Tips About Internet Marketing

Being an Internet marketer, I get asked all sorts of questions by my friends, family and those outside the field. It’s especially interesting because many of them have absolutely no idea about what is involved with marketing online. It’s just a very new concept for many.

I usually first explain how it depends whether you’re talking about marketing a website, a bricks and mortar establishment, an online store, a blog, an e-zine, etc. Then I start to get complex with it and go into detail, start providing examples, and end up off on long tangents about all the specifics. Many people are fascinated, which inspires some great conversations.

Anyway, that got me thinking how although Internet marketing isn’t an exact science, and every different project offers its own unique set of challenges (and opportunities), there are some good general learnings I’ve had throughout my career of marketing online that could be applied to most industries:

1) There’s always more than one road to success
Internet marketing is many times a big social science experiment. That’s the main reason I find it so compelling, even the top guys in the field can’t really put a 100% guarantee on success in a project. But, there’s always so many different avenues you can walk down to find success, and you can take a diversified approach with most projects and then really concentrate on what is bringing the desired returns. The silver bullet doesn’t necessarily come easy, and there may not even always be a silver bullet online for all companies online. That’s the nature of pop culture, however, and the social web is in many ways just a big extension of that.

2) Open, honest, transparent communication is best
Being secretive or closed-off when you’re marketing online is always a bad idea. You want to be open, honest and true to what you’re doing. To go against this in any part of life is to be put at a major disadvantage and inspire disdain. When marketing online, you want to always maintain open lines of communication with your audience, and always listen to them. It’s the best (and free) market research there is. But you’ll only get it if you’re open. I’d like to hope this translates into most things (except maybe poker).

3) Only work on projects you’re passionate about
Everyone, and I do mean everyone, is vying for attention online. So, if you’re trying to create an Internet marketing campaign and aren’t passionate about it, you’re already setting yourself up for failure. Sorry if this is a cliché, but to not give 100% is essentially to give 0%. The campaigns and projects in this space created with passion are obvious not only to other web marketers, but everyone online. Web users are exceptionally intelligent…they will see through any of your attempts to do something without passion and probably pass you over for whatever is next. It’s true for artists too…especially pop-music artists. The ones with staying power have passion. The ones flacked and exploited around radio, the web and TV by record labels and are purely backed by a fake image and big marketing dollars don’t usually have real success.

4) You have to be unique
Our world is oversaturated with products, services, restaurants, blogs, brands of soda, etc. To create something that is just a little better than something else is still blending in, and will only create marginally better results. You have to be unique and excel in at least one way. You have to create the extraordinary to see big results. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for the typical, lukewarm results everyone gets. Be realistic, but be remarkable.

5) Clarity counts
Clearly communicating what you’re doing and promoting on the web is vital to getting the results you want. You can frame something in a way that only a small subset of the population will understand it, that is absolutely fine (in fact, an incredibly powerful strategy is to find an ignored subset of the population, and then speak directly to them). But ultimately, your messages should all be consistent and clear to your target audience. If you can’t explain it clearly to someone in a brief period of time, do you think someone who isn’t close to what you’re doing is going to be able to tell their friend about it quickly and efficiently (or even want to)? Also, never dumb down your message if you’re going after a subset (here’s why).

Advertising; get out there, and get noticed

Google Launches Lively to Create a Virtual World Across Social Networks

Google has just launched Lively, a new social network built around the concept of each user creating an avatar and a personal virtual room that can be embedded anywhere on the Web. In essence, Google is looking to create a massive distributed virtual world, where every Google account can have its own avatar that can be used wherever a Lively virtual room is present – for example, on a blog, a social networking profile, or a Web page.

Here’s a closer look at what Google is launching, how it works, and how it might fit into Google’s larger social networking plans:

Getting Started

To use Lively, you do need to sign up using a Google account and download a browser plug-in. From there, you are able to create your own avatar – starting from a “template” character which then has customizable attributes like skin tone, hair color, and eye colors. You can also dress your character with clothing and accessories. In turn, you’re now ready to use Lively wherever you encounter a room on the Web by signing into it with your virtual account.

Lively Rooms

Similar to avatars, Lively offers several templates for starting your room that can then be customized – for example, a 5 room apartment, or a desert island (rooms can be outdoors). From there, you can do things like add your own background music, insert furniture, pull in photos from Picasa (and other services) and embed YouTube videos on a virtual plasma screen TV.

Once a room has been created, embed code allows you to copy it to any Web page. Each room also has its own URL on Lively, if you prefer to just send your friends to your room directly.


User Interactions

When you’re in a room, there are text chatting options, emotions (angry, happy, say hello, etc.), and you can move around furniture (if the room owner permits it). Some of the emotions are tied to the text chat – for example, if you type “hello,” your avatar will wave. If you enter a room and there is no one it, you can leave a message and a piece of furniture for the room owner.


Monetization Potential

While for now Lively is a free product, there are already hints at the monetization potential Google is looking at with this product. For example, when browsing room templates you can use, it lists the price as “free,” implying that eventually there will be premium versions to choose from. Additionally, with the inclusion of wardrobe options, it’s not hard to connect the dots and see massive opportunities for product placement, such as decorating your character with Nike shoes or a Starter jacket (or whatever the kids are wearing these days).

Advertising; get out there, and get noticed

Firefox 3 and community — How Mozilla used social networking to set a world record

Mozilla is currently deep in the heart of its celebration over officially setting a new Guinness World Record for the largest number of software downloads (8,002,530!) in 24 hours for its Firefox 3 browser. But the company isn’t cheering alone — its enjoying this victory with the community it rightfully credits for helping it to succeed.

Mozilla’s marketing strategy has historically been word-of-mouth engagement, a method that very creatively began with its 2004 Firefox 1.0 launch. As more social networking venues have opened up and expanded to businesses, Mozilla has adapted to putting up appropriate channels and resources.

“Since Firefox is all about the online experience it’s a natural fit for folks who are open to social networking,” said Paul Kim, vice president of marketing for Mozilla. “We announced Download Day with a very concerted plan to leverage multiple social networks and to seed content on those networks that would drive traffic to the download site.”

In doing so, Kim says, it was very important that Mozilla leverage the social applications in a way that was true to its brand, as the company’s engagement with its users has always been very authentic and open.

“Social tools have created a very different era for brand communications, and the thing with social media interaction is that people can spot you a mile away if you’re using the channels like you would a traditional mass marketing technique,” he said. “Social media does no service for existing or future customers if you do not treat it as a human channel with real interaction.”
Mozilla used the following methods to promote Firefox 3 Download Day:

Spread FirefoxThe Firefox community portal started out as the original gathering point for community members. Mozilla created a specific Download Day theme for the site where users could get badges to put on blogs as well as “pledge” to download the software on Download Day. Mozilla received 1.7 million pledges and the affiliate button distribution brought 43 million views to the site.

FacebookThe Firefox Facebook fan page has near 115K members. “We seeded the community with links of articles and other information that pointed to the Download Day site,” Kim said. Mozilla took a very similar approach with social networking sites Bebo and Mixi (Japan).
TwitterKim says that while Mozilla Firefox’s Twitter page was set up in 2007 it grew tremendously (now with close to 5K followers) and was a great complement to its other efforts. “We’re incredibly happy with the level of activity and response we received from our Twitter followers,” he said.

YouTubeMozilla produced a series of feature overview videos that were narrated by some of the designers who worked on Firefox 3. From viewing the YouTube comments and ratings it does not appear that the videos gained much traction, however it was a low-cost alternative to doing traditional video advertising.

Mozilla PartiesMozilla Party Central, a bit of a mashup of Google Maps and Upcoming, is where the company shares news about its launch parties and also gives users the tools to promote and host their own parties. As of last count there have been near 850 parties worldwide, attended by more than 6K people. Mozilla will receive its official Guinness World Record certificate at a party in London this Wednesday.

Mozilla also put energy into traditional public relations efforts, heading on press tour throughout the U.S., Europe, China and Japan. While this was successful as well, Kim says that its Mozilla’s community that truly helped drive Download Day success.

“Social media is not an isolated fad; it’s becoming a pervasive part of many people’s every day media mix and we try hard to participate in ways that are true to the way we’ve always approached our marketing,” Kim said. “We make it fun, we make it easy to participate and we communicate in ways that are authentic — something our community appreciates.”

Advertising; get out there, and get noticed

Need Social Media Success? Don’t Start With Digg

Digg is seen as the “Grand Daddy” or the “Big Kahuna” of Social Media Networks. It has the ability to send an enormous amount of traffic in a given direction.

However, since the major algorithmic update in January, it’s been much harder to get your Digg submissions to the front page. Also, it’s not unusual to see stories in the “upcoming” section with 300 - 400 Diggs and they still don’t hit the front page, and I saw a story today with 1010 Diggs and it was still in “upcoming”! Back in the old days, we could get almost every article onto the front page, now the odds of getting a submission to go “popular” are less than 50%.

Getting your story a significant amount of Diggs is hard work and very time consuming.

Preparing an article or piece that you think will work takes hours and hours of tweaking and can cost a considerable amount of money. All that work will be wasted if the story gets buried or expires, which is statistically more than likely to happen.

Even many of the top submitters have stopped submitting to Digg to protect their high “popular” percentage and continue to appear to be successful on Digg.

However, there are many other Social Networks that can generate large amounts of traffic and are much easier to find success with. I’ve listed the top few other networks you should try:
1) reddit.com2) del.icio.us3) buzz.yahoo.com4) stumbleupon.com5) fark.com6) Propeller.com
Using these networks, you can generate as much traffic - if not more - than an average front page on Digg. Also, it will require considerably less effort and your failure rate will be far lower than on Digg.

Give it a try, submit ten articles to Digg. If you’re lucky, two of them will become popular and send, say, 40,000 visitors. This is basically just an average number that you’ll probably get for a couple of regular stories becoming popular.

Submit the same ten articles to the other sites, and if you know what you are doing, there is a good chance that you’ll have an 80% success rate. I bet you could get at least 100,000 visitors. Getting a hit on Propeller can net hundreds of thousands of visitors too, so that one certianly shouldn’t be avoided.

I’m not saying forget Digg, just focus your efforts on the other networks, as you can have much greater success for less money, less time, and a lot less heartache.

I’ve had a lot of comments asking why I didn’t put Mixx on the list. Here is the reason: I’ve never had a decent amount of traffic from Mixx, the most being around 1000 visitors. It requires much effort to get your story to the popular section of any network, and your effort is best spent elsewhere.

Advertising; get out there, and get noticed