More on this Web 2.0 Thing…
Friday, September 28, 2007
Staying on the topic of the significance the Internet plays in our role as marketers, I came across this article the other day from Mediapost. In it, Karl Greenberg sums up some of the opinions industry veterans expressed during the National Advertising Review Council's NAD Annual Conference on this issue. The title, "Web 2.0: A Minefield Marketers Must Cross," is telling, to say the least. One of the panelists, Mark Serrianne, CEO of brand consultancy Northlich, is quoted throughout the piece, explaining that the challenge now for companies is control. Meaning, there is so much information available through the Web that it is impossible to have a hand in every blog, site, or what have you to create your ideal message. So instead of trying to beat an infinite race, why not join in the running? By participating in the wealth of information through a blog or some other such voice, a company and/or brand has at least a chance of being heard and understood just in the way that it intends. But to say that is, of course, an understatement. Because if the voice you create is interesting enough or even mildly entertaining, your company or brand has the power to become an influencer. The beauty of the Internet is that it is a truly global platform. Its audience is in the billions, so even if you tap just a tiny fraction of it, you have already won. And accomplishing this is much easier than infiltrating the iron clad gates of the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, in which an article might still be prized, but its fame (especially these days) is short lived. So let us reiterate again that a solid footing online should be part of any company's foundation. Labels: Marketing, Public Relations, Web 2.0
posted by Gina Bolotinsky
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When will Marketers start to get it?
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
In 1996, I left a secure 9 to 5 job to work in sales and marketing for a "multimedia" agency - two guys who designed websites. At the time their biggest name client was Rollerblade Canada. The site was pretty advanced for the time whereby surfers could actually look at a 3D skate from all directions.
Once I got the lay of the land I opened my Rolodex and started calling the corporate headquarters of well-known companies in my city offering the service of designing a website. The response was overwhelming - 90% of the people I spoke to said they had heard about the World Wide Web, but were not ready to start the process and kindly asked me to call them back… in a YEAR!
This was amazing to me. Here was an opportunity for companies, with advertising dollars to spend, to take advantage of a new vehicle that could not only generate awareness and sales, but likely set them apart from their competitors. I assume that within that year they all had websites, but I left the company after three months because people just didn't get it…
In my current position, handling business development for Connors Communications, I feel like we are at the same crossroad. The Internet has changed the way that consumers research and buy good and services and, Search has become a unique marketing opportunity for companies to influence the landscape they ultimately control. From propagating positioning messages to gathering intelligence about the marketplace, Search Marketing is creating industry leaders that you've never heard of. For example, shouldn't the mail order business have dominated eCommerce? Instead of Sears, some no-name brand called Amazon.com ate their lunch. Procrastination at these crossroads can be deadly. Companies need to shuffle not only their budgets, but their mindset - the consequences are simply too great. Marketers: how and where your brand is found online is where the game is being played. It’s time to get in on the action.Labels: eCommerce, Marketing, messaging, SEM, seo
posted by Liz Bazini
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HitTail Live Widget
HitTail is making huge strides forward. Currently 10 extremely influential tech sites are hosting our HitTail Live widget. Displaying the real time search hits as they roll in right there on the homepage, this widget is addictive. It's just a taste of what HitTail can do to help drive traffic to your site. Head on over to the HitTail Blog to find out more on what HitTail Live is doing for the likes of TechCrunch, Ars Technica, Small Business Trends, How to Change the World, Alarm:Clock, 5 Blogs Before Lunch, SearchBlog, Read/WriteWeb, BoingBoing, and VentureBeat.Labels: HitTail
posted by Erica Ciporen
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It's Free!
Friday, September 21, 2007
To no one’s surprise, the New York Times announced Monday that its TimesSelect service will now be available to all readers for free. It took them two years to realize that even though they were generating money with people signing up for the service, they were losing tons of advertising money by not having the content available for free. So how is it that now, thanks to the Internet, companies are able to make more money by offering things for free than by having people pay for them? The answer is simple: search. People visiting the NY Times website would be frustrated that they couldn’t access the TimesSelect material. But these folks only made up a small percentage of the advertising money that was being lost. The overwhelming amount was coming from those who were searching for specific topics and were being routed to material from this paid section. So, let’s say I wanted to learn more about France (which happens to be where I just went for my Honeymoon). I would Google “France” and towards the top of the 1st results page, I would find a great article from the New York Times. Because I know the Times to be a reputable source, I would be eager to see what it had to say about France. However, when I would try to open the article, I would find that I didn’t have access because I was not a paid subscriber. You can only imagine the millions of people who had the same dilemma. Simple as it may seem, there is a very important PR lesson to be learned here. People are no longer putting their faith into their trusted news services. Now-a-days, the collective majority Googles whatever it is they want to know about. Sure we might still be more likely to go to the Times than to some random blog, but (as we PR people well know), the Times does not and will not write about most things. What it means for us is that the days of traditional media being the gatekeepers to influencing the public are slowly fading. That role is now shifting to the Internet. With this change, we must pay more attention to not only the press we get online, but the kind of persona our clients have online. What is their voice? Do they even have a voice? Because as I was Googling France, I didn’t find very many helpful websites ending in .fr that were in English, which I am sure isn’t terribly helpful to the French tourist industry. Yet, literally and metaphorically, France is on the map. But for those companies that aren’t, having a solid presence on the Web is starting to make all the difference. Labels: Google, media, new media, Public Relations, seo, Web 2.0
posted by Gina Bolotinsky
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Google Newswire
Monday, September 03, 2007
There was a lot of news made last month out of nothing. The fact that nothing happened 12 months after Google made an ominous deal with the AP was, in fact, quite newsworthy. Many speculated that the agreement was just a payment to allow Google News to avoid royalties and continuing to run as intended (...the kind of agreement that YouTube would love). Turns out that the timetable for unveiling something was 13 months instead. That something was the minor footnote that Google is now hosting AP news on its own servers... as well as articles from the AFP, CP, and PA. An example here shows the story being reported on by the Canadian Press, but delivered by Google.com. This partnership as it stands now is not particularly innovative. Yahoo has been delivering articles from these newswires on its website for years. Newspapers, TV stations, and many other media sites do the same thing. For publishers, however, that is just the problem. They may not readily admit it, but newspapers need newswires. For over a century, they have allowed regional media to cost-effectively deliver national and international news. Yahoo News adopted this model long ago. That was never too surprising given its history as a content-centric destination (and the most visited site on the Internet). Google, on the other hand, rose to prominence as a middle man. Tell them what you're looking for... and be on your way. Later, they started showing ads alongside search results like GoTo / Overture had pioneered. That seemed like a fair deal to get a free, quality search engine. Then they started showing ads on other people's websites with AdSense and providing bloggers with free tools to let people publish their own websites. That was another good idea, even if it led to quite a bit of spam. Meanwhile, Yahoo's Publisher Network hasn't gained the same amount of traction, and their web content has always been focused on keeping people on Yahoo's servers (Geocities, 360, etc.) so the two models have peacefully coexisted.
Now Google is dipping its feet further into content hosting with Google News 2.0 and other initiatives like Google Base or Book Search. Google becoming a publisher instead of just a content locator or aggregator is one of the most dramatic underlying changes taking place on the Internet today. Media outlets better be taking notes. The advertising networks running on those sites better be paying attention. If Google becomes a destination instead of a middle man, then you both lose. It sounds like good business for Google, but they're still not hedging their bets. They're still happy to send people elsewhere as long as AdSense or DoubleClick ads are shown.
The question is: does the partnership makes sense for the newswires? Certainly the future of news is online, and the AP/AFP/CP/PA would all be blind to ignore the 800 pound gorilla. However, there are thousands of media outlets paying for newswire subscriptions worldwide. They provide countless articles everyday to fill up print issues and websites around which publishers sell advertising. If Google begins to pervasively deliver news from their server while showing only their advertising, that cuts out a lot of revenue for many different companies. Of course, your local newspaper is still going to subscribe to newswires even though they made a deal with Google. I just wonder how much longer they are going to be able to afford the fees when their ad revenue declines thanks to Google News, iGoogle, and Google OneBox results. Labels: advertising, Google, media, newswires, Yahoo
posted by Adam Edwards
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