Guerrilla Insight for Authors: Social Bookmarking - Link Building And Search Engine Optimization

Social Bookmarking - Link Building And Search Engine Optimization
Social Bookmarking could be the next big thing in web site marketing since the development of the personal blogs. Social Bookmarking web sites like http://Del.icio.us, Digg, Stumble Upon and Furl al... [Author: Steve Szasz - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]

How Google's Acquisition of FeedBurner Will Change RSS Marketing

While the original plan for the RSS Diary blog was leaving on hiatus until the 2007 edition of the RSS Marketing e-book is done, the FeedBurner acquisition by Google is a story just to important to pass up ... especially all the implications it might bring into the world of RSS Advertising, and RSS Marketing as a whole as well.

So, yes. FeedBurner, a leading RSS metrics and RSS advertising company was just acquired by Google. Finally confirmed after weeks of speculation. I won't go into the details of the acquisition, as you can read more about it at the FeedBurner blog and just by following the news at Google News.

Here, we'll take a look at the implications this brings to the world of RSS Marketing. Just my predictions of course:)

1. RSS Metrics Will Finally Become Integrated With Web Metrics

In my book, all marketing/communications channels should be judged using the same metrics, such as conversions, cost-per-order, cost-per-subscriber, sales etc.

Although you could already do all of this with RSS, it required some tinkering.

But, as FeedBurner gets assimilated into Google Analytics, tracking the key marketing metrics should become a breeze, giving everyone access to crucial internet optimization data.

2. RSS Metrics Moving Closer to the Mainstream

With RSS Metrics being integrated directly into Google Analytics (which I'm sure will happen very soon), marketers might finally start actually measuring their RSS feeds.

Means better RSS Marketing, finally.

3. RSS Advertising Going CPC

Although FeedBurner is cautions to provide any details about how their CPM pricing model might change with the integration of their ad services into Google, I'm quite certain that RSS advertising will move the way of cost-per-click.

Means less revenues for RSS feed publishers, but better ROI for you, the advertiser.

4. RSS Advertising Moving Closer to the Mainstream

RSS Advertising will finally reach the mainstream, utilizing Google's massive advertiser database.

Prices will go up, and RSS content monetization will again start becoming the talk at industry events.

On the plus side, it also means Google will be able to attract more RSS feed publishers, meaning more RSS ad inventory for you. Your RSS advertising reach potential is about to explode, finally enabling you to reach the masses using RSS Advertising.

5. Trouble for Other RSS Advertising Companies

I love Pheedo, another leading RSS Metrics and RSS Advertising company, but the FeedBurner acquisition makes me wonder what's in store for them as Google starts pushing RSS advertising to their massive database of advertisers, especially as part of an integrated online advertising service.

It's certainly not the end of other RSS Advertising companies, but they might all soon see themselves transforming from RSS ad networks to RSS media planning & buying consultants.

Which would be a shame, especially considering the advancements in RSS Advertising developed by Pheedo.

6. Better Targeting for Google AdWords Advertisers (We Wish!)

Advertiser demand seems to be growing quicker than the inventory offered by Google.

The obvious choice for Google (in addition of course to increasing ad inventory through additional reach, media expansion through the content network, and expansion to new ad channels, like RSS and banner inventories) is to offer better targeting, for a premium price.

As a marketer, I clearly want to place my ads in front of the most relevant prospects. Keyword targeting is OK, but adding behavioral on top of that introduces another filtering element to my media planning, enabling me to really pin-point the users I want to see my ads.

How about displaying search ads only to people who have already visited my website, but haven't made a purchase? Google AdWords and Google Analytics integration could offer exactly this.
How about displaying search ads only to people that respond to marketing content banners on other websites? Integrating Google AdWords with one of the latest Google acquisitions, DoubleClick, can get us exactly this.
Of course, I might also want to target my ads to people who are subscribed to X e-mail newsletter. What do you know, Google already has that information through their Gmail service.
And then, how about displaying search ads only to people who are subscribing to other RSS feeds about RSS marketing? Integrating Google AdWords with FeedBurner would make this possible.
Now just take these concepts, put them all together, and expand them to banner advertising, feed advertising and any other online ad channel Google develops/acquires in the future.

This may either be science fiction or Google's actual long-term masterplan. As more advertising budgets rush to the internet, available quality ad inventory will continue shrinking.

By introducing such targeting, integrating the metric and capabilities of all of their properties, Google could come as close as possible to total ad targeting, the holy grail of marketing we are all striving towards.

Things will get much more interesting ... and soon.

If I were an ad agency, I'd start developing a targeting department, focusing on targeted media buying.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing?
Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers.
Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.

How Google Video Search Engine can Solve 2 Major Website Owner's Problems
What is the solution to #1. Getting your site indexed in Google, and #2. Generating quality traffic to your website? Answer: Use the awesome power of video. When Google bought out YouTube for 1.67 ... [Author: Jeff Davis - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]

The 10-Step RSS Marketing Plan

While RSS has certainly become well-established with most marketers, few are using it to its full advantage.

Now, while the original Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS e-book focused on explaining RSS marketing in a world where RSS was just starting out, the 2007 edition will focus on optimizing your RSS marketing and getting as much as possible from it.

The 10-step plan is one of the tools we will be introducing in the 2007 edition, once it's launched (getting there:).

Going through this plan will help you get as much as possible from RSS, on all levels. It will help you bring your RSS marketing to the same level as your e-mail marketing, and more.

But for now, here's a very quick summary of the steps from the process view point.

1. Develop your RSS marketing strategy
It all starts with a strategy that defines all the other elements of your RSS marketing plan. Developing your RSS marketing strategy consists of planning your RSS usage for each marketing function and integrating it with the rest of your marketing mix, and setting the goals for each of the marketing functions.

2. Start using RSS for business intelligence
Conducting business intelligence using RSS is the first step to improving your marketing overall. You will start by finding the right RSS Reader for you, define your business intelligence needs, find the relevant information sources, and implementing the right RSS business intelligence tools.

3. Plan your overall outbound RSS content strategy
Outbound communications using RSS are the most complex part of RSS marketing, with numerous choices available to you. During this step you will define your outbound communications target audiences, define your goals for each of them, decide on your RSS feed publishing model, define your RSS feed content and define your RSS feed content sources.

4. Define your RSS marketing requirements & select your RSS marketing vendor
Defining your RSS marketing technology requirements and selecting the appropriate vendor to supply you with all the features you need to support your strategy.

5. Plan your RSS content strategy on the content-item level
Once you have prepared your overall RSS content strategy you need to plan your RSS content-item level strategy, which essentially means getting the right content in place within the feed to meet your objectives. This consists of defining your writing style, defining the content item structure and defining your calls-to-action.

6. Promote your RSS feeds internally
Simply publishing RSS feeds on your website is not enough to generate subscribers. In this section you will define your RSS feed subscription process, define the RSS feed promotion locations for your feeds, develop the subscription offer and implement the other neccessary technical items to increase your subscription growth.

7. Promote your RSS feeds externally
After setting everything correctly through your own channels, it is neccesary to promote the RSS feeds using external websites as well. This process includes optimizing your RSS feed for the search engines, submitting the feed to the search engines and performing periodic pinging.

8. Measure and optimize your RSS feeds
Measurement and optimization are the two areas that can have the most profound impact on your RSS success. This consists of defining the required metrics, establishing the technical capacities for measurement, measuring and optimizing your content strategy and measuring and optimizing your subscription generation tactics.

9. Use RSS to syndicate your content to other online media
Use RSS to get your content published on other relevant media. The neccessary steps for syndication are defining your target media, defining your RSS feed content, preparing the right syndication tools and promoting your syndication offerings.

10. Use RSS to enhance your website and brand
Enhancing your website is about adding third-party content to enrich the user experience, while enhancing your brand is about providing your own branded RSS Reader.

The NewsGator Interview: RSS in the Enterprise - Manage Internal Information More Easily

In part 3 of the RSS interview with Greg Reinacker of NewsGator find out how Enterprise RSS makes information management easier within a corporation.

What will happen in the RSS space in 2007, for marketers and business?
Will RSS become integrated into every enterprise application? How will that change how information is used?
Will RSS improve information management within an organization?
What challenges do RSS management present to IT departments in larger organizations?
Will centralized RSS tools help solve the internal information management crisis?
What is Attention XML and how will it help you get more of the content you need and less of the content that is not relevant specifically to you?
Are smart RSS Readers only for corporations, or can consumers also take advantage?
What are NewsGator's plans for 2007?

Click here to listen to the interview [MP3; 13 min.]

The NewsGator Interview: RSS for Online Media and Branded RSS Readers

In part 2 of the RSS interview with Greg Reinacker of NewsGator find out how online media can take advantage of RSS beyond publishing RSS content.

Why should online publishers care about branded RSS Readers?
Does it still make sense to provide a branded RSS Reader, especially with the wide adoption RSS is getting through Internet Explorer 7?
What kind of value can publishers bring to RSS Readers?
How can online media enhance the user experience through third-party content via RSS?
Is visitor ownership still a possibility, or are services like MyYahoo! owning the game? How can online media compete?
How can small businesses compete with large portals and large media sites?
Does syndicating your content via RSS mean that you're giving up content?
Is RSS becoming a significant traffic driver?
How can companies profit from pulling together relevant content on a specific topic from third-party sources?
Is there a difference in how summary and full-text feeds drive visitors to your website? When to use which?
Best practices for re-publishing third-party content on your website
Can you put ads next to re-published RSS content on your site? How to do it?

Click here to listen to the interview [MP3; 14 min.]

What You Can Do With Amazon RSS Now?

If I keep this up, I might actually get the reputation of picking on Amazon.com as a hobby [just take a look at Is Amazon Missing the RSS Advertising Opportunity?, Why is Everyone Missing the RSS Transactional Messaging Opportunity? and Get the Most from RSS Marketing ... Take Your DM Hat Off!].

It's just one of those things. You see a company that could really go above and beyond with RSS and really use it to drive revenues, but they just don't do it.

But at least they're showing some activitiy lately ...
[in addition to removing their list of relatively useless category feeds, which used to be available here]

a) Gold Box
Gold Box is a service that provides you with personalized deals every day. It finally has an RSS feed with your daily deals.

But, unfortunatelly, the RSS feed only provides brief information about the product, instead of also giving you a direct purchase link, some of the latest product reviews and other information that could facilitate the sale. Also, there's no personalization, or so it seems. Why not give me an RSS feed with just the special deals for me, based on my previous purchases?

b) Plog
This is one of the genius Amazon ideas. Each Plog is personalized to the individual user, giving him the latest blog posts from Amazon's authors (just from the authors' whos books you've purchased), and it also comes with a targeted RSS feed, matching the Plog content you see when you're logged-in. You can also subscribe to additional blog content manually.

Also, Amazon is promising that we'll be soon able to track latest releases, changes to our orders and "much more" through our plogs, which will presumably also come be published in our targeted RSS feeds.

Amazon, please keep this up. Make us happy:)

c) The Amazon API
But let's be fair to Amazon. Even though their end-user RSS feed offering is poor, they do provide developers with the ability to create their own RSS feeds from Amazon, by integrating with their API.

Here are some examples:

RSStalker.com - provides a variety of Amazon product tracking options via RSS, such as a 10% price drop feed that lets you know when a product that RSStalker is tracking via Amazon drops 10% in price; RSS feeds from your wishlists; last 25 price changes in a selected Amazon category, and more.

Baebo - provides a persistant search RSS feed for Amazon products, based on your keywords.

More great examples floating around ...

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Search engines become smarter by the minute. It is no longer the sheer placement of numerous keywords on a single page. There is the correct placement of anchored text, the specific Meta tags, the wa... [Author: Jeffrey Greer - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

Nameplates - Industrial Utility
Various industries depend upon nameplates for range of applications. The industrial nameplates have unique properties, which make them withstand harsher operating environments and these properties va... [Author: Navpreet Aujla - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

Bryan Eisenberg RSS Interview, part 1: Making RSS Radars Work to Increase Your Sales

Part of the upcoming 2007 edition of the RSS Marketing e-book are also the interviews we are doing with various internet marketing experts and RSS practitioners. In the following days and hopefully not too many weeks, we'll be posting those interviews here.

I'm sure most of you have heard of Bryan Eisenberg before. Bryan is the leading worldwide authority on internet marketing optimization and website persuasion architecture. He was also one of the few marketers that got on the RSS Marketing bandwagon early on.

Recently, Bryan started exploring RSS Radars as a tool to increase the traffic to their optimization portal GrokDotCom.com, increase visitor loyalty, position the website as the key news source for internet optimization ... and naturally facilitate online sales of their books and consulting services. Take a look here.

But while most RSS Radars are based on contextually filtering content from selected third-party RSS feeds, the GrokDotCom.com RSS Radars go far beyond anything else we have seen on the market so far.

Instead of relying only on contextual content filtering to select the most relevant third-party content, they are employing a number of additional filters, such as the amount of linkage the story is receiving, source relevance and credibility, and so on ... and they're calling it a discovery engine.

What are their RSS Radar marketing goals?
How their RSS Radar is different from what you can generally see online?
What concrete results are they achieving?
What you can learn from their RSS marketing?

All of these answers, and more, available in the audio interview.

Click here to listen to the MP3 file [14 minutes; 3 MB]

SEO or PPC - Deciding Which Type Of Search Engine Marketing Your Business Needs
Before you get started with the Search Engines you should decide which of the two major Search Engine marketing strategies will work best for your site. This will help you to stay on track and not wa... [Author: Chris Taylor - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

10 Sales and Marketing Tips I learned from Strippers
Written by WiseCamel.com Like you, I like strippers. However, I generally find myself leaving the strip club with an empty wallet. Any business that can get you to spend all of your money is a good one to be in. But while walking out of a club one evening, I realized that a big reason they have such [...]

Stripper Sales and Marketing

Written by WiseCamel.com

Like you, I like strippers.

However, I generally find myself leaving the strip club with an empty wallet. Any business that can get you to spend all of your money is a good one to be in.

But while walking out of a club one evening, I realized that a big reason they have such a good business is because strippers are such great salespeople. It is not simply due to the fact that they are selling to stupid, horny men like myself, but because they use a lot of highly effective sales and marketing techniques.

You too can achieve great success by applying sales and marketing techniques of strippers. Here are the 10 sales and marketing techniques I have learned from strippers:

Sales Technique #1 - Give them something for nothing
One of the first things a stripper will do is come up to you and flirt with you. She will likely sit on your lap or do something to raise your excitement level. For this, you have to do nothing. But you do get a sample of the service and if it is a good one, your chances of buying the service increases. This also applies to the dances they do on the stage.

Sales Technique #2 - Understand your customers
Strippers get to know their customers by asking questions. This allows them to develop a rapport and tailor the sales pitch…

Sales Technique #3 - Tailor the Sales Pitch
Strippers will try different sales pitches to different people based on what she thinks they like. “I like to get dirty” or “Have you seen my great ass?” or “My tits are real”. Each pitch may be the one thing that converts the potential customer into a buyer. (Pointing out a tight ass works well for me). And she revises her pitch based on experience.

Sales Technique #4 - Make sure you are selling a great product/service
She knows she has to have a great product. If she put on 30 pounds or hadn’t showered for the past 4 days, she would likely not get as many customers. Regardless of how great of a salesperson you are, you can’t do much with a crappy product/service.

Sales Technique #5 - Provide Good Customer Service
She will make sure you are happy on your first dance or she won’t get repeat business or won’t be able to do what she ultimately set out to do…Upsell.

Sales Technique #6 - Upsell
She sells the customer on a relatively cheap service, a lapdance, but then markets her other services to them. She tries to get them to the “champagne room” and sell an upgraded service, which is where the money is at. However, without the first sale, she would never get the larger sale. Customer acquisition is tough. Once she does it, she needs to get as much business as she can.

Sales Technique #7 - Closing Techniques
She will use a variety of closing techniques to get you to buy her services. There are a variety of closing techniques, but two popular ones used by strippers are the compliment close (usually flirting with you) and companion close (getting your buddies to push you into closing the deal).

Sales Technique #8 - Target your audience
Strippers market to individuals that are interested in her service. First, she works in a strip club where guys go specifically for her service, that is obvious. But she also knows which guys to go after within a group or which groups will likely spend the most money. Spending time with cheap-asses only wanting to pay a dollar for a dance will not be a wise use of he precious time.

Sales Technique #9 - Persistence
Even though the audience is qualified, she knows she will get rejections. Even so, she will go up to every guy and ask if they need a lap dance. She also knows that the more guys she asks, the more yes’s she will get.

Sales Technique #10 - Branding
I don’t know any strippers that are named Ethel, Mildred or Agnus. Instead, you will get the pleasure to do business with Cookie, Destiny, Candy, or Raven.

If you liked this post, buy me a beer

Generating Traffic To Your Myspace Website
MySpace is an exciting online community where members can make new friends, reconnect with old friends, network or even find potential romantic partners. While there are some MySpace members who join... [Author: David Riewe - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]

How to Optimize your Blog for Search Engines
Blogs are naturally search engine friendly and optimizing your blog for search engines is really no different than optimizing your website. Here are some suggestions to get you started. Back Links:... [Author: Rose DesRochers - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

A Quick Guide To Web Directories
If you are a seasoned Internet marketer, then it is common knowledge that submitting to web directories can dramatically increase your page rank. If you are a newbie webmaster, then you might be quit... [Author: Karl Turnbull - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

Flying to Boston for the ACCM Conference

Only a few more weeks until the ACCM (Annual Catalog and Multi-Channel Merchant Conference) event in Boston, one of the best DM conferences of the year.

If you're in Boston or are coming to the conference, drop me a note.

I'll be speaking on RSS and other new internet marketing media, together with Scott Voight of Silverpop.

If you're at the conference, definetly reserve the Monday 3 PM slot to come hear us. The last presentation we did together with Scott in London was a huge hit, and we promise not to dissapoint:)

Link Building Is One Of The Hardest Things To Do
"In the time spent roaming the Internet jumping from website to website, it strikes me that links is the only real method of travel. With a rather large number of directories and link schemes that ... [Author: Paul Walton - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

25 Simple Blog SEO and Traffic Tips
This is a nice concise list of 25 ways to greatly increase your blog's traffic and search rankings. 1) Content is king! 2) Submit your site to as many search engines as possible. After the initial... [Author: Jeremy Steele - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

Google TrustRank and the Google Sandbox
Google's TrustRank and Google's Sandbox filters are often discussed in forums. How to manipulate these filters is widely debated and since google still recently is consitently pulling over 45 percent... [Author: Joe Whyte - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

Submit Your Site to Google
As soon as you register your domain name, submit it to Google! Even if you haven't built your site, or thought about your content, submit your domain name to Google. In fact, even if you haven't full... [Author: Montri Sitthichock - Site Promotion - December 11, 2006]

Quick RSS SEO Tips

WebProNews has a short summary from Amanda Watlington's tips for SEO optimization of your RSS feeds:

1. Subscribe to your own feed and claim it on blog engine Technorati
2. Focus your feed with a keyword theme

3. Use keywords in the title tag; keep it under 100 characters

4. Most feed readers display feeds alphabetically, title accordingly

5. Write description tags as if for a directory; keep them under 500 characters

6. Use full paths on links and unique URLs for each item

7. Provide email updates for the non-techies

8. Offer an HTML version of your feed

9. For branding, add logo and images to your feed

Now, let's add some tips from Stephan Spencer and continue with the numbering:

10. Full text, not summaries
11. 20 or MORE items (not just 10)

12. Multiple feeds (by category, latest comments, comments by post)

13. Keyword-rich item [title]

14. Your brand name in the item [title]

15. Your most important keyword in the site [title] container

16. Compelling site [description]

17. Don't put tracking codes into the URLs (e.g. &source=rss)

18. An RSS feed that contains enclosures (i.e. podcasts) can get into additional RSS directories & engines

And to round this off, a summary of my own tips [part 2 here] for using RSS to drive traffic to your site:

19. Get your RSS content (proactively) syndicated on other relevant websites [just the headlines and summaries of course]
20. Submit your RSS feeds to all the RSS search engines and directories

21. Use RSS to add relevant third-party content [again, just headlines and summaries] to your website to gain additional SE weight for your keywords

22. Use RSS to deliver all of your frequently updated content, not just for your latest blog posts

23. Whenever the content in your feed changes, ping the most important search engines and directories [yes, you don't need a blog for this]

Do you have more tips?

(a) Post them in the comments form below.

(b) E-mail me at info@marketingstudies.net and let's set-up an interview

Process on Optimizing your Site through Keywords
There are a lot of things to analyze on your site before you start optimizing your site. Such things are your site overview, nature of business, home page, site dimension and number of pages, product... [Author: Kristine Joy Francisco - Site Promotion - December 12, 2006]

New Marketing Thinking Required for Second Life?

Mobil Avenue accuses me of 20th century marketing thinking. I'm not quite sure what he has in mind, but it seems that my Second Life posts ticked off some people.

Now, don't get me wrong, I see alot of development potential in virtual worlds, but Second Life as it is simply does not cut it.

I won't go into the details again, but the sheer lack of economy of scales shows that something is wrong when you compare the investments in Second Life and the actual virtual world penetration. Not to mention the difficult user interface.

Second Life is a good beginning, but virtual worlds have a far way to go before they deserve to be treated as seriously as some are treating them today. Yes, Second Life should certainly be treated as a marketing/communications playground, but not as a high importance marketing channel.

If you want to call this 20th century thinking, go ahead. It is. As are economies of scale, profitability, sales conversion, cost per order and other business "relics".

And as you'll notice, 20th century thinking still works, even in 2007. We've all heard stories of the demise of advertising, the death of PR, the death of e-mail, the death of postal direct mail and so on ... but they're all alive, well and kicking still today, and will remain so.

Actually, intrusive direct response TV advertising is still one of the most effective tools to generate sales. And it gives you more bang for the buck than almost any other marketing channel, including online.

Do I like this? No. I'd love to believe that the internet is the alpha and omega of marketing. But it's not. It's the key connector, but not the key driver. That's the way things are, and as markters we need to employ 20th century thinking and use what works best ... and the numbers tell us that.

But this doesn't mean we shouldn't play and test. Quite on the contrary.

OK, this conversation is getting somewhat beyond the original topic, and it's quite possible I'm not even getting what Mobil Avenue is trying to say:)

And please don't get me started on 3D virtual webstores ...

Of course, I might be wrong. And if I am, I'll be the first to change my stripes the next day. It's what marketers do. If a new thing comes up and works better than what you're doing, change. But every change first demand proof. Unless you're just testing ... because when you're testing, the rules of the game change.

Guerrilla Insight for Authors

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Social Bookmarking - Link Building And Search Engine Optimization

1. RSS Metrics Will Finally Become Integrated With Web Metrics

2. RSS Metrics Moving Closer to the Mainstream

3. RSS Advertising Going CPC

4. RSS Advertising Moving Closer to the Mainstream

5. Trouble for Other RSS Advertising Companies

6. Better Targeting for Google AdWords Advertisers (We Wish!)

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