2008 June | Online Marketing Blog RSS Ray

Archive for June, 2008

Managing Your Online Reputation

Monday, June 30th, 2008

Online Marketing with RSS Ray and RSSRay.com announces a new episode that you do not want to miss.

Fionn Downhill, President & CEO of Elixir Interactive

Show Date: July 2nd, 2008 at 6 PM Eastern 3 PM Pacific

Show Topic: Managing Your Online Reputation

Show Guest: Fionn Downhill, President & CEO of Elixir Interactive

How to Listen: Live on wsRadio.com or available by Podcast on iTunes or by RSS Feed.

Guest Biography: In addition to her work with the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) Fionn is President and CEO of the recently renamed Elixir Interactive, formerly Elixir Systems. Her Scottsdale Arizona based company is a consulting firm that specializes in building internet applications. They are experts in the field of organic search engine optimization (SEO) and public relations. They provide customized online marketing plans using organic SEO, paid advertising, and online public relations. They have developed their own proprietary software to track ROI and reduce CPA. She believes that the cornerstone of Elixir Interactive is delivering value and ROI to her clients.

Sample Questions:

What are the benefits or correctly managing your online reputation?

How do you identify the websites that will be most influential to your reputation?

How can you encourage your customers to provide positive feedback online about your company?

RSS Ray’s Comments: “A single unhappy customer with an axe to grind against your company is all it takes to ruin your online reputation. I expect Fionn’s insight on reputation management to really help companies of all types to recognize the significance of this field and learn how they can strengthen their own image online.”

Tags: Online Reputation, Public Relations Online, Show Annoucement
Posted in Public Relations Online, Show Announcements | No Comments »

Online Privacy Gets Big Boost from Federal Court

Friday, June 27th, 2008

Employers’ ability to access emails and text messages sent through company accounts greatly reduced by Federal Court ruling.

Almost everyone has heard a story about someone getting fired after sending out inappropriate emails or non work-related text messages from a company phone. Employees of many companies have been forced to be cautious about every email they send lest they be called out by a snooping superior for inappropriate activities or worse still, wasting company resources.

Now, thanks to a new decision from a federal appeals court, employees might be able to rest a little bit easier knowing that their privacy is now more closely guarded than ever before. The decision is expected to drastically limit an employer’s ability to access the emails and text messages sent through company accounts.

According to the ruling, companies may have access to an employee’s messages only if those messages are maintained internally. This means that if a company uses an outside company to allow users to send texts or an outside email service for handling emails, it cannot legally request to view the communications made by its employees. The only way that an outside force would be able to access that information would be if a warrant was created to obtain it.

This will likely protect almost all text messages, as most are done through cell phone service providers. However, some are quick to point out that a large percentage of companies keep email on private servers and will therefore still have access to employee emails.

Many privacy advocates see this as a big step for online privacy. This ruling was the first by a federal appeals court to extend the same 4th Amendment protections to online communications that letters and packages have enjoyed for years.

Employees are now able to send texts and to a lesser extent emails with little fear of reprisal. Additionally these new privacy rights even extend to law enforcement’s ability to gain access to online communications except by the use of warrant. Previously only a subpoena was needed to obtain such information.

Tags: Company Emails, Online Privacy
Posted in Industry News | No Comments »

Google’s Advice about How to Get Top Search Engine Rankings on Google

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

Google’s Matt Cutts tells you what’s important for getting top search engine rankings on Google.

The USA Today recently published tips on how to achieve top search engine rankings on Google.

The neat thing about the article is that the top search rankings advice came from Google itself in the form of Google engineer and blogging legend, Matt Cutts.

The article identifies 5 tips to get top search engine rankings on Google:

1. Spotlight your search terms on the page

2. Fill in your “tags”

3. Get other websites to “link back” to you

4. Create a blog and post often

5. Don’t overdo it

You can see the entire USA Today article and can contact us if you need professional help in obtaining high natural search engine rankings for your business.

Tags: Google, Linking, Search Engine Optimization, Search engine rankings, SEO
Posted in Blogging, Increasing Website Traffic, Online Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

How Marketing, Advertising and PR Firms Price Their Work For You

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

How marketing firms price their work for you A new study reveals pricing strategies employed by marketing, PR and Advertising agencies.

In the “Fees and Pricing Benchmark Report: Marketing, Advertising, and PR Industry 2008” those of us in the Marketing, Advertising and PR industries are being treated to a glimpse into the minds, and pricing strategies, of some of the most well known and profitable firms in our industry.

Based on a survey of 343 industry executives the report by RainToday.com pays special attention to the premium-price firms, profit leaders, and brand leaders in an attempt to find what they are doing right, and why they charge what they do.

One element of the study that is of particular interest is its focus on how clients are charged. The methods are broken down into either going rates, a fixed fee, or a value based contract. It further goes on to separate these strategies based on the type of firm that implements each type of strategy. The report looks at the strategy used by premium profit firms versus bargain firms, or by profit leaders compared to firms who have been decreasing their prices.

For those who are curious, using going rates is the most popular option overall, while value based contracts are the least popular. The exception to this is among premium priced firms who tend to favor value pricing far more than other firms.

Interestingly, this report compares not only statistical data but also actual commentary from the interviewed executives. This creates a much more interesting insight into not only how many firms are behaving a certain way, but also why they are behaving in that way.

As an example, we find that one executive doesn’t use value based pricing because he has “difficulty introducing the concept to clients.” At the same time we see quotes from executives who favor this model of pricing claiming “demonstrating value usually gets an agreement on a price that may seem too high at first sight.”

The report does an excellent job at controlling the data and providing clear insights into a variety of pricing strategies and tactics. Additionally, readers are provided with a number of clear suggestions for how to use the data to increase profits in their own marketing, PR, or advertising firm.

To get more information on the report go to RainToday’s Fees and Pricing Benchmark Report page.

RSS Ray will be interviewing the founder of RainToday.com and author of this report, Mike Schultz, on Online Marketing with RSS Ray July 23rd. Be sure to catch the interview live at 6:00PM Eastern, 3:00PM Pacific on wsRadio.com.

Tags: Competitive Intelligence, marketing firm pricing, marketing industry, pricing strategy
Posted in Competitive Intelligence, Industry News | 1 Comment »

How People Use Search Engines

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

A new study about search engine user behavior reveals the importance of page one rankings for success with online marketing.

Think you can get away with not having your website listed on the front page of Google and other popular search engines? Think again.

According to a recent study by iProspect, 68% of search engine users will never look past the first page of search results.

What’s more, only 8% of users make it past the third page of results. These numbers represent a significant change from 2002 when iProspect created its first report where the numbers were 48% and 19% respectively. While the numbers have been trending towards increased importance for page one search results since 2002, these latest findings indicate a greater importance than ever to optimize your website to achieve better search engine rankings for search terms critical to your business success.

In addition to the obvious benefit of getting more clicks to your website, the study has also identified an additional reason for having page one search engine rankings. The study found that almost half of people surveyed believe that companies that are listed high in the rankings are the top companies in their field.

This represents a fantastic opportunity for companies looking to enhance their brand and increase sales.

The 2008 study also examined for the first time the use of vertical search engines. Vertical searches are specialized searches, such as image search or news search, which allow users to narrow their results to exactly what they are looking for. The study found that only 40% of search users have clicked on results from a vertical search. Of those people, 26% have used image search, 17% have used news search, and 10% used video search.

The study also looked at blended search which the major engines now use to place news, image and other vertical specialized results into the regular search results. Far more people suggested that they have clicked on a blended search option, with 36% clicking on a news option, 26% on image results and 17% have claimed to click on a video result.

These results suggest that now high natural search engine rankings must also be concerned with optimizing images, news articles, videos, and all other content.

The study is available for free by clicking the iProspect Blended Search Results Study or going to the iProspect website at www.iprospect.com.

Need help in getting high search engine rankings for your business? Contact RSS Ray today to find out what you can do to get top search engine rankings on the key search terms for your website.

Tags: Blended Search, Search Engine Optimization, search engine usage, vertical search, website traffic
Posted in Increasing Website Traffic, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Document Analytics For Maximum Marketing ROI

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Pat Weilmeier, Director of Marketing Communications for Vitrium Systems This week on Online Marketing with RSS Ray we’re going to be taking a look at something that you might not have given too much thought to before, document analytics. Like web analytics, document analytics allows marketers to better understand user behavior and optimize their return on investment.

Marketers are able to imbed analytics software into any white paper, sales letter, or any other PDF file and track the exact time spent, pages viewed, and a whole lot more to find out exactly what is working and what isn’t.

RSS Ray will be speaking with Vitrium Systems’ Director of Marketing Communications, Pat Weilmeier this Wednesday, June 25th at 3:00 pm Pacific, 6:00 pm Eastern live on wsRadio.com.

Vitrium Systems pioneered document analytics with their Docmetrics software. Using in-document forms, as well as specialized analytics software and real time reports, Docmetrics allows marketers to understand the efficacy of their documents like never before.

We are very excited to have Pat Weilmier, the chief architect of Vitrium’s own marketing campaign on the program to discuss this exciting new technology.

If you are serious about your marketing success, this is a show you do not want to miss.

Tags: Docmetrics, Document Analytics, Guest Announcement
Posted in A/B Testing Programs, Guest Announcements, Web Analytics/Web Metrics | No Comments »

Engagement as the measure in social media

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

The key marketing metric is customer engagement and social media expert and radio show guest Dan Neely, CEO of Networked Insights tells us all about it.

People have always gathered around peers with similar interests, values, or concerns. Whether it’s in a tavern or at the water cooler, social conversation has long been the most trusted resource for making decisions on everything from picking a paint color to choosing a doctor.

Today, social media is transforming this process. Online communities are popping up everywhere and almost instantly. Social media is a gold mine of customer intelligence, if you have the strategy and tools to understand the insights. The key to unlocking this intelligence is understanding engagement.

Engagement is the new metric for social media, telling companies the degree and depth of customer-to-customer interaction. The old measurements of click-throughs and conversions are not meaningful to customers, which is particularly important when it comes to advertising placements and media buys. If ad placement is based on engagement, advertisers know that the advertising is more relevant to the people that see it because it is based on the topics and people that they engage with.

Measuring social media also can unlock innovative approaches to marketing, media, product development, and overall customer relationships. For customers, social media offers new ways of connecting, sharing, and organizing relationships and information. For companies, social media offers candid access to the collective wisdom and potential influence of people in ways traditional media cannot. It’s an organic two-way conversation.

Tags: customer engagement, Dan Neely, Networked Insights, Social media, social media measurement, social media metrics
Posted in Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Guest Articles, Social Media Marketing, Social Network Marketing | 1 Comment »

Customer Driven Market Research for Growth and Profit

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

I’m really looking forward to grilling Dan Neely this Wednesday.

Dan’s an expert about customer driven market research, using tools like social media, web analytics and business intelligence to help grow profits and life time customer value.

As CEO of Networked Insights, you’ll hear first hand insider secrets to customer driven market research that will give you an unfair advantage over your competitors.

I’m really looking forward to this one so join me this Wednesday at 6pm Eastern for the live version of the show on wsRadio.com. You can also get the podcast version of the show free each week via our online marketing podcast feed.

Tags: Business Intelligence, Customer driven market research, Customer research, Dan Neely, Networked Insights, Social media, Web Analytics, wsRadio.com
Posted in About the Show, Competitive Intelligence, Social Media Marketing, Web Analytics/Web Metrics | 1 Comment »