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marți, 29 noiembrie 2011

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28 Top Takeaway Tweets From SAScon Mini 2011

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 05:46 AM PST

Last week I spoke on the SSL search panel at the SAScon mini conference in Manchester.

This is a great conference, with the main SAScon event taking place in May – and to cover main tips and takeaways from this I’ve listed the top 28 tweets:

Testing products not enough - spend time talking to your customers #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:10 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

"@karate_barbie: #sascon social: like link building - look for authority not quantity"

November 24, 2011 3:47 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@seobelle

Sadie Sherran

Split test analysis recommendation: http://t.co/Xm9nEq5o #sascon

November 24, 2011 2:55 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@ChelseaBlacker

Chelsea Blacker

#sascon biggest mistake people make when split testing is not making bold changes

November 24, 2011 2:56 pm via Seesmic ReplyRetweetFavorite

@rhyswynne

Rhys Wynne

Only way to test conversion process = signup/order products! eg @karlblanks testing dating site & weightwatchers #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:07 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

There was a quote "50% of ecommerce users are logged into Facebook" made at #SAScon by, I think, @badams. Where did this number come from?

about 9 hours ago via webReply RetweetFavorite

@PG_Martin

Paul Martin

"Everybody clicks on the shopping results so get a feed." Too right! @badams #Sascon

November 24, 2011 5:09 pm via Twitter for Android ReplyRetweetFavorite

@Justhipper

Justhipper

You can't convert if you don't know why users aren't buying - find reasons & reassure them #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:16 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

"Your site's internal search is a big, big source of keywords." #sascon

November 24, 2011 5:05 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@pushonltd

PushON

#sascon if your site structure sucks, so will your SEO via @badams

November 24, 2011 5:05 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@karate_barbie

Tracey Drain

Do NOT leave customers with a thank u page. Push them further. #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:03 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@ChelseaBlacker

Chelsea Blacker

Microdata works on reviews waste of time for anything else via @badams #sascon

November 24, 2011 5:12 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@seobelle

Sadie Sherran

Address objections like xplaining "we hav no phone number to keep costs low and deliver u mega cheap prices" #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:25 pm via Mobile Web ReplyRetweetFavorite

@ChelseaBlacker

Chelsea Blacker

Kampyle, Kiss Insights, Survey Monkey, Google Alerts all recommended for conversion optimisation #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:22 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

#sascon get your hands on clients tv & radio advert schedule. Time it with your SEO for optimum results.

November 24, 2011 4:01 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@karate_barbie

Tracey Drain

"if your product is out of stock, do.not show a 404. - i will find you and kill you" @badams. #sascon

November 24, 2011 5:09 pm via Seesmic ReplyRetweetFavorite

@danbellj

Dan Bell

After sale think of how you can get users to purchase again or leave feedback. Could be fresh content ;) #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:05 pm via Tweetbot for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@pinje

Dan Alderson

How did you find us? Open-text results far more insightful/specific than drop-down web field #sascon

November 24, 2011 3:29 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@kevgibbo

Kevin Gibbons

At #SAScon we were told by @majesticseo's @dixon_jones to only use the fresh index when collecting backlink data since it's up2date&accurate

about 6 hours ago via webReply RetweetFavorite

@ChelseaBlacker

Chelsea Blacker

90% of all media consumed starts with search - it is the key to everything says @citizenrobert PR people you need to come to #sascon #prcanc

November 25, 2011 11:00 am via webReply RetweetFavorite

@nickywake

Nicky Wake

@danbarker's @econsultancy article: How to steal some 'not provided' data back from Google http://t.co/BRTCCvZU #SAScon

November 24, 2011 2:49 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@joannahalton

Joanna Halton

Why has mobile been left out by this ssl... Mobile is more personal than a PC now ... #sascon

November 24, 2011 2:41 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@TamarUK

Tamar UK

#sascon google have gone a step forward with transparency and gone three steps backwards with the whole SSL stuff.

November 24, 2011 2:26 pm via Echofon ReplyRetweetFavorite

@APSG

Amrit Gill

SSL panel: "There are so many metrics to measure SEO success, not just keywords," says Chelsea Blacker #sascon

November 24, 2011 2:46 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@pushonltd

PushON

Panel on SSL search #SAScon: @SamuelCrocker nails it - data accuracy matters.

November 24, 2011 2:25 pm via Twitter for iPad ReplyRetweetFavorite

@badams

Barry Adams

The room believe: SSL search is here to stay and the (not provided) percentage is expected to grow. #SASCON

November 24, 2011 2:45 pm via Twitter for iPhone ReplyRetweetFavorite

@latitudexpress

Latitude Express

Contracts based on the growth of organic non-branded traffic - massive changes in the way we get paid. But not in the way we do work #SAScon

November 24, 2011 2:46 pm via HootSuite ReplyRetweetFavorite

@joannahalton

Joanna Halton

. @kevgibbo says although (not provided) is big in tech industry, in other industries it is a lot smaller #sascon

November 24, 2011 2:23 pm via Seesmic ReplyRetweetFavorite

@rhyswynne

Rhys Wynne

For those who were at the event, what were your favourite bits?

Why you can’t afford to ignore mobile advertising

Posted: 28 Nov 2011 05:09 AM PST

For at least five years, digital advertisers have been declaring that the year of the mobile is finally here. But it's becoming obvious to even the most cautious of marketers that mobile is finally an effective platform. A mobile phone is no longer simply a portable version of a landline. For a vast number of people it's a way of sending pictures, streaming video, storing music, browsing the web and reading the news. That's why more marketers than ever before are trying to harness handsets as an advertising platform. Here's why your company should be among them.

The smartphone marketing is still growing
Can we expect to see the smartphone market continue to grow or has it reached its maximum penetration? Well, according to a US-based study by Burson-Marsteller and Proof Integrated Communications, there's still a great deal of scope for growth. It estimates that by 2012, smartphone sales will exceed PC sales. Research by the firm found that, within the US at least, 40% of iPhone and iPod Touch users visit the internet by mobile more than computer. Although an increase in the popularity of portable tablet computers might affect that figure in the future, it certainly shows that more people are spending more time glued to their mobiles. Marketers cannot afford not to take that into consideration. Other businesses are already ahead of you. Last year, mobile advertising expenditure more than doubled. That means your competitors could already have a foothold. Research by the IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers showed that the market grew 116% to £83 million during 2010.

Advertising through apps is effective
Recent research by online mobile application store GetJar showed that 73% of respondents had downloaded an app that included embedded advertising and 60% of those people said they'd happily do so again.

Marketers will be particularly interested to hear that one in four respondents said they had made a purchase after clicking on a mobile ad.

Unfortunately, the GetJar survey wasn't without flaws. Most iPhone users won't be able to access non-Apple app stores, meaning that they will have been heavily underrepresented in the survey.
However, it's certainly an interesting reflection on possible market sentiment. Jon Mew, director of mobile and operations at the Internet Advertising Bureau said: "It's great to see more research showing how effective mobile can be in driving people all the way through to purchase. This is one of the key reasons that brands have increased their spend on mobile by 116% in the last year."

Another interesting app statistic comes from the recently published comScore 2010 Mobile Year in Review, which you can download for free. It found that by December last year, only 37% of those who had downloaded a game app had paid for it, down 17% on the previous year.

According to comScore, this development shows that the value of a mobile app is not necessarily in the sale of it, but in the potential advertising revenue that can be generated.

But mobile does remain a challenging environment
Advertising across a mobile platform can still be a difficult and challenging task as the opportunities for doing so are so fragmented across different devices and technologies. That makes it particularly hard for marketers to measure success.

But as more people use their phones to get price and product information, it's never been more important to capture their business through their handsets. There's a real chance that your in-store customers will use their mobile phones to inform their decisions and even to make their purchases.

In its review, comScore urged: "Multi-channel retailers need to carefully assess the buying activity of their in-store customers and devise strategies to ensure that they maintain their loyalty if these customers shift some of their buying requirements from offline to online as a result of the use of mobile devices."

Move into mobile now
So, you can't afford to ignore mobile anymore but successfully marketing through it is a real challenge. It can be expensive, especially as it's an extra marketing need – you're unlikely to want to divert funding from your online advertising spend. In short, we're looking at an interesting few years for mobile marketing and commerce. Many companies, especially larger brands, should be investigating now, before they are stuck playing catch-up.

*Image by Yutaka Tsutano on Flickr.

Seth's Blog : The last hardcover

The last hardcover

Today the Domino Project is publishing Sarah Kay's new book. It's a short poem, a great gift and a book I'm proud to publish by an author on her way to big things. I hope you'll take a look.

Almost exactly a year after we started, Sarah's book is the last print book we'll be launching. Twelve books, twelve bestsellers, published in many languages around the world.

I've posted a history of what we built, along with some of what we learned along the way.

By most of the measures I set out at the beginning, the project has been a success. So why stop? Mostly because it was a project, not a lifelong commitment to being a publisher of books. Projects are fun to start, but part of the deal is that they don't last forever.

The goal was to explore what could be done in a fast-changing environment. Rather than whining about the loss of the status quo, I thought it would be interesting to help invent a new status quo and learn some things along the way. Here are a few of my takeaways:

Permission is still the most important and valuable asset of the web (and of publishing). The core group of 50,000 subscribers to the Domino blog made all the difference in getting the word out and turning each of our books into a bestseller. It still amazes me how few online merchants and traditional publishers (and even authors) have done the hard work necessary to create this asset. If you're an author in search of success and you don't pursue this with singleminded passion, you're making a serious error. (See #2 on my advice for authors post from five years ago, or the last part of my other advice for authors post from six years ago.)
The ebook is a change agent like none the book business has ever seen. It cuts the publishing time cycle by 90%, lowers costs, lowers revenue and creates both a long tail and an impulse-buying opportunity. This is the most disruptive thing to happen to books in four hundred years. It's hard for me to see significant ways traditional book publishers can add the value they're used to adding when it comes to marketing ebooks, unless they get busy with #1.
Booksellers have a starfish problem. Without permission (see #1) it's almost impossible for a publisher to be heard above the noise, largely because long tail merchants haven't built the promotional tools traditional retailers have long used to highlight one title over another. You used to be able to buy useful and efficient shelf space at a retailer. Hard to do that now.
There is still (and probably will be for a while) a market for collectible editions, signed books and other special souvenirs that bring the emotional component of a book to the fore. While most books merely deliver an idea or a pasttime, for some books and some readers, there's more than just words on paper. Just as vinyl records persist, so will books. Not because a reader can't get the information faster or cheaper, but because there's something special about molecules and scarcity.
When you combine #1, #3 and #4, you get to Kickstarter, which it seems to me, is going to be ever more important, particularly to new authors, authors that don't write genre ebooks and anyone with a tribe who wants to produce something like a book.
Sponsored ebooks are economically irresistible to readers, to sponsors and to authors. I'm proud to have pioneered this, and I think it's a trend worth pursuing. The value transfer to the reader is fabulous (hey, a great book, for free), and the sponsor gets to share in some of that appreciation. The author gets a guaranteed payday as well as the privilege of reaching ten or a hundred times as many readers.
The ebook marketing platform is in its technical infancy. There are so many components that need to be built, that will. Ebooks are way too hard to give as gifts and to share. Too hard to integrate into social media. And the ebook reader is a lousy platform for discovery and promotion of new titles (what a missed chance). All that will happen, the road map is there, but it's going to take commitment from Apple, B&N and Amazon.
If you're an author, pick yourself. Don't wait for a publisher to pick you. And if you work for a big publishing house, think really hard about the economics of starting your own permission-based ebook publisher. Now's the time.
Most of all, the character of people in the world of books hasn't changed since I started in this business 27 years ago. Every author I dealt with was a delight. Smart, passionate, honest, humble (and yes, good looking). Readers sense this, I think, and treat books and the people who make them very differently than someone hawking a vitamin or a penny stock. Publishing is about passion and writing is a lifestyle, not a shortcut to a mansion and a Porsche. Bestselling authors are like golfers who hit holes in one. It's a nice thing, but there are plenty of people who will keep playing even without one.

I'm not going away, any time soon, but, except for a digital bonus coming soon, the Domino Project won't see any new titles (the current ones will be for sale forever). I'd like to thank Lisa who listened to me rant for more than ten years, the interns who helped me build it, the authors whose ideas we brought to the world and the passionate people (especially Amy and Alan) who made it work.

PS Thanks to everyone who has bought one of our books, and double thanks to anyone who shared a copy with a friend or colleague.