by Jennifer Laycock

A round up of what Jennifer thought was worth sharing today. From the latest numbers on how much businesses spend on search marketing each year to the need to dig deep in analytics to simple reminders of why social media matters, Jen offers up half a dozen articles worth your time.

• CNet’s Jim Kerstetter reports that online ad spending will continue to boom, despite the overwhelming buzz of an economy headed south. In fact, online advertising is expected to have increased nearly twenty percent this year to nearly $24 billion. According to Jupiter Research, online ad budgets continue to grow as well, sucking dollars from more traditional offline capmaigns. It will come as no surprise to those in the industry that Search marketing continues to capture the largest portion of those dollars.
• On the heels of my own article about tapping in to some of the great features of LinkedIn, I’ve spotted a great tutorial on the service from the folks over at Common Craft.

  (Hat tip to Communication Overtones for spotting this.)

• Are your analytics suffering from a case of Velleity? (Do you even know what Velleity means?) Matt Bailey whips out his word of the day toilet paper and offers up a great blog post reminding us that wanting dating isn’t enough. You have to learn how to look for it and how to use it. Great post for those still trying to justify investing in good analytics.
• Jake Matthews over at 10e20 offers a nice recap of why Social Media is such an important arena for companies that do business online. It’s not just about getting a ton of traffic from StumbleUpon or amassing a list of followers who hang on your every trip to the gym via Twitter. Jake points out eight key benefits social media can bring to your business. Every last one is well worth the cost of admission.
• Adobe is claiming Flash files will now be “search friendly” because they’ve developed new technology to “read” the content within Flash files and have released it to the engines. Interesting, but don’t get ahead of yourselves. The engines would still have to test and then decide to adopt this into their indexes. Who knows if or when that will happen.
• Barry shares some mocked up screen shots of how Yahoo might start integrating Google AdWords ads into the mix once their partnership is firmed up later this summer.

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Puppy’s Picks for 07/01/08

by Jennifer Laycock

A round up of what Jennifer thought was worth sharing today. From her first “Plurkshop” to social media espionage to a couple different viewpoints of creating online content, Jen offers up half a dozen articles worth your time.

• If you’ve taken the time to work on optimizing your site, or have hired a firm to do it, you need to read Lee Odden’s article from last week’s AllBusiness.com. Lee outlines four common issues that can quickly tank a search engine optimization campaign. It’s a quick read and a good reminder of how important it is for companies to view SEO as an ongoing issue to be considered each and every time they update their site.
• Bet you’ve never heard of a “Plurkshop” before. (Unless you follow Mack Collier on Twitter in which case you know all about them.) Despite my personal belief that Plurk is backed by big pharma companies that want to encourage the spread of ADHD so they can sell more drugs, I sucked it up and joined in a Plurk conversation last night. The “Plurkshop” was led by Amber Naslund of The Brand Box and focused on the challenge of fragmented conversation in social media. In other words, how do you keep track of what people are saying about your company when they’re saying it on Twitter, blogs, Plurk, YouTube, Digg, Kurtsy and a million other sites? There are no solid solutions, but the conversation was very interesting. Amber recaps it today over at The Brand Box.
• Speaking of Social Media, Rohit asks if concerns about social media espionage are just around the corner. I’ve wondered that myself, especially as I see more people sharing more and more details of their personal lives.
• One of the biggest challenges for small businesses when it comes to writing content for their site isn’t so much learning how to build keywords into the mix, it’s learning how to do that while still creating copy that sells. That’s why it’s essential to make sure whoever is responsible for writing your copy has the ability to mix search engine friendly writing with customer friendly writing. There’s a great post over at Copyblogger right now that looks at the difference between hard sell copywriting and soft sell copywriting.
• Anita Campbell looks at the glut of content on the Web today and examines what small businesses can do to stand out from the crowd with their own content in an article at Inc. Magazine. With more than 261 million Google results for “top ten” lists, Anita reminds us the bar has been raised and the best way for small business to own a piece of the content pie is to go “narrow and deep” in your focus. Good advice for targeting the long tail as well!
• Apparently Google has chilled a bit and decided SEOs might actually be worth hiring. In a post over at Google Webmaster Central Blog, they mention an update to the “What’s an SEO?” article in the Webmaster Help Center. The new version makes it clear Google has no problems with search marketers and even offers some useful questions to ask while hunting for an SEO.

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Puppy’s Picks 06/30/08

While every Internet marketing start-up could benefit from social marketing sites, many newbie Internet marketers are still not sure how to utilize them.

Sure, social sites give you a lot of interactivity and allow users to personalize their sites, compile a list of favorite links, videos, music, photos, documents and share it all with friends and visitors, but how exactly does that help you develop your Internet marketing start-up business?

The first thing to understand is that there are two basic types of social networking sites, so you will need to be clear in your own mind about what it is you want to do - bookmark or network?

Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking sites allow you to build and organize your favourite links (i.e. bookmarks) AND you can choose to restrict them to selected friends or make them public and share them with everybody on the Internet.

The big advantage of social bookmarking is that your favourite links are no longer tied to one specific browser accessible from just one computer in one location.

Social bookmarking services enable users to save bookmarks on a remote web server which can be accessed anywhere where there is an online connection.

Social bookmarking sites usually categorize links with a “tagging” system which allows users to choose keywords with which to “tag” their bookmarks. Sites can then be retrieved via the tags.

You can encourage others to bookmark your articles, blogs or webpages by adding a Digg, Stumbleupon, TwitThis or other button on your page.

However, there are so many social bookmarking services, that if you added all their buttons you’d end up with more buttons than content on your page! Instead, use a service like addthis.com, which places one button on your site for a wide range of social bookmarking sites.

Social Networking Sites

Social networking sites offer a convenient method of connecting with people who share similar interests to you.

Sites like Facebook and MySpace allow you to post your advertisements and promote your products, as long as you do not simply (and stupidly) send out spam. A good site with regularly updated original content will attract traffic.

MySpace or Facebook?

It has recently been noised abroad that MySpace is no good for Internet marketing, but that is not so. It was simply a case of too many Internet marketers not knowing who their audience was.

The point is that MySpace tends to attract a younger age bracket with less money to spend than does Facebook. Get to know the sites and adapt your content to each one, don’t simply post the same stuff to both.

Another reason why some people don’t think social networking sites are good for business is that they do no more than set up a profile. Then they get stuck, don’t know what to do, do nothing. Merely being there is not enough! Find ways to communicate with the people who are there on their terms, not yours.

Go careful, though, that you don’t go overboard with the crazy applications and the “late night partying confessions” stuff if it is not the sort of thing you want your clients to see!

Whereas social bookmarking sites are simply sites for you to collect and organize your favorite links, social networking sites, being more sociable, require more time and regular fresh content updates. With social networking sites you have to work on your image!

Search Engines Love Web 2:0!

Another reason why Internet marketers should build a presence on both social bookmarking and social networking sites is because search engines LOVE them!

Search engine spiders regularly follow links posted on these sites. So, by building up your links on these sites, your website backlinks will grow, and so will your search engine rankings, which is what you need if your Internet marketing start-up is to survive, grow and thrive.

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If you found this article helpful you might like to visit http://grasp-the-nettle.com for more free articles on Internet marketing to help you master the net. You might also like to sign up to my FREE Internet Marketing Start-Up newsletter, which comes complete with a library of Internet marketing ebooks (worth a total of $136.75) for you to download free of charge. David Hurley lives in Japan, where he works as an English language consultant, editor, and Internet marketer.

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Use Social Marketing Sites To Give Your Internet Marketing Start-Up A Helping Hand

by Mack Collier

More businesses than ever are exploring the possibility of using social
media tools and sites to help grow their business.