'Net Features : week15

Has Social Media Helped Your Business?

Linc Wonham — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 11:01:00 GMT

Two separate reports on social media marketing were released this week with – on the surface, at least – what seem like diametrically opposite results.

According to the 2011 Industry Report from Social Media Examiner, 90 percent of more than 3,000 Web marketers say that social media is an important facet of their business today. Brand exposure was identified as the greatest benefit, with 88 percent of respondents citing it as a positive result of their social media campaigns.

Increased website traffic is another benefit (remember this when you get to the next paragraph), with 72 percent of the marketers claiming they gained traffic and subscribers through their social media efforts. Another advantage named by a high percentage of marketers was improved search rankings, gaining a 62-percent share of the response.

Then we have the research released by ForeSee Results, which states that, on average, less than 1 percent of website visits come directly from a social media URL. ForeSee surveyed 300,000 consumers on more than 180 websites across multiple industries to come up with that number, which sounds like an awfully poor return on a company’s investment of both time and resources.

Or is it? The ForeSee report also pointed out that while only 1 percent of visitors are coming to websites directly from social URLs, an average of 18 percent of visitors report being influenced in some way by a social media campaign, indirectly sending them to that site. That company’s ROI just got a whole lot better.

That's one of the challenges facing social media marketers right now, and why handfuls of companies are searching for the best solutions to accurately assess a business’ social media ROI.

It is also why marketers have to look deeper at the analytics they do have when dealing with social media than they would for most of their other campaigns – or take their focus off some of the analytics they rely on most.

Even though we have been hearing about it and using it for several years now, social media is still very much an enigma. But most will agree, like 90 percent of those responding to the Examiner report mentioned above, that it is in fact an effective tool for their business.

How about your business? Has social media helped, or do you feel like you are spinning your wheels on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and the rest? Please let us know in the comments section below, or cast your votes on our Facebook page.

Convofy Enters the Hot Social Business Space

Linc Wonham — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 11:00:00 GMT

Convofy is a new corporate social network that strives to get businesses’ employees on the same page by introducing faster internal communications, sharing and collaboration while reducing email overload.

The latest entry into the rapidly growing social business space, the Adobe-funded startup will be going head-to-head against competitors such as Socialcast and Qontext. Convofy, however, claims to have created a new solution that enables collaboration on visual content such as images, files and Web links.

“We have re-invented the simple comment,” says Faizan Buzdar, founder and CEO of Convofy’s parent company, Scrybe. “It has never been faster or easier to discuss your images, files, docs, even Web links, and to reach decisions in an incredibly small number of cycles. Convofy’s in-context collaboration allows commenting and mark-up and lets you attach context to each comment. These comments take you to a specific section and literally point to the context.”

The Basic service is free, and the Premium service is free for the rest of the month of April. Beginning in May, Convofy Premium will cost $5 per user per month for administrative control, customization, compliance, integrations into existing solutions and priority customer service to harness the power of a company's private social network.

A recent IDC report predicts that the social business market will grow by 38 percent through 2014. For more information, view the Convofy demo.

Finally, LinkedIn Gets an Android App

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 23:00:00 GMT

A few weeks ago LinkedIn sent around an email announcing some astonishing new user number (which I forget of course) - a significant milestone in the company’s history. Cleverly bundled within that message was an indication which order you signed up as – I was somewhere around 23K (and still only a few hundred followers). It’s been interesting to see the growth of LinkedIn over the years and things are seemingly getter better.

LinkedIn has been on a tear of late – it’s list of new services and functionality has shown it is more than ready (and very able) to compete in the socially-focused, hyper-mobile yet still business driven community on the Web. The latest indication of this is not the user milestone mentioned previously, but LinkedIn’s release of version 1.0 of its own Android mobile application. LinkedIn has had an iPhone app for several years but now will be available on the most popular mobile OS (in terms of consumer market share) in Android. As an Android user myself – I simply could not pass this one up.

The modules of the app are pretty stout (notice I didn’t say ‘robust’) and include updates, search, connections, invitations, messages and "reconnect". Users can view timeline updates, search for users from within connections and the entire LinkedIn user base, respond to invitations, and send and receive InMail messages.

Hadoop and HBase for Infolinks

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 20:00:00 GMT

Here’s one news items that both the developer community and Internet marketers might find interesting. Online in-text advertising service Infolinks has implemented Hadoop and HBase to their system. I know, exciting right? Actually, strangely, it is.

By implementing these technologies, Infolinks will be able to provide much more finely-tuned statistics – which the company hopes will improve the publisher payouts and advertiser exposure. “The integration of Hadoop and HBase enhances our analytical capabilities for the large amount of data at our disposal, which in turn raises the precision of our keywords,” shared Moshe Moses, Infolinks CTO and VP of R&D.

Hadoop provides a framework for large scale parallel processing using a distributed file system and the map-reduce programming paradigm. The Apache Hadoop project develops open-source software for scalable, distributed computing. Hadoop includes such subprojects as Map Reduce and HBase - a scalable, distributed database that supports structured data storage for large tables.

Infolinks and similar in-text advertising services have been for the most part on the fringe of available promotional and monetization considerations. Using technologies currently in play by companies like Facebook, Twitter and Amazon is certainly a way to return to the view of Web professionals (or it should be).

DealPulp Brings Daily Deals to Online Retailers

Mike Phillips — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 14:11:00 GMT

With the explosion of Groupon, LivingSocial and others in the daily deal space, it's kind of amazing it took this long for DealPulp to come around. But DealPulp has arrived and it offers the same daily deal mania to pure-play online retailers. As one might imagine, it works by promoting one daily deal for one online retailer per day, that users can purchase and use on the retailer's website. Once the user purchases the discount, a unique promo code is generated that is used at checkout to get the discount.

While discounts to local businesses (and sometimes national stores) have seen great success, DealPulp director of brand strategy Jess Swain sees a hole in the market. "It looks like the trend is to expand into hyper-localized deals," Swain says. "That is great if you like local, but maybe it is a little bit of tunnel vision."

DealPulp can also be used by brick-and-mortar stores to drive online sales. And that makes perfect sense. It also could be a very good way to drive awareness of a store's online presence, apart from the discount alone.

Another attractive element of DealPulp is that they offer an affiliate program for website owners. It pays a healthy 25 percent commission of the cash value of purchases, post-discount. Once enrolled in the affiliate program, widgets are available to embed on websites, in varying sizes.

To date, DealPulp.com shows more than 90,000 members.

iAd Gallery Shows Advertisers the Way

Mike Phillips — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 15:09:00 GMT

If your business is considering running mobile ad campaigns (or already running them) have a look at a new app from Apple, iAd Gallery. Here, advertisers can browse through the latest mobile ads from some of the top advertisers and innovators in the industry; including American Express, BMW and McDonald's.

Ads can be searched, sorted or simply browsed. Also included are the agencies responsible for each ad. Overall, it's a nice way to keep tabs on what the big agencies and advertisers are doing, and what consumers are being exposed to, in order to help create and plan your next interactive mobile ad, whether on Apple's system or elsewhere.

Those interested in the app will need the iPhone 4.2.6 software update.

Mastering Search - Finding Your SEO Workflow

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 19:30:00 GMT

Take my advice: Latch on firmly to anything that helps you plan, scale and master various SEO-related tasks.

While WM produced a big list of SEO software a few months back and continues to profile interesting SEO platforms and services, it is also useful to provide guidance on how your enterprise can best use the features and functionality these SEO services provide. Consider the following a baseline for evaluation or a selection criteria for discovering the platform that can actually help develop an effective SEO workflow that is your own.

Auditing: Call it what you will (competitive analysis, benchmarking, research or auditing), but at the core of any reliable SEO software solution is the ability to accurately asses the performance of others and yourself. Those which offer their customers the ability to generate customized reports and receive practical insights will have the most positive impact on your SEO campaign. Pay attention to not only the amount of data, but also its freshness and relevancy to your specific objectives.

Task Management: The top-tier search engine optimization platforms offer not just tools to support specific SEO tasks, but help manage the entire long list of tasks associated with shoring up top positions on search engines. In-house or agency-side SEO teams (as well as geographically distributed teams) must be able to track progress, communicate and access information as they need it. Selecting a platform which enables you to create and assign tasks, message team members, see the pending tasks and simply manage the overall workload is the sign of an enterprise-ready system.

Keyword Research: You didn't think we'd leave something as important as keyword research out, did you? It would be difficult to do so, even if we tried. The reason we've placed "keyword research" further down the list is pretty simple - while certainly important, it is far from the most important element of a sound system. The benefits of having an informed understanding of the competitive landscape and using another system's infrastructure and expertise far outweigh anything else. When it comes to keyword research, however, being able to analyze keywords and related terms and phrases (volume, competitiveness, value, relevance), adding keywords to a specific campaign are those systems which bring the most value.

And Yes, More: Let this list act as a starting point for developing your own ultimate SEO workflow and the solutions mentioned as guides to higher rankings. Any support for link building would of course be welcome, as would having a platform that can sync with analytics accounts or the webmaster tools accounts of popular search engines.

Web CEO - Online SEO Software In Focus

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 19:00:00 GMT

It is fascinating to see companies not just survive over the years but actually thrive - continually finding ways to offer better products to their users and remain relevant and useful. The Web is a highly competitive business environment for every niche and category; not evolving means irrelevance.

For this reason, it is good to showcase those companies serving Web professionals that fit this mold, changing now for a better future for themselves and their clients.

Having tools and applications at the ready that have been used by thousands for their own SEO success is one way to shorten the road to Web success. One of the perennial leaders in the search engine optimization software market is Web CEO.

Let's look closer into the company's recently released online version and see how that might match up to the SEO software selection criteria WM outlined recently. While online SEM/SEO platforms have been in vogue for quite some time (meaning WEB CEO is a bit late to the game), the soundness of the system overall, coupled with their decade-long experience, make the online platform one to definitely consider.

Web CEO Online is a web-based application for search engine optimization that facilitates collaboration for keyword research, the education of users in SEO procedures, the creation of “To-do” Roadmaps for various projects, regular audits of websites for errors, the monitoring of search engine visibility (ranking), tracking and building of backlinks, and the analysis of key website traffic metrics. Reports can be run and emailed to a group of people on a defined schedule.

Thanks to a strong system and a competitive price point, Web CEO Online is ideal for webmasters, stand-alone SEO specialists and even large marketing agencies.

Web CEO Keyword Report:

Web CEO Action Plans

Web CEO Site Visibility Index

Web CEO Link Popularity Report

Web CEO Visitor Activity Report

New Issue Available - May 2011

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 18:30:00 GMT

Email is so ubiquitous in the daily life of a Web professional that it is easy to take it for granted. As it stands today, email remains an efficient, inexpensive and effective way to communicate with both existing audiences and prospective buyers.

Those who have learned how to use the power of email to their benefit are reaping the many rewards — higher sales, greater awareness and bigger profits, to name a few. The feature story of Website Magazine’s May issue highlights three key traits of email superheroes (and heroines); in acquisition, automation and deliverability through engagement. If the business you own or operate does anything with email, read these powerful superhero strategies for email marketers and possess the keys to the great hall of high conversion marketers.

Review the May 2011 Table of Contents Now

This edition of Website Magazine, of course, also features content on a variety of topics to ensure your website’s success. You will receive practical information on marketing and analyzing Web video, details on the trend of app store optimization (along with some useful tips), a raw and timely look at the latest do-not-track legislation, a discussion about the new IAB-proposed display advertising formats, and plenty more.

Website Magazine is also excited to announce a retooled series of columns for our readers. SEO Corner is now Mastering Search with Joe Kerschbaum, who will be splitting writing duties with Dante Monteverde. Ecommerce Express and Design and Development Digest are new additions which we hope will serve our readers’ interests well. Our regular columns, Conversion Cache with Tim Ash, and Findability Makeover with Heather Lutze, can now be found online — bringing these thought-leaders more frequent exposure to our Web business community.

Enjoy this issue of Website Magazine and remember to share your stories of ’Net success with our editors at WebsiteMagazine.com.

IAB Launches New Quality Assurance Program

Linc Wonham — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 17:00:00 GMT

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has announced the debut of the Ad Network & Exchange Quality Assurance Certification program. Designed to be a compliance mechanism and the first-ever industry-endorsed certification, the program aims to enhance buyer control over ad placement and context.

Only companies that undergo rigorous training, conduct an intensive internal audit and assign a compliance officer to ensure they maintain the IAB’s Quality Assurance Guidelines (QAG) will receive the compliance seal. The seal can be placed on a company’s website and marketing materials and certifies that the business is adhering fully to the criteria as outlined in June 2010 by the QAG.

The IAB also announced the first 17 ad networks & exchanges that have completed the training and received the seal. They include 24/7 Real Media; Adap.tv; Adconion; AOL/Advertising.com; AudienceScience; BrightRoll; Burst Media; Casale Media; CONTEXTWEB; CPX Interactive; Google; Specific Media; SpotXchange; TubeMogul; ValueClick Media, YuMe and Traffic Marketplace.

“IAB congratulates this first wave of companies and looks forward to announcing additional compliant companies in 2011,” says Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. “The Ad Network & Exchange Certification Program is the next step of the Quality Assurance Guidelines and gives marketers an extra level of comfort that companies carrying the IAB seal are brand-safe and deliver what they promise. Buyers who want to ensure they are getting the highest level of quality assurance can now look for the IAB compliance seal and know they are dealing with an ad network or exchange that has made a commitment to transparency, accountability and trust in advertising.”

Seven other IAB member companies are currently enrolled in the Ad Network & Exchange Certification Program, and along with those that have received their seals, they represent more than two-thirds of the top 25 ad networks ranked by comScore based on site traffic or audience.

The IAB is allowing buyers to file complaints via the IAB website about compliant companies that might be falling short of their commitment to maintain the highest industry-established standards of quality. The IAB will then investigate with an independent third party under the direction of a Steering Committee of IAB member ad networks and exchanges, which can result in revocation of the seal.

The guidelines and contact information for the compliant companies can be found here.

Online Jobs, Freelance Earnings Continue to Grow

Linc Wonham — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 15:00:00 GMT

Demand for Web contractors grew 32 percent in the first quarter of 2011, according to Elance’s most recent report. More than 135,000 jobs were posted with the online employment platform, and earnings grew 12 percent from the previous quarter.

Earnings for online workers increased in 40 out of 50 states, and more than a dozen cities with double-digit unemployment ranked in the top 50 earning cities on Elance. Businesses on Elance are posting nearly 50,000 new jobs each month, and online workers have earned a total of over $360 million on the platform.

Notable hiring trends of the first quarter of 2011 include the following:

Help (Definitely) Wanted
After cutting headcount to the bare minimum over the past few years, businesses are gearing up for growth in 2011 and adding resources to their teams. Many businesses are adopting hybrid hiring models, filling select positions on staff and supplementing with skill-specific hires online. New York tops the list of hiring cities, followed by Los Angeles, San Francisco and Brooklyn.

Show Me the Money
Leading the list of the Top 50 earning cities on Elance are New York, Austin, Texas and Los Angeles. Demonstrating that high earnings are not limited to urban metropolises, the Top 50 earning cities also included Plant City, Florida (No. 30), Chaska, Minnesota (No. 35) and Littleton, Colorado (No. 50).

What Unemployment Rate?
Nevada, with currently the highest unemployment rate in the U.S., saw online earnings grow 16 percent in the first quarter. California, with the second highest unemployment rate, grew 12 percent in online earnings. Oklahoma and Maine grew a whopping 118 percent and 65 percent, respectively, while Illinois grew an impressive 48 percent.

Most Creative City
Amarillo, Texas has retained its number one position for contractor earnings in the creative category on Elance. Austin, Texas jumped 10 spots in contractor earnings for IT skills in Q1 of 2011. San Jose, California leapfrogged three traditionally strong operations cities in Texas to become the Most Organized City, and New York City holds the No. 1 spot in Marketing.

What is a Multiple Domain (UCC) SSL Certificate?

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 13:00:00 GMT

If you are selling online then you should be familiar with an SSL certificate. But what about a UCC SSL Certificate?

Unified Communications Certificates (UCC) are SSL Certificates that secure multiple domains and multiple hostnames within a domain. They allow you to secure a primary domain, and up to 99 additional Subject Alternative Names, in a single certificate. UCCertificates are ideal for Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2010, and Microsoft Live® Communications Server.

UC Certificates are compatible with shared hosting however, the site seal and certificate "Issued To" will only list the primary domain. Please note that any secondary hosting accounts will be listed in the certificate as well, so if you do not want sites to appear 'connected' to each other, you should not use this type of certificate.

Digital River Releases My Commerce

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:00:00 GMT

E-commerce solution provider Digital River has introduced a solution for small-to-medium sized business software, digital content publishing and physical goods market dubbed My Commerce.

The offering is essentially a collection of e-commerce products from RegNow, shareit!, SWREG, eSellerate, Reg.net and CCNow. Features include users interfaces that include full site and cart merchandising tools, and shopping cart and order page customization capailigies, APIs to manage products and catalogs, and localization tools displays sites in any language.

“Digital River is committed to providing global e-commerce solutions for the SMB space at prices that are both highly competitive and compelling,” said Joel Ronning, Digital River’s CEO. “The upgrades and enhancements we continue to make to the My Commerce solutions reinforce our ongoing efforts to offer SMBs the flexible tools they need to scale their e-businesses on a global basis, increase their efficiencies and grow their online businesses. With price points as low as zero percent, we are leading the way in helping to break down the barriers to entry so companies of all sizes can be selling online in just minutes or hours rather than days.”

Digital River My Commerce is part of Digital River’s portfolio of global e-commerce solutions, which also includes Digital River® Global Commerce™ and Digital River® Commerce Express™.

Constant Contact Gets Even More Event Friendly

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 09:00:00 GMT

Email service provider Constant Contact has released several new features which aim to firm up its position in the event marketing landscape with additional payment options, registration sharing, donations and a partnership with ePromos.com.

Event organizers are now able to process payments online through Google Checkout. When users store their credit card information within their Google account, they will be able to make ticket purchases or donations thanks to the integration with Constant Contact. This applies also to the new donations feature

Constant Contact also now provides its customers the ability to share the names of registrants on the event landing page (although little information on that is available), and, through a partnership with ePromos, Constant Contact customers will be able to purchase promotional items.

Publisher? You’re Ready for RTB say PubMatic

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 07:00:00 GMT

PubMatic, a “sell-side” platform for publishers interested in monetizing through direct ad sales, released the results of a study showing that “real-time bidding” (RTB) campaigns sold directly by publishers are in very high demand. Finding from the study include:

- Audience Targeting continues to grow: 97% of advertisers will leverage anonymous audience targeting in 2011, and 47% will have more than half of their online advertising budgets dedicated to campaigns that include audience targeting with user level attributes

- Demand for RTB is greater than the supply: Only 20% of publishers have opened up inventory to RTB, while 62% of advertisers have leveraged RTB for their campaigns

"Advertisers and agencies were very clear about wanting the ability to buy RTB campaigns directly from premium publishers because they get a guaranteed brand safe environment with the targeting sophistication of RTB,” said Rajeev Goel, Co-Founder and CEO of PubMatic. "Private Marketplaces are changing the way that display advertising is purchased – the precision targeting of RTB coupled with the transparency of direct publisher sales will significantly increase the size of the display advertising market.”