Monthly Archives: April 2008

The Website Microsite

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Categories: Design Marketing

The “Microsite” is becoming recognized as a part of a website dedicated to a specific subject. It is a separate section or a separate website, sometimes with its own domain name.  Microsites are set apart in that they have a rich media component like video, flash, or audio.

A new concept developing over the last year or two, it is now the subject of more research. One such study among marketers finds that the Mircosite is being used as much as video in specialized pitches, product demos and other short term information. This is somewhat surprising as online video has been well excepted among both marketers and buyers.

RedFusion Media builds Microsites generally for specialized media and subject. Examples include online personalities that guide the user through filling a form, or making an online sales pitch. This is particularly effective as the video can be both the demonstrator and closer. Additional questions can be referred to a FAQ section, technical specifications section or any possible objection to the close.

Our experience shows increased completion of forms and signups for service. Microsites, while not really very different from the Website, may become another hot trend, in that it is a way to work on a specific subject in an intense way without effecting the general Website. Microsites can also be built by outside vendors for larger corporate Websites without engaging the webmaster for creative, a task that most marketers find compelling to get the product they envision.

See http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1006226 for the full article.

If You HaveTeen Customers Today Or Adult Customers Tomorrow Listen (Text) UP

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Categories: Social Media & Networking Trends

The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that nearly ALL teens in the US are online. . . and active in texting. (Writing for those of us over 22.)

Overall 94% are online, and if the income category under $30,000 in household income is eliminated, it is over 97%!

Responding teens were heavy users of electronic communications overall: 71% had a mobile phone, 59% had a notebook or desktop PC, 58% had a social network profile and 27% had a blog, according to information reported by Emarketer Newsletter.

While these facts are no real surprise to the market researcher or technophile, it deserves a hard look for those catering to teenage or young adult customers, because one possible result may be irrelevance of some businesses that don’t get it. Those that text, (they do not like to call it writing) may expect those that sell to them to text as well. Girls spend much more time texting and high-tech communicating than boys do. 44% of girls text every day, compared with only half as much for boys.

Don’t let your conclusion be that this group is great at writing though. In a recent seminar that I attended, Email expert Michelle Howe explained that in her college level business school writing class, most students completely clutch when asked to write a two paragraph email announcing a fictional policy change! See more on this subject in upcoming posts.

What is Social Media on the Web?

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Categories: Social Media & Networking

What is Social Media?

Social media is the new marketing idea to tie social groups together. The major driving force behind social media is the “user created content”. Users or members of the groups are the ones that create and push the direction of the website, not the owners of the site. The content is driven mostly by blogging or by message boards, where users can create and publish there strings of content. Users also get there own personal homepages, can add photos and plug-ins to their pages, and can link their pages to there friends. The major examples of sites that would be social community sites are; MySpace.com, FaceBook.com, Meetup.com, and YouTube.

Can small and medium businesses use Social Media as a tool?

Sure, the most basic way to create a social community is to add a Blog to your existing website. Blogs are really a two way communication tool with the major advantage that Blogs have a powerful distributions system in the form of an RSS feed built in.

Getting Customer Permission To Sell

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Categories: Email Practices

Email Contact“Permission based” email is when a customer has asked for updates, product information and other direct contact from your company. This is a valuable tool which still has lots of power. First it is like direct mail except, of course, online. Second, these are interested parties and existing customers.

According to a new report by EMarker, Promotional emails perform well against other online forms of contact. They rank right under your website for importance as most influence to buy online.

Online marketing increasingly is more than the website. It is the most important, but in many ways it needs the other media to maximize its prospecting effect.

Read Online Marketing Effectiveness for more information about customer permission to sell.

Click Prices Rise But Value Still Good For Smaller Business

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Categories: Business

With an astounding 42% revenue increase, Google stock surged over 17% in a single day following the announcement of huge 30% profit increases. The stock was down due to current market pressures and reports that the “click” rate was flat by ComSearch and other research firms.

Google reported that in fact clicks on its ads increased 20% in the first quarter from a year earlier and 30% in the forth quarter in a Wall Street Journal front page article today.

RedFusion Media has see the cost per click increase over the last several months, supporting the notion that demand for ads continues to increase. This was confirmed by Google’s Chief Executive Eric Schmidt in an interview with the Journal stating that on average advertisers are paying more for each click.
RedFusion Media buys online advertising for dozens of its clients and still sees lots of room for smaller businesses to take of advantage of small market niches in local areas. Even with prices rising, the effectiveness is still greater than most other options available to smaller companies and non-profits. Using our Local Target Marketing program, clients can see exactly what they spend and how many phone calls and emails are received as a result of the ad spend. If the cost goes too high it becomes apparent immediately, a measurement that other media simply can not do.

Search Trends: Number of page results searchers look at.

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Categories: SEO - Natural Search Trends

Having your website be found in search engines is extremely important and often it is very cost effective. New studies show that Internet surfers are relying more and more from results on the first page of keyword searches. This study done by eMarketer.com, shows that the percentage of search engine users that select their choice from the 1st page of results has increased from 32% in 2002 to 41% in 2008. Searchers moving to the second page of results have declined from 23% in 2002 to 17% in 2008.

 

“Online search has become so efficient that most Internet users are now impatient with anything less than great results.” (eMarketer.com, Searching for SEO April 17, 2008) The trend that people are using the first page of results more often shows the importance of building a solid SEO plan to move your site’s pages to the top, because that is where the searchers are looking for your products and services.

Google is now crawling your HTML Forms

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Categories: Google, Yahoo, & others

Forms on websites have always been a problem whether it is coding, execution, or the fact that it was a wall to spiders. I would say that in my 10 years of coding, html forms have been the biggest problem in web site design. From the start forms were created using odd execution triggers; you could use CGI, Java, and the always dangerous Microsoft Front Page extensions. Today we use a number of other functions, php, asp, and flash to improve the delivery of the information. Internet data is now mission critical, so the old form techniques are out – mostly due to security and mail delivery problems.

For Google search, or any spiders for that matter, forms were the end of the road, spiders could not follow. Spiders could not follow the destinations of the forms. Many times forms just go to a “Thank You page”, but sometime they unlock whole sections of content that would not be indexed in the search engines. Other navigation solutions used “jump menus” which are usually coded as forms, so none of your jump menu content was found by the engines.

Google has announced that is now experimenting with the ability to search, from “Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Crawling through HTML forms”

“In the past few months we have been exploring some HTML forms to try to discover new web pages and URLs that we otherwise couldn’t find and index for users who search on Google. Specifically, when we encounter a <FORM> element on a high-quality site, we might choose to do a small number of queries using the form” – Jayant Madhavan and Alon Halevy, Crawling and Indexing Team.

RedFusion Media has always placed high value on “Google-able” search pages, and if you would like to learn more about how Google works, and how search engine optimization works.

Yahoo and AOL work together against Microsoft

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Categories: Business Google, Yahoo, & others

Reported today in the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo and Time Warner’s AOL are talking about a deal that would combine internet operations. This action is in response to Microsoft’s un-solicited bid to buy Yahoo, which declined the offer. In response Microsoft has gone to News Corp, which owns MySpace.com in an attempt to put a joint deal together where they could buy out Yahoo.

The “Bigger News” may be the disclosure of an apparent defeat, Yahoo is talking to Google about outsourcing search ad sales for Yahoo’s advertising engine. Google has a large lead in market share on all add placement and sale revenue.

Managing the New Workforce, Generation Y (Millennials)

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Categories: Business

The complete Managing Generation Y article can be found here.

ABSTRACT

Hiring new, young talent just out of college is challenging some established practices of management and changing today’s corporate culture. With the shift of the younger employment force from Generation X to Generation Y, also known as “Millennial”, companies are finding that there are different attitudes and work habits that need to be incorporated into the existing culture. With companies now having different generational mentalities and priorities, the corporate melting pot has new challenges ahead.

For the first time, new college graduates are entering the workforce, having never known a world without computers, cell phones, email, or instant messaging. They have been brought up in a fast-paced, instant world that is always moving and changing.  Their parents valued their opinions from the time they were toddlers and gave them choices, rather than making decisions for them.

Topics about Millennial Management Challenges

  • Loyalty
  • Advancement Expectations
  • Work Attitudes
  • Management Tactics

Read the complete Managing Generation Y article

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Explained

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Categories: Marketing SEO - Natural Search

At RedFusion Media, we believe there are some very specific steps, tactics, and skills that go into the development of websites that are highly ranked in search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the term the web industry has given the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website page.

Common Questions

  • How does a search engine like Google, Yahoo, and MSN rank my pages?
  • What goes into building pages that are successful in search engines?
  • The final question, can RedFusion Media show us their success on SEO?

Our SEO answers can all be found on our new page, “Build a better performing website using proven Search Engine Optimization processes.”