vital marketing

There are a ton of web sites that claim they’ll distribute news releases for free. But my experience is that many of them are more trouble than they’re worth and they are constantly pinging you with upcharges.

Today I came across a great blog entry that ranks these “free” distribution services by:

1. Page Rank – What is the Google page rank of the site? I’m only listing free PR sites that have a page rank of 4 or higher. To determine the page rank of a site,

2. Google News – Are most of the press releases that are published by the site picked up by Google news? To find out if a PR distribution site is getting their content indexed by Google news, go to Google News and do a search for “site:sitename.com”. This will show all of the stories by that site that have been indexed by Google News. As an example, a search for all press releases for the free PR site BigNews.biz, would look like this “site:BigNews.biz”

3. Traffic – Does the free press release site get any traffic? For this list we used Alexa.com to check traffic. You will have to set your own standard for what you feel is acceptable. For this list, I’m using any site that is ranked above or around 100,000 by Alexa.

4. Cost – For this list we are looking for sites that are primarily free. However, they may offer additional premium services for a fee.

As a result, I tried the top ranker – http://www.PRLog.com.

I just submitted 2 releases (one for Hopkins Marketing and one for OstermanCron) and that experience was excellent… compared to previous experiences on other sites. The real proof will be in whether or not we get online exposure… but so far so good.

Randy should be posting this but he sent it to me, I love it, and thought I’d post it.
Are you familiar with LastPass? ( https://lastpass.com/)

It’s a free and extremely secure online password manager. The guys on the PCMAG.COM podcast talked about it in reference to a story about a recent Twitter hacker. All of the PCMAG guys use LastPass and really love it.

Also, here’s a PCMAG story about this product: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343565,00.asp

I’ve been using it for several days now and REALLY like it.

Hopkins Marketing and Vital-Marketing both recommend it!

I was updating a client’s web site this morning and they asked me to name a pdf file: “Poster – Regional Disparities and Economic Outcomes Associated with Minimally Invasive and Conventional Surgeries of the Chest, Abdomen, and Pelvis.”

Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when you are naming files:
No spaces: use hypens or underscores to separate words. Why? Because some web browsers may not recognize the spaces. If you use spaces, they are frequently translated as “%20”. So if your file name is Hopkins Marketing.pdf, it would be read as Hopkins%20Marketing.pdf. The problem is that this can cause confusion in identifying the actual file name. Spaces in file names can also cause broken links, because popular software (like Microsoft Office) recognize spaces as an opportunity to move to another line. The spaces can also affect your search engine results. So drop the spaces.
Avoid special characters in a file name (eg %, #, $)
Be relevant to the content. The title is important for search engine optimization so get your key words in there.
Be brief: Err on the side of brevity. Depending on the application, you may be limited to 256 characters or fewer.
Generally about 25 character maxium is a sufficient length/goal.

With that last comment, I’m off to reduce this 148 character file name by 80%. I’ll start by removing the spaces!

Last post talked about interactive pdfs and one of the benefits being that you don’t have to print, mail, fax, scan, etc. In other words… save some trees by going electronic!

MarketingSherpa just published a case study that is a great follow-on: “SUMMARY: Marketers looking to save money on print costs can take advantage the growing trend toward “green” marketing by transitioning customers from a paper catalog to digital communications. In this Case Study from our archives, see how a marketer redesigned their email program to make it a green alternative to their printed catalogs. The test worked: They reduced their print run and lifted email conversions 19%.In this Case Study from our archives, see how a marketer redesigned their email program to make it a green alternative to their printed catalogs. The test worked: They reduced their print run and lifted email conversions 19%.”
Read the case study here: http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31300

Bottom line: customers are looking for, and responding to green offers.

PDF forms are great. Sort of. Everyone can universally open them (who doesn’t have Adobe Reader these days.) But when you have to print a form, fill it out and then mail it, scan it, fax it, or email it, it’s not so great anymore. It’s a pain.

Why not make it interactive and save a tree. The job applicant, for example, opens the form, and types his qualifications right into the form and hits submit. Or saves the document and then emails it back. Saves lots of steps, not to mention those trees. Plus, you receive readable and uniform responses.
You can create interactive forms in Adobe Professional and Indesign (I prefer Professional.) Or have some one do it for you for under $10/page (OK, this is a shameless plug… julie@hopkinsmarketing.com). But seriously, if your pdf’s are static, it’s time to go interactive.

Here’s a nice summary article of the top content sharing websites: http://tinyurl.com/m4axax
The only thing I question, is the email marketing recommendation for aWeber. In all fairness, I’m not familiar with this service. BUT, I am a huge fan of www.mailchimp.com. For my clients (HopkinsMarketing.com and Vital-Mktg.com) who may only blast emails sporadically, pay-as-you-go is the way to go. Plus, they just keep innovating in the mailchimp labs. Love it and highly recommend it.

Ning is one of the social media sites mentioned. I’m digging into this one and will report back…. looking at it as a private network for my ginormous extended family, as well as for my neighborhood association. I’ll report back with what I like/don’t like.

Happy 4th of July!

It’s easy to link to a PDF document from an email or HTML page—just use a standard HTML hyperlink. For example, to link to the October 2007 issue of Connections Magazine (PDF), include this URL address:
http://www.connectionsmagazine.com/issues/7/10.pdf

But what if you want to link directly to my article, “Creating a Virtual Contact Center,” that begins on page 29?

By appending the tag, “#page=pagenumber” to any PDF URL, your browser will open the PDF file and position it on the specified page number.

So for our example, you can direct readers to the article on page 29 with this URL:
http://www.connectionsmagazine.com/issues/7/10.pdf#page=29

Adding the “#page=” tag eliminates the manual PDF-navigation effort for your audience. Not only will they appreciate the time saver, they’re more likely to find and read the targeted content.

Lately, Randy and I have been spending more time on Social Media sites LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. But when I ask friends outside of my marketing world if they’ve ever heard of Twitter, I usually get “Twitter? What’s Twitter?” And Facebook… “that’s for teenagers.” LinkedIn…. “I’m on it because someone sent me an invitation. But I haven’t done anything with it. I don’t have time for it.”

But the fact is, social media is growing like crazy and if you’re in marketing or sales, you need to dive in.
I attended an American Marketing Association meeting on this topic today, led by Kendra Ramirez. http://www.linkedin.com/in/kendraramirez
Key take-aways – you’re crazy if you don’t give social media a try. Get a strategy… know what you’re trying to accomplish. The only industry where she has seen poor results is in manufacturing. Good bye cold-calls. Get over yourself… it’s OK to put your name and photo out there. People remember faces, not names so the pic is important. She cautions against putting your maiden name, year of your birthday, and your physical address. (Not sure yet if I agree about the maiden name.)

Articles, seminars and training courses are EVERYWHERE. Experts abound. No excuses. Dive in! (Besides building your business, you might just find out that it’s fun!)

The media has always been one of the most effective ways to communicate your message. In this new eBook, David Henderson provides valuable perspective and helpful guidance on how to communicate through today’s changing media.

David is an Emmy Award-winning former CBS network news correspondent, author and media strategist who is one of today’s great thinkers when it comes to embracing Web 2.0.

His eBook’s popularity is a great example of the power of social media. Released just a few weeks ago, it’s already attracted more than 7,000 downloads!

So if you’re trying to figure out the new online world—Web 2.0, blogs, social media, and Twitter—what’s the value, and where’s it all headed? Then you’ll want to check out David’s free eBook at www.mediasavvyleader.com.

Sometimes, it’s just simple personal expressions that make a difference in creating meaningful relationships.

This from a net promoter blog on the success of AIG and CEM. It illustrates how baby steps can have a giant impact:

“One of their [AIG's] big points of focus in terms of experience design is to really focus on the main moments of truth, and to make specific changes to reflect what they know about personal events happening in the customer’s life. Such as special communications and offers that are linked to events like birthdays, family changes, moving house, or other things that are, actually, a pretty big deal in peoples’ lives! And when they get personalized communications, it’s a great way to make them know that your company cares about them personally. These types of programs and changes, have allowed them to double revenues in some cases.”

And this:

“I thought he summarized all of this nicely by highlighting the fact that they have focused on moving from a “push” model, that is about marketing and selling to clients, to a “pull” model where excellent customer experience generates a natural positive image and word-of-mouth to bring in new customers. And ultimately, this all comes down to demonstrating every day to their clients that they are listening. The act of listening, and responding to the client, is right at the center of developing deeper relationships.”

So keep it personal….and listen closely…..

Or perhaps your offerings are just “flexible,” “next generation,” “industry standard,” “mission critical,” “scalable,” and a few other overused, hype-driven phrases.

In David Meerman Scott’s eBook, “The Gobbledygook Manifesto,” he analyses over 388,000 press releases sent in 2006. What he found was 74,000 mentioned at least one of the gobbledygook phrases—the same meaningless jargon kept cropping up over and over again.

The winner (or most abused term), was “next generation”, with more than 9,800 references. This was followed with over 5,000 uses of each of the following words and phrases: “flexible,” “robust,” “world class,” “scalable” and “‘easy to use.”

Volume Analysis: Gobbledygook Business Terms

As an online expert and viral marketing strategist, Scott says, “just like with a teenager’s use of annoying catch phrases, I notice the same words cropping up again and again in Web sites and news releases—so much so that the gobbledygook grates against my nerves and many other people’s, too. Well, duh. Like, companies just totally don’t communicate very well, you know?”

Scott continues, “Just saying your widget is ‘industry standard’ means nothing unless some aspect of that standardization is important to your buyers. In the next sentence, I want to know what you mean by ‘industry standard,’ and I also want you to tell my why that standard matters and give me some proof that what you say is indeed true.”

Always Write for the Buyer
As you write news releases or website copy, start with your customer in mind; not with your product. Well-written materials speak in the customer’s language … what are their problems and business issues? How can you communicate in way that demonstrates your expertise in the market?

To learn more about the study and how to avoid these overused clichés, download Scott’s complimentary eBook, “The Gobbledygook Manifesto.”

I’ve  got to give Tom Boylson (www.printingalliance.com and www.promotionalliance.com) kudos for this one. Have you ever worked with a client or partner who can’t find their original artwork (vector art… .eps file?) Or your own company can’t get its hands on the original art….the designer is long gone, the computer it was stored on is in the computer graveyard….etc. So as a result, everytime you need something printed, it’s a major hassle. Here’s a possible fix…. www.brandsoftheworld.com. Go to this site and type in a brand…. say General Electric and you’ll get a bunch of options. You’re not going to always find what you’re looking for but it’s a resource. I uploaded one of my client’s logos – OstermanCron. Now we have a central resource for grabbing the logo (and who knows…. it could help SEO too??) This is also a resource for getting new vector art created from your .jpg or .gif file.

Another trick in using the alt-text to improve opens for Outlook Autopreview users…. don’t just add alt-text to the top graphic. Add to at least the top two, maybe even the top three. Then you can begin to build a story.

 Think about your subject line and how the story flows if users are seeing just alt-text.

Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve probably noticed when searching with Google, often PDFs come up in the search results. That’s because Google indexes PDF files, and PDFs represent a large volume of the content on the web.

However, most people don’t think about optimizing their PDFs for the search engines. That’s unfortunate because it’s easy to optimize your PDFs for Google indexing and searching.

First, make sure you include TITLE, DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDs attributes in your PDF file. You can also add the AUTHOR and other fields as desired—but TITLE is essential!

You can supply these attributes (tags) with Adobe or other tools that you use to create the PDF. Or you can always modify these attributes in existing PDFs by using a freeware utility like PDF Info.

Keep in mind that the TITLE field is what Google uses as the heading in its search results. If you don’t have a TITLE, then it will just display the first chunk of text in encounters in the PDF document—which is often not ideal. So always include a useful TITLE tag.

Also if you want a search engine to find your content based on keywords or key phrases, be sure you include those terms in prominent locations in your PDF document, such as the page titles and table of contents.

For more information on PDF files and SEO, here are a couple of useful links on Adobe’s site:

• Offer search tools a helping hand
• Make your PDFs work well with Google (and other search engines)

I have a non-profit client – www.vppac.org – that is hosting an annual conference for several hundred members in Vegas next February. Another client – www.ostermancron.com – is hosting a small open-house event to show off the latest and greatest in office furntiure this fall.  In the case of VPPAC, I needed a way to accept credit card payments. In the case of OstermanCron, I needed online registration and a way to track attendees.  A colleague of mine – Greg Doud www.doudsystems.com – found a great site for getting this done. Event Brite -www.eventbrite.com. Just started playing around with it but it looks like it is going to work brilliantly. Plus it’s FREE. If you aren’t charging for the event as in the OstermanCron case, it is truly free. If you are charging for registration/tickets as is the case for vppac.org, then you pay a transaction fee to Paypal and 2.5% to Event Brite with a max fee of $9.95 per ticket. Well worth it given all of the functionality you get and the time saved in trying to manage yourself. I’ll let you know how it goes…… 

This week Google added a privacy link on their home page and results pages.

Here’s an excerpt from Google’s blog about the new link:

“So, today we’re making a homepage change by adding a link to our privacy overview and policies. Google values our users’ privacy first and foremost. Trust is the basis of everything we do, so we want you to be familiar and comfortable with the integrity and care we give your personal data. We added this link both to our homepage and to our results page to make it easier for you to find information about our privacy principles. The new “Privacy” link goes to our Privacy Center, which was revamped earlier this year to be more straightforward and approachable, with videos and a non-legalese overview to make sure you understand in basic terms what Google does, does not, will, and won’t, do in regard to your personal information.”

Like Google, all web marketers should include a privacy statement on their web site, clearly stating if you will share any customer data and if so, how. Make the policy easy to understand and make it easy to find on your web site—a best practice is to include it in the footer of the web site so that it appears on every page.

Plus as an added bonus, the search engines like privacy statements! It makes your site appear more legitimate and professional—include one and you’ll be rewarded with higher ranking.

Of course not everyone needs a privacy statement quite as sophisticated as $168B Google. Something like WEconectIT’s Privacy Statement is sufficent for many organizations.

If you need help crafting your policy statement, check out The Direct Marketing Association’s Privacy Policy Generator. Simply fill out a few questions and this useful online tool will generate a privacy web page that you can post on your site.

This week InformationWeek reports that Adobe announced their new ‘Searchable SWF technology.” They will be distributing a “search-engine optimized” version of Flash Player to Google and Yahoo.

“When a search spider hits an SWF Flash file, the special Flash Player will start up. This Flash Player will navigate every state of Flash files like a virtual user would, finding and helping the search engines index text and links along the way and searching through otherwise unlinked files that the Flash file points to.”

No doubt this will impact Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) once Google and Yahoo start indexing all the flash-only sites that have so far been invisible to search spiders. However, there are still serious limitations—some that will be annoying to web users—so there’s still no reason to race to Flash as a primary web site development tool.

“Still, only text and links will be searchable. Graphics and video, including FLV files, still won’t be able to be indexed properly, and there’s no capability to search and index metadata embedded in Flash files (even though, Adobe says, SWF and FLV files have metadata fields) or to allow people to link to specific content within a Flash file in order to make search results more relevant. Also, when someone clicks on a search result, they’ll be taken to the beginning of a Flash file and will have to navigate their way to the content they are seeking.”

Here is another article titled, “Caution urged following Google Flash changes” that outlines a few additional concerns.

If you’re not already using Google Analytics, you should give it a try. It’s
an incredible service!

Google Analytics analyzes traffic for one or more of your websites and
provides easy-to-understand reports on your visitors—how many, where they come
from, how they found and use your site, what converts them into customers, and
much more.

Here’s just a few good reasons to use Google Analytics:

• It’s FREE—spend on marketing, not on web analytics.
• It’s easy to use—simple enough for novice marketers, while delivering all
  of the capabilities that experienced web analytics professionals expect.
  It’s a hosted service that runs on the same servers that power Google. Just
  paste the Google Analytics tracking code into each of your website pages and
  tracking begins immediately.
• It’s powerful—it has many of the features you’d expect from a high-end
  analytics offering. From large, high-traffic corporate sites to small sites,
  Google Analytics delivers consistent service.
• It’s integrated with AdWords—if you have a Google AdWords PPC account, you can
  use Google Analytics directly from the AdWords interface. Google Analytics
  also calculates ROI metrics from automatically imported cost and keyword
  tracking data, saving you time.
   

Track your blog with Google Analytics
I’m currently using Google Analytics to track my WordPress and Blogger Blog.

Thanks to Andy Wibbels for his simple instructions for tracking these three popular blogs with Google Analytics:

• Blogger
• TypePad
• Wordpress

Google Analytics Dashboard

If you do nothing else, pay attention to your “From” address and your subject line – these two are the biggest factors in increasing open rates.

The “from” address should include your company or brand name to increase recognition. If appropriate, include an individual’s name if the recipient will recognize the name.
For example:

From: George Washington, The White House.

Your subject line should be short (50 characters or less) and relevant to the content. Choose your words carefully – according to one study 69% of email recipients decide to report email as spam based on the subject line. Avoid words and phrases that read like spam.

Here are a couple free tools that will search your email for “spammy tendencies.”

http://www.gravitymail.com/spamscore.php
http://spamcheck.sitesell.com/

This is just one of 15 tips in the new Vital Marketing report, 15 Tips and Tricks for Marketing on the Web. It’s a free download, so make sure you check out this guide for more helpful hints and reminders.

The inbox is overflowing. And if your customer or client is using Outlook Preview Pane (they probably are) or Google Mail (snippets), chances are you have a couple lines of text to entice them to open.

Look familiar? I’m not picking on Corel; most companies are guilty of ignoring what happens in Autopreview. Does an email like this entice you to open? Perhaps the subject line will get you – but Autopreview adds nothing to the equation.

So if you are sending html email – a newsletter or promotion – what do you do?

Here are two valid options:

1. Use alt-text behind your images. From a Jeanne Jennings post on Optimizing for Snippets: “Yes, you can simply place your fabulously engaging snippet/AutoPreview phrase at the very top of the e-mail where all will see it. Or you can use alt tags and place it beneath an image at the top of your e-mail (say, your logo). The alt tag text will come through in the snippet or AutoPreview area, but it won’t be seen once the reader opens the e-mail. This is sneakier — and to my eye, more visually appealing — than having a phrase at the very top of your message.

To learn more, here’s a nice entry from David Greiner on Campaign Monitor’s blog: Optimizing for Gmail’s snippets and Outlook’s AutoPreview.

2. “…place your fabulously engaging snippet/AutoPreview phrase at the very top of the e-mail where all will see it”…. BUT make the text white. You will be able to read the text in autopreview but when it is opened, the text is not seen and doesn’t mess with the look of your email. I saw this effectively done by Adobe.

As always – bottom line in email marketing – Test. Test. And then go test some more.