Digital marketing news.
Working notes, written when something changes and it is worth saying out loud.
Hacking Reddit Marketing
A post that works on Reddit works the way a good joke works: in context, unforced, and worth having heard. Get it wrong and the community turns on you the moment it senses it is being worked.
KFC Dodges Major Social Media PR Bullet
KFC’s social team answered a viral accusation quickly and well. The story then turned out to be a hoax, which does not undo the quality of the response — and does raise an uncomfortable question about what national publicity now costs.
Technical SEO For the Front End Developer
Google has demanded more speed. What that actually asks of the person writing the front end, rather than of whoever owns the SEO spreadsheet.
The Ugly Truth About Generating More Online Reviews
There is an old saying that more isn’t necessarily better. This is doubly true when it comes to online reviews. Just about every business owner I’ve met has a serious case of online review envy. They look with envy at the shop down the street with pages of positive reviews. The ugly truth is that […]
Embrace Brand Advocates the Monty Python Way
Social media has decentralized the control companies have over their brand. Embracing brand advocates in lieu of fighting them leverages your customer base to do a great deal of online marketing for you. While many industries have embraced this, think of Lays Do Us a Flavor, movie and recording industries, are still persecuting brand advocates […]
Maximize Mobile Conversions Using Responsive Web Design
Mobile devices are long beyond the fad stage. They are rooted into the way millions of people interact with the Internet every day. There is a lot of data showing that mobile will eventually over take desktops. In no way am I suggesting that the desktop is dead. What I am saying is that any […]
Facebook Marketing ROI in Decline
Facebook Marketing ROI is in decline. We marketers flocked to Facebook in a way that we would have never done to its predecessor MySpace due to its youthful demographics and ease of reaching that audience. This helped make Facebook the marquis social network for marketers. Fortune 500 brands all the way to the local mom […]
Facebook Advertising Fraud Research
Facebook advertising fraud is a concern for every online marketer. This is one of the worst kept secrets of the online ad world. It’s not just Facebook. Google Adwords is rife with it as well. A few weeks ago Veritasium published an eye opening video exposing these fake clicks by using a honeypot.
Content Marketing Overload: Break Through with Quality
Content marketing overload is a real problem for all of us. There is just so much content posted every day that most of it will go unseen. It’s like trying to get the attention of a bartender in a crowded club by trying to yell louder than everyone else. Sure it can work but it’s […]
SEO and Social Media Starts with Content
As an Internet marketer it is easy to get bogged down with tactics. Does this keyword get a decent amount of traffic? Is this copy tweetable? We all deal with these questions daily. These challenges get the most attention because they are immediate, easy to understand, and have clear solutions. The question that companies and […]
Facebook Contest Pitfalls to Avoid
Running a Facebook contest is a popular and effective method for generating new Likers. Many companies think that the more desirable the prize the more entries and thus Likers their contest will get. While that is a true statement, matching the prize to your audience can generate quality Likers and more importantly, avoid negatively impacting […]
Increase Yelp Ratings The Black Hat Way
Every company wants to increase their Yelp ratings. A positive rating can drive real sales to a business. Conversely, a negative score can remove a company from a shopper’s consideration. When real money is at stake, some people will turn to black hat techniques to increase their score. The super secret technique for increasing review […]
Lay’s Viral Marketing Done Right: DoUsAFlavor.com
The Internet is a buzz over the best Super Bowl ads. Among all this big budget branding, Lay’s pulled off a viral marketing success story with DoUsAFlavor.com. Football fans will eat approximately 11 million pounds of chips during the game. To make sure Lay’s brand gets a piece of that chip binge, they launched an […]
White Hat Tip: Leverage Email List to Increase Liker Count
I’d like to share a quick tip that will help you grow your Facebook Liker count the white-hat way. Many new Facebook page owners fail to take advantage of tools Facebook has already built in to the site. The good news is that you don’t have to be a tech wiz to do this. All […]
Facebook and a Teenless Future
Last week Princeton and Facebook duked it out over the idea that Facebook’s user base would collapse in a couple years. This paper went viral and drew a lot of attention to the idea that Facebook is beginning its MySpace like decline. Before the paper, Ruby Karp’s Op-Ed on Mashable “I’m 13 and None of […]
How Fake Reviewers Stay Anonymous
According to this BBC article, the Virginia Court of Appeals has issued a ruling that customers who wrote negative reviews on Yelp for a carpet cleaning service must be identified. The carpet cleaning company claims that the reviews were posted by people who were not customers.
Buying Facebook Likers is Easy Hiding it is Hard
Everyone knows how to buy Facebook Likers. How to artificially boost your Liker count by purchasing Likers is the worst kept secret in Social Media. A quick Google search produces hundreds of results. Take a look at BoostLikes.com. You can get 10,000 likers in 10 days for just $120. Now that’s impressive!
Benefits of Blogging for Small Business Websites
One of the most frequent questions I get when working with small to medium local business is: “Should I add a blog to my site”. In most circumstances blogging is a good idea not only because it can help with organic search engine rankings, but it can also help add a different slant to your […]
Apache Web Server Over Optimization: A Cautionary Tale
When it comes to squeezing every ounce of performance from an Apache web server it is easy to make changes that can have dire consequences to your sites. Sometimes you can see your web server load go up right away so it’s easy to tell you are headed in the wrong direction. But, some modifications […]
Temporary Fix for WordPress 2.8.4 Exploit
This exploit has been patched in the new 2.8.5 version of WordPress. Download it at: http://wordpress.org/download/ If you are running WordPress 2.8.4 there is an exploit out there that will allow someone to DOS your site.
Cost Per Click 101: 3 Tips That Will Boost Your Paid Search Campaigns
If you are just starting out with paid search using Google’s Adwords or Yahoo’s Sponsored Search, you have probably noticed that getting the biggest bang for your buck isn’t as easy as plopping down your money and letting the sales role in. It’s easy to think of cost per click (CPC) ads as a regular […]
All Meta Tags Are Not Created Equal
I remember the good ol’ days of search engine optimization before Page Rank and all those annoying quality indicators. It was a simpler day when all you needed to get into the top ten was cram variations of the same keyword phrases into the Keyword and Title tag. Then you could get extra fancy and […]
Using Twitter to Do Social Media the Right Way
“Try not to be a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value” -A. Einstein Social Media Marketing is all the rage right now. Going viral or hitting the front page of Digg, Reddit, etc… seems to be the Internet Marketer’s Holy Grail. I have to admit it is very useful […]
Long Tail SEO Process
When it comes to SEO, everyone wants to rank in the top 10 for their keyword. As a Phoenix SEO, that is the reason people hire me. But what a lot of people don’t understand is the value of key word phrases. Today’s search engine users are getting more and more sophisticated. Back in the […]
SEO Friendly Ad Copy
Ask yourself this question, “Who buys products on your site? Search Engines or people?” Obviously, the answer is people. So why are you writing your sales text for search engine spiders? I know, you’ve read online that you have to stuff your pages with relevant keywords so the engines will love you and rank your […]
Google’s Speedy Spider
On Saturday, I was having some technical trouble with one of my Linux web servers. After scouring the web for an answer with no solution in sight, I decided to call in reinforcements and ask a question over at Web Hosting Talk. Being ever persistent, I went back and started toying with my server some […]