Archive for November, 2007
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 30th, 2007
Right now there’s so many exciting developments in new media, marketing and on the Internet in general, that its becoming quite a task to decide which makes me the most cheerful. November saw Google announce Open Social and Facebook enter the Internet advertising market with SocialAds, the XO was launched as was Kindle which lead me discover my first reason:
Askville by Amazon is a neat application, you can ask the community any question about any topic and with any luck the community comes up with satisfactory answers. I always have questions so I expect I’ll be using it a lot.
Docstoc – has a wide range of business templates and documents available to share. There’s some debate about the quality of some of the documents therein but the concept is great especially for small businesses.
Zoho – I Stumbled upon this on-line solution aimed at providing everything from word processing and spreadsheets to CRM and project management.
Kijiji- I like Craigslist and use it regularly to good effect so I was pleased to find this Canadian alternative.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 28th, 2007
Julie Anderson, VP of Marketing at PeopleMaps was kind enough to share their experiences with corporate blogging on our Facebook discussion forum. PeopleMaps puts blog technology to good use for different purposes in their organisation:
“PeopleMaps has been blogging for a while – and we do it in a few different ways:
We use our main company blog as our news channel out to all our audiences. We ask new customers to subscribe to email updates to be sure they’re kept up to date with our activities. We don’t blog all the time on this channel – people are too busy to read our news every day!
We use 2 other blogs to speak to two separate audiences – our consumer audience and our corporate audience. This allows us to be specific in our topics – and builds up our traffic independently from our website SEO and online advertising activities.
Internally we blog to keep various other groups informed of our activities – e.g. our shareholders. These blogs are private as we don’t want just anyone to read that info – the blog technology is just really easy to use and a great way to push out information informally, without relying on email.
Oh, and we use Typepad currently as it was the easiest platform to get started with. We’re messing around with WordPress for some other activities though.”
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 27th, 2007
Do you know how many visitors your site gets, how long they stay, where they come and how often they come back? These are vital statistics used to track Internet marketing efforts and in monitoring the effectiveness of your website investment.
Fortunately our friends over at Google have just the solution. Google anaylitics is a free web site traffic analysis tool that tracks traffic to your website. It works by having you enter some code on your website so that its engine knows to track your site.
Using Google is a great way to understand your on-line community: how they find you; how they navigate your site and how they become customers. Website owners can monitor and improve web site results by honing in on their specific community. The service includes a dashboard containing vital visitors stats and the ability to drill down on these to find out more; score cards to assess traffic; conversion rate tracking analysis for keywords targeted; targeting by region (for example); the ability to create and share (send and schedule personalised e-mail reports) and export data.
Analytics is a free service that is used to attract customers to Google’s fee paid Ad Words and Ad Sense offering but those are optional – the benefits of this free data at our marketing fingertips are unquestionable.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 26th, 2007
Following the launch of our Out-Smarts Facebook page last week, I was asked by Christine at Bluelime Media to write a blog post for their blog about setting up a Facebook business page. For step by step directions on how to do so you can read the post by clicking here.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 23rd, 2007
I’ve been using Google Adwords for a while now for targeted online promotion of my business and so far so good, I’ve been relatively happy with the results. What I like best about AdWords is the fact that you can get going and test the waters really easily. For as little as $5 per month you can get started with campaigns and tweak to see what works and what doesn’t before expanding your promotions.
Enter Facebook and their business pages. Business pages are great – a free way to raise brand awareness amongst your network and their friends. However, their advertising component whilst being attractive (you can reach out and promote to a highly targeted demographic including age, location, sex, keywords, education, workplace, views and relationship status) isn’t great for those who want to test the waters. Unlike Google, Social Ads have a minimum daily investment of $5 for advertising. Really what you are paying for here is the targeting capabilities and the investment may be worth it. $5 is not a lot you may think but for small to medium sized companies already happy with Adwords it may be prohibitive (especially since the Facebook option is new and the effects of advertising in this forum are untested).
Has your organisation tried Social Ads yet? What response rate are you getting and how do the results compare to your experience with Google Adwords (if you’ve used that)?. Please let me know and so that we can feature your comments in a future Out-Smarts Internet Advertising blog post.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 21st, 2007
Yesterday I blogged about the new Kindle but I am much more excited about the XO. This laptop project has been in development for years and is aimed at empowering children in the third world to learn by providing them with access to low cost computers that are child friendly. With that in mind the laptop has been designed to be rugged, easy to use, to view, has great power efficiency and it uses free open source software thats helps keep the costs low.
The aim of the project is to provide an XO to as many kids around the world as possible to make it easier for them to learn. Right now if you give a donation of a laptop another will be shipped to you. Its a great cause (the donation can be written off) but the promotion is only on until 26th November and the response has been overwhelming so get cracking.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 20th, 2007
Out-Smarts has a business profile in Facebook and within a day of creating our page we have 7 fans! We’re testing the waters to see how we can use this profile to share our knowledge and expertise; to collaborate with interested parties and to assess if Social Ads is a viable Internet advertising tool. Become a fan and check up on our progress or submit to our discussions – the current one being innovative corporate blog uses.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 20th, 2007
Splashed across the front of today’s Vancouver Sun is the so called “future of books” – the Amazon Kindle: an electronic reading device that allows readers to enjoy up to 200 books at once. Retailing at $399 the Kindle also supports blogs, magazines and newspapers allowing the busy exec to access some good reading whenever the chance pops up.
Using a model similar to Apple’s iPod and iTunes, users simply connect to Amazon from wherever they may be (using advanced cellphone modem technology built in to the Kindle) and buy books or subscribe to dailies and mags. Amazon keeps a back up so you don’t have to worry if your Kindle is stolen and connection fees are built in to the price of the content you buy so your cell phone provider needn’t even know. According to the promotional video the battery lasts for hours and the screen is easy to view (its monotone granted, but it does look quite simple and the font size is changeable).
The Kindle concept is great but given the fact I am already weighed down with devices (cellphone, iPod, laptop…..) I am not sure if the value ad and cost entice me to buy just yet (especially considering I already get some of the blogs they provide free of charge) – just as well really since the service is not available in Canada anyway.
I am awaiting feedback from Amazon as to how to submit a blog (I’ll keep you posted on that one!).
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 19th, 2007
Looking for some good marketing reading to get you off to an easy start on a Monday morning? Then check out the Top Marketing Blogs to Watch in 2008 on Evan Carmichael’s blog. Watch for Out-Smarts on next years list!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, November 16th, 2007
When I meet with executives in the finance sector and talk about new media adoption I usually get the response that investors are typically old school and like to do business the “traditional” way. I always have to ask about the next generation of investors – those for whom new media adoption is the norm: have these financial organisations considered how they will attract these new investors in the future without using new media?
Steadyhand, a local financial organisation that provides mutual funds does just that. It bucks the trend both in terms of the mutual funds services it provides and its approach to new media adoption which is leading edge to say the least. The company has adopted a blogging policy that encourages all employees to contribute as well as Internet advertising and social marketing strategies that effectively reach and involve their target audience.
Traditional finance companies should take note – this is the way of the future.
