KeywordSpy^TM - a powerful web-based keyword intelligence system - has announced the unveiling of KeywordSpy Version 3.0. 

What’s so great about this upgrade? Version 3.0 is a compilation of user feedback – elevating the product version to an all new level based on customer interaction and use. 

New features include:

1. Daily scans of over 127 million keywords in our database.
2. Advanced searching options including destination url and ad copy searches.
3. ROI Indicator to easily pinpoint profitable keywords and ad copy combination.
4. Competitor sub-domains related & misspelled keyword results.
5. Support over 80 major affiliate networks for a high-end affiliate research.

 If you are interested in learning more about this great product, sign up now for a free trial.

About KeywordSpy

KeywordSpy currently operates in USA, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Through this keyword tool and keyword software, you can perform advanced keyword research and keyword tracking to study what your competitors have been advertising in their Adwords campaigns and Other PPC campaigns. You can now get complete in-depth analysis, stats, budget, affiliates & ad copies of your competitors. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

According to Susan Moskwa, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Webmaster Central Blog: “URLs are like the bridges between your website and a search engine's crawler.  Crawlers need to be able to find and cross those bridges (i.e., find and crawl your URLs) in order to get to your site's content”. 

If your URLs are complicated or redundant, crawlers are going to spend time tracing and retracing their steps. However, if your URLs are organized and lead directly to distinct content, crawlers can spend their time accessing your content rather than crawling through empty pages, or crawling the same content over and over via different URLs.

Susan provides exceptional learning in a slideshare that can be accessed here.

More tips:

Length of URLs - keep your URLs as short as possible and try to remove all unnecessary folder names. The shorter the URL, the higher the keyword density and the better for your placement in search engine results. Likewise, the closer your main keywords are to the beginning of the URL, the better.

Keywords in URLs - use the same main keywords your webpage is optimized for as this should be the search phrase you want to rank high on. Expanding the range of keywords should not be done in an URL, this should be done in <h2> or <h3> tags or plain text.

Use Hyphens - try not to use underscores in URLs as they are not used as dividers by Google. Use hyphens, periods, or commas instead. Hyphens or dashes are more user friendly and people will find your URL easier to remember. If you use underscore, you will actually have to search on “keyword1_keyword2” to find your webpage. Using hyphens will allow your pages to be found using “keyword1-keyword2” etc. 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Google Voice gives you a single phone number that rings all your phones, saves your voicemail online, and transcribes your voicemail to text.  

Other cool features include the ability to listen in on messages while they are being left and the ability to make low cost international calls.   

Your Google Voice number is tied to you rather than a device or a location – so it stays with you as you move, change jobs or switch phone companies. Your forwarding phones may change but your Google number remains the same, so you don’t need to send out updates all the time about numbers to reach you at.  

The best part? You can record custom greetings for your favorite callers or block annoying callers by marking them as SPAM. 

Google Voice is Free - GET AN INVITE NOW! 

To learn more, watch this great overview on how it works or access the Google Voice Blog 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Before Web 2.0, organizations would take old brochure copy, poor graphics, a couple of cheesy widgets and off they go to build a web site in bad html code. With today’s user expectations, web sites have to be a bit more sophisticated, offering the best-of-breed in user experience and delivery.

To truly build a great web site presence, compete on a level playing field and convert customers, organizations must do a bit of homework before developing their web site.

Review competitors – in order to compete, organizations need to see how they fare against the competition. A comprehensive competitor’s analysis will allow the organization to provide a similar interactive experience when vying for customers to their products or services.

Know your audience – most web sites try to cater to a broad-base audience using a ‘hit or miss’ approach. With today’s web savvy user, web sites need to address exactly who their customers are. In most cases, audiences are looking to be entertained, informed or persuaded - but knowing specific industry focus, generational disposition and online behavior will go a long way in getting your audience to engage, drill down and act.

Create relevant content – with the growth of social communities, blogs and rich video media, content can be served up in many formats. Key to the use of these great Web 2.0 applications is providing relevant content to users.  Similar to ‘knowing your audience’, organizations must segment content based upon visitor types.

Enhance the experience – the visitor experience relates to ease of use, access to relevant content and tools that will help engage, connect and convert customers. Reviewing appropriate navigation, Flash or graphics, web tools or gadgets as well as call-to-action scenarios will enhance the experience and have the visitor coming back for more.

Integrate online and offline strategies – successful organizations have realized that integrating online and offline marketing strategies is the best way to tap into a large customer base and get customers to spend more. Moreover, when an integrated strategic plan is executed for online and offline simultaneously, customers get a single, unified message from the organization that reflects a cohesive brand.

More Related Strategy:

Engagement Redirects the Marketing Trajectory

Web Site Success Requires Companywide Collaboration

Web Personalization - No Longer the Next Frontier

Best

Denice MacDonald 

Whether you intend to use SharePoint as a dedicated internal content management system, have a need for forms processing or merely want a platform for social computing, this is not a product that can be simply turned over to the IT department to install and manage. 

Organizations that want to accomplish the most with SharePoint will need to align business and IT teams to constructively design a specific approach or strategy – reason simply, SharePoint seems easy to use, but somewhat difficult to master. 

The first and foremost step, develop a strategy around business needs.

What are your business needs and how can SharePoint help in addressing those needs? The following are examples of business requirements ahead of a SharePoint install:

1. Improve communications and documentation between diverse locations by providing a central repository for production procedures and information
2. Provide a method for documentation change management sharing information
3. Reduce the cost and time of resolving problems by providing a central portal for users (staff or employees) to search processes, procedures and get up to date documentation
4. Provide the ability to work on documentation at the earliest emergence, before interaction with other processes and large volumes of users
5. Project managers can share documents and collaborate with other users on projects; using an integrated set of tools
6. Provide collaboration tools such as wiki’s and blogs within the context of an intranet allowing feedback, surveying and access to versioned documents  

Once these objectives have been defined, it will be much easier to align goals to SharePoint technology.   

LEARN MORE:

From Microsoft

• Topics to consider before deploying SharePoint Products and Technologies

• Office SharePoint Server 2007 Technical Library in Compiled Help format

• Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit v3.0 x86

• Analyzing Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Usage

• Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Trial Version

Top 10 Benefits of MS SharePoint Services for Document Management by Positive NPV

The SharePoint Report by CMSWatch

Best

Denice MacDonald

Common Tag is an open tagging format developed to make content more connected, accessible and engaging. Unlike text tags, Common Tags are references to unique, well-defined concepts, complete with metadata and their own URLs.  

Specifically, Common Tag format is based on RDFa, a standard mechanism for placing structured content within HTML documents. The format uses the URIs of concepts defined on the Web as a way of anchoring the meaning of Tag objects. Common concepts can be found, among others, in two big databases of structured content or controlled vocabularies, as librarians call it – Freebase and DBpedia.  

According to the Common Tag web site, "The Common Tag format was developed to address the current shortcomings of tagging and help everyone - including end users, publishers, and developers - get more out of Web content. With Common Tag, content is tagged with unique, well-defined concepts - everything about New York City is tagged with one concept for New York City and everything about jaguar the animal is tagged with one concept for jaguar the animal.” 

Faviki is involved in the development of the  new open tagging format – Common Tag, together with AdaptiveBlue, DERI (NUI Galway), Yahoo!, Zemanta, and Zigtag. This is the first time that this number of web companies have stepped together from day one to introduce a tagging standard.

Resources:

Common Tag - The New Semantic Layer by Website Magazine, June, 2009

Will You Implement Yahoo's Common Tag? by Search Engine Roundtable, June, 2009

Best

Denice MacDonald

You finally launched a much-anticipated Web 2.0+ web site and you can’t wait to hunker down and review your analytics. How do you gauge if your analytics for your site are appropriate, measurable and definable? And most importantly, who in your organization would benefit? 

Moving from a silo to a working team 

In the past, most web sites were created and managed within a silo. Now, it is recommended that organizations have a dedicated department or team leader focused to web statistics, watching the performance of various campaigns and then analyzing certain key metrics leading to higher ROI. After keen observation and reporting, useful recommendations are made to the various departments regarding how to increase conversions. 

Connecting the dots 

In many cases, the statistical information from web pages are important to the sales and marketing department as they relate to collaborative online and offline initiatives. The information technology department may find the numbers helpful in determining browser and network bandwidth needs. Web designers would be interested in the numbers to determine if each web page is attracting the number of visitors it should.

If a web page, or the entire site is underperforming, the web traffic statistics will reflect this and specific parts of the web site may need to be re-designed to attract more traffic. Lastly, management will want to see that the ongoing investment in the web site is yielding a definable ROI. Connecting disciplines and/or departments will help the organization perform on all four cylinders - defining and redefining web strategy as necessary. 

Web analytics – the PLAN 

Start with figuring out what you want to do with web analytics. You need to have a plan to have an idea of what your return will be on your investment. Again, this will include collaboration with other departments and disciplines. Then, you will need to select an analytics tool that works in tandem with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the organization resulting in reporting that makes sense to the various stakeholders. 

The right tools

Not all analytic tools are alike. Take time to review and possibly demo various options. Here are a few popular and time-tested solutions worth reviewing.

Google Analytics

IndexTools

Omniture's Site Catalyst

Unica's Net Insight

Web Trends

Coremetrics

For web statistics 'best practices' and more, visit: The Web Analytics Association 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Google has recently introduced "What's Popular," a gadget for user iGoogle startup pages. The gadget displays popular items of interest in the form of links with titles and short descriptions from Google's index on users' iGoogle pages. Similar to Digg, users can interact with the application by voting or participate in polling – but there are significant differences between this application and Digg.

First and foremost, there is no login, username or special account needed to vote, other than already being signed into your iGoogle account. Similar to Digg, you can submit URLs for inclusion in the gadget without any other significant information - meaning you can submit anonymously. This eliminates the worry of being penalized for submitting your own content. If you decide to submit using your Google ID and want to be recognized, you can edit the title and description of the submission.  

Unlike Digg, there presently is no area for commentary or the capacity to make friends. On the surface, it could be argued that this gadget has the potential to be a much more democratic process than a site like Digg, where results are regularly manipulated by networks of "friends"¹.

Not to worry, Google already has a huge user base that can be pointed in the direction of web pages they might enjoy and this should not deter from the application’s overall success.

None-the-less, these types of applications by iGoogle continue to grow and add depth to user interaction to content on the web.

Get it now and try for yourself:

If you are an iGoogle user, you can get the “What’s Popular” gadget here.
If you are not an iGoogle user, a stand-alone URL is available here and a mini gadget URL is available here. 

Sources:

¹Web Magazine May, 2009

Google Rolls Out Digg Reminiscent iGoogle Gadget: What's Popular -  By George Norman - Software News Editor

Best

Denice MacDonald

With the economy still influx and unpredictable, online marketers are taking advantage of other ways to make money: affiliate networks. 

If you’re new to this kind of thinking, affiliate marketing is basically an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing requires little, if any, start up costs, low risk and the opportunity for significant payback.

Most online marketers are familiar with top affiliate network giant Google AdSense -- a  free program that enables web site publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads and earn revenue from clicks. 

Here are a few top notch affiliate networks to begin the journey - each has a different model - one may be right for your organization. 

HydraNetwork.com

Hydra is the largest online advertising network where advertisers pay only for new customers, leads, or any other specific campaign result. The company generates millions of new customers for advertisers every month and helps publishers monetize ad inventory through its performance-based ad publishing platform. 

PepperJamNetwork.com

Pepperjam’s affiliate program management service includes affiliate & super affiliate recruitment, newsletter creation and dissemination, banner and landing page design, daily communication with affiliates, reporting, & any and all strategic direction needed for the program to meet benchmarks and success. 

ClickBank.com

Founded in 1998, ClickBank is the online retail outlet for over 10,000 digital product vendors and their 100,000 active affiliates. ClickBank makes a sale somewhere in the world every three seconds. Serving over 200 countries, ClickBank is consistently ranked as one of the most highly trafficked sites on the web. 

OfferWeb.com

Similar to the Google AdSense model, OfferWeb is a software program that allows you (The webmaster of your own site) to add banners and buttons to your website. Traffic comes to your site to look at your products and services and sees your "OfferWeb" banner and every time they click on your selected banner, you make money.  

Find the "Right-fit" Affiliate:

AffiliateScout.com

AffiliateScout.com is a comprehensive directory of affiliate programs that are organized in a way that allows you to find the most relevant advertisers for your web site. If you are looking for advertisers in your niche, Affiliate Scout can help you partner with those advertisers.

Best

Denice MacDonald

If you’re a busy web professional like me, you don’t have time to participate in every event, tradeshow or user group.  Moreover, if you don’t care for daily extensive reading and prefer some face time, a video blog may be your answer. 

WebProNews Blog Videos is your home for ebusiness, tech and search video content. They provide exclusive coverage of conferences, compelling interviews with top names in the industry, practical tips, and online news that matters.

You can watch the blog version with actual clips at events with subject matter experts like Bruce Clay, or you can read the blog.

Either way, you will be able to find current information that would take hours to filter through via daily searches or bookmarking. WebProNews provides RSS feeds and archived blogs.

Here are a couple of interesting, if not edgy, posts:

Bruce Clay - SES NY 2009 - Mike McDonald sat down with Bruce Clay for an interview at Search Engine Strategies, NY on a follow-up to ranking being dead, and changes to search results based on behavioral and intent-based data.

SES NY - Twitter Exclusively as a Marketing Tool? - Discussion on Guy Kawasaki's presentation at the Search Engine Strategies, NY.

Best

Denice MacDonald

How are you really going to fare during this tough recession? Simply by measuring everything you do on the web. So to help you out, I'm providing all the great tools that will accelerate conversion rates and increase web ROI -- not to mention tools to help you keep an eye on your competition! 

Once you start diving into a few of these, you will get the gist on which ones will meet your needs.

1 -- Rankings, Demographics and Usage

• http://www.quantcast.com/

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

2 -- Key Organic Words and Adwords Traffic

• http://www.semrush.com/

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

3 -- How Your Site Fares Against Your Competition

• http://www.compete.com/

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

4 -- Reciprocal Links/Keyword Ads and Variations

• http://www.alexa.com/

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

5 -- Paid Words

• http://www.keywordspy.com/

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

6 -- SEO Competitive Analysis/Benchmarking

• http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

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

7 -- Sign up for Website Grader

• http://website.grader.com/

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

8 -- Web Analyzer (analyzes customer web logs – this one is free)

• http://www.quest.com/funnel-web-analyzer/

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

9 -- All types of SEO Tools for Free

• http://www.seomoz.org/

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

10 -- Web Analytic Thought Leaders

• http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/

Best

Denice MacDonald

I received a timely e-mail from founder Todd Hogan from Surchur regarding a recent press release announcing a major update to their web site.

Surchur.com gives you a dashboard to the latest social media, blogs, pictures, and videos for a given topic. The new surchur.com adds several additional features:

1 -- The Surchmeter - see just how popular your keyword is on Surchur, in the blogosphere and on twitter - more sources coming soon!

2 -- A more intuitive cleaner design - we think you'll really like it.

3 -- Significantly faster load speed.

4 -- The front page and "catching fire" feature track the hottest topics on the internet via Yahoo Buzz, Google Trends, Twitter Search and more.

5 -- A history for surched topics, so for popular keywords you can see what was being posted on something yesterday, last week or, as our history builds, further into the past.

If you want to learn more about Surchur, visit the homepage, the social media section or their blog.

Best of luck Todd, we love your web site!

Best,

Denice MacDonald  

Internal search relates to keywords that people use while visiting your web site. On average, 10% of all visitors to web sites will use ‘search’ for one reason or another.

When using internal search, visitors are able to search web site content on their own terms, specify their intent through refinements and evaluate related content for further exploration and discovery¹. If there is a disruption in finding content or if visitors feel that they do not get satisfying results, they will abandon the effort and possibly leave the web site altogether. 

How do you know if your internal site search is meeting visitor expectations? And more importantly, is the internal search function aiding in converting visitors? Internal site search is successful only when it works in tandem with well defined content or properly segmented product or services (navigation and taxonomy).

Check these quick metrics to gauge the effectiveness of your web site’s internal search: 

What is the average number of searches per visit? The average is roughly 2-3 times per visit. A ratio above this benchmark could be a sign that your content is not relevant or your navigation structure needs work. 

What is the percentage of visitors going directly to search from their initial entry page? For example, a retail site with a high percentage of new visitors going directly to search is probably not optimal. Visitors should be able to get to product by navigation, product links or targeted content. 

How many searches resulted in “0 matches” as a percent of search attempts? You want this number to be as low as possible. Misspellings, buzzwords, the use of phrases associated with a competitor, or even lack of your search solution crawling all your content can be the issue. You would be surprised how often the entire site is not crawled (sections such as about, news etc.) with site search concentrating solely on product results.

What percent of visitors gave up on your search and abandoned your site from the search page as a result of too few or too many results?  Moreover, if a null page is returned, are there help, FAQs or ‘suggestions’ to keep the visitor interested? 

Excerpts:

• Kick Butt with Internal Site Search Analytics¹
• Internal Search Report  
• Internal Search: 7 ways to ensure your users can find your information

Internal Search Tools and Resources:

• Endeca
• Fast Search (Microsoft Subsidiary)
• Google Search Appliance 

Best

Denice MacDonald

Clients were the driver for most of the blog content written in 2008 for MacDonald Consulting. The blogs ran the gamut from brand awareness, product review, transitioning web technology and metrics reporting. Because of their key ranking (and as evidenced by subscriber page views), the following "Top 5 Blogs" are a reflection of issues facing B2B and B2C marketers. 

McDonalds Marketing Strategy - This blog elevated MacDonald Consulting Services to a top organic spot on Google. The purpose of the blog was to show clients how easy it is to elevate listings by concentrating on keywords that are both related and non-related relative to SEO efforts.  

Creating iPhone Microsites - With iPhones flying off the shelf, online marketers and advertisers are working diligently to get portions of their web site to emulate via mobile technology. This particular blog focused on a short-term solution to 'right size' a web site for a B2B client.

Kindle: Amazon's Reading Device - Amazon's top selling reading device for e-books was the topic for a client seeking a hand-held device for leisure reading as well as periodicals. As a product review blog, the topic was the center of conversation with team members who were reluctant to use advanced technology.

Content is King! Evaluating Content Management Systems - This particular blog was used in numerous instances for clients moving from static to dynamic web sites. Inundated with numerous choices, clients were happy to learn that there was a process of evaluating the right content management system - one that meets their demands today but agile enough to manage long-term needs.

The Key to Great Tradeshow Exhibiting is Marketing - Although online marketing continues to take a large portion of marketing dollars, it's interesting that many clients still use tradeshows as a major marketing initiative for lead generation and overall visibility. I found that most clients had a fragmented approach to tradeshow exhibiting. This particular blog is a response to a client frustrated with tradeshow results and was looking for some insight on the effectiveness of an integrated online/offline tradeshow campaign.

Next Top 5:

• Learning from the Best: Blogging Gurus
• Social Networking Can Boost Your Business
• What Makes a Great Blog?
• Business Bonding on Social Networks
• When is it Time to Dump a Client?

Best,

Denice MacDonald

2008 has definitely been a year of growth (and change) in many segments of technology and the web. Consider the big story of early 2008, Microsoft’s attempted takeover of Yahoo! – only to see Yahoo! reject the offer – go figure. With the ebb and flow of the economy, it will be interesting to see what happens with my favorite top stories from 2008: 

Google Chrome – With a mixed bag of reviews, Google Chrome did make a big splash - garnering over 1% of total browser users in its first three months of launch. It will be interesting to watch Chrome’s ability to give Google a compelling platform for the delivery of web applications while hopefully playing nice with Firefox in 2009.

• Will Google Chrome Gain Acceptance on Corporate Desktops? by Amit Agarwal, Digital Inspirations  

Video Content Kicks Butt – According to comScore, Hulu, a joint venture between Fox and NBC that offers professionally created content, made the list of the top 10 video sites on the web. With video in general becoming widely accepted (ala YouTube), tv video content on demand via the web is the next big logical step to capture ‘strategic’ advertising dollars. Take a look at the hulu web site and get hooked – like me!

• Web Site’s Formula for Success: TV Content With Fewer Ads by Brian Stelter, The New York Times

Amazon Kindle – Like most professionals, I’m finding it harder and harder to read all the feeds and e-mails I get each day – not to mention grabbing some leisure time for reading. I believe the ongoing rollout and use of e-books (Kindle) will bridge that gap and suddenly make reading ‘cool’ again.

• Amazon's Kindle

Social Communities – I personally belong to 10 different social web communities – several for pleasure and several for business networking. We’ll begin to see the social communities evolve (and share) technologies thereby elevating networks that are working and eliminating those that don’t. Of critical importance, will be the evolution of Facebook - Facebook will debut a "Social Rank" algorithm which will determine which of your friends are most relevant and important. It will be fun to watch Facebook in 2009!

• Predictions for 2009 by Charlene Li (author of Groundswell)  

As web marketing professionals, it will be interesting to see how the above-mentioned trends will evolve in 2009.

To all my subscribers - the best to you in 2009.

Denice MacDonald

Like many web consultants, I hear varying versions of what defines Web 3.0 and its place in today’s growing web technology. 

I’m learning with interest that Web 3.0 will bring a sophisticated structure to the meaning of web pages, creating an environment where software agents and aggregators will carry out tasks for users by automatically locating disconnected information.  

Web 3.0 will apply massive artificial intelligence to past online behaviors, personal information, and what we're doing now. The result is unprecedented access to information, media and resources not seen under Web 2.0 technology. 

There are several critical pieces that will comprise the attributes of Web 3.0.  

Semantic Web: A web where machines can read web sites - discerning, reasoning and vetting data on behalf of users.

3-D Web: A web you can ‘virtually’ walk through. Similar to “Second-Life”, Web 3.0 will permit users not only to produce and share content, but also to produce and share content that is confined in virtual worlds.

Media-Centric Web: A Web where you can find media using other media—not just keywords.

Pervasive Web: A Web that's everywhere – on PCs, mobile and other devices. 

All of us in some fashion or another in the next several years will be faced with any or all of these evolving pieces. As the economy fluctuates and rebounds, infrastructure for the Internet will take precedent as there will be less demand for creating 'brick and mortar' and more emphasis on evolving web sites.

Sources

Web 3.0 by Cade Metz, PC Magazine

The Semantic Web - by Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila 

Making Sense of the Semantic Web - by Steve Mollman, CNN

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Website Magazine is the one magazine that focuses 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.

By providing a broad scope of useful articles and tapping premier talent in the industry, Website Magazine covers all the elements that together make websites successful: search engine optimization and marketing, website design, content management, blogging, E-commerce, online advertising, email marketing, analytics, web software and applications, customer service/customer relationship management, web hosting, mobile web and more. 

I highly recommend that anyone who is involved with web site development, strategy or execution (including internet marketing) subscribe to this publication. Website Magazine has also developed additional content exclusive to their digital edition which is available only to subscribers.

You'll find insightful articles on SEO for WordPress, product videos and ROI, advantages of being a certified Google AdWords Professional, Internet usage market share, domain names and SEO and the ultimate PPC bid matrix.

Lastly, you can join Website Magazine's online community and get a free listing!

Subscribe Today!

• Free Subscription Here
• Sample Issue

Enjoy!

Denice MacDonald
 

I was recently at a client meeting during the lunch hour and noticed quite a few staffers in their cubes watching mini-video news clips on the election and YouTube promos. Someone aptly called the event 'video snacking'.  I've heard this term for the last year or so but I have to tell you that I am intrigued - not only from a user perspective but from an advertising point of view.

I guess the midday spike in web traffic is not a new phenomenon and media companies have started responding in a meaningful way -- specifically over the last year. They are creating new shows and timing video posts to coincide with the noon hour. Moreover, advertisers are remapping the way they sell advertising online, recognizing that noontime programs can command a premium. 

Big Win for Advertisers 

From an advertiser’s perspective, the web is a more flexible medium than television, because technology makes it easy to monitor people’s behavior and adjust programming accordingly. Better still, marketers have found that consumers are up to 30 percent more likely to make a purchase after viewing an advertisement at lunchtime than at other times of the day. 

Video Snack Web Sites 

If you have a spare 10 minutes then this video snack web site will keep you entertained. They search out the very best short bite size video on the net. Funny informative, must see clips. Enjoy! 

Using Video Snacking as a Lead Generator 

Video snacking isn’t limited to work computers. With the growing popularity of portable media players, people are video snacking wherever and whenever time permits offering marketers opportunities for both consumers and businesses. Consider providing a coupon or snack to anyone that watches your video over the noon hour - go one step further and offer a viral coupon so that office workers share it with others.  Win/win for everyone!

Best,

Denice MacDonald

Communities are about delivering game-changing results - from increasing customer revenue, to introducing product and solutions, communities aid in increasing overall brand effectiveness while decreasing costs. 

How do we know this? Well, recently, Beeline Labs, Deloitte and the Society of New Communications Research have produced a compelling study: "The 2008 Tribalization of Business study" which focuses on the early experiences of more than 140 organizations on how they’re managing communities, measuring success, and reaping business benefits. 

Great Take-away - Lessons Learned 

When asked for the most important advice they had for others starting communities, survey respondents had many good tips to share. Two of the eight "Best Practices" that emerged from the research: 

Keep it simple and intuitive: “Focus on the least common denominator first. Keep it easy to navigate with simple tools to use.” People are busy; they need information in brief, easy-to-scan bits s they can quickly choose what is interesting to them and go right to it.  

Keep it fresh and active: “Keep activity levels up, constantly add new content.” “ Think of how to create ‘events’ – what can you do to excite people and get them to share in the community.” “Update regularly, find topics for discussion’ “Content is king” 

To access the results of the study through an interactive slideshare, go here.  

More Great Resources:

The Long-tail Effectiveness of Business Communities  

Understanding the power of communities - even when you do not have a critical mass of users

Best

Denice MacDonald 

You can trace your family roots, get a daily shot of football or redecorate your apartment. Vote for your favorite web sites and see where they rank on the list: 

Vote Now!

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Here are the Top 10 Essential Web Sites we can't live without:

View Now!

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My pic > SearchMe

View Internet search results through a new lens at SearchMe, an engine that displays results not in the usual text-list format (that's so Google), but as a slick image gallery of actual web pages you can flip through and filter results by topic. A query on Montana, for example, lets you narrow results into categories like real estate, lodgings, weather and fishing. SearchMe isn't the only visual search engine — rivals include the meta-search site KartOO and newcomer Viewzi (which was still in private beta as of June 2008) — but its clean, intuitive interface sets it apart.

Enjoy!

Denice MacDonald