'Net Features : wmfeature

Doing Facebook Hashtags the Right Way

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 18:15:00 GMT

If you’re not using Facebook hashtags the right way, you’re definitely using them the wrong way.

After what seems like years of speculation, Facebook finally announced that it now supports clickable hashtags. Facebook calls the addition the first step of “a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people and topics.” If you know how to use them the right way, hashtags can be so much more.

Few of the Facebook features released over the years have lived up to their hype and really transformed how social media power users interact with the network, but hashtags have the potential to change all that. Hashtags are essentially identifiers (denoted with the pound - # - symbol) that indicate a similarity of a content theme or interest. You’ve likely seen hashtags pretty much everywhere, as Facebook’s own Instagram, as well as Twitter, Pinterest and, even, Tumblr support them. Hashtags are essentially just a way for users to scan strings of thought and see ‘memes’ without following everyone that is using the hashtag.

Hashtags are created by users and when clicked upon by others, and they can be linked to the entire conversation thread surrounding that hashtag. Hashtags present the perfect opportunity to follow a conversation, but more importantly, reply to others, interact, and drive engagement for your brand and its social media profile.

Hashtags on Facebook work pretty much the same way they do everywhere else – with a handful of exceptions. Let’s explore what the differences in Facebook hashtags are and two tips for how you, as a social media power user, can leverage them to your advantage.

MONITOR: The first step if you’re planning to fully maximize your hashtags on Facebook is to understand how they are currently being used – by your own followers and by those on the broader network. Start by searching for a hashtag. To do this, pick a keyword you’d like to see information about and append the pound symbol (#keyword), entering it into the Facebook search box. Searching for the hashtag will return updates from other Facebook members that you may not (yet) be connected to, providing an opportunity to ultimately connect (see the next section) with like-minded individuals and potential prospects for your own post. Searching regularly for hashtags related to your brand is also a valuable social listening tool. Hashtag research can provide an understanding of what’s being talked about, shared and discussed – providing competitive insights and an advantage when it comes to creating your own updates, too.

Facebook, and other social media management tools, aren’t yet providing any statistics (at least that we’re familiar with) about #hashtag clicks, but if there’s some use, count on it appearing in short order.

INTERACT: With a firm understanding of what hashtags are circulating, as well as the tone of those hashtags (positive, negative or neutral) you can and should start interacting with the people using them. To do this, like and share their posts and, if necessary, even make a clever comment related to it. Interaction is a fundamental element of success with social media – if you don’t do it, someone else will. Put yourself out there in front of an audience that shares similar thoughts, experiences or beliefs and you’re better positioned to receive a positive response.

Perhaps the most important thing to know about hashtags is that they exist. It will be important in the future to monitor their use related to your brand, interacting and engaging with the Facebook community as needed. Hashtags don’t need to define your social media presence on the network, but they can definitely support it and in a very positive way.

Local Google Carousel in Focus

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 16:50:00 GMT

Google users, and the local businesses looking to attract them into their stores, have begun noticing the new Carousel layout for local search results.

The search results design feature has been available on Nexus slates and the iPad for a while, but this week Google made the new layout available on the desktop version of the site as well. Users searching with queries with an obvious local intent will the carousel which include images of the listing, its name, overall score as well as the cost scale and the number of reviews. If this doesn’t encourage local businesses to finally complete their local Google listing, nothing will.

Where it gets really interesting is what happens after a user clicks on an individual listing within the carousel. When users select a specific listing, a new search is generated for the name of the business. In our case, that returned a collection of review sites (yelp, urbanspoon, grubhub and the official website itself) on the organic results, in addition to the restaurant profile and details (hours of operation, address and phone), photos (inside and outside) as well as dierctions thanks to a rather tight integration with Google maps.

The carousel feature is currently only available in English at the present time and in the U.S. only, but more languages (and features) are expected over time according to Google.

9 Ad Lessons to Change Your Thinking

Administrator — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:00:00 GMT

Editor's Note: The Web industry moves fast, and if you don't stop to take in what others are saying (and doing), you could be left behind. SMX Advanced 2013 offered some very informative and actionable paid advertising sessions. Joe Castro, Director of Paid Advertising at Fathom, a full-service digital marketing and analytics firm, shares his top takeaways from the event:

Google Enhanced Campaigns Are Here to Stay and No, They Are Not Going Away: Make sure you buckle up and enjoy this experience especially when the July 22 automatic migration takes place. I attended several sessions in relation to enhanced campaigns—unfortunately I did feel like this topic dominated many of the paid advertising tracks. Main takeaways include:

Jeff Allen, Hanapin Marketing: Reviewed their study on what $1 million taught them about Enhanced Campaigns: clicks, impressions, spend, and CPA up for mobile and tablet devices. Computer spend down and CPA up. Focus more on segmentation rather than bid modifiers to start.
Brad Geddes, Certified Knowledge: Take advantage of ad group level sitelinks, but start where it makes sense. Look at ad groups in the top position, since ad groups don’t show in ‘other’. Ad group level sitelinks tend to work best on the most ambiguous/general terms (higher CTR and conversion rates).
Ben Vigneron, eSearchVision: Mobile-only campaigns aren’t 100 percent possible with enhanced campaigns. However; you can set your desktop/tablet bids very low and use a bid adjustment of 300 percent as a possible workaround, although this is not perfect.
My Final Thoughts: Enhanced campaigns make sense, but stripping the control of device targeting does not and should be easy to change. Hopefully they will split out tablets and give it it’s own bid modifier; until then, advertisers are looking to shift some budget elsewhere if they expect to take a drastic hit in CPA and ROI.

Consider Shifting Some MORE of Your Budget Away from AdWords, Seriously: Some people might think this is a joke, but it’s honestly a viable option with enhanced campaigns negatively impacting results. But where else can we invest?

Bing Ads: Yes I’m serious. Are you upset with control from AdWords being taken from you? Well, Bing gives you MORE control than you’re used to getting with AdWords legacy campaigns. In addition to device targeting, as some of you may or not be aware; you can have a SEPARATE campaign for ‘syndicated partners’, see performance of these partner sites, and even exclude them. Something Google AdWords has never allowed advertisers to do. In addition, the Yahoo! Bing network is right at about 30 percent of search market share in the U.S., make sure you’re capturing these users!
FBX Retargeting: Adam Berke from Ad Roll provided compelling reasons to give retargeting on Facebook a shot. CPM was 82 percent less and CPC was 70 percent less than standard retargeted and there was only an 8.3 percent overlap in targeting the same audience if using both standard and FBX retargeting.
Twitter Advertising: Jeffrey Jewett from Optify discussed his own success with Twitter Advertising (especially Twitter Lead Generation cards), claimed it provides better leads than both Facebook and LinkedIn for B2B.
Using Paid Social to Advertise Content Promotion: Marty Weintraub from AimClear discussed another way organic and paid need to work together in order to successful; promoting engaging content with paid social (Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter). Although it’s not free, it appears to be extremely cost effective and a very fast way to promote content. This concept was perhaps the most innovative from all of the paid tracks, and I really enjoyed it.
Final Thoughts: There are options out than just Google AdWords for paid advertising. Set expectations with your clients or company from the early findings from enhanced campaigns and be proactive in finding other solutions. Lastly, not all paid advertising needs to have a direct ROI right away. Set aside budget to help promote the engaging content you have written for your company or client.

Did you attend SMX Advanced? What was your favorite sessions and why?

SEO 3.0: Image Use and the Very Visual Future of Optimization

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 15:45:00 GMT

Google’s Matt Cutts indicated in his most recent video that using stock images on web pages does not have an effect on SEO – either negative or positive. Glad we have that cleared up!

While images may not directly influence rankings, it’s not too much of a stretch to see how really valuable (descriptive, attractive, compelling) images play a role in encouraging others to link to your content. So, in a roundabout way, the use of images may eventually be seen as really important by the search engines and the SEO community.

Cutts himself (in the video below) even indicated that Google may look into using the unique value of an image as part of the ranking algorithm or at least as a signal in the ranking algorithm. If that does happen, all that social media optimization you’ve been engaged in could pay off.

Essentially, it’s possible that the more likes, retweets shares and +1’s an image receives, the more value Google could assign it, improving the rank of the original hosting page as a result. That’s total speculation, but it could happen.

Startups like Olapic already see the potential in leveraging user-generated photos when it comes to social media optimization. The company allows brands (including Lululemon, Threadless, Coach, Steve Madden and others) to collect photos from services like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and display them on their websites. If Google or other search engines can find a way to connect the virtual dots so to speak, understand how engagement of this nature indicates relevance and popularity, you might just begin to see the emergence of SEO 3.0.

As CPCs Rise, How Will Advertisers React?

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 14:14:00 GMT

Following the migration to Adwords Enhanced Campaigns, Google advertisers are seeing increased bid prices in the range of 6% during the last three months according to new findings from Adobe – which recently examined 100 advertisers who spent a combined $100 million spend from March through May (2013).

The industry typically experiences a slight pullback during the first quarter of the year – a result of the high spending during the Christmas holidays – but that’s certainly not the case here as for many the Adwords Enhanced Campaigns have brought an added level of complexity (and it seems cost, as well confusion).

Enhanced campaigns essentially remove the opportunity for marketers to target mobile, desktop and table devices specifically. Instead, tablet and desktop bids are forced to be identical and mobile bids are set as a percentage adjustment relative to the desktop and tablet bids. The result has apparently been an increase in CPCs.

Adobe is seeing that CPC for tablet campaigns have increased 3% and mobile CPCs a smaller, but still significant 1%, which is expected to rise as the migration deadline of July 22nd nears and more advertisers make the switch. In order to keep campaigns below cost but operating efficiently, Adobe is suggesting marketers properly set and manage their mobile bid adjustments (MBAs), which determine bids on mobile devices and how much mobile ad spend is allocated, and which are proving critical to a successful transition to Enhanced Campaigns.

Adobe’s Sid Shah, director of business analytics, indicates in his outlook that CPCs on Google will continues to increase this year (despite being flat year-over-year despite being flat for two years) as competitive pressure will drive up prices – anticipating a 5-10% rise on a YoY basis for the next two quarters.

Only time will tell how advertisers will react. Are you seeing higher bid prices than quarters past? Have you officially migrated your campaigns? Share your experiences with other Website Magazine readers by commenting below now.

Adobe Creative Cloud Gets More Awesome (and More Essential)

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:25:00 GMT

Adobe has released a significant update to its subscription-based Creative Cloud offering, making available hundreds of new features to its “CC” desktop applications such as cross-device collaboration and some exciting new publishing capabilities for the design world’s leading creative solutions.

“We’ve added a ton of new innovation to all our CC desktop apps like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign," said David Wadhwani, senior vice president and general manager of Digital Media at Adobe. "These apps include new features that increase productivity, streamline the effort to build mobile content and showcase some stunning new imaging and video science."

Perhaps the most significant development is the improved workflow. Designers can now store (20GB of storage for members), share and actually work on their files within Adobe’s Creative Cloud through their Mac OS, Windows, iOS and Android, ensuring their work is synced on whatever device they are using. Creative Cloud is also now integrating with Behance, providing CC users an opportunity to publish and showcase their work within that 1.4 million member online community, receive feedback, and with any luck, maybe even gain some exposure.

The Creative Cloud updates features hundreds of new features, and includes recent versions of 15 of Adobe desktop applications including Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Premiere Pro – bringing the total to more than 30 tools and services for professional designers within CC.

Adobe Creative Cloud users will receive all of the new features and functionality as part of their membership at no extra cost - $29.99.mo for existing users and $49.99 for new users (requires annual commitment) which provides full versions of every app within creative cloud. Adobe will also be hosting a new initiative this month with “Create Now: A Celebration of Creativity,” providing a forum for Adobe users to connect and collaborate.

Yahoo Shows Sign of Life with New Local Offering

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:30:00 GMT

The Yahoo Small Business network has launched Yahoo Localworks, a program to help local businesses increase visibility and generate leads through search resutls, directory listings and map applications.

Yahoo will push business profiles (listings) and related content to directories including its own Yahoo Local service, as well as sites including Yelp, Citysearch and Bing - potentially reaching upwards of 150 million local searchers each month.

Yahoo indicated that the platform will make it easy to correct existing errors and push new information so content is always up to date. Businesses will be able to add photos, videos and business hours, and showcase their brands unique strength's and personality. The Localworks platform will also enable business owners to track performance including impressions, clicks and actual results metrics such as profile views.

The program is currently being offered at an introductory price of $29.99/mo until the end of September (billed quarterly) - the program will cost $49.99.mo reguarly.

The Ultimate Net Promoter Score Toolbox for the Modern Ecommerce Merchant

Amberly Dressler — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:45:00 GMT

Despite its simplistic nature in a sophisticated digital world, Net Promoter Score (NPS) plays an important role in measuring and improving customer loyalty. At its basic, NPS assigns a value to a company based on the number a customer uses to indicate the likeliness they will recommend a company/product to friends or colleagues. NPS is calculated by taking the percentage of promoters (those that use 10 or 9 as extremely likely to recommend the company) and subtracting the percentage of detractors (those that use 0-6 as not likely to recommend).

KEEP READING: The Ultimate Net Promoter Score Toolbox for the Modern Merchant

Mobile Marketers “Unsophisticated” Says Strongmail

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 17:20:00 GMT

Strongmail is asserting that mobile marketers just don’t stack up in the sophistication department. According to results from the email marketing solution provider’s new survey, at least half (44 percent) are still strumming their banjos in the digital backwoods when it comes to mobile, and more specifically, mobile with a cross-channel component.

"It's clear that the vast majority of businesses understand the value of using mobile marketing to drive customer engagement and lifetime value, but they are struggling to implement sophisticated, cross-channel approaches that can fully leverage the strengths of this emerging channel," said Katrina Conn, vice president of marketing services, StrongMail.

StrongMail’s survey revealed that mobile marketing adoption has increased 22 percent over the past year and is now being leveraged by over half of all businesses (56 percent) – in the form of mobile websites, mobile apps, and mobile optimized email. The problem, according to Strongmail, is that a lack of strategy and associated resources are slowing the growth. The good news for companies like Strongmail is that more than 80 percent of businesses that do not currently conduct any mobile marketing initiatives plan to do so in the future, with at least half doing so in the coming year.

Additional highlights from the “StrongMail Mobile Marketing Survey 2013” study include:
• 43% cite lack of strategy as biggest barrier to adoption, followed by lack of resources (21%)
• 56% have not integrated mobile marketing into cross-channel, lifecycle marketing programs
• Mobile websites (77%), apps (60%) and mobile-optimized email (49%) are most popular forms
• 57% reported increased mobile marketing budgets for past 12 months; only 3% saw a decrease

Digital Projects for Summer Web Workers

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 19:30:00 GMT

Summer has arrived, but it's not a time to relax. In fact, it should be quite the contrary when it comes to your digital efforts.

Now is the perfect time to start all the projects that you didn’t have the opportunity to begin during the rest of the year. Here are a few general Web improvement ideas that will prove valuable to your 'Net endeavors when site traffic picks up after the summer heat subsides.

IMPROVE DISCOVERABILITY

Build a Link Prospect & Influencer List: There’s no replacement for traditional website-based links as means to improve search engine traffic, but it’s not always easy to acquire them in the quantity (or quality) that your brand deserves. The one mistake that most digital brands make is not spending a sufficient amount of time finding the right potential link prospects and investing in those relationships to ensure that someday they will pay off – and big – in the form of links.

Take the summer months to identify websites that you believe would be beneficial to acquire a link from, noting how they currently link to other sites, and what you might need to do to earn one – be it contributing a guest post or just emailing the site owner. Go it alone and start by exploring LinkedIn, or check out one or two of the most popular SEO software solutions, which are equipped with features for this exact purpose.

Getting new links is the fastest path to improved discoverability, but sometimes it’s necessary to clean up the link profile your site already has. The best way to do that (at least when it comes to Google), of course, is using the link disavow tool in Webmaster Tools. A quick side note: It seems that the best strategy when optimizing your link profile with the disavow tool is to block the entire site instead of individual links on pages.

Internet professionals might also want to consider if they are being associated with the right search terms and phrases. If there’s doubt, the summer presents a perfect time to make over your keyword strategy.

Simplify Share-ability: Social media is playing an increasingly important role in discoverability on the ‘Net these days (subscribers will have access to an informative article on this topic in our August issue, so make sure you’re subscribed to Website Magazine).

Search engines have been quite open about their use of citations as ranking factors on search results. A great deal of effort (from listening and creative content development) is required to receive a citation (be it a like, a retweet or a +1) but those social affirmations don’t just happen on the networks themselves; often, they occur on the website and that presents an opportunity to help your brand increase awareness among key audiences.

Many websites, however, seem to do the absolute minimum when it comes to profiling their social sharing features – relegating these now common website elements to sidebars or worse, to footers. These less-than-ideal placements put these valuable features virtually out of sight of visitors who could potentially share and grant a social citation. Take the summer months to audit your website’s social sharing efforts, focusing on the prominence and ease-of-use of the social sharing elements.

Of course, sharing starts with you, so don’t miss Website Magazine's Big List of Personal Branding Solutions.

REDUCE SUPPORT COSTS

Add a Knowledge Base: It’s not uncommon for Web workers and Internet pros to get lost in the day-day of their digital work managing customers and, of course, all the back-and-forth digital communication that comes with it.

Customers need support – and they always will – but the savviest Internet professionals are actually turning off the business phone and shutting down their support-ticket systems in favor of offering users knowledge bases to help them help themselves in issue resolution. The approach could be a mash-up of a traditional frequently-asked question section with a weblog, and perhaps even some official tutorial videos or a forum. If Internet pros have these solutions in place, they’re more than half way there! All it takes is some forethought and planning about what issues users have, and how they will go about finding them on your digital property.

Knowledge bases are an excellent project for the summer, but if you’re not yet a believer that it’s time to give up your help desk software just yet, check out WM’s 2013 Help Desk Comparison chart.

GAIN AUTHORITY

Develop Acquisition Focused “Special” Content: Authority is a word that has been used with greater regularity over the years, but little has emerged about how search engines or social media sites actually define it, much less how you can go about acquiring it. It doesn’t need to be that complicated though. Authority is essentially a quality that indicates that you (or your brand) is an accepted, and more importantly respected, source of information. Authorities are typically extraordinary people (or companies) meaning that in order to become one, you need to be pretty special. For the most part, the way that happens today is to add value. Write a thought-provoking book/ebook or make a series of exceptional (informative or entertaining) videos. The point is that in order to be an authority, you not only have to do something bigger, but also better. Authority is another topic that Website Magazine will delve into in our upcoming September issue. (Did we mention you should subscribe to Website Magazine?)

Launch a Referral/Partner Program: Taking the time to write the next amazing, thought-provoking work isn’t for everyone – fortunately, there are some shortcuts. If you make great products (be they information or tangible goods) and you and your customers believe in them, another way to gain authority, or at least some additional awareness, is to launch a referral or partner program to help those loyal users spread the word. Explore solutions like Ambassador, InviteBox or Refer.ly, which offer trackable refer-a-friend functionality. Other options include gamification providers (e.g. Bunchball, Badgeville, etc.) to incentivize use, or even traditional affiliate networks to start rewarding brand loyalty.

MODERNIZE DESIGN

Redesign Everything: Design is a fluid, ever-changing and essential component of your Web success. It’s a real challenge to redesign with users (and their future expectations) in mind. This means you’ll need some time to think it through to ensure you make the right decisions. Fortunately for Website Magazine readers, our Design & Development channel routinely features a roundup of interesting articles, such as the recent ‘9 Rules of Portfolio Site Creation’, that can serve as terrific inspiration for your summer design projects. For example, you might want to give your 404 pages a worthy makeover, retool your menu designs, create some modal windows or better yet, optimize what’s behind the UI.

The summer is a perfect time to reimagine your Web property, so don’t waste any more time; why not get started today? Tell other Website Magazine readers what’s on your digital summer project list by sharing a comment below!

9 Rules of Portfolio Site Creation

Allison Howen — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 18:45:00 GMT

Designers don’t just create résumés, they create portfolios that showcase their best works of art. More often than not, those portfolios are featured on the Web so that they can be easily accessed and shared at any time and from everywhere or used to supplement hard copy promotional materials.

Unlike their paper counterparts, digital portfolios must follow Web design and development best practices, not to mention tricky, and ever-changing, SEO tactics. After all, a site without functionality, and visitors, is ineffective (regardless of how cool it looks).

Discover 9 rules of portfolio site creation that will help make your digital showcase better than the rest:

1. Make a Statement with your Cover Page

First impressions are everything, which is why it is very important to set the tone with your site’s cover page. Whether you want to take a fun approach like Jesse Willmon (below), or a straightforward style like Frank Chimero, make sure that the portfolio’s theme stays consistent throughout the entire site. Also, remember that the collection’s layout and design elements shouldn’t interfere with the site’s overall usability.

2. Feature a Clear Menu Bar

An online portfolio should have a variety of content, including assorted work samples, references, past experience and contact information. In order to get all of this important information seen, designers must feature a clear menu bar on their site, because no one is going to waste their time searching for information that should be readily available. Instead, possible employers will simply move on to the next candidate’s portfolio. Paul Currah, for example, not only features a menu bar at the top of his site that makes it easy to navigate through his diverse collection of work, but also features a bright menu on the left side of the page to make it simple for visitors to learn more about him and his skills.

3. Be Selective with Work Examples

I had an art teacher who once told me that for every 100 paintings I create, I will only like one. While she may have been exaggerating a bit, the point is that art (design) is very subjective and more often than not, you will be more critical of your work than others will be. That said, use your critical eye to your advantage by carefully selecting the pieces of work that you want to feature. While it is a no brainer to feature your highest performing work and projects from your most prominent clients, use your best judgment to decide what other examples make it into your featured showcase.

4. Provide Descriptions

The images of the featured work on your site might make sense to you, but make sure they also make sense to your potential employers. The best way to do this is by accompanying your work examples with short, yet detailed, descriptions. These descriptions should state what the project goal was as well as detail your specific contributions to the project. Olly Gibbs' portfolio site, for instance, features a project title that drops down when visitors mouse over image examples. Then, when images are clicked on, a window slides across the right of the screen to provide visitors with a description about the project.

5. Add Testimonials

Just as user generated reviews are very influential to the decision making process for consumers shopping on e-commerce sites, testimonials can also sway an employer to choose to hire you over another candidate. Philip Bloom does a good job of featuring testimonials by displaying a “What clients have to say” section on the cover page of his portfolio. By doing this, potential employers who may not have been even looking for testimonials can tell that Bloom’s work has been deemed a success by previous employers.

6. Be Accessible

Your digital portfolio is worthless if potential employers can’t figure out how to get a hold of you. While some designers choose to display their contact information on every page of their site, you should at least have an “about” and/or “contact” tab featured on your main menu. By doing this, visitors won’t have to search for a way to contact you because regardless of wherever else you feature this information on your site, they can easily click the appropriate place in the menu bar to obtain access to this data. As an example, check out how easy Jamie Kim makes it to get in touch with her.

7. Update Frequently

Just as the rest of the professional world needs to keep their résumé up to date, a designer should do the same. This can show employers a few things, including that your work is in demand, that you stay current with new technologies and that you take pride in your creations.

8. Stay Creative

Some designers choose to take a simplistic approach to their portfolio design, while others, like Kendra Schaefer, decide on a more dramatic approach. Regardless of what technique is chosen, designers should make sure to add some personality into the site by including a few unique bells and whistles. So despite which design path you choose to go down, remember to stay creative – after all, you are a designer.

9. Sell Yourself

Last, but certainly not least, make sure to promote your portfolio whenever and wherever possible. As mentioned previously, a portfolio that is not seen is ineffective despite all the time and effort that is put into it. This is why designers should actively take steps to increase their site’s visibility. This can be done by linking to the portfolio on social sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Google+, as well as featuring some of your work on design-centered community sites, like Behance and Dribble. Plus, designers should include their portfolio’s URL on all of their business cards, so new contacts can easily access work samples. In addition, including a blog on your portfolio, like Luc Latulippe has done, can help drive traffic to your website. This is because the Google search engine loves timeliness and authority, and a regularly updated blog can help your portfolio site obtain both.

Add Social Group Gifting to Your E-Commerce Site

Allison Howen — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:00:00 GMT

Social gifting company eGifter has expanded its platform to allow retailers to add social and group gifting to the product catalog on their websites.

The eGifter platform enables site visitors to create a group gift around any product available at a retailer’s e-commerce store. The recipient is notified about the gift via an email or social notification that presents the product their friends have chosen for them. Upon redemption, recipients are presented with an eGift card in the amount they need to purchase the product their friends have gifted them, however, recipients can also choose to use the eGift card on any other available item on the retailer’s site.

“It is often difficult to get just the right amount collected from a group of participants,” said Tyler Roye, CEO of eGifter. “Our platform addresses this issue by using a variable denomination eGift card program in a very unique way to help make group gifting for products as easy as it is for an eGift card.”

That said, retailers have the option to make the feature only available on select products, such as higher ticket items that may be more appropriate for group gifts. Moreover, the platform adds a layer of social activity to gift cards. For example, when a digital gift card is delivered through social gifting, retailers receive increased visibility via friend-to-friend marketing. In addition, social gifting and group gifting can be added to registries and wish lists, too.

It is also important to note that the new offering includes all of eGifter’s latest features, including a personalization feature that lets all group gift contributors add personal videos or pictures to the gift. Additionally, the entire experience, including video creation and delivery, can take place on a mobile device.

Inbound Marketing is NOT the New SEO

Administrator — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:00:00 GMT

:: Travis Bliffen, SEO Proz ::

Once upon a time in a Web before Google Panda, Penguin and Knowledge Graph SEO, companies only had to worry about choosing the right keywords and getting them to rank well, but not anymore. These changes have led the SEO experts of the Web to scream, “Inbound marketing is the new SEO,” but the fact is, SEO is a form of inbound marketing. Those same experts have been using inbound marketing all along, they just didn’t know it.

What exactly is inbound marketing?

The definition of inbound marketing is a tricky subject in itself as the answer is often dependent on the person answering and the context of the word use. Generally, in-bound marketing can be described as marketing designed to lead customers or readers in. It’s an intentional effort to create traffic and keep it. The primary focus of inbound marketing is bringing in people and making them happy, so they, in turn, bring in more people. SEO, being the optimization of content via keywords to rank well for search terms on Google, is just one form of inbound marketing. If you really think about it, SEO is just a predecessor to inbound marketing in terms of popularity. It was the first popular form of the technique. To say that inbound marketing is the “new” SEO is only figuratively true in that the whole kit-and-caboodle now encompasses the SEO industry that online advertising created for search engines which was previously limited to just SEO, but on a literal level, SEO always was inbound marketing.

How you can embrace inbound marketing:

The continued trend in search engine algorithm changes is for user enjoyment. It’s about quality interesting content that makes for longer dwell times, lower bounce rates, and higher click-through rates that encourage users to create backlinks and social media signals which in turn raise search engine ranking. So those who want to evolve beyond simple keyword SEO and embrace inbound marketing need to also progress towards a marketing scheme that is about people and not search engines.

This means making changes that don’t necessarily do anything at all for a pages search engine rank—at least not directly. It means making small changes that make people happy that fall under the blanket term inbound marketing.

Social media marketing:

If you’ve ever seen content go viral with millions of Facebook “likes” and “shares” you understand the importance of social media marketing. Social media marketing cuts out the search-engine middle man feeding your content directly to your target audience. The trick is locating that target audience and then reaching them. The best way to do that is to pay attention first to those who like your content and second, what those within that niche are sharing and liking.

Content marketing such as blogs, podcasts, newsfeeds, and Web copy:

Next, SEO has always just been within content, but previously the focus was more on compiling keywords in a readable manner at the right density, in today’s search engine world content does matter. Take the information gleaned from your social media research and create quality content that appeals to your audience. In addition, create it regularly—remember the goal is to not only bring people in, but keep them.

Natural backlink campaigning:

Aim to create backlinks that real people will find useful. In the old Google world backlinks may have simple served to create a link for Google to crawl, today Google wants to see people visit that link and stick around. Besides, if people click your link and enjoy, they may just create more backlinks for you.

Page quality improvements for users:

Optimizing your page load speed, offering an easily navigable website, providing superior customer service, and an overall voice that you care about your customers are all wonderful ways to keep people coming back as well as get them to recommend your company to others. Those recommendations will in-turn raise your search ranking.

It’s unquestionable that online search engine ranking matters to businesses, so businesses looking to continue to cash in on online marketing have to learn the rest of inbound marketing and rise above SEO if they want to rank well on search engines, but in bound marketing certain isn’t new—even if nobody realizes that’s what SEO has always been a part of.

Travis Bliffen is the founder of The SEO Proz, a search marketing company located near Marion, IL. After working in the industry under the guidance of other search-marketing professionals, he launched The SEO Proz in early 2012. Since then he has worked with numerous local, national and international clients to improve their search rankings.

How to Deal with AdWords Image Extensions

Michael Garrity — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 18:15:00 GMT

Last week, the pay-per-click (PPC) world was probably changed forever when Google began introducing an extension that allows advertisers to place images into its standard text-based AdWords ads on its search engine results pages (SERPs).

At present, Google says that about one in every six searches on the search engine provides results with “visual content,” and that number is only going to increase as Web users demand more and more easy-to-digest and visually appealing content. As a result, the company decided to improve the overall flexibility of its paid search ads to follow consumer trends.

But wait. I know that you may be thinking to yourself that image-based PPC ads just sound a lot like Google’s already existent crop of product listing ads (PLAs) that feature a clean cut, catalog-ready picture of the products (or related products) that a user searched for, along with information like price and provider.

That’s not the case with these PPC images, however, which are far sleeker and focus on providing a visual experience with the product in question, as opposed to just a sterile image totally devoid of personality. Google’s paid search ads can also feature more than just static images, as they’ll work with animated gifs and Flash animations, as well.

It Pays to Be on Top
Let’s not forget that the inclusion of image content on AdWords ads is still an incredibly new phenomenon, and one that exists only in beta mode. Because of that, no one really has much information about the specific (and important) details regarding things like how many ads will be able to display image results, or if there will be overlap with PLAs.

However, what is unquestionably clear is that, for now at least, all PPC images (which come in groups of three) are going to be located directly above and limited to the first paid search listing, which really draws the user’s attention to the top of the section and highlights the ranking in the top spot. This makes having the number one paid search ranking on Google just became significantly more appealing.

What the Beta Launch Tells Us
So, although details are still sparse regarding the actual changes that image-augmented PPC ads will make for the paid search industry in the long run, even with just a week of testing, a few key observations have already emerged.

For now, only big money advertisers like Samsung are actually able to show images with their PPC ads, but Google is already accepting applications from current AdWords customers to include images, custom text and site links in their own paid search ads.

What we have learned from their experiences, and from Google’s initial announcement, is that there will be some restrictions on the images that advertisers can display with their PPC ads. The biggest (and most obvious) being that they absolutely must own the image that they’re trying to display. And for anyone who thinks they can be sneaky and just pass off a stolen image as their own, they should know that Google will go through a rigorous review process before actually showing the images with the ads. (This also helps ensure that nothing to questionable or inappropriate is displayed.)

A handful of advertisers and PPC managers have already had some trouble getting their images approved by Google, such as a company that tried to promote pictures of dresses for the keyword “runways.” Google has also turned down a collection of images because it apparently only allows one of the three pictures displayed to have white space around it (presumably to ensure they don’t end up looking too much like PLAs).

Needless to say, following the AdWords guidelines may prove to be trickier than you may initially expect. Thankfully, there are a few general rules of thumb that advertisers can keep in mind to streamline the validation process. For starters, make sure you present Google with high quality images right off the bat, and they cannot include animations, overlays or logos that are not part of your product. Google also prefers pics that are 640px by 360px and only allows a 16:9 aspect ratio. Perhaps most importantly, though, is that you must submit an image that is already available and visible on your website.

The Story So Far
Right now, just one percent of all Google searches are even seeing these image-conscious PPC ads, so there’s not a lot of concrete data that we can go off of, particularly when it comes to getting performance reports on individual images.

In the meantime, one thing that advertisers and PPC managers can do is to create new ad groups specifically for these image extensions that indicate when images should be representative of all of the ads or keywords in an ad group, and to make sure (or at least most) of the keywords in said ad group are “image-seeking” and don’t include information about the product’s price or online reviews.

Facebook News Feed Ads Outperforming Google

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 13:30:00 GMT

At the end of March, Facebook opened up its news feed ad inventory to the Facebook Exchange (FBX), allowing advertisers to retarget their site visitors.

But how have those ads performed?

A new report from FBX partner Triggit, from two retail-focused FBX news feed campaigns, suggests the news feeds ads outperformed the right-rail FBX ads as well as ads from Google AdX.

Triggit, which expected to see a click-through rate five times higher before the first News Feed campaign launched, actually saw CTR's 25 times higher, suggesting that "these results are now the norm around here at Triggit."

The CPAs for News Feed retargeting was also 50% to 30% cheaper than FBX's right-hand rail ads and up to 70-90% cheaper than retargeting on Google properties.

Facebook officially expanded the inventory offering to its FBX partners in May.