Interesting news from the ACCC who say that Consumers consider blogs as reliable and as influential as mainstream media.
Sounds like call to action for online reputation monitoring :P Its also interesting to consider how the ACCC see's its role in new media. Will they try to control and censor australian bloggers and online review sites.
"CONSUMERS who get their news from the internet are likely to trust a blog for reliability as much as a mainstream media site, the competition watchdog said today.
"For a growing base of users, these are all equally valid sources of news, information, entertainment and gossip, and users are not necessarily discriminating between traditional and new sources.""
This is very cool but also scary, what has made the internet great is its total freedom. Will that be eroded by Australian governments and what can we do to ensure that bloggers cannot be held legally liable if they critisise an Australian Company online.
Source: Courier Mail
Labels: Blog, blogs, consumer, conversations, internet, Marketing, online, pr, PR 2.0, reputation, reputation management, reputation monitoring, sem, seo, social media
Posted by Nick HaC @ 6:29 AM
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We just bumped into a podcast from mid 2006 from PodWorkx that we thought was was quite interesting to see some early perspectives on podcasting and the role of consumer consumer generated media coming into play.
Disclosure: PodWorkx is now part of the Shifted Group, Copyright 2007
Click to Download - PodWorkx.com - An interview with Mick Stanic.mp3 (27.86 MB)
Today we had the pleasure of interviewing Mick Stanic. Co-Founder of ThePodcastNetwork and founding GM/EP at Singleton OgilvyInteractive. We talk about the state of the podcasting industry aswell as how Advertising and Media companys can relate to Podcasting as a technology and as a marketing channel. Thanks Mick!
Labels: advertising, communities, internet, Marketing, online, podcasting, Startups
Posted by Nick HaC @ 6:35 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
We have blogged about Twitter and emerging lightweight social networks over the past few months. This week in Sydney was the first STUB meeting (Sydney Twitter Underground Brigade), a group of 100 or so sydney twitterers. We were pleased to attend and meet the other elite emerging web 2.0 community influencers.
The interesting aspect of the twitter community, is that the majority of members are either
- Internal influencers within companies
- Change drivers within digital agencies
- Influential bloggers and podcasters
- Jerky corporates trying to understand and exploit the social media space (like telstra)
- Awesome net-savvy community engager's from non evil companys (like microsoft)
If your on twitter, you can connect with us at http://twitter.com/nickhac or http://twitter.com/shiftedpixels
Dave King of our own St Edmonds Lab hypothesizes that Twitter circles can amplify existing social circles Download MP3 (2.3M)
Nick Hack of Shifted Pixels imagines casual group gatherings that are instigated and organized through Twitter bursts. Download MP3 (1.8M)
Cathy Edwards of the Telstra Chief Technology Office points to the corporate dimension of Twitter: Maintaining and deepening business relationships Download MP3 (2.5M)
Ian Grant of Sound Alliance sees worldwide fan circles spontaneously forming around live gigs, bands and music minutiae. Download MP3 (1.9M)
David Whittle evaluates the true data amassed through Twitter. He envisions that the constant messages about state create new marketing opportunities Download MP3 (3.7M)
Labels: Blog, communities, consumer, online, pr, social networking, web 2.0
Posted by Nick HaC @ 5:12 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
It's estimated that up to 50 percent of visitors to landing pages will bail in the first eight seconds.And while that amount of time can feel like an eternity to a bull rider in the rodeo, it's a mere blink of an eye to an email marketer hoping for strong conversions and a positive return-on-investment.
Online marketers spend countless hours and untold millions trying to make recipients click on a link leading to a landing page. But delivering only clicks is short-changing the company. Marketers need to convert prospects to customers; clicks need to result in purchases. with online marketing, the bridge between the click and the credit card is generally a landing page.
As online competition intensifies, greater efforts are being placed on maximizing revenues from each and every opportunity. And few opportunities are as rich with possibilities as when an email recipient clicks a link within a message and comes knocking at your online door.
A MarketingSherpa reader survey found that average landing page conversion rates for email campaigns ranged from 5.67 percent to 11 .31 percent for free offers, and from 5.67 percent to 7.63 percent for e-commerce campaigns.If your conversion rates are running near the bottom or below those ranges, consider making changes to your landing page program. A new evaluation by Silverpop of landing pages from 50 companies finds that placing a little more effort on nurturing recipients once they hit those landing pages would be time and money well spent. This report, evaluating landing pages from companies throughout North America and the United Kingdom, can serve as a valuable guide.
Key Findings
Landing pages that pass the eight-second test successfully feature a number of important attributes. Unfortunately, many of those reviewed in this study failed to grab the attention of customers and prospects, leading them down a clear path to conversion. Silverpop found that:
- Successful landing pages grab attention quickly by matching the promotional copy in the email's call-to-action that yielded the click. Yet 45 percent of the landing pages evaluated failed to repeat the email's promotional copy in the headline.
- Catapulting a clicker to a Web site's home page generally fails to deliver on the promise inherent in the email's call-to-action. Yet 7 percent of email campaigns dumped recipients there.
- Recipients can be taken aback when they click on a link and end up on a landing page without the same look and feel as the email that captured their attention. But three out of 0 marketers risked confusing customers and prospects by sending them to landing pages not matching the email.
- Asking too many questions can lead prospective customers to become wary and frustrated enough that they abandon the process. Nevertheless, 45 percent of landing pages that included forms required more than 0 fields to be completed.
- While the presence of a navigation bar on a landing page can be a distraction that pulls visitors away from the primary conversion goal, nearly seven out of 0 landing pages included them.
- Professional writers know it's a lot harder to write short copy than long. Apparently some marketers are taking the easy way out, since 25 percent of the landing pages reviewed by Silverpop required scrolling through more than two screens of text.
Labels: advertising, behaviour, Email, Marketing, online, websites
Posted by Nick HaC @ 6:13 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
We have seen an explosion of consumer choice, a new level of scarcity of consumer attention, the growth of abundance of options and masses and masses of online consumer review and comparison sites.
Under 30's have grown up with advertising, and are fully aware of the processes that corporate marketers use to sell them products.
Are there are more products than consumers need? Just go to the supermarket, you have 20 types of peanut butter, 200 types of cheese and 80 types of toothbrushes.
Want to but a tshirt online? Which one of the 10 million sites do you choose?
We could speculate that consumers and businesses make more choices based on social recommendation than advertisements.
We could also speculate that are seeing the end of the media-industrial era, and the rebirth of the pre-industrial era consumer run Market Place (this time with global, realtime efficiencies).
This new era is the market place of the people for the people. Of course there will still be a strong need for insustrial processes, but these will become commoditised as platforms, just like electricity and the railroads have become.
If you are selling a product, a service or an idea... spreading your brand will soon strongly rely on person to person social reccomendation.
But with so many products and features on offer, how do you get noticed? Instead of selling based on pure functionality, as a coat functionally keeps you warm, the new market is about style! So what defines style or fashion, social influence and reccomendation?
The drivers of social reccomendation are the early adopters, the merchants of cool. Those who take early risks and by breaking the norm send waves through the social landscape. Sometimes they succeed, and sometime they miss the mark. Aside from the risks of this space, this is the source of new social influence and trends. And this space must be recognised.
Dont think this only applies to consumer goods, business to business services and products follow the same rules. Business communities and social networks are potentially even closer, tighter and more intimate than those of the consumer social community. Is it possible that the tightness of the business community creates an even stronger desire to use the hip process or service or business practice?
The rules of consumer influenced have changed. Has your businsess shifted?
Labels: advertising, behaviour, branding, communities, consumer, design, internet, Marketing, online, pr, reputation, social networking, technology, viral, web 2.0
Posted by Nick HaC @ 5:46 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
Every single day, someone, somewhere is discussing something important to your business; your brand, your executives, your competitors, your industry.
Are they hyping-up your company, building buzz for your products? Or, are they criticizing your service, complaining to others about your new product launch?
A great brand can take months, if not years, and millions of dollars to build. It should be the thing you hold most precious. It can be destroyed in hours by a blogger upset with your company.
A new product launch could take hundreds of TV commercials, dozens of newspaper ads, and an expensive ad agency.
It can also spread like a virus with the praise of just one customer, at one message board.
A company can dominate market share, throttle competition and hold the #1 brand in the world.
It can also crash in months if it fails to listen to what its customers want.
By now, you should have an understanding of just how powerful consumer generated media (CGM) is. Your next action could be the difference between your company’s success or failure. Do you click the back button and ignore the conversation, or; do you engage a partner who can help you manage and interact with this new online community?
Shifted Pixels is managing online reputation for some of australia's largest companies, call us for a quick chat to let us know about your online reputation.
Labels: branding, communities, internet, Marketing, online, pr, reputation, social networking
Posted by Nick HaC @ 6:36 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
Our friend Trevor Cook, a well known blogger and PR guru, has released a fantastic online guide to Social Media.
What is Social Media?
The online communities, technologies and practices that people use to share news, opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives.
The paper includes lots of new stuff on emerging communities such as second life, wiki's, twitter, myspace, facebook aswell as "traditional" social media - blogs, rss, podcasts and more.
Check it out - Guide to Social Media
Labels: Blog, communities, consumer, mark, Marketing, online, pr, reputation, social networking, web 2.0
Posted by Nick HaC @ 6:46 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
We recently came across a 'whitepaper' from Daryl Wilcox of Daryl Wilcox Publishing (associated with Sourcewire etc), which provided a very interesting overview of the future of traditional PR, which began with an interesting conjecture in 2017
However it soon returns to normality, and highlights what many PR organisations are starting to consider, namely whether to adapt to changing trends and behaviours as to how people read and gather news. To quote the whitepaper:
''The worst case scenario for PR, and this is real world and not fantasy, is that PR loses significant ground to an apparently more dynamic and imaginative profession - search marketing. The danger is this new discipline will take a bigger slice of the marketing budget at the expense of search marketing will start to take on communications roles which were previously part of the PR function''.
As the report goes onto state, there is already significant evidence of this. Many traditional offline publishers are now pouring money into online.
Search engines are also the weapon of choice when researching products or services, once the sole domain of offline publishers. Companies are getting wise to this, and the associated spend online is reflective of this trend. Added to this, is the ability of search marketing in order to drive traffic to the site.
Search marketing budgets are often similar to PR budgets nowadays - ranging from retainers for small clients of circa $500 per month to budgets of over circa $50000+ per month. However search marketing has one significant advantage over traditional PR in as far as it can demonstrate return on investment more effectively, easily and objectively. This is particularly important in many companies where every penny is accountable. As a result many search engine marketing companies are offering a range of online PR services such as PR syndication. This impacts PR as many organisations that would never have previously considered PR are now introduced to PR by search marketing agencies.
However the PR industry have been fairly slow in response. The report highlighted the CIPR conference in November 2006, where not one of the 14 sessions had any Online PR bias. As the report puts it - ''The transformation of the media by the Internet was not a revolution, it was a slow burn. Now it as a raging fire''
However we are in danger of singing the whitepapers praises too highly. Whilst we fully agree with much of the report (particularly with my SEM hat firmly on), the reference to PR professionals being potentially better at SEO than search marketeers seems slightly of the mark. SEO is not all about numbers, numbers is merely a part of the fully equation, and it is this attention to the numbers along with the terminology and phrasology, that allows us search marketeers to leverage this ROI from online.
However Daryl's document is written with the PR sector particularly in mind, and as such does an excellent job as such in advising PR of the potential of the Internet, whether or not they choose to utilise that information is another question. To be honest, there is no reason why Search Marketing and PR cannot cohabit side by side.
We am currently working with a well respected PR agency, who are wholly embracing Online PR and the opportunities it can offer, and we are sure they want be the last.
To PR agencies. If you haven’t embraced the Internet, call us for a quick chat.
Posted by Nick HaC @ 2:59 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
Once you've optimised your website copy, you'll find that the most important part of optimisation happens off the page - where links from external sites back to yours play a vital role in telling Google and other search engines how important your site really is.
Link building works best when you have a one-way link from another quality site to your own. You can try all sorts of tricks to build up the number of links you have, but to maximise your results concentrate on obtaining links from quality sites.
Of course quality links are not that easy to get! But many companies have an under-used resource that could generate hundreds if not thousands of quality links. That resource is public relations.
Good public relations and the online practice of link building are natural bedfellows. First, because the dynamics of each is remarkably similar and second, because when used in tandem with important keywords in mind, they can produce spectacular results:
- Public relations is the process of building a company's reputation, largely through the use of positive media coverage.
- Link building is the process of building a web site's 'reputation' by getting links from relevant and respected web sites.
- Success cannot be guaranteed
- Relationships and industry knowledge are important
- You've got to give up some control
- Results can be spectacular
Posted by Nick HaC @ 2:53 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
Basically, reputation management (online) is the business of monitoring what the marketplace is saying about your brand. It also means responding to situations before they run out of control. Venues include blogs, discussion threads, forums and social networking sites. A simplistic forumla is to allocate a proportion of resources to reputation management in relation to how important your brand is to your overall business.
Monitoring how consumers talk about your brand can provide early warning signs for product or service issues as well as promotion opportunities that can be leveraged. Companies can start by subscribing to RSS feeds of search results on their company name from blog and news search engines, set up a Google Alerts account or use Conversation Trackers.Shifted Pixels offers Online Reputation Management, Contact us for more information
Labels: branding, Marketing, online, pr, reputation
Posted by Nick HaC @ 2:37 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
