Now when people ask me what I do I give them the short answer; Internet Marketing Strategy. What is the Internet Marketing thing all about? Well it’s not limited to Google, although that is a great place to start. There are Search Engine Fundamentals that should be applied to your website before any comprehensive Internet marketing Strategy can be formed. Google or “Search Engine friendly” web sites are simply one of many tactics available to you.
Other tactics include:
Social Media marketing
Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are not just personal tools to communicate with friends. Used correctly they can be a great resource for lead acquisition and brand loyalty.
Mobile and Local Search
One of the biggest missed opportunities in internet marketing is failing to have complete and correct information about your business available to mobile phone users and in Local listings on search engines and online yellow pages.
Viral Marketing
This can cover a lot of individual examples, but essentially Viral Marketing happens anytime you create something that causes the recipient or viewer to pass the message to someone else. Probably the best example is a “send to a friend” link in an email or webpage.
Reputation Management
Finding negative comments about your business online and responding positively is critical for large and small businesses alike.
email Marketing
It’s not just about sending a blanket email blast. Creating content specific to each email campaign and quantifying the results will show you how much return on investment you are making… Or not making as the case might be.
Search Advertising
Pay-Per-Click advertising has a whole process to learn or outsource. How much should you pay – how do you measure return, how do you find the right search terms, how do you write the ad… the list goes on and on.
Analytics
Constantly refining the content of your site to both be as relevant as possible and to increase organic ranking in the search engines.
Server Based
And then there are server based tweaks like a 301 redirect. If someone looks for a page on your website they should see the same thing with and without the “www” in the URL. Similarly if there are back links to your web site without the WWW the search engines may see that as a back link to a different website.
Whole books are written on each of these topics… well except the last item about redirects. So in the venue of this blog it is just the briefest hint at what can be done to help your customers find and do business with you.
If you have been following my posts you probably already know something’s up. I have launched a Digital Marketing – slash – Internet Marketing Company. Here is the very original name.. . IMS Strategic Internet Marketing Services Pretty clever I think.
If we know each other personally expect a call from me in the next few weeks to tell you more about this. More to come…
Adam Coppin wrote:
And really creepy that they’re going to be listening to my phonecalls as well as reading my emails, monitoring my blog and tracking my position on the globe…
As if anyone really believes the “do no evil” motto any more…
Adam Coppin
Senior Web Strategist
Web Teks, Inc. – An eBusiness Solutions Firm
Jake wrote:
In a Google World:
0730 – Set Facebook status to “Eating breakfast at Chick fil’a” – also updating my Twitter
1200 – Watch old episodes of MacGeiver on YouTube during my lunch break
1330 – Get a voice mail from a friend mentioning something about a chicken suit and a request to bring over one of your power tools
1700 – On the drive home from work, notice that billboards change as you drive down the highway, advertising a Black and Decker Robot Chicken that can break into your neighbor’s house with a paperclip
What’s so wrong about all that?
.___. .___.
{O,o} Jacob Tews {o,O}
/)__) Developer (__(\
-"-"- Web Teks, Inc. -"-"-
http://www.webteks.com
the xy axis in the trackball is coordinated with the summer solstice
Here it is the night before my guest appearance on the HearSay with Cathy Lewis program and it’s not exactly cramming – but I am making sure all my social media accounts have been at least logged into.
In the process I ran across a cool little social network aggregating widget called Digsby.
From their own description; Digsby is a multiprotocol IM client that lets you chat with all your friends on AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, and Jabber with one simple to manage buddy list. It is also an email notification tool that alerts you of new email. And the triple play is that Digsby is simultaneously a social networking tool that alerts you of events like new messages and gives you a live Newsfeed of what your friends are up to.
I downloaded and set up the application on my home computer, and configured it to show my three main email accounts, Facebook, Twitter,MySpace,and LinkedIn accounts in about 15 minutes – but I know where to look for all my username and password codes so it may take you a little while longer than that. Now i can see when i get a new email, someone at work IM’s me, I get a friends status change – it happens from one concise application. Very cool.
Here are my various social network profiles being tracked in Digsby :
Posted: February 20, 2009 at 7:01 pm | Tags: Personal
I’m sitting in El Asteca restaurant in cheapeake waiting for a table and freezing my arse off every time the front door opens. I’m also posting to my blog from my phone while I wait. Now that may not seem like a big deal if you’re under 40- but this is star trek stuff to me. In a second I’ll snap a picture and post it to facebook. What the heck is going on here – we seem to be reaching out to one another in a strangely intimate way. Too much computer time?
Update:
This is the photo uploaded from my mobile phone to FaceBook
Posted: February 10, 2009 at 10:31 pm | Tags: ink, Monday
So if you read the last entry I owe you a follow up. I did go back to the office last night. The alarm did go off again. I did put the correct code in. It did not work.
When I called my boss at home for the second time on the same day I needed to write down the temporary pass code. While reaching for the ball point pen sitting on my nice new oak (well oak-ish) credenza in my darkened office, a thin blue stream of ink left a gooey filament all the way from the credenza to my new desk to the new leather bound executive pad there. But the Coup de grâce was the moment I walked into the now lit and populated office this morning. Our Office Manager gave me a wink and asked which number I used on the alarm pad. I told her. She tried it. It worked.
Posted: February 9, 2009 at 10:29 am | Tags: Personal
O.K. – this is how to start a Monday… My office computer was giving me a lot of grief last week – displaying the dread “Blue Screen of Death” several times in a row. So Thursday night I went out and purchased a replacement box. After being out of town for the weekend I decided to come in bright and early to set up the new computer and not eat into office time on Monday… so around 6:00 AM I entered our new office and proceeded to enter my alarm code… except I did not push something or I pushed the wrong button. Then the Fire Alarm went off.
The Fire Chief was very nice. Now I know to keep my glasses on when entering the building and that the overhead lights take several seconds to come on… and double triple quadruple check which buttons to push in which order.
Then I turned on my flighty computer to find it had not reset text in an out of office message. I had been monitoring my email by blackberry Thursday afternoon and Friday while traveling – but with the flighty computer turned off I did not know the auto responder function was still on until…. 134 emails went out at 6:34am Letting everyone know I would be out of the office from December 19th 2008 through the 22nd. Before I could answer back a did receive a lot of emails which let me know it was already 2009.
The day got better after that. (Well so far anyway)
I just can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve updated this blog! Now that I’ve been invited to speak on the topic of Social Networking I figure it’s time to return to being social on the network.
Last week an old friend and colleague of mine sent me a note – pretty much out of the blue. Back at the dawn of the internet I worked for the New York Times Company at their Norfolk Virginia Television Station WTKR. I was the first “Webmaster” for Newschannel Three and had a desk in the promotions office above the studios. I had also worked as a Producer for WNIS radio – writing and producing the morning news casts for the station presented by the television news anchors.
Straight across the newsroom was Danny Epperson, who was one of the main Producers for the local news effort. I remember having fun talking with Danny about what I was doing with HTML and how the nuts and bolts of the internet were actually connected. Keep in mind this was in the early 90’s and the internet was “new” – heck – this was BG! (Before Google)
Flash Forward about 15 years and now Danny is the Producer of “HearSay With Cathy Lewis” on WHRV-FM and “What Matters” on WHRO-TV. If you are out of this market you should know that Cathy is highly respected in Hampton Roads by her peers in Broadcasting and has been doing her very popular Public Affairs radio talk show and the TV version for many years.
Danny spotted me on FaceBook and invited me to be a guest on the HearSay program this March 3rd.I’ll be talking about Social Networking… so… I came to work early this morning so I could post this tidbit to my blog and well, now we’ve come full circle. OMG I just can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve updated this blog!
There certainly have been a lot of changes lately. This is a time for introspection for me personally as I begin a new life.
The focus of my world recently has been to transition to living solo which is going well. I am now living in Chesapeake, close to my office. My professional life continues to flourish along with the success of Web Teks.
I guess the biggest news is the Open Source Music Project. With more time as of late to devote to my music, it brings me great comfort – and surprisingly – others seem to enjoy it as well.
The Open Source Music Project was actually germinated during my association with a group knows at A2 in 2006-2007. Although I am obligated to leave out most of the details, A2 is an effort to launch a new kind of digital entertainment. As far as I know that is still an effort in progress.
So what the heck is open source music?
I made it up. But the concept is to allow the free use of any individual tracks as the ingredients for a new song. When you record and produce your own music it is usually a series of separate audio tracks blended together. My inspiration came from getting such different results when mixing certain tracks together and leaving some out of the mix. Some of them are not so great – but a few really shine.
On the Open Source Music Project site I encourage anyone interested to download these tracks and use them any way they like (under the Creative Commons Attribution License). If you take a listen let me know how abysmal that stuff really is. You may comment on any track on that site and if you really are a glutton for punishment subscribe to the RSS feed.
“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”
Albert Einstein
