Internet Marketing

As a lover of all things audio (and the podcasting format in particular), it was with great joy that I read a SiteProNews newsletter article on “Enhancing Web Effectiveness with Sound Design.”

Audio has a powerful effect on an audience. The internet has a powerful effect on an audience. And whoever said “ne’er the twain shall meet?”

We’ll be talking more and more about using web video to make a powerful impression, but let’s not forget that even though the moving pictures make a movie, an, uh, “move”-ie, the audio is just as important.

If not more.

The thing about audio is that it captures your mind and is cheap to produce. You can put it on your ipod and take it with you to the gym, take it on the bus and enjoy it while driving. Try the same with a movie and you run into problems.

Also, the file size of audio is much smaller than video, which in turn lowers the bandwidth expense of adding video to your site… and increases how many people can effectively enjoy it with a primitive connection.

Audio is not for everything, but for the right offer, it can be transformative. For example:

• Have your actual customers voice their testimonials
• Create a voice-version as an alternative to text on your website… great for people with limited patience or with a vision impairment
• Jazz up descriptions of your products with professional narration of key selling points and some tactfully used effects and music
• Create a weekly podcast covering hot topics about your industry (hey, it works for us)
• Use audio as training or learning materials to accompany webinars, webcasts, or PDFs

And that’s just brainstorming for a minute or two — the point is, there’s a way you can use it on your site, and the uses of audio are only limited to your imagination. Which, by the way, is the canvas of audio.

Last week, I wrote a blog post about Twitter, the fast growing microblogging platform that allows users to blog 140 character ‘tweets’ to their closest friends, followers and yes, even strangers. Twitter, although, originally created to keep up with what your friends are up to, has quickly become an easy way for companies to monitor their reputation online.

Zappos.com, one of the largest online shoe merchants, known for its outstanding customer service and amazingly large selection of shoes (personal experience) has recently taken to Twitter. They have set up a Twitter feed page on their site which follows online mentions about the company and ‘tweets’ made by their employees.

Zappos.com has been the online sweetheart of many bloggers.  With amazing customer service stories like, I Heart Zappos, this one and one more, it’s hard to NOT love them.  Zappos.com did not set out to win over bloggers, they set out to win over their customers…and some of them just so happened to be bloggers. With one flower bouquet, Zappos.com managed to win over thousands of bloggers and fans.  According to Yahoo Site Explorerr the “I Heart Zappos” post currently has close to 2,000 inbound links! Talk about free publicity!

As a company committed to customer service, it is a smart move for Zappos to embrace Twitter. Following their company’s brand online will help them pro-actively remedy any negative mentions online and humanize the company by  following their employee’s tweets.

Traditional advertising is dead. And if it’s not dead…it’s flopping around on the wooden deck of a much bigger ship, a vessel known as search & internet marketing. The inevitable shift to online advertising is forcing traditional print, radio and television media to scramble to find sponsors, sell ad space, and secure their future in the advertising market, unfortunately, it may be a futile fight.

Earlier this week, it was announced that 111 Newsweek Magazine staffers accepted an early buyout and are leaving the paper. This following the layoffs and buyouts of The New York Times and The Washington Post earlier this year. These layoffs and buyouts are just proof that the internet is taking over the advertising market. Craigslist has replaced newspaper classifieds, YouTube has replaced television commercials and banner ads on popular blogs are replacing Magazine ads. Why the shift? It’s cheaper and more effective.

I was talking to a colleague of mine recently who detailed one of her client’s attempts to stick with the ‘old school’ method of marketing his business. He signed a 6 month advertising contract for $20,000 with a well-distributed niche magazine. To track his efforts, the client had his developer set up a landing page specifically for the web address which was printed on the magazine ad. In the first 3 months, that landing page received a total of 5 hits. 5 HITS! If you do the math…you would figure out that those 5 hits cost the client 2,000 each! And the kicker…none of those 5 hits converted into a qualified sale!

On the flip side, internet marketing is cheap! For less than a 6 month magazine ad contract, you could have a seo-friendly website developed, implement organic and internet marketing, effective user conversion strategies and begin to reap benefits indefinitely!

As marketing becomes more internet focused, it is important to find a reputable web development and SEO firm to help you outline an online marketing strategy that fits your budget and fulfills your goals.

photo credit: cursedthing

Search Engine Land featured a great article this week “Building a Company with Social Media” discussing the ways Senior Level Executives, Marketing, Public Relations, and HR Personnel can use social media to meet their professional objectives. Here’s a quick recap:

Senior Level - Top executives tend to be thought leaders. Utilizing a blog to promote those thoughts can be a very powerful tool in several respects. Not only does a blog run by a top exec bring insider knowledge to the common folk, but it also brings a human element to a company. Randy Baseler, VP of Marketing at Boeing Airline has a public blog where he writes about everything from Aviation news, safety to his european vacation.

Marketing - Marketing executives are hired to get the word out. In the last 10 years, marketing has seen a huge shift from print publications to online marketing. Through the use of social new sharing sites such as Digg, Reddit, and Propeller, marketers are able to get new content out to the public immediately and have it devoured by the tens of thousands of news seekers using these social news sharing sites.

Public Relations - Online Reputation management is a means of monitoring what customers, past clients and prospective clients are saying about a company or brand online. With the  help of online search tools like Google Blog Search and Technorati, PR execs are able to search for online references, good and bad about their product and be proactive about the negative comments

HR -  Human Resources professionals using social media sites, like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn, are able to tap into their extended network of friends, co-workers and business associates to find qualified job candidates. The best part about this type of contact, it comes with a built in referral from someone you know and trust.

Whether you are a small business or belong to a large corporation, using social media to expand your business, your brand, and your authority is a cost effective way to make a mark for yourself.