tools people are building are like nothing ever seen before; efficient day to day communication, networking, multi-player games, and above all, personal connection.
To step outside this ‘wow’ box for a few minutes, we need to take a breath and look at the whole thing.
Connection, Interaction, Social Engagement, One-to-one; these are not new concepts in the field of marketing. In fact, the very heart of everything happening in the communications world online is built on ideas from the outside world. Adapted ideas that use similar rules and offer similar advantage, but take place in an online channel recently adopted by the masses.
The social successes of the internet are profound but it does not have to be so complex.
Companies can choose to take advantage of social media online much like they do with many forms of offline communications; print, events, contests, or word of mouth initiatives. You can choose to go out with open arms and except what comes back at you, or you can be more tactical with your toll sets and not necessarily open a dialogue with the rest of the planet.
Social Tools that allow users to connect to each other and offer the Brand feedback can be just as effective as direct conversation. Remember though, they will talk about you anyway so you might as well take part.
As you move your Brand more into the social space on the internet, you must realize that there are thousands of other companies and organizations all entering at the same time; if you use conventional forms of sales communication, you will be slaughtered. You must engage in the conversation, and prove yourself a valuable connection to win here.
The practice of Public Relations is the best way to look at the social space from a larger corporate perspective, you need to relate to and connect to your audience through a medium where they not only read your message, but talk back to you about it.
Purists would say that the market has no place in social space (hogwash); the market has been a part of communication for over 100 years, as unfortunate as it may seem, the market influences over 80% of what you read in your newspapers and magazines. I understand that not all of it is good, but it is there, people need to decide what is the right information for them and take part in their own way.
Social Network and Discussion Forum users and developers have laid out a series of very important rules that allow great communities and social networks to almost self moderate. You must know these rules: be open with your identity, speak about something related and worth while, and most of all, don’t spam people with stuff they don’t want, people don’t like spam.
The right way to take part in any marketing online or in the real world is through honesty and integrity. If you sell garbage painted like gold, you will have a fight waiting for you online; if you sell good product and service your customer properly, they will invest in you, and help you reach out to others.
Finally, if you make a mistake and still want a crack at success, apologize, strategize, and move on.
We have all seen these great little engines that take our songs and make random playlists of songs we may like. I would like to take that to TV. The most annoying part of watching TV online is the clicking a new show, after your show has finished. Very few resources automatically play the next show.
A great site is CNET, online TV done right. The content is not perfect, but the integration of commercials, the autostart of the next show, the resume after idle time, all that is amazing. I am on the hunt for the perfect online TV station; it needs all of the above to be successful.
YouTube finally plays parts of episodes consecutively, that is a nice step up, but it still does not recommend new shows and play them automatically. They have a new engine called Warp that seems to recommend, but it does not play automatically.
Help me in my hunt for the ultimate online TV channel, lets rate them, and berate them, lots of evolution is still needed to get the net up to par with its predicessor.
We spend a lot of time, planning the use of the social channel for our clients. There is no two clients who need to use it in the same way. Our objective is to discover the right use fo the channel for the right client.
Do you want to speak out the the market and allow them to speak back? Or are you a little nervous about what they will say? Many clients are truly not ready to open that door; its a corporate culture thing.
I have recently been introduced to a new idea that I find quite intriguing; an idea that many clients can take advantage of, and use to ‘get their feet wet’, while giving back to the communities they serve. It is called Social Capital Value Add. And it has simple, but highly engaging ideas that will help companies better take advantage of the medium, without opening the door completely.
Take a look at the blog on CMA, Michael is a great thinker, a lot has gone into this idea, and you will get a lot out of it for yourself and for your company. SCVA
It’s pretty safe to say that people just aren’t happy with plain old regular tap water anymore. School districts have even started banning vending machines with bottled water to encourage kids to drink tap water. If you think about it, the tap water we have here doesn’t even come close to what they would have in Africa - so people need to toughen up.
That being said, the kind people from “Glaceau” dropped by these offices today and unloaded a box of “Vitamin Water”. I’d like to add, that 50 cent is one of the primary shareholders in this drink. What “Vitamin Water” is exactly, I do not know - but i can tell you it tastes terrible. If I really had to describe it, I’d say it’s overpriced juice - supposedly this stuff is like $5 a bottle.
Each drink comes with it’s own zany name and description. I had the supreme pleasure of tasting “XXX”, a drink containing acai-blueberry-pomegranate (triple the good stuff!!!!). The bottle then goes on to explain its witty nomanclature:
“c’mon get your mind out of the gutter. we only named this drink xxx because it has the essence of triple fruits and antioxidant vitamin c to help keep you healthy. and this drink does not cost $1.99/min, has not “gone wild!!!”, nor will clips of it be passed around the internet like a certain hotel heiress. and it has never been seen live or nude, but it is definitely au naturale.”
First, the writers at Glaceau have never heard of proper grammar. Second, how can something be “au naturale” when it only contains an “essence” of the vitamins it says it has. That sounds pretty slack to me. How do you bottle essence anyway?! Imagine waking up Christmas morning as a child and you’re expecting a new bike, but your deadbeat dad just got you the “essence” of a bike. In reality you found a bowling ball. Then your dad asks you if he can use it when you’re not using it. That’s what bottling essence is like. FAIL.
On another note, my web trolling lead me to find a pretty awesome site the other night. Sidetracker.com is a new website that lets couples crowd source their arguments. The fighting couple writes up “her side” and “his side” descriptions of their problem, and the anonymous crowds can vote on who’s right.
There’s already some pretty interesting content on there, and it amazes me that people have the time to actually post their aurguments - let alone make sure the other half responds.
Google has finally released its long hushed browser, and some of us here at Lifecapture have been testing it out. Popular social marketing blog, Mashable has release an article discussing the “7 Really Awesome Things About Google Chrome.“
There is finally a feature in social networking that mirrors the half-attention of real life. You know when someone is gabbing away at you at some party (cocktail, family gathering, what have you), and you’re just nodding your head or maybe adding in an “uh huh”? You can now do that on the internet.
FriendFeed, a twitter like application that is in beta has implemented a “fake following” feature where users are told they are being followed by certain people, when in fact they really aren’t. The notice will show up in their browsers, but updates won’t show up on the followers feed.
With this new feature being implemented, gone will be the days where users expect you to follow their move. This just saves a whole lot of egos from being bruised.
Ever forward a funny email? Did that message contain any advertising? When individual consumers pass advertising messages to their friends, family and co-workers they are participating in viral marketing. Today, whole campaigns are designed to get the public to endorse products to their peers.
Initially the impact of the message is limited, but by motivating readers to propagate the information, the campaign has the potential for exponential growth.
Viral Marketing is considered to be an art rather than a science - it doesn’t allow a lot of control, and you can’t always track results. Advertisers have no way of knowing what the recipients did with their messages. In many cases it’s hard to tell if new customers found the business because of the viral marketing campaign, or through more conventional means.
If done incorrectly, viral marketing breeds SPAM. In too many cases, individuals eager to make more money are motivated to spam the masses. This can be problematic for the client company image.
One way of ensuring the ‘worst case scenario’ doesn’t happen to your campaign is to spend more time than money doing market research, analysis and planning.
The current world population is estimated to be 6,676,120,288 of which 1,407,724,920 are internet consumers. This is a world population internet penetration of 21.1%. Relatively, the most internet consumers are to be found in North America (73.1%), Australia (57.0%) and Europe (47.7%).
In absolute numbers the most internet users are to be found in Asia (530 million), even though the internet penetration in Asia is only 14%. Europe comes in second here with 382 million internet users.
The current Canadian population is estimated to be 32,440,970 of which 22,000,000 are internet consumers. This is a internet penetration of 67%, which is higher than the US penetration. Google sites are currently the most popular and used websites in Canada, followed up by Microsoft and Yahoo sites. Facebook seems to be extremely popular in Canada and cover the #4 spot.
Read our full Internet Consumption Report for more demographics and statistics, featuring the most popular activities on the internet, social networking, mobile social networking and much more.
Search engines are the most important online medium to search for information. 92% of all internet users are frequently making use of search engines. Of all search engines, Google is by far the most used search engine. It provides search results not only on its own website, but powers other search engines’ results as well.
Placement at or near the top of the rankings increases the number of searchers who will visit a site. However, more search engine referrals does not guarantee more sales. SEO is not necessarily an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be much more effective, depending on the site operator’s goals. A successful Internet marketing campaign may drive organic traffic to web pages, but it also may involve the use of paid advertising on search engines and other pages, building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, addressing technical issues that may keep search engines from crawling and indexing those sites, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure their successes, and improving a site’s conversion rate.
Since SEO strongly influences the volume of traffic to your website, it is important to invest into this. There are numerous agencies out there that can assist you to get into the top of the rankings. These agencies are usually quite expensive, so make sure a sitemap is present, issues such as broken links are fixed, etc. so the agency can focus itself on ‘the real work’. Since there are so many agencies out there, picking the right one can be quite hard.
There are a lot of different theories on ‘the perfect method’ to gain a high rank in the search engine result pages (SERP). The algorithms used by the search engines are secret and nobody can give you a 100% guarantee on a good position. However, through extensive research some methods have been proven to be influencing the ranking in a positive way. Which elements are the most important is unknown, but the following methods will help you gaining a better position in the search engine rankings.
The term podcasting derives its name from Apple’s iPod, but to create a podcast or even to listen to one, you don’t need to own an iPod, or any portable music player for that matter. Podcasting is a new type of online media delivery.
Podcasting is broadcasting on iPods or other MP3 Players. Created by ex MTV host Adam Curry, Podcasting is a new method of communication for the internet – unfortunately, it’s still limited to your PC. But thanks to companies like Apple, creator of the iPod,podcasts can be downloaded to your personal media device and accessed at anytime. Your trusty mp3 player can become a true audiovisual media player - this handy companion is not just for music anymore.
Apple is developing iPods that can play videos, handle live streaming, make phone calls, etc. Popular television shows such as “Lost,” and “Desperate Housewives,” are main attractions. Motion picture editors are busy transforming hour long stories into six minute formatted ‘vcasts’ to be played on your iPod. This raises some alarming questions about the future of television programming – perhaps it will become as short as the average viewer’s attention span?
However, will people enjoy watching their favorite television show on a 2.5inch screen? IPod itself is continuously going through changes. The original model had the capacity to save three hundred songs, yet the current versions hold over thousands. Please note that in order to listen to podcasts you do not need an Apple iPod. Any personal media device will probably meet the requirements, even your regular PC.
Podcasting is a fresh medium. There has not yet been a comprehensive marketing plan developed to guarantee positive results with advertising in podcasts. Because the medium is still in its infancy, many advertisers are unsure of how to maximize its potential - pioneers are still experimenting.
More progressive marketers are researching information / entertainment hybrids or what they call ‘focused programming’ that will let them distribute a compelling message through traditional podcast channels. Podcasting’s challenge is similar to video-on-demand’s own situation - What does a brand have to say to consumers on an ongoing basis beyond a buy-me-now message? Brand as content producer is a trend that’s not likely to abate any time soon.
Looking for more resources on how to create and market your own podcast? Read our full article on Podcasting in our article section.
Social Media Marketing is a powerful tool but also hard to control. Researching someone else’s mistakes can give us heads up for any future efforts. Even though we can’t control the outcome of a viral we should always try to minimize the possibilities of a campaign turning into wasted efforts. Let’s take a look at Wal-Mart.
The Wal-Mart case
In August 2007, Wal-Mart started its own Facebook profile, aimed on students. The goal was to stimulate the consumer behavior of students on their student rooms. After a few weeks the original goal of the ‘Wal-Mart Roommate Style Match’ was far forgotten.
Visitors of Wal-Mart’s room decoration page can leave comments; a function intended to receive praise on the decoration tool, or a few suggestions for improvement at worst. Wal-Mart did probably not expect to have their complete Facebook Wall filled with criticism on its low wages, aversion to trade unions and unhealthy competition practices.
Marketers should keep this in mind when offering customers the option to make their opinions public. You could have many satisfied customers, but when you expect a small group of ‘brand terrorists’ to vent their frustrations for the whole world to see, you might want to think twice about opening a brand page on a social network site.
One of the visitors said Wal-Mart’s biggest mistake was putting a ‘Wall’ on their profile.
Wal-Mart – The second attempt
Packed with the experience of their last campaign a new attempt on social marketing was made. Wal-Mart announced the launch of a Social Marketing Campaign by allowing users to review content on their site.
A Social network site was launched for kids on the Wal-Mart website named ‘The Hub’. What happened was, parents had to be informed of every new registration which isn’t very ‘cool’ for the kids, although it’s great for parents. All content got screened by third a third party, while social networks are joined to express yourself in the way you want to. Next to that there were no options to PM or mail each other. Communication possibilities are a basic requirement for a social network site.
The marketers should’ve realized that just one stage of child-protection is the best they can do to keep kids safe while building a popular social network. People need to be given control and have the ability to allow two-way conversations to flow without you being the only one talking.
Another good learning school and example of an unexpected turn out of events. If you found this interesting; more cases are featured in our full article on Social Media Marketing failures.
Podcasting is broadcasting on iPods or other MP3 Players. Created by ex MTV host Adam Curry, Podcasting is a new method of communication for the internet – unfortunately, it’s still limited to your PC. But thanks to companies like Apple, creator of the iPod,podcasts can be downloaded to your personal media device and accessed at anytime. Your trusty mp3 player can become a true audiovisual media player - this handy companion is not just for music anymore. 
