WebProNews

Tag: WebProNews interviews

  • Threats to Expect in Mobile, Social, Location and Email in 2011

    It’s getting late in the year, and it’s about time to start looking forward to 2011. While we can speculate about a great many topics, few trends are going to be as important to anticipate as those related to security. We asked an expert in the field about some of the things he is anticipating. WebProNews interviewed Paul Wood, MessageLabs Intelligence Sr. Analyst at Symantec Hosted Services about what businesses and consumers can expect to deal with in order to stay secure over the next year. 

    Mobile Phones and Tablets

    First off, we asked what implications all of the new mobile devices and tablets coming out have on security in the coming year. "Three trends emerge," Wood tells us. "Increased mobile device processing power will mean more opportunity for malware to run on these devices. As their numbers and use increase, they become a viable target for attackers. Many brands of mobile devices will share the same chipsets and threats targeting vulnerabilities in some chipsets will emerge in 2011."

    "Increased convergence from a technology perspective means that more people than before are using mobile devices to access their email and social networking circles," he continues. "From a corporate perspective, business users will be accessing business data and services whilst on the move – often outside the boundaries of the physical corporate network – so applying the same rules to enforce acceptable usage policies, for example – will become more important."

    Paul Wood Talks Security Threats in 2011"Security protection will be required to work seamlessly across many platforms as users switch between devices and laptops used to store and transmit information online," he adds. "Businesses will look to the cloud to secure their information longer-term, irrespective of how the data is accessed. There will also be a drive for stronger cloud-based authentication and for the cloud to remove malicious threats before they reach the network or device."

    Social Media Threats

    When asked whether social networks like Facebook and Twitter will start becoming bigger security problems or less of an issue in the next year, Wood says, "Social networking will continue to be a persuasive force and will continue to be exploited as a means of running confidence tricks – social engineering attacks – and for distributing malware. The level of risk will remain unchanged from this year, but the level of sophistication involved may increase. This may manifest as phishing attacks to compromise legitimate accounts and third-party apps may be likely to continue to be a source of malware and attacks against privacy. We expect to see more fraud targeting virtual online currencies."

    Location-Based Services

    As you’re probably aware, location sharing is becoming more common thanks to capabilities in mobile phones as well as the market saturation of check-in apps. We asked Wood if threats based on the sharing of location are going to become a bigger problem. "Probably not, it’s difficult to see how to monetize attacks over the internet using location sharing," he says. "One attack that may be predicted is for malware faking location information in order to boost ranking or prominence of the spoofed location. This type of information will be of value in the reconnaissance stage prior to a targeted attack, or perhaps prior to burgling someone’s house – the robber can know the owner is elsewhere." 

    You may recall a site/Twitter account called PleaseRobMe, dedicated to illustrating that very point. 

    Email Spam 

    As far as changes over the next year with regards to email spam, Wood says, "It’s going to remain in excess of 90% of all email for most of 2011. Botnets will continue to be a major threat and a major source of spam – currently 90% of spam is sent from botnets."

    "Spam will increasingly use URL shortening links as these are legitimate domains – we may even find a legitimate shortening domain being compromised or spammers establishing their own such services, using disposable domain names and chaining them together," he predicts. "Spam will increasingly make use of the news and current affairs by consuming RSS feeds from major news aggregators and using these headlines as subjects in the messages. More spam will be sent from new economic areas, particularly East Africa as increased broadband capacity is deployed in the region."

    The One Thing Businesses Should Do

    Finally, we asked Wood if he could name one thing as the single most important step businesses should take to protect their data, what would it be?

    "Know what it is that you’re trying to protect," he answers. "Too many businesses look for magic bullets that will make security go away. The reality is that security is achieved by knowing what it is that you are trying to protect – know your assets, who has access to these assets and under what circumstances, and what are the attacks directed against the assets. By considering these issues, businesses can build coherent defences that protect their systems yet also allow employees to get on with their work."

    Symantec’s Kevin Haley has some more interesting predictions for 2011 in a new report here.

  • Recipe for a Blog That Doesn’t Suck

    Recipe for a Blog That Doesn’t Suck

    (more…)

  • Who’s Got the Time for All This Technology?

    Who’s Got the Time for All This Technology?

    In a recent article, we asked how business owners and CEOs can keep up with new technologies and strategies in the digital age. It’s a topic we discussed with a few people at Pubcon in Las Vegas. 

    "The pace of change is frightening," New York Times tech columnist David Pogue told us. "In the last three or four years…it’s becoming overwhelming for me. I mean, it’s my job. I eat and breathe keeping on top of tech, and people will say ‘what do you think of…’ something I’ve never heard of and everyone else has, and it’s like oh my god, now I’m behind. So I don’t have any idea how a CEO is supposed to keep up."

    "Obviously there’s people like me and websites, whose job it is to filter stuff for you, and bring to you what’s important," he added. "That would probably be one way to do it, but I think it explains why in general business is always behind the curve." 

    A similar subject also came up in a conversation with well-known consultant Chris Brogan, who says, "What I look at is, I try to stay with a product or sale solution mindset, and I say, ‘Is there a reason this is gonna add to what I’m working on right now?’ and if I go try this new social network, is that likely to be where my new target audience is gonna be?"

    "Honestly, it’s really interesting," he adds. "Everyone’s always chasing the new thing. I think you go backwards and look at the old things. I’m amazed at who’s not searching inside eBay or who’s not searching inside of Amazon or whatever…who’s not really working their email marketing lists, as opposed to just beating it over the head with automated stuff."

    That’s a great point. The rate at which all of this stuff comes out is unreal, and a lot of people try so desperately to stay on top of the latest and emerging trends, that they leave behind proven and established opportunities. 

    "I think with time management, you just have to keep going with the mindset of what you real goal is, and keep paring away," says Brogan. "It’s like I’m a priest and I give absolution all the time. I’m always like, ‘You don’t have to try Quora just because everyone’s always inviting you to it.’ I haven’t said yes to that invite yet. I’m sure it’s gonna be great. Whatever. You know what? I stopped reading TechCrunch and Mashable because my friends will tell me when something really cool’s coming. I read their sharing of TechCrunch and Mashable, because then I get the story I really care about."

    Brogan is certainly not alone, which is why social search is bound to become much more integral to the way people interact with information on the web (good news for Microsoft, given its recent deal with Facebook to integrate social data into its search results). 

    "So then the other thing with time management is – I keep telling people this – in the Internet space, there’s more work than there is time in a day, and there always will be," Brogan adds. "If you don’t put the gate down and you don’t say, ‘Time is up,’ it’s you. It’s your doing. You know, if you’re missing out on family life, it’s your choice."

     

  • Social Media and Blogging: The Common Sense Approach

    (more…)

  • Check-In Apps Add Key Relevancy Factor to Your Marketing

    Are check-in apps just a fad or are they the future of local business marketing? It may still be too early to tell, but I’m starting to lean toward the latter, because this space is only picking up more and more steam, and businesses and marketers are getting excited about it as more apps continue to flood the mobile app markets. 

    Are check-in apps just a fad? Tell us what you think.

    At PubCon this week, WebProNews spoke with Gib Olander, director of biz dev at Localeze, which provides local business listings to all kinds of sites and apps. He certainly seems convinced that location-based services (LBS) are here to stay. 

    "Geo-location is just an outstanding place, and the way I think about it is, we started with a big search box and we all kind of wanted to find answers to ‘what’ questions and things have evolved pretty quickly to a ‘what’ and a ‘where’, so we did a geo-modifier," he tells us. "We added a state or a zip code or a city. We started to find more information."

    Putting the "Where" and the "When" in Marketing

    "Nicely, social layers added on top of that where you start to get your Facebook and your friends’ recommendations," he continues. "Yelp did a great job with reviews, and then Foursquare came along, and they’ve added a really neat new component with this check-in feature, and there’s other sites that are doing it as well, like Brightkite and SCVNGR, but one of the things I think is really neat and new for marketers is they’ve added the time of ‘when.’"

    That "when" is a key factor in executing a successful campaign, and it’s one that just hasn’t been able to get nearly as precise in marketing channels of the past. The mobile device in customers’ pocket tracking right where they are when they’re there (particularly when they’re sharing this information on purpose) is astonishingly powerful. 

    "When someone is there really changes the relevancy of what kind of information you want to share with them – what kind of things you want to talk to them about," says Olander. "So, geo-location has added all those…kind of layers: the who, what, where, why, and when on top of each other, and it’s created new opportunities for businesses to talk to their customers, and for customers to discover new businesses, and I think that’s just really exciting for our space."

    "Michael Metcalf from Yahoo talked about this at a conference," he recalls. "Your spatial network is just about as important as your social network. So who’s around you and when they’re around you both from a physical location, and businesses need to be aware of that with other businesses, but also people around you. Because when people congregate in an area, they leave a pyschographic imprint of who they are and what they are, and why they’re there. And marketers can tend to look at that."

    "Like so right now at PubCon, if you were tracking this event, you would see that by the profiles people have when they’re here now at this particular time…you know, we’ve got a lot of interesting SEO and SEM and geo-location and marketing and targeting," Olander explains. "So as a marketer or advertiser…and a big feel for tech…so maybe if you’re the Marriott nearby, you could start to target the area during the hours that we’re here with special offers of free wi-fi or that type of thing."

    Which Check-In Apps Should I Utilize?

    One challenge that marketers face along with these types of opportunities is knowing which services to utilize. There are seemingly new check-in apps coming out just about every day.  Foursquare is the one that’s gotten the most attention thus far, but there are plenty of others breathing down that company’s neck to be the "it" check-in app – the Facebook to Foursquare’s MySpace. Of course, Facebook itself is doing more in this space with its Facebook Places product. It will be interesting to see how other apps co-exist with that. Facebook Places is only going to get bigger and bigger. The social network has over half a billion user, let’s not forget.

    "I think the real competition from the Facebook ecosystem is gonna come from third-party developers like Zynga that build on top of the Facebook Places API, because you’ll notice with Facebook Places that they haven’t done anything with like virtual goods like badges or points, and these are some of the main attractions of Foursquare and Gowalla," Lawrence Coburn, who runs the geo-location app provider DoubleDutch recently told WebProNews. "So they’ve just left that open, but I know that third-party developers won’t be so shy, and they’ll come in and make games, because there’s a lot of good game developers on Facebook." 

    That’s certainly another advantage for the social network giant, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to consider the rest of these apps doomed. 

    Foursquare itself has some pretty big plans, particularly for local businesses. CEO Dennis Crowley talked about this at ad:tech last week. "The harder part is consumer brands…consumer packaged goods," he said, adding that it’s hard to find a practical way to use Foursquare to sell things like batteries or cereal. The local business stuff is much more obvious though, and what may not work with Foursquare or even Facebook Places, may work with another app. 

    "Across the board, they’re all really important," says Olander. "I think there’s a stat out that there’s more than six thousand LBS apps on the iPhone alone, so fragmentation is a reality of the marketplace. What we think, at Localeze, is that you look at each one of them as an opportunity…what you really have to establish is your business identity online."

    "It used to be that you could just have a brick and mortar store, and put a nice awning up or a nice sign up, and people would walk by and find you," he adds. "But today, you really have to own that online presence, and that starts with owning your name/address/phone number. You make sure it’s consistent in multiple applications, and then you’re starting to cover them all. You start to monitor each of those and see where most of the foot traffic, or where your audience or customers are, and then really interact with those and create unique content offers for them."

    Are you marketing to customers with location-based services? Tell us about your experiences.

  • Clicks But No Conversions? It’s the Landing Page Every Time.

    Are you putting enough thought into your landing pages? If not, it’s probably the main reason your conversions, or more importantly your revenue, aren’t higher. At PubCon in Las Vegas, WebProNews spoke with Brad Geddes, Founder of PPC training firm bgTheory about advanced PPC and landing page optimization. 

    Why Landing Page Optimization is Critical

    "Landing page optimization – it is critical," he says. "If you have an account that has several thousand clicks and no conversions, it’s the landing page. That’s always the issue."

    "A lot of people don’t really get some of the high-level landing page testing," he continues. "Step one is where do you send the traffic, whether it’s…rarely the home page, but it’s a category page, a product page, an about page, so forth. And then it really comes to laying out the page itself."

    Think about it from the user perspective. How much of a page do you take in before you leave or convert? The whole thing? I doubt it. 

    "The most missed element is that whole concept of ‘above the fold’ – what’s displayed in the browser when the page first loads," says Geddes. "80% of [the] time, 76% of clicks occur in that above the fold section, so if that call to action isn’t there, it doesn’t matter how good your page is."

    "Every page really has a goal to it – what you want someone to do," he continues. "So certain pages you’ll have actually won’t be conversion-based pages. They’ll be more segmentation-based pages or so forth. But every page you send traffic to, you should have a primary goal, which you want someone to do."

    "So, if you’re a lead gen site, you obviously want a form on the landing page," Geddes adds. "If it’s an e-commerce site, you want a buy button. It sort of depends on what kind of site you are. If it’s a local business, you want a phone number and driving directions, but your conversion action has to be on that landing page. It should be above the fold, clearly visible, easy to understand contents. Minimize distractions."

    Why Less Conversions Can Mean Greater Revenue

    "We have a blog that has a huge amount of traffic on it, but had horrible conversion rates, so we essentially moved more conversion elements to the blog, and what happened is, the site’s overall conversion rates dropped significantly, but our revenue went up a lot, because all of a sudden we’re bringing more people into the funnel," Geddes explains.

    "So that’s where conversion rates are interesting, because you kind of measure it from the point of the user – where they entered your funnel, so…it dropped our conversion rates…a thirty or forty percent drop in conversion rates," he says. "Probably a 20% increase in revenue. We just essentially brought more people into the funnel to buy."

    Everyone wants traffic, and there’s no question. If the traffic’s not there, you can’t convert it. That said, it doesn’t end with getting a lot of traffic. You can’t just get people to your landing page. That page has to make them want to perform the action you are trying to get them to perform. 

    "It’s not about the traffic. Traffic gets someone to your site," says Geddes. "The page then has to pick up the traffic to actually convert it."

    You might want to worry about that before you start worrying about how to get people to your site.

  • Tips For Increasing the Chances of Customers Buying From You Online

    In the fast-paced digital age where everyone wants a piece of that sweet Internet money, competition for small businesses is greater than ever. Fortunately there are  more tools available to small businesses than ever as well. Still, there are so many factors to consider, and so little time. 

    WebProNews sat down with Paul Boisvert of Yahoo Small Business to talk about some things that small e-commerce companies are doing wrong and how they can improve their approaches to ultimately get more sales. 

    Making the Most of Limited Time and Resources

    "The big issue with any small business is having enough time," says Boisvert. "There’s so many different trends that are out there, having to keep up on the education with what’s new…what’s current, what are the new tools they should be using, what are the new trends…it’s a little bit daunting, and so we try to simplify things with our services, and try to educate them and direct their attention to things that are going to generate the highest ROI."

    In fact, this subject came up more than once at PubCon this week. Read here and here for some additional thoughts on this from Chris Brogan and the New York Times’ tech columnist David Pogue respectively. 

    "In a nutshell, the biggest thing I see that they’re doing wrong is they’re not focusing," says Boisvert. "They’re not embracing their passion. When people get in and try to sell every product to every single person…you can’t possibly be an expert on everything."

    "You know, Amazon has tens of thousands of employees, but they have people that are experts on their specific topics," he adds. "So all small businesses need to kind of embrace what that core product is that they really have a lot of knowledge on, and then you’ll be able to speak with authenticity. You’ll be able to speak with authority, and that’s going to persuade people to buy from you, and buy the products that you’re selling as opposed to anywhere where they could get the same product."

    But e-commerce success isn’t just about time and product focus. Things like site usability and shopping cart optimization can make a huge difference when it comes to getting people to actually buy.

    Improving Your Shopping Cart Process

    "A few pointers I would throw out on shopping cart optimization…" says Boisvert. "You obviously want to have your contact information there, you want your 1-800 number there if you have one (if not, if you have a live chat, you want it there)…it’s just a reassurance. Even if people don’t use it, they know that that number is there. You’re a reputable company, and if they have an issue they can contact you. It’s not hidden."

    "So you kind of want to reduce all the fears that people have as they proceed into that checkout process, so they don’t have any of those questions and they can just pull out their wallet and pay you," he explains.

    "Other things like trust marks are also very important," Boisvert adds. "Just having them on the site and reassuring somebody that you’re a brand that another larger company has vetted to a certain degree, whether that’s Yahoo or Verisign or any of the other trust marks that are out there, but those are really important in kind of reducing the fears that people have."

    Trust is one thing, but you also have to think about the process itself. How easy is it for a customer to check out? If there’s any hassle involved, you risk losing the sale, because your competition is only a click away. 

    How Many Pages Should The Checkout Process Include?

    "You do have to guide the consumer,’ says Boisvert. "You want to have a smooth flow. You want to reduce friction in your checkout process, but I think the whole argument around one-page or two-page or three-page is largely overblown. I’ve talked with many merchants. They’ve tested both versions. Our shopping cart supports all the various combinations: order review in place, order review not in place, single-page, multi-page…people have tested it, and they find out that the results for the most part are the same."

    "I think the key differences are the people that are kind of on the edges," he notes. "If you sell a very low average order value, like a $20 purchase such as beads for jewelry or something like that, a single-page checkout makes sense because it doesn’t require a lot of having to address a lot of fears and uncertainties with a low purchase value."

    "However, on the flipside, if you’re selling expensive watches or appliances, you want a multi-step process so somebody can feel comfortable with you…comfortable with the product they’re going to get at the end of this checkout process," he concludes. 

    Watch the video above for more from Boisvert and some things Yahoo Small Business specifically is doing for e-commerce businesses.

     

  • Splitting Up Your Social Strategy for Better Results

    Marketing is about achieving goals, and that goes for social media marketing as well. In fact, you might say it’s about "micro goals". At least that’s what Jennifer Evans Laycock, President of SugarSpun Marketing says. 

    "The concept of micro goals is really about looking at all of the little things that can happen with your social media campaigns," she told WebProNews in an interview at PubCon in Las Vegas. "So we think about it in terms of, how many followers do I have on Twitter [or] how many fans do I have on Facebook? But a lot of times people don’t look at the other small level goals that happen, so like how many times has this specific article been retweeted or how many times does the discount code off of Twitter get used?"

    "When we look at all of those as individual goals (micro goals), they just are what they are, and we put them together, we can get a lot of insight into an overall campaign," says Laycock. "We may see a lot of links and a lot of traffic coming into some of our articles, but then if we go and look at the engagement level or the conversion rate off of some of those articles, it’s next to nothing. Well, that’s easy to say this is just link bait, and if we wanted to accomplish something, we need to re-write it. We need to come up with something different."

    "So, it’s having those micro goals in play to give you the way to see sort of the overall picture," she adds.

    By getting a better view of that picture, you should be able to fine tune your efforts in order to increase traffic and conversions. "The nice thing about micro goals is that if you’re looking at it on that level, you can kind of change directions a little more quickly with your campaign, because you’re not just looking at that end goal of did my conversions go up or did I get more traffic?" she says. "You’re actually seeing it as it’s happening. So you have a lot better opportunity to change directions mid-stream, and fix something that’s not going the way you want it to."

    Having goals means knowing why you are doing certain things in social media (as opposed to just jumping on the social media "brand" wagon). "What I’m seeing a lot happening now as companies call, is I’ll get that call that says, ‘We need you to build a Facebook Page for us.’ And I’ll say, ‘why?’ And there’s just dead silence. And I get, ‘Well, I don’t know.’…because everyone’s doing it," says Laycock.

    "You don’t want to do just what everyone else is doing," she adds. "Don’t jump off the bridge because everyone else is…People spend the money on the Facebook Page. They have fun making friends, talking to people, and then at the end of the day, when the CEO comes in and says, ‘Well what did this do to our bottom line?’ they go, ‘I don’t know.’ That’s problematic."

    "If you want to impact the bottom line of your business, set a goal and figure out which social media outlets are actually going to help you reach it," she continues. "Not just which ones are most popular."

    You may think that you have to be on Facebook or you have to be on Twitter, and there are certainly plenty of good reasons to be, but if these reasons aren’t practical to your own business, you can probably do without them, although it’s hard to imagine not having a goal of reaching as many people as possible with your message. 

    "I, much like most of the other people in the industry, used to spend a lot of time on Twitter, and I find myself spending less and less, because it was taking away from what I needed to do, which is work with clients," says Laycock. "So, invest the time to get the understanding, but once you have that understanding, ask yourself honestly: is this working for me? And if it’s not, start investing some time into learning something else."

    It doesn’t hurt to keep your eyes open for new technologies, like New York Times tech columnist David Pogue was saying in an interview with WebProNews. There are so many technologies coming out so frequently, you’re not going to be able to jump right into all of them, but you can keep an eye on the industry and look for practical ways to use different services. As he said, it may be dangerous to wait too long. That said, don’t forget about your goals. 

  • Rich Skrenta Talks Blekko as “The Third Search Engine”

    If you follow the search industry closely, or even just tech news, you’ve probably heard that there’s a new search engine in town, from the co-founder and former CEO of Topix and NewHoo (which went on to become The Open Directory Project or DMOZ), Rich Skrenta. It’s called Blekko, and it turns to the public to help make search results more relevant and less spammy. “We’re applying the Wikipedia model to search,” Skrenta tells WebProNews.

    “Google and Bing really is the competition,” says Skrenta, referring to Yahoo’s transition to Bing results and Ask’s search surrender. “All the rest are folded or gone away.”

    “The web’s not getting smaller,” he adds. “It’s not stagnant.”

    “We think users can benefit from a third point of view on search,” Skrenta continues. “Our goal is to be the third search engine,” noting that search began with human curation, with the Yahoo Directory in the mid-nineties. Back then, it was basically, social search, he says. Back then it was more human-driven, but now, he says most new pages are not created by humans. They come from “spammers flooding the web with poor content.”

    “You don’t want to search the world wide web for health,” says Skrenta, implying that when you look to the web at large for results, the quality is going to be greatly diluted by spam and poor quality content.

    I’d add that for something like health, this could even be the difference between life and death, so he makes a pretty good point. To counter this, Skrenta thinks the Wikipedia model is the answer. “We really need the world’s help.” The intention is to harness this model to build out every category in every language.

    Can this be done? Can Blekko create enough buzz to get Wikipedia-like adoption or even editing? That remains to be seen, but he’s clearly up to the challenge.
    (more…)

  • How Can Business Owners and CEOs Keep Up in the Digital Age?

    How does a business owner know what online marketing strategies to choose from? There are seemingly new tactics, new ideas, and new tools coming out every day, and most companies simply don’t have the resources to jump right into every one of them. Decision makers must figure out which ones will work best and be the most cost-effective for their companies. The problem is, that it’s just not easy to figure these things out.

    How do you decide which technologies to get involved with? Comment here.

    “The pace of change is frightening,” New York Times tech columnist David Pogue told WebProNews in an interview at PubCon. “In the last three or four years…it’s becoming overwhelming for me. I mean, it’s my job. I eat and breathe keeping on top of tech, and people will say ‘what do you think of…’ something I’ve never heard of and everyone else has, and it’s like oh my god, now I’m behind. So I don’t have any idea how a CEO is supposed to keep up.”

    “Obviously there’s people like me and websites, whose job it is to filter stuff for you, and bring to you what’s important,” he added. “That would probably be one way to do it, but I think it explains why in general business is always behind the curve.”
    (more…)

  • Keep it Here for Live Coverage of PubCon This Week

    PubCon Las Vegas gets started tomorrow (at least content-wise), and promises to deliver  tons of great information about social media marketing, search engine marketing, etc. WebProNews will be covering the event with many exclusive interviews with speakers at the show (see PubCon’s full speaker list here). 

    At BlogWorld last month, WebProNews sat down with Brett Tabke, CEO of WebmasterWorld, which hosts the event. "We have a huge  kick off keynote this year from New York Times’ Mr. David Pogue, lead tech editor…very well known in our space. We’re really excited about having him out," says Tabke. "We also have a huge social media panel the second day with Brian Clark, Scott Stratten, Chris Brogan, PR Sarah Evans…"

    Tim Mayer, former head of search product and business at Yahoo, will also keynote the third day. 

    "We’re really looking forward to it. We have a huge presence this year in social media…kind of turned the corner on search this year…obviously that’s our core interested – SEO, SEM of course, but social media, just a huge set of tracks this year on social media," says Tabke.

    "Coming up to about two years ago, we had done traditional marketing, offline marketing, PPC marketing…buying ads here and there. We had limited success with it," he says. We know it was working to a degree. People used coupon codes, took us up on offers, and then we decided…well, with the advent of Twitter and how huge the impact it had on events, such as SXSW…all the conference space, we decided to move exclusively to Twitter and Facebook marketing. It completely changed the nature of our business and the nature of the attendee that comes to PubCon."

    It’s not only PubCon’s content that focuses on social media. Tabke and his team take full advantage of social media to organize the event as well. "We found quite a few great speakers via Twitter and through a service called Klout that rates tweets and their influence, and we tracked everybody through Klout and we came up with some very interesting speakers, such as Scott Stratten (we discovered him through Twitter 2 years ago), Chris Brogan (a couple years ago as well)."

    Topics to be addressed at the event include: reputation management, PPC tactics, in-house SEO, affiliate programs, modern CSS and HTML coding, social media marketing, retweets and influence, Twitter apps, keyword research, large scale search programs, hiring SEOs, optimizing for universal and personal search, WordPress SEO, multimedia SEO, SEO tools, geo-location marketing, content creation and marketing, backlinks, monetizing social media channels, PR, link-buying, community administration, information architecture, e-commerce, optimizing for contextual ads, analytics, local search, and much more. 

    We’ll be providing continuous live video coverage throughout the event. Stay tuned to WebProNews.com and live.dev.webpronews.com throughout the week.

     

  • Why Email Marketing Still Trumps Social

    Social media has been at the center of marketers’ attention for years now, as many still grapple with finding their ideal strategies. There’s no question that social media has opened up many new doors, and should not be ignored. That said, email marketing is still one of the most effective channels.

    Have you had more success with social media or email marketing? Comment here.

    WebProNews recently had a chat with Chris Brogan at the Inbound Marketing Summit, and while most of the discussion centered around online video, email marketing came up, and some pretty good points were raised.

    As our own Michael McDonald noted, “Social’s great, but not everybody goes to Twitter everyday, and maybe I have Twitter and Facebook, but not LinkedIn…but all of these people have email, and they check that every day.”

    “I’ve got a stat like that for consumer brands,” said Brogan. “93% of people have a daily opt-in relationship with at least one consumer brand. 15% on Facebook. 4% on Twitter.”

    “93% of people say, ‘I would like to get mail from this company every day…15% Facebook. 4% Twitter,” Brogan reiterated. “…and there’s no age skew in that. It starts at age 13, I think, in the study. And it’s young people just the same…maybe don’t want to be friends with Coke, but they do necessarily want the deals…”

    “Send me an email, and tell me, you know, if I can get a deal on Mello Yello this week…” Mike agreed.
    (more…)

  • Chris Brogan Talks Online Video’s Ongoing Evolution

    Online video has come a long way in the last few years, and it’s only going further. With the release of new devices and formats, online video content production is going to do nothing but grow. WebProNews recently spoke with Chris Brogan, popular social media guy, President of New Marketing Labs and part of the Pulse Network, about where it’s all heading and where it already is. 

    "To me, the whole future of what device is going to be shooting the signal across is changing a lot," says Brogan. "I think that just as we started thinking we were going to get used to a three-inch screen, you know, first the HTC EVO and then the Droid X and all these kind of big ol’ phones showed up, then the nine-inch and the six-inch or whatever tablets are all there, and I think that 1. it’s going to be back to ‘holy cow, there’s a lot of formats I gotta get it out to’ mode, and then there’s the whole Flash or not…"

    "I think that one of the things is, you know, after you address the whole IP addresses wearing out problem, and then you’re gonna have the whole addressable bandwidth moving around with you stuff, and I think that’s coming up," Brogan continues. "I think that there’s, you know, the backbone Internet, and then there’s the  wireless Internet, and that’s another whole story, but I think that we’re getting closer and closer to the 3G than the 4G."

    Good Quality Content will rule in online video"As we’ve all embraced the YouTube level, I think we’re now starting to go backwards and say ‘we want more HD," he adds. "Consumption of HD is going to go up and up and up as our pipe is getting better, as more people are bringing T1’s to their home…see to me, the mobile one is where the real game is, because we’ve untethered. We’re all laptop users. No one says, ‘Man, I bought a great desktop the other day,’ you know? So, I think that’s one, and I think 2 is, we’re actually going to start consuming more Hi-Def…"

    It’s not always been clear just how important HD was going to be to online video. Brogan recalls, "A year and a half ago, I’m talking to Abby [Johnson of WebProNews] and I’m saying, ‘I don’t think you need HD. No one’s processing it. Nobody wants it. It can’t parse. It’s not worth your trouble shooting it.’ And you know, everyone proved me wrong."

    One thing that’s pretty much always been clear, however, and one that will never change is that content is important. "Good quality content’s gonna rule…and making those distribution deals."

    "Nobody’s buying smaller monitor screens for their desktop, and nobody’s looking for lower res, so if you’re not getting closer and closer to 1080p and beyond…We could have a bunch of cameras in our pockets and be doing just fine," notes Brogan.

    Of online video’s recent and ongoing evolution, Brogan says, "There’s a lot of people just into the ‘now what?’ stage. You know, ‘gee whiz’ was a couple years ago, and ‘ok, we’re ready to start’ was last year. This year’s ‘ok, I need real serious numbers. I need real conversion."

    That’s why we’re likely to see more and more solutions emerging to help video content providers crunch the numbers. In fact, just today, Brightcove launched its latest version with a great amount of emphasis on analytics.

  • New Media is Like Ostrich Meat. Eventually, Your Kids Will Grow Up Eating It.

    WebProNews recently spoke with popular radio and podcast personality Adam Carolla. After being fired from his radio show, he started a podcast and after just two weeks, it reached 2.4 million downloads. Some people consider him a pioneer in podcasting, but he doesn’t seem to really think of it that way. "I was doing a radio show, and then they fired me," he says.

    Should you wait until you lose your job to start trying something new? Tell us what you think. 

    His friend then told him he should do a podcast. After explaining to him what a podcast was, he convinced Carolla to sign on. "I’m flattered that people think of me as some sort of podcast pioneer," Carolla tells WebProNews. "There are people who were doing it before I was doing it. There will be people doing it after I was doing it. We didn’t invent anything. Maybe we were a little more consistent about it or approached it in a little different way, and you know, if people like to give me more credit than I deserve, I’m always willing to take it."

    "But you know also, the whole pioneering thing, you know a lot of people say, ‘well, you got in on the ground floor of this’ and they act like you bought Macintosh or Apple stock, you know, in 1979," he continues. "It’s not quite the same. It’s more like…I always tell people, ‘the guys who played in the NFL in the 50’s were sort of pioneers, but those guys made 8 grand a year, and had to work at used car lots during the off season with no benefits,’ so pioneer…not necessarily a rich pioneer…you’d be much better off playing in the NFL now and making millions of dollars, so it’s somewhat analogous in that it’s nice to be known as the first guy to the party and the pioneer and all that stuff, but on the other hand, you don’t get rich just because you were there first."

    Inspiring words for anyone who may think they are late to the game at this point. The fact is that it’s still very early in the game, particularly when it comes to monetization. 

    "When it comes to advertisers and monetizing the podcast, there’s nothing that people have done and are aware of and so when you’re trying to get ad dollars from companies and they have traditionally used terrestrial radio and print and cable television and network television and sky writing and banners on the back of airplanes and blimps and everything else, this is new," says Carolla. "And people are a little weird about new, and it’s sort of like…I remember about ten years ago, people wanted us to eat ostrich meat, and they’d go ‘well it tastes like beef and it’s lean and it has less fat than beef and it’s better for you and it’s cheaper per pound, and people went…’I don’t know. I never ate ostrich growing up. That seems weird to me.’ and you’re like what’s the difference…"

    "So there’s that little transition, and you can tell them until you’re blue in the face ‘hey, it’s better and it’s leaner and it’s cheaper and it’s whatever’, and they’re still like, ‘I want a burger.’ So that’s what you’re dealing with," continues. "Now eventually, you start getting people going ‘hey, I tried that ostrich burger and it’s pretty solid,’ and then eventually, their kids grow up eating ostrich burger and it makes no difference to them, and they start preferring it over the beef, because it’s cheaper and leaner and whatever else it is. So there is that transition where no matter how much you tell them, and how good it is for them, there’s still [the] old school that goes, ‘I don’t know.’ But, we’ve seen all that change in the last six months. I mean it just changed. People are stepping up. They’re advertising. They’re getting their checkbooks out. They’re not writing anything on them, but they’re getting the checkbook out…but they understand, a couple hundred thousand people’s a couple hundred thousand people. It doesn’t matter what they’re listening to or how they’re listening to it."

    As far as content production, Carolla doesn’t see new media as much different than old media. "There’s not much to it. It’s not that different….everyone tries to kind of spin it into something different, but you get a microphone, and sometimes you get a camera, and you sit there and talk, and you tell jokes or you have some provocative conversation, and either people want to hear it or see it or they don’t, and you put it up on the computer vs. the TV set or on an MP3 player vs. the car stereo or radio, but either way, it’s just you talking and people listening…"

    Carolla’s talking about podcasting, but you can see where this logic would apply across the whole new media board.

    Is new media really that different than old media? Share your thoughts.

  • Keep Learning & Get Help From Friends to Improve Your Social Strategy

    One of the many challenges of corporate social media is that it never stops evolving. New tools, applications, features, and strategies emerge just about every day. It can be tough keep up. That’s why constantly learning has to be part of the strategy as a whole. 

    WebProNews spoke with José Chacón, Lexmark’s Director of Marketing in North America, at BlogWorld & New Media Expo a couple weeks ago. While he and the company were at the conference to launch a new product (a pretty cool printer/scanner with social media apps), he said they were also at the event to learn. A lot of the time at the event, he said, was just spent talking to people and learning. 

    "We’re still learning. The organization has been fully open and is embracing it [social media], and I think that’s why we’re here," he told us. 

    "Being such a large organization, you need to get a lot of people comfortable," said Chacón. "It’s something that’s taken us a while, but I think now, they recognize the opportunity – the value. They see what we can do with it and primarily, it’s to serve our customers better."

    Do you have partnerships? Even just other businesses your friendly with? What’s to stop you from teaming up to help each other out in the social media space? It could be good for all parties involved (including the customers). 

    "A lot of the things that we’ve done, and we started very…like a lot of other companies, with you know, using social media more from a corporate standpoint…using Facebook, posting videos on YouTube…probably in the last 18 months is when we started really doing a lot more with our retail partners, with some of the other brands that we’ve worked with that are part of the value propositions…they’re also involved in social media, so we’ve been working together," he said. "So they’ve been helping us, we’ve been helping them. We want to make sure that if they are helping us, that we give back as well. So I think it’s been a pretty neat experience."

    Such teamwork could be particularly helpful for businesses with fewer resources to dedicate to social media, and if you want a complete strategy (that is to maximize effectiveness), it’s going to take a lot of time and/or resources. 

    At this point, you’ve really got to have some kind of social presence if you want to find success in online marketing. "As big companies, big brands…if you want to maintain viability in the marketplace, you need to participate," said Chacón. 

    If you’re not a big brand, you’re going to need to participate even more.  

  • Thinking of Check-Ins As Searches That Aren’t Going to Google

    Businesses are still struggling with finding the right social media strategies, let alone strategies for check-in apps like Foursquare, Gowalla, and the recently launched Facebook Places. WebProNews spoke with Lawrence Coburn, CEO of geolocation app provider DoubleDutch about where this industry is headed and what it means for businesses looking to take advantage. 

    "I think it’s still early days," he tells us. "I think a huge step for the whole industry was when Facebook Places launched a check-in. And I think the big question that we all need to answer is like ‘is the check-in becoming a gesture that’s gonna be as common as a status update?’ which is, you know, Twitter’s thing…I think it is. I think we’ve passed critical mass, especially with Facebook in the game."

    "What Facebook did is they launched a very basic service, and with a couple exceptions," he adds. "They did some pretty cool stuff, but for the most part, it’s very basic."

    Facebook has over half a billion users, so naturally, when the company launched Facebook Places, a lot questions surfaced about other check-in services. Would they be able to compete with such a monster? 

    "It looks to me like Foursquare has weathered the storm with Facebook’s initial launch, and I don’t think Foursquare’s going anywhere," Coburn says. "I think they’re gonna keep growing. I do think that there’s gonna be a shake-out, like right now there’s probably 10 or 15 consumer-facing check-in apps, and I don’t know if the market can support all those identical apps, but I think we’ll see some fragmentation as well."

    "I think the real competition from the Facebook ecoystem is gonna come from third-party developers like Zynga that build on top of the Facebook Places API, because you’ll notice with Facebook Places that they haven’t done anything with like virtual goods like badges or points, and these are some of the main attractions of Foursquare and Gowalla," he adds. "So they’ve just left that open, but I know that third-party developers won’t be so shy, and they’ll come in and make games, because there’s a lot of good game developers on Facebook."

    Games are one thing, and there are ways businesses can take advantage of games themselves, but is there more to this phenomenon than just games? Real business applications? 

    "I think that location is so fundamental that it has its chance to be its own mega-hit in it’s own right," Coburn says. "Think about it. You want to know where your friends are. You want to know where your family is. You need to know where your co-workers are….To me it’s almost more fundamental than like a status update, which if you had to pitch Twitter to me on paper now, if I had never seen it, it would be a tough sell, but it worked. It became like a communication channel in its own right."

    "Right now you hear about a lot of campaigns that big brands are doing with Foursquare, in terms of giving away free stuff, I think Gowalla gave away a bunch of New Jersey Nets tickets. Then there’s like deals with Starbucks and I think, Brightkite," he says. "It’s all interesting stuff, but I think there’s a lot of experimentation, trying to see where the value is for big brands…We do know this: if a consumer tells you (a brand, a company) where they are, it’s a big deal." 

    "It’s almost like a search query that isn’t going to Google," he continues. "It’s like they’re telling you ‘I’m here, what do you have for me?’ and that’s an opportunity for brands and marketers, and I think we’re gonna figure it out as to where the monetary value is."

    Have you found interesting ways to use check-in apps for your business? Comment here.

  • Is Social Media Part of Your Corporate Culture?

    WebProNews recently spoke with C.C. Chapman, founder of Digital Dads, Co-author of Content Rules, and self-described Boston Media Maven. He says, "Social media has to be ingrained in you culture. All the tools in the world aren’t going to save you."

    "It doesn’t matter what the platform is that it’s being pushed out on. You want good content, and you push it out in as many places as you can, whether it’s written or video," he adds. "Social media ain’t new. It’s been around for a long, long time. The concepts aren’t new, the tools just get newer every day."

    Businesses struggle every day to find good social media strategies. There’s no one right way to do it. There are so many variables involved that it really has to come down to personal decisions on the part of management. Here are some tips to get you started. 

    When it comes to finding the right employees to put on your social media strategy, Chapman says, "So many companies are like, ‘oh, he’s a social media guy’ or ‘she’s a social media girl’, and at the end of the day, everybody in your company…doesn’t need to necessarily understand these tools and be responsible for it, but every time somebody goes out from your company, they’re probably socializing, whether it’s having a beer or hanging out on Facebook and Twitter, you want them to understand these tools…to understand that everything they say can be shared and whatnot. And you know, teach them these tools, so they can figure out and get it in your culture so you’re not scared of this stuff."

    "PR and marketing should not be separate departments anymore (I know the purists will yell about it)," he says. "Get ’em together, and…depending on the company, get legal involved…I mean, it depends on what you are…"

    "There’s definitely training companies…there’s nothing wrong with having blogging guidelines or social media guidelines," Chapman adds. "There’s nothing wrong with that, but don’t try to clamp it down. You know, if Bob’s angry, he’s going to go out there and start yelling about it, and you need to take care of it, but guess what: if you don’t have a listening strategy, and if it’s not part of your culture, you’re never gonna hear it either, so that’s the other side of the equation."

    You never know, you might be able to solve some internal problems by listening. 

    As far as finding a starting point, "Start playing," Chapman suggests. "Start small. I always tell people (I work with a lot of executives), I say, play on your own. You know, set up your own Facebook account for you, just so you can figure out the tools, and maybe you’ll start going, ‘Oh, I see how this could benefit, and how this could be used", because otherwise…until you start playing with it, you’re never gonna understand it."

  • Unplugging From Social Media and Getting Social (And Original)

    (more…)