Posts Tagged ‘Marketing Methods & Providers’

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The increasing interest in architectural and document presentation standards for the WWW has produced a variety of fascinating research studies from various sources, primarily in academic communities. In particular the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab of Stanford University has presented the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility; this report is the result of an extensive research project spanning over 3 years and 4,500 participants. The report proposes 10 essential qualities or guidelines that contribute directly to the credibility of a web site.

The problem addressed by this report (web site credibility) directly concerns search engine marketing as all such campaigns are essentially an effort directed towards increasing the perceived credibility (and therefore visibility) of a given web site. I have summarized the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility below:

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There is a new book out by Seth Godin that gets to the why of New Marketing and explains the 14 trends that go with it. He encourages you to wisely dive in and embrace it. What are you waiting for?

Seth Godin who has written 11 books to date including Purple Cow as well as being an entrepreneur and highly respected speaker has another great book for us to read, Meatball Sundae. I truly enjoyed yet again his getting to the point writing merged with real-life business examples. Godin doesn’t focus on the negative instead he illustrates through words what a company did and what they could have done better and on the flip side what they did and what he thought was amazing about it. He also includes many websites that should be looked over as examples or used in your new marketing strategy. Godin gets into old marketing and new marketing how they differ and why old marketing is not the future or the present. He touches on, The Long Tail theory coined by Chris Anderson which is also one of SEOmoz’s must read books. Godin explains why direct communication with your customers is more important then ever and how one person can effect your business by using direct communication. It’s up to you to make it a positive comment or a negative one.

Quote from Meatball Sundae:

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When was the last time someone received a thank you note from you? Been a while? Don’t assume that people know you appreciate them or their help. Tell them. You know yourself how much a thank you means — and how good it makes you feel when someone says it. Take the time to thank people no matter how busy you are.

There are countless articles and business tycoons that swear by the mighty thank you note. Management guru Peter F. Drucker, honorary chairman of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, attributes much of his success in life to his early habit of writing 10 to 12 thank you notes a day. Ken Langone, VC and Home Depot Founder states “The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful gesture.” Southwest requires it in their hiring criteria, “We look for listening, caring, smiling, saying ‘Thank you,’ being warm.”— Colleen Barrett, president, Southwest Airlines.

There are countless occasions that merit a thank you note such as, a nice to meet you note, a new project from a current client, a vendor that has recently done a great job for you, an employee for a job well done or a presentation they assisted with, for people who refer others to you, etc.

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Is Twitter just the newest, shiniest yet useless Web 2.0 toy or a powerful way for your business to connect with your customers?

It’s up to you to answer that. For the last year or so since it launched, I’ve avoided Twitter like the plague. I may be an internet addict and the typical gadget-fixated geek, but I absolutely abhor hype. I avoid news involving Hiltons, I hate myself whenever I use business-speak, and sadly I didn’t go see Braveheart in the theater. All because I avoid hype.

But, for reasons I care to keep to myself, I registered for an account a month ago and haven’t stopped “twittering” since. During my experiment-turned-obsession I’ve noted some implications for businesses both large and small.

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Ever since reading Call to Action I’ve been in love with the whole idea of personas. We’ve been doing a lot of reading on the topic lately and learning how to create strong personas for each website we work with.

One of the things we’ve been trying to wrap our head around is the concept of writing content for both personas and the personality of site visitors. We battled with this for several days, trying to distinguish properly between a persona and a personality. I was finally able to boil each down into a few words that made it easy for us to see the difference:

Persona = motivation (what the visitor needs, why they are on your site)
Personality = temperament (how they navigate, what they need to see or read to find what they want)

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All of the recent movement by SEOs to be very open and forthcoming with information about their business finances has stimulated a lot of discussion here at the office about the inherent value of various aspects of search marketing. One clear question remains in my mind:

Should there be a standardized valuation scale which assigns reasonable price-ranges for various search marketing activities?

Search Engine Marketing as a profession doesn’t yet recognize a governing body which sets forth industry standards and best practices. Perhaps it never will, more importantly; perhaps it doesn’t need to. Based upon my observation of what the majority of SEOs consider “optimization” I certainly don’t want my own work to be stifled by a majority-rules idea of what SEO should be.

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Find out about Destination Marketing on Thursday.

Would you want to be part of a business network that has to lie to you to get you to join? Me neither. There is no worse way to try to gain legitimacy than to attempt to gain subscribers through illegitimate methods. I recently received an email from a company attempting to do just that. Below is a screenshot of the email I received from a business networking service similar to Linkedin.

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I don’t know much about the Ghost Rider character, but like everyone else in America I have been subject to the barrage of advertising for the newly released Nicolas Cage movie. If you haven’t had the pleasure, please review the trailer below. Pay special attention to the information given in the voice over.

(Click below to play video)

The advertisements are so prevalent it comes as no surprise that other companies would think it a good idea to use the character for their own promotional campaigns. Lets take a quick look at Jackson-Hewitt’s ghost Rider commercial.

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A few weeks ago I became the proud owner of a 1966 Dodge Charger. Its in good condition but it needs some engine work. Unfortunately, about the only thing I know how to fix in a car is, uh, well… hmmm… I guess I really don’t know how to fix anything in a car. Not a good place to be when you own one of these!

Jason clued me in on a few things and suggested I find a Chilton Manual. He said that it will help me learn how to “fix” things. So I immediately put my never-been-grease-stained fingers to work and went to Google to find such a manual.

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