Are you gearing up for your first mobile advertising initiative? Don’t be too concerned - mobile is simply another medium to add to your arsenal to target the right audience. 

In basic terms, it’s about finding the right places to connect your client with the right audience to deliver the right message.  

To help us get it right, Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has created a detailed Mobile Buyers Guide to help us plan and gather basic information that is vital to any successful advertising campaign.  

Since mobile is a distinctive platform, this step can be overlooked due to the misconception that the basic rules of advertising do not apply. 

The Guide will give you the necessary background information as well as provide an overview of the marketplace, definitions as well as practical examples to gain a greater understanding of mobile as an advertising platform.  

According to the Guide: “The best campaigns keep the user experience in mind. For consumers, mobile offers convenient information, entertainment, and exclusivity. Tailoring campaigns that deliver marketing messages that are also convenient, entertaining and offer exclusive content or discounts is the key to success.” 

The Power of Mobile: 

Gartner: Mobile Advertising To Grow 74% In 2009 by MediaPost

Report: Mobile Users Responding to Mobile Advertising by Wireless Week

Mobile Advertising – The Next Big Thing by The Economist

Best

Denice MacDonald

Writing copy for the Web that grabs attention and gets the results you want takes special skill and attention.

Oftentimes, companies will forgo writing web copy and repurpose brochure copy. Writing copy for the web is remarkably different than writing copy for print. Here are a few tips to make sure your web content is spectacular and resonates with site visitors.

Before any web copy is written, the following information should be available to the web copywriter(s).

1. SEO/SEM Report or Findings – the web copywriter will use the report as a guide to segue words or phrases that will help ‘optimize’ the content web page.
2. Persona or Voice of Customer - understanding the attributes of customers that you want to engage at your content web page will help dictate the impact statements or ‘headings and sub heads’ for the section (different and distinct from navigation or menu).
3. Functional Web Page Elements – understanding what other functionality will appear on the page will help the web copywriter(s) craft content that will work collaboratively with feature boxes, call to action scenarios or other promotional items.  Having a layout or ‘wireframe’ of what will appear on the page will work well here.

Now that the web copywriter has a clear vision of the type of customer, how the customer gets to the page and what the customer will likely experience, they are ready to begin writing.

1. Headings and Sub Heads - On the web, you can ‘make or break’ interaction to your web pages with headings. A good one makes it easier for readers to understand the significance of the content and will likely get them to read more. Headings and sub heads should be short, clear and concise ranging from 7 – 10 words.
2. Amount of Content – Begin by envisioning a ‘picture paragraph’ – that is, content that is solid and clear enough to get the point across and fall ‘above the fold’ (fits within the visitor window). Remember that shorter is better – paragraph length should be no more than 50-60 words.
3. Editing – It is always advisable from both a quality assurance perspective and from a visitor’s view to have someone review and edit web copy.  Reason simply, diverse users to the web content may not interpret or understand what has been written and may need some ‘dumbing down’ for the content to resonate. 

Whether you're trying to sell products or services at a business or commercial site or if you just want to let people know the latest at your personal site, content is just as important as any of the other elements that constitute the overall brand strategy for your web site – chose wisely.

Resources:

Net Words: Creating High-Impact Online Copy by Nick Usborne

Content is King! Evaluating Content Management Systems

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Cloud computing—in simple terms— is virtualized resources served over the Internet. Cloud computing is often provided "as a service" in the form of 'infrastructure as a service’ (IaaS), or more commonly as ‘software as a service’ (SaaS).  

Why the buzz? Cloud computing customers can minimize out of pocket or long-term budgetary needs when they incur new demand or fluctuation requirements for their infrastructure or massive web properties. Instead of having to invest time and money to keep websites and infrastructures operational, cloud computing customers simply pay for the
resources they use, as they use them.  

The direct benefit of cloud computing
is agility and flexibility — meaning that customers no longer need to forecast drastic upbeat in traffic – they can simply promote their websites aggressively and on-demand.  

Learn More:

What Cloud Computing Really Means by InfoWorld – discusses the various solution offerings including SaaS.

Cloud versus cloud: A guided tour of Amazon, Google, AppNexus, and GoGrid by InfoWorld – provides insight into various vendors – including pricing and relationship differences.

What is Cloud Computing by Salesforce via YouTube - Salesforce currently is ahead of the pack and does a great job of explaining the semantics and benefits of The Cloud.

Best

Denice MacDonald

So what exactly is Google Buzz? Buzz combines all of the social networking attributes like conversing, sharing and updating  -- all within the existing Gmail and Google.com infrastructure.

Buzz's features include:

FRIENDS LISTS - friends are added automatically who you have emailed on Gmail (there is also public and private sharing if you so desire)

SHARING - combines sources like Picasa and Twitter into a single feed, and it includes full-sized photo browsing

REAL TIME INTEGRATION - instead of emailing you with updates, like Facebook, Buzz features emails that update dynamically with all Buzz thread content

RECOMMENDATIONS - puts friend-of-friend content into your stream, even if you're not acquainted. Recommendations learn over time with your feedback.

To see how it all 'comes together' - view the latest YouTube video on Buzz:

Best

Denice MacDonald

Compete has recently released Audience Profiles on Compete.com. This free offering allows website owners to gain never before seen insights about their online audiences.  

Audience Profiles allow site owners to look beyond standard demographics and discover the lifestyle preferences, hobbies, and interests of their online audiences. These insights can then be used to create highly targeted marketing campaigns and attract more customers. 

All you need do is go to audience profiles at compete.com and sign up for a myCompete account and copy some simple XL code onto your home page.   

Within a month, you should be able to see some quantifiable data on your web audience – information that will help you create defined messaging and targeted marketing campaigns. 

Compete.com is a ‘must-have’ resource for web analytics, competitor analysis and now, audience profiles.  

To learn more about Compete.com – go here. 

To learn more about the significance of Audience Analysis – go here. 

Best

Denice MacDonald  

In a recent Mashable post The Maturation of Social Media ROI; Brian Solis helps C-suite execs understand the validity and moving ROI target of social media. Is anybody getting this 'measurement thing' right? 

It is quite apparent that social media strategists in their eagerness to prove social media's importance are literally creating bogus measures of performance – not to mention their own jargon to explain results – or lack of results.   

Organizations need to establish what needs to be accomplished, what should be conveyed and what should be measured before any actual engagement. Like most campaigns that require integration and defined ROI, begin connecting social media activity with a clearly defined end game.

To learn more about ROI, social media and the strategies that bind, read The Maturation of Social Media ROI.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .   .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     . 

Brian Solis is a principal at new media agency FutureWorks, and author of the upcoming book, Engage. You can connect with him on Twitter or Facebook. 

Best

Denice MacDonald 

With budgets still tight, how are companies managing to stay connected while bringing engaging and relevant messages to customers?  

Successful companies are learning that if they use interactive elements such as video, polls, FLASH and RSS feeds within their e-mail marketing campaigns, they see higher conversion rates and a stronger connection to their customers.

Video, if created properly, can really enhance your e-mail message and recipient interactivity. By using an enticing image with descriptive impact statements, recipients will be eager to click and link to the video. Include the file size, length of video or formats supported. Use flash video (FLV) whenever possible to achieve higher compression rates. 

• HOW TO: Create Online Video That Works by David Rich

Polls are a great way to entice recipients and engage audiences that want to be heard. Create topics or subjects that will resonate with your intended audience. Provide immediate results, along with associated support material, newsletters or additional links.  

• Best practices: Using polls in e-mail marketing by Karen J. Bannan

RSS feeds are another way to keep customers connected post e-mailing especially if your company has a blog, dedicated community or news section. RSS feeds provide the right amount of content to recipients on their terms making it the perfect connection outside of targeted e-mails.

• Newbie's Guide to Google Reeder - by Josh Lowensohn

In summary, once you have created an on-going e-mail campaign with customers, remember to include interactive elements and content that will continually engage your customers. Remember to measure the effectiveness of each campaign and refine where necessary.

Best,

Denice MacDonald

In today’s plethora of blogs, tweets and slideshare, how can you increase search engine rankings for your own organization? Simply by using social networks to help elevate your brand presence.

For example, I read and routinely respond to industry blogs that have a similar audience as MacDonald Consulting. 

Of particular interest is a blog response to an associate I’ve done work with:

Likewise, I take every opportunity I can to respond to questions on LinkedIn - hallmarking my industry breadth while helping fellow colleagues to be successful:   

Lastly, I’m asked permission to use my blog as an example in this scenario:   

This interaction has garnered MacDonald Consulting high rankings in Google search results while aiding in expanding my own social network.

Take some time each week to answer blogs, syndicate your own blog content and answer LinkedIn questions. See what happens. You’ll be amazed how quickly your own personal rankings now appear on first page results.

Best

Denice MacDonald

As Twitter continues to dominate the Internet, we can naturally conclude that users are adding more and more followers each day. How will you stand out as a differentiated brand amidst all the noise and thousands of other tweets?

1. Elevate Your Brand Name

Smart brands use Twitter in meaningful ways, and most of them use their brand name as a way to make sure customers can find and recognize them. See how these top brands are elevating their presence through creative use of their unique 'twitter' value proposition.

Resource: 40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them 

2. Custom Twitter Backgrounds

Most Twitter follows scan their tweets quickly to find what is of interest to them. In order to standout, you can begin to use images or custom backgrounds to get noticed.

Customer Backgrounds: TwitterImage 

3. Build Your Twitter Brand with Memes

Hash tags are ways to denote an important tag word used in a Twitter update. The purpose in doing so is to build a community around a given tag word, which encourages more activity around a topic of interest. Search engines and dedicated Twitter memes can pick up on these hash-tagged keywords and provide a streamlined, niche set of Twitter updates relevant to that topic of interest. It can also help you build your brand.

Global Tags for Twitter (Updated Daily): Twemes 

Great Resource:

50 Useful Twitter Tools for Writers and Researchers 

Related Posts:

Twitter Can Be a Real Tweet

Can't Get Enough of Twitter: It's Become Universal!

Best

Denice MacDonald

The application of social video - often referred to as using the strategy of video as the central piece for social interaction and storytelling online - is beginning to grow rapidly.  

Take for example Samsung's HD Camera Phone Trick. That YouTube clip was created and produced for Samsung Mobile by London's Viral Factory. Its traffic and engagement patterns were tracked and analyzed by Visible Measures – with unprecedented results.  

The social video piece was specifically designed for social interaction – prompting the consumer to take the challenge and solve the puzzle. The formula was a simple one (you’ll need to view to see why). To be perfectly honest – I was drawn in and wanted to take the challenge!       

What does this engaging video tell us? 

1. Modern brand building with social video is a necessary part of the marketing mix
2. Due to its authenticity, engagement with video is beginning to rank higher and more desirable in comparison to TV viewing or radio broadcast
3. Bottom-line, people like to watch video, share it and get involved with it making it a natural word of mouth strategy

Obviously, everyone who uses social video as part of their marketing mix is curious about direct measurement – meaning, does it really work and feed the bottom-line?

As social video become more active, click thru activity as well as viewing and registration are good indicators of brand lift, interaction and sharing offering much better results than highly charged broadcast metrics. Based on the Samsung example – how could argue with its success?  

BTW – there’s a follow-on video that reveals the puzzle. Here’s the answer. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

You've spent a lot of time building up your reputation and image both online and off, so it's important to make sure that someone or something has not jeopardized your brand.

One of the simplest and easiest ways to track your reputation is to use Google Alerts. With this free service, you can search either all of Google's properties, or you can specify that only News, Blogs, Web, Video, or Groups is searched. You can then configure the Alerts results to be emailed to you either as it happens, once a day, or once a week. There is also a page where you can edit the alerts once they are created or delete them when they are no longer in use. 

If making a good name for yourself online is a priority, it's time to take a proactive approach to getting your name out there the way you want.  

BUSINESS SOCIAL NETWORKS – Complete your profile in its entirety and connect with key professionals in your network.

BLOGS – Consider a business blog and one that you contribute to – showing you are a thought leader will aid in elevating you or your products in your industry. Likewise, use blogs to amend or respond to bad hype.

WEB 2.0 PR – Get news interviews, podcasts, webinars with clients 'live' online. Third party testimonials by key constituents regarding your products and services will go a long way in building brand reputation.

LINKING – If you have a web site, consider carefully where and how inbound and outbound links are connected – bad links will reflect poorly on your brand.

SUB-DOMAINS - Add a sub-domain for careers, corporate and/or product info for little or no cost.  Not only will sub-domains elevate your search results but add depth to your reputation.

PPC/ONLINE ADVERTISING – This can only help protect your brand and will help influence visitors to see who is the real website that should be visited.

SEARCH - Take control of the visible results of any search related to your brand. By taking a coordinated approach to search engine optimization, you take greater control of the other nine slots.  

FREE MONITORING TOOLS:

Similarly to Google Alerts, Yahoo! Pipes is also a good tool for aggregating and combining feeds into one central repository.

Using Twitter search you can locate any instances of your name and decide whether you want to tweet back or ignore them. 

If you have a blog, then you have to be on Technorati. Technorati tracks “blog reactions,” or blogs that link to yours. Search for your brand on Technorati, and subscribe to RSS alerts so that when someone blogs about you, you find out.

Yacktrack lets you search for comments on your content from various sources, such as Blogger, Digg, FriendFeed, Stumbleupon, and Wordpress blogs.

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Website Magazine's March, 2010 cover story is about social media for business. And, as an educated audience of Web professionals in the industry, they want your input!

Please take just a couple of minutes to take their 2010 Social Media Initiatives survey. They want to know how social media is affecting your business, and what some of your objectives might be in 2010.

The survey is very brief, and they will share responses (anonymously, in aggregate) with all of their readers in the upcoming issue of Website Magazine. 

Take the survey now.  

Why should you care?

Social Media is getting quite a bit of hype – but is anyone truly doing it correctly?  With a lot of chatter and just plain noise – web strategist may need to get back to the basics: who is the intended audience and is the organization creating the right conversation that invokes engagement and sharing? I’ll be anxious to share the results of what others are doing in 2010.

More About Website Magazine (Denice's favorite web resource)

Website Magazine is the one magazine to focus exclusively on the business of running a website: tips for successful websites, solutions for enhancing website traffic, the latest Internet industry trends and statistics, as well as news analysis on the Internet industry.

Subscriptions (complimentary and professional/print and online)

Advertise (lots of opportunities and great pricing)

Best

Denice MacDonald

As always in January, we start to see a plethora of web predictions for the year. This year is not any different with the marked transition of mobile video, Android technology and geo mapping. In my estimation, the top technology to watch will be Social CRM.

We’ve seen the rise of Twitter and Facebook as social communication tools. This year, those modes of real-time communication will find their way deeper into the enterprise. Salesforce.com is set to launch Chatter, its real-time stream of enterprise data which interfaces with Twitter and Facebook and turn them into business tools. Startups like Yammer and Bantam Live are also making business more social.

As recently as last March, Jeremiah Owyang was blogging on The Future of Twitter: Social CRM. In that blog, Jeremiah inferred the various directions Twitter could go: create their own brand management system that they can resell to the world’s companies to monitor, alert, track, prioritize, triage, assign, follow-up, and report on the interactions with brands.

However, there is still one huge quandary – can CRM be ‘automated’ – that is, respond fast enough (daily, by the hour, by the minute) while still providing a personal touch to help and assist customers, continue to build relations and trust?

Again, Jeremiah Owyang presents and interesting blog on Matrix: The Four Social Support Strategies wherein he discusses the various ways in which to interact with customers – specifically the fourth strategy (automated social support) – companies will have the ability to quickly scale by responding to customers faster, and more accurately, using automated responses.

Bottom-line – whatever your social media strategies are for 2010, you’ll need to watch closely the rapidly changing landscape of Social CRM.

Best

Denice MacDonald

Sources:

10 Technologies That Will Rock 2010 by Erick Schonfeld, January, 2010

The Future of Twitter: Social CRM by Jeremiah Owyang, March, 2009

Matrix: The Four Social Support Strategies by Jeremiah Owyang, November, 2009

With the latest entre of Google’s Nexus One and Droid by Motorola, there’s been a lot of buzz around the next generation of smartphones powered by Android technology herein referred to as superphones. 

Open Source Operating System and Software Platform - Why the hoopla? The Android was developed with one simple idea: Open up mobile devices to enable greater innovation that will benefit users everywhere – through open source collaboration. 

Technical Attributes - Android is a mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel. It was initially developed by Android Inc., a firm later purchased by Google, and lately by the Open Handset Alliance.  It allows developers to write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries. 

Market Share Predictions - In the Fall of 2009, Gartner Inc. predicted that by 2012, Android would become the world's second most popular smartphone platform, behind only the Symbian OS which powers Nokia phones. Also predicted: BlackBerry will fall from 2nd to 5th place, iPhone would remain in 3rd place, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile would remain in 4th place¹. 

View this YouTube video to get a full grasp of Android capabilities.

Best

Denice MacDonald

[¹Source: Android to grab No. 2 spot by 2012, says Gartner from ComputerWorld October, 2009]

Google has a new feature that allows users the ability to leave annotations or notes within in analytics charts, helping to explain sudden spikes or drops in traffic.

Annotations allow analytic users to leave shared or private notes right on the over-time graph in an effort to let users bring intelligence to data.

The Annocation's feature will be available in January of 2010.

To learn more about this powerful new feature before it's official launch, access this YouTube video.

More about "Annotations":

From Google Blog: Holiday Bonus - More Great Features 

From TechCrunch: Google Analytics Gets An Upgrade With Annotations, New API And More

Best,

Denice MacDonald

As web sites become more sophisticated, so does the need to concentrate on targeted audiences. I’m amazed that most organizations cannot clearly state who their target audience is. In fact, they typically reply with a long list of diverse people. When probed about which are the most important or relevant, they typically say that they all are.

The reality is that if you build a web site for everyone, you will attract no one. It is critical that you concentrate on your target audience and design and create content that will resonate with them. Does this mean that you ignore everyone else? Absolutely not. If built correctly, the web site will cater to a clearly defined audience while appealing to the masses.

A good way to get a handle on your target audience is to create two or three personas that describe the main user segments to your web site. A persona is a brief fictional biography that captures the essence of the individual you are targeting.

When creating personas, it’s always best to talk to actual customers or prospects. If you can’t do that, try talking with secondary sources — people who know the actual customers well.  

Developing personas usually starts with collecting some demographic data, such as age, education, and job title. But the goal is to collect the qualities of the intended user such as information on their web habits, behaviors and needs.

The result of this analysis will be the information you will need to attract, engage and convert visitors. 

Sources

User Personas & Wireframes: The First Ten Seconds — by Charles B. Kreitzberg, Ph.D. of Website Magazine

Making Your Web Site More Appealing: Start With Audience Analysis — by Bob Savar of World Wide Web Communications

Importance of Web Site Audience Analysis  — by Gene DeFazzio of Buzzle.com

Vendor Recommendations

Need a good Information Architect?  Check out these exceptional User Experience and IA providers:

Deb Reiser

Brian Molstad - Molstad Consulting

Best

Denice MacDonald

According to several leading experts, social media is a number one priority in 2010. Social media will be used by organizations to lift their brand, stay connected to customers while using networks to grow their lead-gen pipelines. To learn how your organization can capitalize on what others are doing, check out these ‘top’ resources, articles and blogs from leading subject matter experts.   

Social media on marketers' menu for 2010 by Helen Leggatt, Biz Report   

"It looks like social media is on the menu for most marketers next year. A survey of almost 2,000 MediaPost subscribers found that over half plan to have "a presence on social networks" as part of their marketing mix in 2010..."  

10 Ways Social Media Will Change In 2010 by Ravit Lichtenberg from Ustrategy.com

"It is impossible to separate social media from the online world. Facebook reached 350 million users last month -- 70% of whom are outside the US -- and it accounts for 25% of the Web's traffic, according to Pew nearly one in five people on the web use Twitter or some other service to check status messages, and 94% of enterprises plan to maintain or increase their investment in enterprise social media tools. The social media conversation is no longer considered a Web 2.0 fad -- it is taking place in homes, small businesses and corporate boardrooms, and extending its reach into the nonprofit, education and health sectors. From feeling excitement, novelty, bewilderment, and overwhelmed, a growing number of people now speak of social media as simply another channel or tactic..."

Why You Need A Social Media Policy in 2010 by Vanessa DiMauro, Customer Think   

"Policies are dull. No one wants to create them, no one likes to read them and certainly, few desire the job of enforcing them.  But they can play an important role in outlining the rules of engagement around a particular set of online behaviors and have a strong role to play in the face of new situations where the there are no standards.  This is especially true with the wild west world of social media in business..."  

Six Social Media Trends for 2010 by David Armano, Harvard Business Review   

"In 2009, we saw exponential growth of social media. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to outpace MySpace. So what could social media look like in 2010? In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive — at least, that's my guess. What are the near-term trends we could see as soon as next year..."

Best to my network this holiday season!   

Denice MacDonald 

Anyone who has a vested interest in a corporate or personal blog knows it takes time and effort to produce a great blog. I personally belong to a dozen blogs and try to read them each day. From a personal standpoint, I can tell you what keeps me clicking back and what I look for in other blogs.

Here are my 'must-haves' for a successful blog.

Blogger shows enthusiasm for his/her blog. If it's written to fill space, I can tell. I’m only interested in blogs that surprise, delight, amuse and inform.

The blog is well written. I read certain blogs because I not only enjoy reading them, but I’m truly getting information that is important to me – in a style of writing that is more conversational and with the bloggers point of view (good or bad) in mind.

The blog has links to other blogs, newsfeeds or other relevant information. I want to know that this blog is going to get me the next relevant click of information. I love resources, links back to other blogs and creditable information so that I can understand the bloggers opinion or slant.

The blog is updated regularly. There’s nothing worse than finding a great blog only to find out that the blogger blogs on a sporadic basis. I want a blog to be committed to me, the reader, by providing ongoing, updated content – especially if I have subscribed to their feeds.

The blog embraces comments and feedback. I welcome an opportunity to comment on content and provide my opinion on topics. More sophisticated blogs allows sign in and the ability to post comments making the blog very interactive and viral in nature.

The blog is properly tagged and categorized. Make it easy for me to move around your blog, clicking on other categories or relevant tags.

More Great Bloggers:

The Rules Behind Creating a Great Blog by Tom Hung, ProBlogger

27 Tips for Building a Kick-ass Blog by Ahmed Bilal

What Makes a Great Company Blog by Mack Collier

Best

Denice MacDonald

Twitter creator Jack Dorsey recently gave the first public demonstration of his hotly-anticipated latest venture “Square” – a device that allows its users to make credit card payments through their cell phones.

Square is a card reader about one inch in length that attaches to the headphone socket of most cell phones. 

The device contains a magnetic strip reader that allows a user to swipe a card, which will then coordinate online with card issuers and banks through a mobile application on the user’s cell phone. 

Basically, the Square works very similarly to card swipers that you see in most retail stores.

The device is scheduled to be available for iPods and iPhones in March 2010. 

View the latest "Square" YouTube video from TechCrunch    

Sources: 

After Twitter, Comes Square - By Richard Neil Ilagan, The News Chronicle

Creator Reveals Square Mobile-pay Device - By Barry Neild, CNN

Best

Denice MacDonald

Grooveshark is the most inclusive and fully-featured on-demand music service on the Web. With an unmatched catalog of music, millions of users flock to the site to listen to their favorite artists as well as discover music and share tracks with friends.

Listening to any song instantly, creating playlists to return to later, or simply accessing a quick favorite song are the fundamentals of Grooveshark's offering.

How are they capturing marketshare?

Grooveshark delivers the world's music to the world more easily than any other site online and receives its support from advertising as well as a premium VIP subscription service. In fact, visitors and subscribers can opt out of advertising for $3 per month. 

Also, the much anticipated Grooveshark Mobile applications will further monetize the service and Grooveshark's unique and innovative platform for breaking artists keeps it one step ahead in being a competitive, sustainable and profitable business.

Bottomline, these guys are awesome and you need to check them out! 

Features – see how unique and differentiated Grooveshark is relative to other music on-demand sites 

Free Stuff – all types of wallpaper from Abstract to Shark wallpaper free for download

Join Now – fast, easy and worth it!

Best,

Denice MacDonald 

[Source info and company background taken directly from Grooveshark]