Things change in the Internet world so quickly. And we are fortunate to have the staff capacity to be able to research and keep up with the latest tools and techniques. We want to pass that new info on to our clients.

As we plan for our next seminars, we would like to hear from you, about what you want to hear. Please participate in our Internet Seminar Topics Survey.

Thanks for opening and reading all the way down to here. As always, call us if you have any questions or suggestions. We love to hear from you.

Hope all is well,

Molly

Using an email marketing tool can be one of the most cost effective ways to maintain and grow your brand and customer relationships. And in this economy, we are all looking for an easy, cheap solution.

Statistics show that most people appreciate informative emails about subjects they are interested in. The frequency of an e-blast depends on your target readers, and what their desires are. We think it’s about once a month for general topics. It may be more frequent for things that change often, like special pricing.

Today, we want to tell you about a new Broadcast Email tool that we like better than others. Read more about the email tool and look at the demonstration at E-Newsletters and Surveys

It is really user friendly. Even I can use it!

You can:

• Develop a built-in testimonial section on your website and feed it from the feedback tool.
• Allow reviews or manage client concerns.
• Keep the web chatter about your organization under control.
• Manage your email blast tool and address book, uploading easily or allowing sign-up from your website.
• Select a pre-built e-blast template or ask us to design one that matches your website.

Hope all is well, Molly

Once logged into your Flickr account, go to the “Organize” dropdown menu and select “Your Sets.” At the bottom of the page, there is a dropdown menu to select which photos you will be adding to your new set, e.g. “All your content” or “Content Uploaded on…” This is just helpful so that you don’t put duplicate photos in separate sets. Next, click the “create a new set” link near the top of the page. Drag and drop each photo that you want to include in your set, from the row of photos at the bottom, into the body of the page. For more information on creating sets, refer to this page: http://www.flickr.com/help/organizr/

Once you have created your set, and are ready to embed it into a webpage as a slideshow, click on the “Your Photostream” link in the upper right of the page. Once on the Photostream page, click on the set of photos to the right that you wish to embed. 

Now you can either a.) Grab the direct link to your photo set, or b.) Create a Slideshow of your set.

a.)  If you want to send viewers from your webpage to your photo set, click “Share This” in the upper right and click “Grab the link” in the next pop up window. You can copy and paste the link into your webpage or an email so send viewer to see your photo set.

b.) To create a Sideshow, click “SlideShow” in the upper right of the page. A preview of your slideshow will open; click on the “Share” link at the upper right of the page. You will be given the option to “Grab the URL” (in the case that you wanted to link directly to your slideshow) or “Grab the embed HTML” (in the case that you wanted to have the slideshow appear within your webpage). If you are embedding the slideshow in a webpage, you will copy the HTML code and paste it into the body of the webpage that you want it to appear on. You can alter the size of your slideshow by changing the width and height in the beginning of the HTML code. This section of code looks like this: <object width=”400″ height=”300″> 

For more information on embedding a Slideshow or sharing photos, refer to this page: http://www.flickr.com/help/sharing/

For a number of years now, Yahoo and Microsoft have been courting each other. Yahoo has bee going through tough times and Microsoft trying to move more of its business into the search market. Having a failed ($47 Billion) bid to buy Yahoo last year, Microsoft probably gets want it wanted out of the new 10 year deal with Yahoo. Microsoft gets its Bing search engine to power Yahoo, with out getting the employees. Yahoo gets an improved engine for its search, and will handle the sales side of the online advertising engine.

Currently Google still rules the search with 65% of the search according to Comscore. Last year “Microsoft handled 8.4% of searches that month and Yahoo accounted for just under 20%.” WSJ

Read more about the merger at the Wall Street Journal

We have made a few recent launches of cool, clean flash headers.  The flash projects were launched in the “initial” form, but have been built them so that we can add some very complex actions in the future.

The first is Longmont Dairy, we have added a large, clean flash file on their home page.  Version 2, is going to include their whole sales pitch and sign-up form for new customers, with in the base flash file.  The pitch itself will include video and some step by step questions on buying home delivered milk.

The Second is Brithinee Electric (motor repair), which uses a flash file to run some sales slide-shows with voice overs.  The flash has been built so that we can expand on the current information already being pulled into the file, like full video.

Finally, we relaunched our own RedlandsWeb.com header.  This is by far the most creative, and we have tried to capture some cool things about Redlands.  The file itself will include some pretty cool features as we build it out.  We have even had some great feedback already -

“You are right, the new RedlandsWeb header is the coolest online thing I’v seen.” - eRedlands.com

We have long worried about “reach” of a website, and it is important.  In most cases you may think you want a ton of hits, but in reality, does your site even land in a market or niche with any hits?  Clients should always understand what their market really is, how big it is.

For instance, we know just about everything there is to know about “Redlands” and the keywords that are involved.  We have run RedlandsWeb.com, a Redlands Community site for 10 years.  We know that the total number of searches with in Southern California for the word “redlands’ is only about 9000 per month.  So, even if we bought every single keyword about Redlands, there really wouldn’t be more than 9000 searches.  We currently are very highly ranked on words about Redlands, and last month received 5,743 visitors from search engines.  Knowing that our market is only about 9000, we have more than 63% of the market with out having to buy keywords.  But, we go even farther, and pull out the 1,671 searches that are for the University of Redlands, we find that we are pretty close to saturating the market place.

So if we are maxed out on the possible hits to our site, what is next?  Well, we would like to get more hits per visit, or push them to a larger site, like our InlandEmpire.US site, which gets a broader audience.

Are you looking at your “Conversion Metrics” on your website?  For most marketers, converstions are the most important metric they may look at with regards to their online web performance.

We constantly are looking at what “Brand” and “Direct Action” have to do with websites, measurements, and helping us create an experiance for clients.

Here is a great article:
Most Marketers Ignore Brand Metrics Online. Survey: Web has a ways to go to prove itself adept at building brands

If you are using the online Everyone.net email.  You may have noticed it has a great new interface, or maybe you haven’t and are seeing the old look.

In any event, you can change between the two looks if you would like.
You can change between looks, under Options, Preferences, below it he exact question.

Web Interface:
Would you like to enable advanced features for modern computers?
  

Yes, enable the new features.
  

No, use the Classic interface.

 

Below are the “New” and the “Old” looks.

While Chrysler may be going through bankruptcy, and being run by the Obama administration, it did have very successful internal marketing strategy brewing.  They had formed an internal advertising agency called Organic.  Driven by the idea that data generated from the Internet can be tracked,

Chrysler’s digital marketing agency, Organic, has designed a “media modeling” system that helps the company calculate the best ways to allocate its marketing dollars.  The modeling proved very successful, predicting “Jeeps” 2008 sales within 1 percentage point.

Dealerships have been hit hard, online advertising spending has dropped some 30-40%, but for those dealerships that are still around, they should strongly consider keeping their online advertising budgets up.  Chrysler’s agency “estimates that about 70% to 80% of consumers research vehicle purchases on the Web.”  In a tightly competitive market, local online advertising for the dealerships is a must.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124259801821028103.html