What’s Viral Marketing?
Seth Godin wrote a really good article about viral marketing yesterday on his blog.
He basically talks about two different kinds of viral marketing:
1) “The original classic sort in which the marketing is the product and which a self-amplifying cycle occurs.” An example he used was Hotmail. I’m sure you’ve seen the little blurb of copy at the bottom of Hotmail emails encouraging the email recipient to sign up for a Hotmail account. Over time, more and more people signed up for Hotmail accounts.
2) “…a marketing campaign that spreads but isn’t the product itself.” Nowadays ad agencies are generating videos and putting them out on the Web. Their goal is to put together something that’s funny/memorable that will be passed around to millions of users worldwide on sites like YouTube.
Recently, viral videos seem to be what everyone wants to do. I hear it all the time. I guess there’s a “coolness factor” to it.
Check out the full post. Definitely a good read.
Internet Marketing 101 - Part 1 - The Basics
To start things off, I’d like to share some commonly used terms in Internet marketing. You may have heard them before but had no idea what they meant.
- Affiliate marketing - Selling your product through other Web sites or email lists by paying the site or list owner for each sale. The flip side of this is selling other products through your Web site and getting a commission/fee for each sale.
- Blog - Short for ‘web log’. A Web site where contributor(s) post short entries and visitors can post comments. The home page on this site features my blog.
- Content Management System (CMS) - Application that allows users to manage Web site content without HTML knowledge/expertise. These are becoming very popular these days as people become more Web-savvy and have smaller budgets.
- Conversion rate - The number of sales, leads or other desired actions that occur on your web site. The actual conversion rate is calculated by dividing your conversions by your visits.
- Domain name (Web site address) - The address of your web site such as ‘www.yourcompanyname.com‘
- Dynamic Web site - Web site generated using a web application and a database.
- Flash - An animation and interactive platform that lets you create very complex movement on a page.
- Hit - Any one file downloaded from your site one time. A single page of a web site, viewed once, may generate 30 or more hits. Commonly misused as a Web analytics metric.
- Page view - Any one page of your site completely loading any one time.
- Registrar - The service you use to reserve a domain name (i.e. GoDaddy.com).
- RSS - Stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” A type of text file that delivers a list of headlines and content directly to feed readers and other software.
- Unique visitor - Any one visitor coming to your site any number of times in the time period. If a visitor comes to your web site 30 times in a month, he/she still only counts as one unique visitor.
- Visit - Any user visiting your site any one time. This is not a unique number.
- Web Analytics - Taking traffic data and other information about your web site, analyzing it, and then providing insight.
The 5 Stages of Internet Marketing
I break Internet marketing into five important stages:
- Planning (& Strategy) - Develop overall strategy and plan for Web site and other tactics.
- Production (Design & Programming) - The look and feel of the Web site is created and then programmed.
- Promotion - Internet marketing tactics are implemented to drive traffic to Web site.
- Measurement (Web Analytics) - Web site visitor activity is tracked including metrics such as number of visitors, conversions, popular pages, etc.
- Improvement - Web site improvements are made based on analytics and customer feedback
Next up - Part 2 - Planning and Strategy
I will cover some of the things to consider when developing your online strategy. Proper planning could save you a lot of money and headache.
Introducing Internet Marketing 101 series
I’m currently working on an Internet Marketing 101 series that will cover everything you need to know about establishing your own presence on the Internet.
The 7-part series is going to cover the following:
- Internet Marketing overview - I’ll cover some common terminology (to help you understand some of the language) and other basic information. The goal is to help make sure that you’re not overwhelmed with the process.
- Web site planning - Much like building a house, you’ll need a good plan. The complexity of your plan will depend on the complexity of your site. This is the place to determine your goals/objectives and set a road map for the project to follow. You’ve heard the saying “Fail to plan then plan to fail” (or something like that).
- Registering a Web site domain (www.yourcompany.com) - This is a very important part of having a successful Web site. A good, memorable Web site address will make it easier for people to find your site. This will cover the process of registering a domain and pointing it to your Web site.
- Hosting - Your Web site has to live somewhere. Chances are that you’re not going to host in yourself unless you have a Web server and an IT staff to support it. I’ll tell you about some of the things to look for when chosing your host.
- Web site development - Who’s going to build the site? Are you a do-it-yourselfer or are you going to pay someone? Who’s going to manage the content? We’ll discuss some of the options you have when building a site.
- Web Analytics - This is one of the most important parts of Internet Marketing. Tracking. How will you know how many people are coming to your site, where they’re coming from and what they’re doing during their visit without using analytics. There are some really good free options out there.
- Promotion - Built it and they will come, right? Not necessarily. It takes a lot of work to drive traffic to a Web site. In this section, we’ll discuss some basic tactics for driving traffic. (A more in-depth series on promotion will follow after the Internet Marketing 101 series).
First up, Internet Marketing overview…
I’ve been a slacker…
I’ve been working on updating this Web site and just realized that I haven’t posted anything on this blog since July. I haven’t even been able to post something once a month. That’s all about to change!
My plan for this blog is to offer basic Internet marketing information (Internet Marketing Made Simple) that will help you make decisions on promoting yourself, your brand or product. This will include cool tools, resources, best practices and much more.
My first series of posts is going to cover creating a basic Internet presence for yourself and what you will need to make it happen.
Hopefully the first post will appear in the next couple of days.
To receive updates on new articles, subscribe to my RSS feed today.
Why do I want to unsubscribe? Because…that’s why.
I just unsubscribed from an email that I magically started receiving from my health care provider. I’m assuming they added me to their list after I signed up for online access. I certainly didn’t ask to receive emails about someone winning an iPod Touch… (unless it was me doing the winning).
Anyway, I clicked “unsubscribe” expecting to your get a typical “you’ve been unsubscribed” screen. Instead I got a screen asking me why I unsubscribed.
For some reason, I was caught off guard with “…we would like to know your reasons for unsubscribing.” Is it just me, or is this a little strong? I immediately flashed back to being a kid and having my parents asking me why I did or didn’t do something.
As a marketer, I can appreciate wanting to know why an email recipient unsubscriber from my mailing list. This would be very useful information.
As a consumer, if I unsubscribe from an email, I want to be removed immediately. I don’t want to do anything more than click a link and be told that I’ve been unsubscribed. Nothing sets me off more than being forced to log in to a site to change my preferences (especially if I don’t know my username/password) or even being asked why I’m unsubscribing.
Please just let me unsubscribe peacefully…
Am I losing my mind?
Several months ago, I subscribed to the New York Times’ Circuits email newsletter based on a co-worker’s recommendation. It comes once a week and has an article written by David Pogue. He’s a well-known technology guy that writes really good articles about different gadgets. I saw him speak at a Social Media conference in Vegas in April 2008. He was really good. Anyway, I’ve realized that I don’t read the e-newsletter and have attempted to unsubscribe from it. Over the last month, I’ve unsubscribed at least 4 times. Yesterday it showed up in my inbox.
So this time I’m going to take some screen caps of the unsubscribe screen just to make sure I’m not crazy. You can see below that I clicked the “unsubscribe” link in the email. Click on the thumbnail below to see the unsubscribe page.
So I’m crossing my fingers that the email doesn’t come through next week because I really don’t want to have to hunt down someone at NY Times about manually removing me from the list. And I certainly shouldn’t have to…
UPDATE: Apparently the unsubscribe link in the “Circuits” email unsubscribes me from a completely different email called “Tech Updates”. David Pogue left a comment for me pointing that out. I guess we’ll see if “Circuits” shows up next week.
How do you organize information?
One of my biggest struggles as an interactive strategist is staying on top of industry-related news, trends and information. I don’t have the luxury of focusing on one area of internet marketing. Clients look to me to provide guidance for a wide variety of things including Web site development, search engine marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, etc.
I currently subscribe to a ton of RSS feeds from a variety of different sources. I’ve been using my iGoogle home page to manage my RSS feeds. It works because it shows me the last three posts from my favorite blogs.
(On a side note, setting up an iGoogle page is really easy. When you’re looking at Google.com, look up in the upper right hand corner. You’ll see an “iGoogle” link. Click this and you’re on your way. If you have a Google account, you can view this page every time you log in regardless of your location)
Yesterday, I read an article on Ian Lurie’s Conversation Marketing blog about Google Reader and how he uses it to prioritize and organize all of his feeds. Check out his post on solving “Internet marketing overload”. >>
I read a related post a few minutes ago on Dosh Dosh (a blog focusing primarily on Social Media) that was also very interesting. The author write about he sorts through all of the information to find what he’s looking for. The comments to the post are also helpful because a bunch of people wrote about how they organize info. Take a look.>>
Hopefully you find these posts as helpful and informative as I did.
Consumers trust bloggers less than you would think…
I read an interesting post on Jeremiah Owyang’s blog this morning. He points out several surveys that show that blogs are at the bottom of the list as far as trusted sources used when making a buying decision.
For example, a Forrester Research survey shows that consumers trust sources in the following order:
- Opinion of a friend or acquaintance that has used the product - 83%
- A product review in a newspaper, magazine or TV - 75%
- Info on manufacturer’s Web site - 69%
- A review by a known expert - 63%
- Consumer reviews on a retailer’s site - 60%
Number 10 is an online review by a blogger.
I was surprised that blogs were so low on the list. Maybe they don’t carry the weight that we all expect these days.
I completed the Rodes City Run 10K (that’s six miles)!
On Saturday, I participated in the second leg of the Louisville Triple Crown , the Rodes City Run . The course started at Broadway and 4th Street and ended up behind Louisville Slugger Field.
I ended up walking most of the race like I did in the Anthem 5k. My body just doesn’t want to run. The whole time I was out there my body kept telling me to stop the race. Fortunately, I persevered.
The biggest problem I had at the Anthem 5k was that I had to use the restroom the entire race and was in pain. On Saturday, I got downtown with plenty of time to spare and made sure I found the porta-potties. As soon as the race started, my body started telling me that I had to find a restroom. I knew there was no way that I could make it six miles with having to use the restroom so I ended up running into a Thornton’s on Broadway. I sure felt silly running into Thornton’s but there were already a couple of other people in there.
After three miles, my time was around 44 minutes. It was slightly ahead of my 3-mile time at the Anthem 5k and included my 2-minute run into Thornton’s.
Sadly, almost everyone out there beat me. My final time was 1:32:59 and I finished 5,388 out of 5,958. I only did better than 103 men. The guy that finished first did the entire race in less than 29 minutes. Oh well. I guess I’ll stick with my day job and not enter the professional running circuit.
I finished the Anthem 5K!
This morning I ran (I use the term “ran” loosely) the Anthem 5k Fitness Classic in downtown Louisville. The race began and ended at Louisville Slugger Field. There were a whole lot of people down there. 6,892 people to be exact. I ended up walking most of it. It wasn’t because of poor physical condition. Well, that was part of the reason, I guess. When I got to Louisville Slugger Field, I couldn’t locate a bathroom. I figured I’d be okay once the race started. Man, was I wrong. Every time I ran and my feet hit the ground, it felt like my bladder was getting shook around inside my body. I was really worried that I was going to have an accident. So I ended up walking most of the rest of the race. It slowed me down but having an accident would have been even worse…
I finished the race in 44:46 minutes. I placed 5,702th overall and 2,822th out of the 3,055 men. I was hoping to finish better but I’m proud that I finished faster than over 1,000 people. Okay, so most of the people I beat were much older than me or pushing their kids in a stroller. I’m still proud that I completed the race.
Next up is the Rodes City Run (10K) on March 17.
I’ll definitely be sure to find the restroom before the next race. I’m not making that mistake again.
