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MarketingSherpa: Video Marketing Benchmark Guide 2009

December 5, 2008 By Leave a Comment

MarketingSherpa’s first-ever Video Marketing Benchmark Guide 2009 provides you with practical data and how-to guidance in the rapidly changing video marketing landscape. To our knowledge there is nothing else like it. Learn More.

The Video Marketing Benchmark Guide is designed to arm you with the data and practical how-to information you need to make the right strategic decisions for your organization. It covers all forms of video (online, network & cable, mobile), their similarities and differences, focusing on ROI so you can use the right video tactics to match your strategic goals. Find out:


  • How the video landscape (and especially the ad-supported video landscape) is changing, and what this means for marketers.
  • How digital distribution, behavioral ad-serving, and online media buying are making video more accountable.
  • How publishers and content producers are monetizing video content.
  • How accountability and analytics are completely changing.
  • Plus you will get details on how the growth of video impacts marketing tactics like SEO, viral, PPC, infomercials, lead generation, and direct sales.

They analyzed the information from 1,083 marketers who answered our comprehensive survey along with data from Nielsen, Comscore, Rentrak, BrightRoll, TubeMogul, and more.

You’ll find:

  • 173 charts and 74 tables
  • Additional research from 1,422 consumers
  • 22 strategy reports, industry overviews and special reports
  • Complete with in-depth interviews, qualitative and quantitative research, practical tips and Case Studies, the Video Marketing Benchmark Guide 2009 is for large, medium and small B2B and consumer companies that want to use video as a way to improve their results. Learn More.
Filed Under: Video Optimization

FatWire Launches Content Server 7.5

December 4, 2008 By Leave a Comment
FatWire Software today announced the launch of FatWire Content Server 7.5, a new release that extends the market-leadership of FatWire’s web content management (WCM) solution. FatWire Content Server 7.5 drives greater efficiencies in content management and promotions online, and delivers powerful capabilities to make content publishing more transparent, configurable and error-proof.
The web is one of the most powerful vehicles for engaging with customers and prospects to drive business growth while controlling costs. As websites grow in complexity and scale – and audiences increasingly demand personalized content and a rich and interactive online experience – a robust platform becomes a necessity to cost-effectively manage the web experience.

FatWire Content Server 7.5 addresses this need by automating the entire WCM process, including content authoring, site design, content publishing, targeted content delivery, web content analytics, and user participation. With this new release, the Content Server platform delivers even greater levels of ease of use and power.


Key features in FatWire Content Server 7.5 include:

  • Site Preview: lets business users set up time-based versions of their website and preview what their site will look like on different future dates, including side by side preview of date-based versions. With this new tool, business users and marketers can create seasonal and time-based online campaigns with ease.
  • Customizable Business User Interface: provides the ability to configure the content management user interface by role to support customers’ business processes entirely. Now, users can have a dashboard tailored specifically to their content management process for dramatically improved efficiencies.
  • Real Time Publishing: provides a transparent look into the publishing process via a dashboard view. New capabilities give full control over content publishing at a granular level, as well as error prevention and process recovery for maximum impact in this critical step of the WCM process.
Filed Under: CMS, Fatwire

Predictions for Mobile in 2009

December 3, 2008 By Leave a Comment
As we approach the end of the year, here are five predictions from Bango on changes that will shape the mobile world during 2009.

1. A strong shift from off-line to on-line advertising, driven by growth in mobile-targeted marketing.
Tightening marketing budgets demand more controlled spending and better value. Mobile starts to look a lot more appealing, offering attractive costs of acquisition and more precise targeting than off-line or PC delivery. Brands will be able to measure mobile ROI with a very high degree of accuracy and use analytics to better deliver mobile campaigns and understand their consumers.

2. Major online retailers eye new opportunities in mobile.
We believe that one major “e-commerce” retailer will acquire a D2C mobile content provider to expand its presence in digital content. The big guns in the on-line music, video and books markets will have identified mobile as an increasingly important media platform and will want to expand into this area. One implication is how such a move from a major player would threaten Apple’s position as a leading music retailer for mobile devices.

3. Music becomes DRM free.
Online music retailers follow Amazon and Napster’s lead and meet consumer preference for DRM free music that can be transferred effortlessly between phone and PC. Mobile phones will become the dominant platform for listening to music, boosted by their portability, the high storage capability of the latest phones and the ability to play the ubiquitous MP3 format – DRM free of course!

4. Economic prudence drives down fixed line broadband subscriptions in favour of mobile data plans.
Over recent years people have started to cancel their landlines in favour of using mobiles for all voice calls. We predict users will start to cancel their fixed line broadband subscriptions and upgrade to smartphones and wireless “dongles” to get on the internet. This consolidation will happen first in the US where nearly 20% of mobile users have a smartphone.

5. Open Access fever continues…..
Of the remaining proprietary players, US operator Verizon will finally open up its Brew shackles in 2009, enabling it to further grow its data business with a fully realized, open internet offering. However, the other closed mobile player, Apple, is likely to remain closed on the back of the momentum it has built around the iPhone and its App Store. As if replaying history from 20 years ago, the Apple solution will plateau as more mainstream, open and cost-effective content and application environments emerge. Which will go on to become the Microsoft of the mobile world? While we predict plenty of activity in 2009, it will be too soon to declare a winner.

Filed Under: Mobile Advertising

Search, Shop and Donate with GoodSearch.com

December 3, 2008 By Leave a Comment
With the economy slipping, charities across the nation are bracing themselves for declining contributions this holiday season.

While individuals still want to support their favorite cause, they may not have the time or the money to do so. There is a solution. More than 70,000 nonprofits have partnered with a new Yahoo-powered search engine called GoodSearch.com, and online shopping mall GoodShop.com to enable their supporters to generate donations just by doing something they do everyday – search the Internet or shop online. What makes the system so compelling is that it doesn’t cost the users a thing. It’s a form of philanthropy that works for everyone in this tough economy!

Consumers are helping their favorite causes by shopping at GoodShop.com where they can choose from more than 800 well known retailers including Target, Apple, Macy’s, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, Petco and others. The shopping experience and the prices are exactly the same as going to the retailer directly, but by going through GoodShop, up to 37% of the purchase price is donated to the user’s favorite cause. In addition, GoodShop provides the user with coupons and deals for the stores so not only are they helping a cause, but they’re saving money while doing so!

Similarly, with the GoodSearch search engine, approximately one penny is donated to the users’ favorite charity with every search. You use it exactly as you would any other search engine (it’s powered by Yahoo so you get quality search results) and the pennies add up quickly – just 500 people searching four times a day will earn around $7300 in a year! It doesn’t cost the users a thing!

GoodSearch and GoodShop have quickly spread via word-of-mouth, the blogger community, and a number of celebrities and their foundations including Jessica Biel, Montel Williams, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, Jeff Bridges, and others. This is helping to generate significant funds for the participating nonprofits. For example:

  • Supporters of the ASPCA are shopping on GoodShop and searching on GoodSearch, to date raising more than $22,000 to help animals in need!
  • The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has earned nearly $10,500!
  • An order placed at Adobe Software earned Capri Elementary School in California $191!

Internet users have found GoodSearch and GoodShop to be a compelling idea. Lisa Codron, a teacher in Los Angeles, uses GoodSearch and GoodShop in support of Best Friends Animal Society, which runs the nation’s largest sanctuary for abused animals. “It’s amazing. I buy so much online and because of GoodShop I get dozens of discounts as well as the opportunity to support my favorite charity. There’s really no reason not to GoodShop!”

Filed Under: Uncategorized

SES Chicago: Interview – Lee Odden on SEO Through Blogging and Feeds

December 2, 2008 By 1 Comment
SES Chicago 2008, which is just around the corner, will feature a session on the topic of “SEO Through Blogging and Feeds.” Lee Odden, CEO of TopRankMarketing.com, is an expert on this topic and will also be a panelist at this session at SES Chicago. I had a chance to catch up with Lee, to get his insight on SEO through blogging and feeds.

[Manoj]: Is there a specific Blog platform you prefer or recommend?

[Lee Odden]: We prefer WordPress and use it as much as possible. There are simply too many plus points with it and over the past 3+ years of focusing on WordPress as a blog platform, we’ve had plenty of time to test.

[Manoj]: The difficult part of Blogging is after it’s setup, when you have to create a consistent writing schedule – what can bloggers do keep their motivation going?

[Lee Odden]: Motivation for blogging must start with something to say. If that’s a problem, then blogging is a lost cause. People that start a blog solely as a SEO exercise are going to run into issues with sourcing content. The most successful blogs (in terms of branding, PR and revenue) are for the most part written by people who are passionate about certain topics.

There are functional tips for making the task of being consistent though, including:

  • Maintain multiple draft posts. Start posts when you have an idea and finish it in parts, rather than trying to write an entire post in one sitting. Sometimes that works, but getting interrupted by other work can throw you out of whack.
  • Create a sort of editorial calendar on a weekly or monthly basis so you know what kinds of posts you should be doing instead of scratching your head in the morning wondering about what you should write that day. Example: News on Monday, Book Reviews every other Tuesday, Surveys/polls every other Friday, Wildcards every Wed and Thurs.
  • Monitor social channels such as Twitter and Delicious search results to see what people are talking about and bookmarking.
  • Tap into the Q/A that happens between customer service or sales and customers. Use that kind of back/forth information to create useful tips on blog posts
  • Do a series of posts on the same topic each week (Ex part 1 of 10)
  • Solicit guest blog posts from others in the industry or your own company
  • Most importantly, get feedback mechanisms in place so you can see what audiences are responding to. Nothing is more motivating than seeing traffic, links, comments and subscribers as a result of a particular blog post. Social media monitoring tools are very effective for this purpose.

[Manoj]: What are some elements that are often over looked by organizations when applying optimization on a blog?

[Lee Odden]: Few companies think to create a keyword glossary for their blog. Even when they do, they tend to focus on keyword research through regular search activities as reported by Keyword Discovery or Wordtracker. Blogs should also factor in keyword research based on social media, such as keywords used in comments, tags and links from blog posts.

Unique title tags from the post title, in the body copy and anchor text links to older posts are all good opportunities for blog SEO. Planning, writing and promoting “linkable” blog posts are often overlooked as a way to attract inbound links from other blogs and increasingly, from mainstream media sites that publish blogs.

[Manoj]: How can a an organization leverage RSS to help with their SEO Strategy?

[Lee Odden]: RSS can package text, audio or video. Syndicating various media types gives the blog additional distribution channels which other bloggers and web sites might link to. Assuming the RSS feed uses the same domain name as the blog, there’s SEO value to those syndicated news items getting picked up by other web sites when they link to the feed URL.

It’s important to make the RSS feed(s) easily found on the blog as well as in an auto discovery tag.

[Manoj]: Why kinds of benefits can an organization expect with the implementation of a blog (and some of the natural SEO benefits that come with a blog)

[Lee Odden]: When a blog publishes AND promotes useful content, the benefits include:

  • More content to be spidered by search engines and an increased footprint of the brand via search
  • More links from other sites to the blog and improved search engine visibility
  • Non-search engine traffic from social media sites and direct links from other blogs
  • Direct communication with customers and prospects via RSS
  • Depending on the blog structure and content, increased contacts by journalists that want to use blog content or authors as subject matter experts
  • Increased leads or sales as a result of blog content – direct or indirect

[Manoj]: Don’t you just love Chicago?

[Lee Odden]: Sure, especially when I’m inside the Hilton. Or Morton’s. J

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Lee Odden is CEO of TopRankMarketing.com, a Minneapolis based digital marketing and PR agency that helps Fortune 500 companies with internet marketing and social media strategies. Odden also publishes Online Marketing Blog (http://www.toprankblog.com/) which has been recognized as a top blog on marketing, PR and social media by Advertising Age, Onalytica, Junta42 and ranks in the top 50 blogs on Technorati by favorites.

Filed Under: Search Engine Strategies, SEO

Googlebot Answers Questions from Users

December 1, 2008 By Leave a Comment
Last week at the Google Webmaster Central blog, Googlebot answered a few questions related to user’s issues on redirects and 404 pages. We have posted the questions that were posed to Googleblot below, for the answers check out the Google Webmaster Central Blog.
  • Recently, I did some spring cleaning on my site and deleted a couple of old, orphaned pages. They now return the 404 “Page not found” code. Is this ok, or have I confused you?Frankie O’Fore
  • I was just reading your reply to Frankie above, and it raised a couple of questions.What if I have someone linking to a page that no longer exists? How can I make sure my visitors still find what they’re after? Also, what if I just move some pages around? I’d like to better organise my site, but I’m worried you’ll get confused. How can I help you?
  • I have a problem—I live in a very dynamic part of the web, and I keep changing my mind about things. When you ask me questions, I never respond the same way twice—my top threads change every hour, and I get new content all the time! You seem like a straightforward guy who wants straightforward answers. How can I tell you when things change without confusing you?
  • I am the kind of site who likes to reinvent herself. I noticed that the links to me on my friends’ sites are all to URLs I got rid of several redesigns ago! I had set up 301s to my new URLs for those pages, but after that I 301′ed the newer URLs to my next version. Now I’m afraid that if you follow their directions when you come to crawl, you’ll end up following a string of 301s so long that by the end you won’t come calling any more.
  • I know you must like me—you even ask me for unmodified files, like my college thesis that hasn’t changed in 10 years. It’s starting to be a real hassle! Is there anything I can do to prevent your taking up my lovely bandwidth?
Filed Under: Google