Bob Johnson's Blog on Internet Marketing

In the middle of a communications capability review for a client this morning, I made a visit to Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox website in search of specific usability information. Haven't actually found it yet, but the browsing did make me realize yet again how important it is in online communications that websites tend to the basics before the bells and whistles.

We always say we know this. We don't always act like it when we plan to recraft our websites.

A 2005 column reporting the 10 most serious website design mistakes ends with a reminder that's as true now and it was three years ago:

Back to Basics in Web Design http://www.useit.com/alertbox/designmistakes.html

"There's much talk about new fancy "Web 2.0" features on the Internet industry's mailing lists and websites, as well as at conferences. But users don't care about technology and don't especially want new features. They just want quality improvements in the basics:

• text they can read;
• content that answers their questions;
• navigation and search that help them find what they want;
• short and simple forms (streamlined registration, checkout, and other workflow); and
• no bugs, typos, or corrupted data; no linkrot; no outdated content.

Anytime you feel tempted to add a new feature or advanced technology to your site, first consider whether you would get a higher ROI by spending the resources on polishing the quality of what you already have. Most companies, e-commerce sites, government agencies, and non-profit organizations would contribute more to their website's business goals with better headlines than with any new technology (aside from a better search engine, of course)."

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Time for a little Friday speculation on a fine spring day in Michigan.

A visit to AdAge this morning linked me to an April 14 article at http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=126364 with a title that will scare some people: "It's Web 3.0 and Somebody Else's Content is King."

• The article reports on a new online venture by Tina Brown, of New Yorker and Vanitry Fair fame, to launch an "aggregator" service that people will use to find information on topics that most interest them. Consider it a sophisticated version of present-day search. And an opportunity for focused online advertising.

The scary part of this for traditional communication and public relations plans is that the "aggregation" efforts won't be limited to "just" formal websites. Instead, they will pull content about a particular topic from any place on the web that somebody is creating it. For colleges and universities, that means that it will become even more likely that when people search for something at your school, what comes back will include a Rate My Professors site, a Wikipedia entry, videos on YouTube about your MBA program, and blogs that people write about you.

Even more so than today (when Wikipedia, for instance, is almost always returned by a Google search not far below your official site), you won't be able to control the content that people see about your institution. What's on your own website will become less and less important, especially in the early stages when people explore to build a list of possible "best fit" places to study. You can continue to describe your faculty as if they have sprung forth from Lake Wobegon, but people will pay even less attention to the superlatives than they do now after they've reviewed your Rate My Professors list.

Will "aggregation" services indeed successful in the Web 3.0 world? Various people are busy diasagreeing about that now. But you can be sure that movement toward continued collapse of the Internet walls that separate sources of information will continue.

Two other places are worth a visit if the this topic interests you:

• The Wikipedia page for Web 3.0 for various definitions and predictions of what's to come at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_3
• The Pew Internet report on "Financial Woes Now Overshadow All Other Concerns for Journalists" (not about salaries but the survival of the business model) at http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=403 

Will individual college and university websites remain important? Yes. But their value as an early marketing tool will diminish in Web 3.0. People will visit your sites in the future because they have already put you high on their list of possible places to enroll. The experience they have on your website at that point, and how it compares to your competition, will play a major role in sustaining or diminishing initial interest levels. Two elements will rise in importance: 

• More than before, strong marketing sites will be built around knowledge of the content your future students want to find and the tasks they want to accomplish on your site. That includes, for instance, information about real college costs similar to what a handful of colleges are providing with online cost estimators (see a list of 7 at http://bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/2007/12/5_online_financial_aid_scholar.html).
• You'll have to engage people with web-friendly language when they visit your site. Web editor positions will proliferate in a Web 3.0 world. And that is a very good thing.

Enough for now. More later. A great weekend to everyone.

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The marvelous research folks at the Pew Internet Project are working with Elon University on a new survey of "Internet stakeholders" to see whether or not people agree with "recent statements by leaders in science, technology, business and politics" that Pew feels are "provacative." The Pew email arrived yesterday.

In the survey, "Each scenario or set of scenarios is prefaced by an extremely brief explanation of the status in 2007 regarding the issues involved." I've copied each of those for future reading.

For now, this seemed a good opportunity to report what these "leaders" believe are the trends most important to study as we move toward the target date of 2020.

• The mobile phone is the internet connection tool for most people in the world.
• Social tolerance has advanced significantly due in great part to the internet.
• Content control through copyright-protection technology dominates.
• Transparency heightens individual integrity and forgiveness.
• Many lives are touched by the use of augmented reality or spent interacting in artificial spaces.
• Talk and touch are common technology interfaces.
• Next-generation research will be used to improve the current internet; it won't replace it.
• Few lines divide professional from personal time, and that's OK.

What do you think?

I expect to be well retired by 2020. Many readers, on the other hand, will be at mid-career or a bit later and will have a more active interest in how these changes might impact their higher education marketing efforts. You may already be incorporating some of them into your long-range marketing plans. Or at least your occasional long-range thoughts.

The research report is promised in a few months. I'll include that note in a blog posting or newsletter when it happens.

Until then, take advantage of the valuable information already available from Pew Internet research. The 5 latest research reports are at http://www.pewinternet.org/
 

Posted by Bob at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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A very nice article is just up from MarketingSherpa that tells you everything you wanted to know... and maybe a bit more... about how college and university marketers and public relations people might use the social networking site Digg to best advantage.

The article is at http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30279 and is open access until January 15.

Once you read this, you'll understand why Digg is a fickle place. But that doesn't mean that creative presentation of content likely to appeal to a large audience isn't worth posting. I'm thinking, for instance, of the handful of colleges and universities with online estimators for scholarships and financial aid. Special celebrations and traditions might work as well. Or faculty research results in areas of high public interest.

There's no way to know in advance exactly what might be popular in this viral marketing format. Pay special attention to the section on elements of the algorithm that Digg uses to decide what gets prominent placement and what does not. It isn't for instance, only the number of "diggs" that your article receives, but also the "diversity" of the people who like it.

So take one piece of advice in the MarketingSherpa article to heart: spend some time on the site before you post anything to it. Get a feel for what's popular in the 8 topic areas. And then decide how you might get some extra visibility for your college or university if CNN someday finds you listed at a top level.

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A fine New Year's greeting to everyone reading this.

As I write from Marshall, Michigan, the sun shines on a deep snow that will disappear soon as the temperature heads for 50 degrees by Sunday. Similar dramatic changes in trends aren't likely in the world of online marketing, but new things are happening all the time. Let's take a moment and ponder some points raised at ClickZ.

Heidi Cohen does a nice job in "Seven Top Online Marketing Trends for 2008" at http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3628001 to outline important expectations in online marketing.

Email Marketing, Social Networking, Mobile Marketing

Three things she writes about seem most relevant for the higher education marketing world:

• Yes, people continue to grow tired of "promotional" email designed to sell them things that don't already interest them. That doesn't bode well for "search" marketing email efforts in 2008 unless the messages are very carefully targeted indeed to well-defined groups. On the other hand, I agree with Heidi that email (especially email newsletters) will continue to have a strong role to play with people who have expressed interest in particular colleges and universities. But one email "blast" (does anyone else hate that term as much as I do?) won't do nearly as well as email that takes into account where people are in the college selection process and matches content to special interests of the readers.
• Growth in social networking online will come from "more targeted offerings that attract users  based on interest." This might provide opportunity for recruitment engagement based on careful matches with the interests of people in a particular group. For Heidi, this aspect of social networking will grow more rapidly than the larger Facebook and MySpace efforts.
• Mobile marketing won't take off this year. Two reasons for this. First, many people just don't like the complexity of the devices used for mobile marketing communications. Second, there's no agreement yet on a common platform to use for communicating. For sure, many marketing people continue to believe that mobile marketing has a future. But if Heidi is right, don't fret if you don't develop a strong program in this area in 2008.

Overall, expect marketing resources to continue to shift toward online efforts. That's the one constant that almost everyone seems to agree on. No, print and broadcast media still isn't about to disappear. But in 2008, higher education marketing resources should continue to shift in the online direction. Onless you are an alchemist, that likely means less resources for print and traditional advertising and more for online efforts. For many colleges, that's still a difficult transition.

2008 New Year's Resolution

To better keep up with what's happening, make a 2008 resolution to subscribe to the ClickZ newsletters and research reports that are of most interest to you. Visit the home page at http://www.clickz.com/ and explore to find the most valuable content for your own marketing activities.

Exciting and important things will happen in 2008. I'm looking forward to sharing many of those with you and to hearing about the innovations you are making in your own online marketing efforts.

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Headed out to San Diego tomorrow and a Sunday afternoon tutorial at the AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education on "Writing Right for the Web," still the most popular topic I'm asked to speak about. And just back from giving an on-campus web writing workshop at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University last Wednesday.

And that makes me think about the answer to a common question: where can I go to learn more about this?

Today, you'll find a plethora of articles and books on the subject with a basic web search. But you can't go wrong starting with Jakob Nielsen and his usability-inspired opinions and resources about web writing at http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/

Jakob Nielsen... on target since 1997

Start back with articles from 1997 and 1998 and you'll find that not many of the basics from a decade or so ago have changed. And yet, only recently does it seem that people who create websites are starting to pay more attention to the quality of writing that's actually needed to engage people at a website and make them feel comfortable about returning to it again.

The AMA tutorial is special for the 3.5 hour length that matches the time usually available at an on-campus presentation. Simply put, that gives time to review and talk more about the subject, including the popular section on writing for search engines added earlier this year.

Web Writing at CASE V in December

After the long version, it is also a special challenge to narrow the material for a 60 or 75 minute version. The next time for that is at the CASE V district conference in Chicago, December 10. You'll find the description of my session and 7 others that focus on creating more effective websites at http://www.casefive.org/conference/2007/web.cfm 

Writing Right for the Web... focus on that and make your website a better place for everyone who uses it.

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Just finished reading the first of two aticles appearing in MarketingSherpa, "Special Report: How to Get Your Company Listed on Wikipedia, Part 1" at http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=30116

This is "open access" until September 12. I'll add the next article here as soon as it appears.

Right now, it is likely that you have a Wikipedia entry and unlikely that you know much about who started it. But as this article notes, Wikipedia is the 11th most popular website in the world (and some report higher than that in the United States). Many if not most colleges and universities will find that a Wikipedia link comes up on the first page of Google and Yahoo search results, often among the top 5 returned. You should assume that people are going to visit your Wikipedia content.

Wikipedia and Brand Identity

What people find on Wikipedia will help shape your brand identity. Every college and university should designate a person from marketing and communications to monitor your content. What's critical is understanding what you can and can't do when you find something you don't like.

What's valuable about this MarketSherpa article is the basic guidance on how to become a recognized and respected member of the Wikipedia content community. Volunteers are very serious about protecting Wikipedia from false content and particularly from contributions from marketers that are blatent attempts at self-promotion. This article will let anyone new to the Wikipedia world some initial clues on what's accepted behavior and how to establish yourself with the Wikipedia guardians.

Let Wikipedia Know Who You Are

The most important element: identify yourself right away as a representative of your organization who plans to monitor contributions to the site and make factual corrections. Don't even try to turn your Wikipedia entry into an online version of your admissions viewbook, capital campaign case statement, or annual report. MarketingSherpa refers to this person as your "Ambassador" to Wikipedia. Be sure to select a person who is a diplomat and who knows how to negotiate.

One area that every college should attend to is making sure that third-party endorsements of your faculty (grants won, articles accepted, and books published) appear in the content. Similarly, there doesn't appear to be anything wrong with listing the firms that take your students for internships and co-op placements. When in doubt, ask Wikipedia. And of course, make sure that the list of academic programs you offer is current. Establish an identity as a factual, regular contributor who can help build the reputation of the website.

Wikipedia is for International Students

Ready to check your listing now? Go along to http://www.wikipedia.org/ and use the search engine on that page. And note that Wikipedia articles are available in up to 10 languages now, with more on the way. Can you say "International student recruitment opportunity"?

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Wednesday morning today is final prep time before my Search Engine Marketing workshop this afternoon at the ACT Enrollment Planners Conference in Chicago. 

And so a quick note from today's issue of Search Engine Land as I was checking the latest Search Marketing news.

"SEO Tips and Tactics from a Wikipedia Insider" is a column by a person who volunteers to review and revise inappropriate changes to Wikipedia content. The focus here is on changes made by the offices of political figures to remove unflattering references to them that were indeed based on true facts.

Two elements stand out from this report:

• Changes were spotted quickly by the Wikipedia volunteer corps, in part because it was usually easy to see who made them.
• Edits to remove the "bad" content and in some cases restore what had been changed were also made very quickly.

But that doesn't mean that editors from college and universities (and political offices, for that matter) can't play an active role in updating Wikipedia content and achieving stronger search engine visibility. The article gives 8 "white hat" tips on how to do that without getting yourself in trouble with Wikipedia.

Spend some worthwhile moments at http://searchengineland.com/070717-113550.php for the details.

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Yesterday I was finishing my keynote presentation for the start next Sunday of the 2007 eduWeb conference in Baltimore.

The keynote title is "Marketing and the Web: Trends and Tribulations in Online Communications" and a key part of the message is the increasingly easy ability of "normal human beings" to access the web and add content without the help of web experts.

Doing the usual research, I came across an April 2007 report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project that I'd missed before (despite the email updates I get from them!).

At http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/212/report_display.asp you can read more about why Wikipedia is one of the 10 most popular websites and is likely to stay that way for some time. Take special note of the subhead introducing the report: Wikipedia is "particularly popular with the well-educated and current college-age students."

One reason Wikipedia will stay popular is the high rankings that Google search often gives to articles located there. College and university Wikipedia sites, as I noted in an earlier blog post, often rank in the top 5 listings when searching for them by name. The trial and the tribulation in this is the visible presence on the web of information that most colleges don't care to publish on their own websites. Consider this example:

• A history of student riots at Michigan State over the past three decades at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_State_University_student_riot

And don't get caught up in an abstact discussion of whether or not what's posted on Wikipedia is accurate. If you see something that isn't right, either correct it yourself or join in the discussion about how it should change. A new form of democracy is emerging in online communicaitons. Experts in everything from content preperation to website design have a less important role than just 5 years ago or so. Join in. Have fun.

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If you haven't yet discovered a new feature from Wordtracker, visit the "Free Keyword Suggestion Tool" at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

Enter single keywords and you'll get back a plethora of results for your entry and a long list of similar combinations. When you can't quite decide how to label something at your website, go here and use the tool for an estimate of how many people are searching for your possibilities each day.

Yesterday, after lunch at the CCU Communication Officers Conference, three of us were discussing the relative popularity of "elementary education" and "teacher education" as possible labels for a website path at a particular college. None of us really had an especially educated guess about which one to use.

Wordtracker made it pretty clear which of those terms is in more common use:

• Elementary education... estimate of 800 searches per day
• Teacher education... estimate of 81 searches per day

That's obviously quite a difference and strongly suggests which term is best used in the title tag for a page and for the primary heading on the page.

We also learned that "Special education teacher" was a relatively popular term, with an estimate of 222 searches a day.

Your results might not always be quite so definitive, but this is a quick and easy way to do an initial test.

In July, I'll be offering two workshops on search engine marketing. The first is on the pre-conference Wednesday afternoon schedule at the ACT Enrollment Planners Conference (http://www.act.org/epc/). The second is a post-conference Tuesday afternoon event at the eduWeb Conference (http://www.eduwebconference.com/).

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If you're just starting to puzzle out what you might do to improve the "searchabiity" of your website pages, one of the better places to start is by reading Search Engine Optimization by Gradiva Couzin and Jennifer Grappone.

Reading the book and realizing just how tedious a process it is to review and remake your website for better search results is a great good thing. You'll ask yourself a critical question: do I really need to do this? And the answer is: if you have good web traffic now, with people making the various conversions (completing inquiry forms and admissions applications, for instance) you want them to make, then you just might not need to spend the extended time it takes to truly move your website to a new search marketing level.

You don't have to read the book to take advantage of the website that goes with it. Visit "Your SEO Plan" at http://www.yourseoplan.com/ and you'll find information for the novice and the more experienced.

What does a website truly optimized for strong search marketing results look like? Here are two I've included as examples in my new presentation on search marketing (a short version for the Aslanian workshop next week and longer versions in July for the ACT and eduWeb conferences):

• The Regis University Online MBA at http://www.mbaregis.com/
• The University of Illinois Online at http://www.online.uillinois.edu/

Try a Google search for "online college degrees" and note the only individual school that comes up in the top 5 results. The folks at Illinois Online indeed know how to do search marketing for top results in a very competitive arena. If you'd like similar results, you're ready to start the process.

My guess is you'll see some things you can start doing on your own website even before you read a book or visit a website.

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Google continues to gain market share among people using search engines and Wikipedia is among the Top 10 must visited websites in the United States.

If you or someone else at your college or university isn't checking your Wikipedia content regularly, it might be time to start doing that.

In the past few days, while searching for various schools, I've noticed that the URL for the Wikipedia entry is listed among the first 5 responses that appear. With the overall popularity of Wikipedia as an information source, it seems likely that more than a few people will make a visit to the Wikipedia location.

I'd love to see research among people who have visited both the official website and the Wikipedia counterpart as to which one has more credibility.

Here are four institutions and how the Wikipedia URL finished in Google searches over the last few days:

• McDaniel College... fourth listing
• Philadelphia University... fifth listing
• University of Toronto... fourth listing
• Hofstra University... fourth listing

Google for your school soon and see if it is listed as high as these. I've not done anything resembling a "scientific" review, but it does seem frequent enough to pay attention.

How useful are the Wikipedia entries? For basic information about the number of students enrolled and the academic programs offered, it is usually faster to visit Wikipedia than an official website. Pity about that, but it is often the case.

And don't forget the official seal. For some reason, most of the Wikipedia entries I've seen include the seal or crest of the university right on the front page.

If you haven't already, start checking your Wikipedia content soon.

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Late on a Thursday in Marshall, there's time to pull together some thoughts that have been filtering through the brain in the last few days, particularly while preparing for the early June national conference of the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education.

How different will the college and university website of tomorrow look from what we see most often today? Only a fool would make a really firm prediction, but there sure do seem to be winds blowing out and about the country side.

Let's consider these that keep coming back to me:

• Wikipedia is a model for a highly popular website that presents great quantities of information without appearing to spend a great deal on traditional design elements. I ignored Wikipedia sites for a long time but now when I want basic information about a particular college or university I check Wikipedia first, rather than the college's own website. In recent presentations I've featured the University of Texas at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas and University of Waterloo at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Waterloo
• Are blogs about to break into new prominence compared to traditional web content? I'm especially impressed by the move at MIT to make blogs the cental content on the first page for admissions at http://www.mitadmissions.org
• Blogs are also being used to deliver regular news updates and that strikes me as about the  best possible investment in a CMS system for "real people" to easily make regular content updates. See how the Santa Clara University law school does it with 18 blogs on a single page at http://www.scu.edu/law/blog/index.html

What are these examples telling us? Each one features easy to post user content, so simple that just almost everyone can figure out how to to it. And there just isn't a great deal of traditional design time to spend on blogs and Wikipedia websites. And that suggests that websites are getting simpler and easier to use. And that the High Priests (and high costs) of web design are in danger of losing position.

Depending on exactly when you count, Wikipedia is the 8th most popular website in the United States. And new beta sites are in development for countries just about everywhere.

The prediction: websites just might really be getting easy to use. Imagine that.

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Down in Dallas getting ready for two presentations this afternoon at the CASE IV meeting... including one that explores the future of integrated communications when so much online content is being produced by everyday people rather than the communication "experts" that are usually in control of print and web content.

And that growing tension between what some have called "the mob" and the experts is an early subject for discussion in Gerry McGovern's just opened blog at www.giraffeforum.com

Make a visit... posts will be by Gerry and partners, including yours truly. Anyone can comment and we are hoping that we'll all end up with new ideas and perspectives on issues that are sure to dominate marketing communications for some time to come.

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With an absolute plethora of newsletters, columns, blogs and more out and about the countryside telling us how to create better websites, anyone challenged for time needs to be cautious about investing that time for maximum return.

You won't go wrong if you regularly read the columns from Mark Hurst.

Visit http://www.goodexperience.com/blog/archives/001182.php for the archives and treat yourself to some worthwhile browsing. Then sign up to receive future issues by email. And of course, in this time of Internet Interactivity, you'll have a chance to loop back to Mark's column online to read comments and post your own.

When you first visit the Good Experience site, but sure to read through the "This is Broken" section, where each day a new reader example is posted of what people should not be doing on the website.

Be advised that Mark is definitely in the camp of web people who favor attention to content more than attention to elaborate design. In his most recent column, he notes that at a new Girl Scout site with a bright new graphic face he couldn't find the types of cookies that are sold. The solution? A visit to the very plain Wikipedia site where the information was easy to find.

Make a late 2007 resolution. Become a regular reader of Mark's Good Experience column. And pledge to offer a better experience to your website visitors in the New Year.

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Have you explored the emerging 3D version of the Internet World at the Second Life website?

If not, take yourself along to http://secondlife.com/ and start exploring.

Is it relevant to higher education? Go to http://secondlife.com/businesseducation/education.php and sign up for the regular newsletter to keep up to date with what will certainly start to happen in this new version of Internet space.

Note that you can "rent" space in the Second Life world just as you can rent a physical location for your off campus programs. Do this and you can create a new virtual world for potential students to enter and a new way for them to take your classes and earn your degrees.

Is anybody already getting started? Once you join (a process that will take you a few minutes to complete) you can search for "colleges and universities" or the names of specific competitors. I found two university names and visited one from Ohio University. That's about to become the Link of the Week at my website.

When I visited today, there were about 2.5 million Second Life members and about 880,000 had visited sometime in the last six months. Those are not yet huge numbers, but this is early in the Second Life life cycle.

If distance learning is important to your campus, start tracking what's happening here. Too early to say if this is the next great revolution in online higher education, but it isn't too early to note that early adopters are already exploring the new world. So maybe you should be also.

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I've just finished updating my next "Writing for the Web" presentation, a 3 hour run in February for Academic Impressions. The session description is at https://www.academicimpressions.com/conferences/0207-brand-messaging.php 

One section in the presentation highlights the virtues of employing people with direct marketing copywriting backgrounds to write for your website or to show others using your CMS how to best add new web content. And that took me back to a long series of tips from direct marketer Nick Usborne at his Excess Voice website.

If you're already a convert to direct marketing style or if you're open to conversion, then visit Nick's tips at http://www.excessvoice.com/web-copywriting-tips.htm The 39 vary in length and substance but all are easy to read and you can quickly scan the full list of titles for what most interests you.

From reviewing as many college and university websites as I do, three really stand out:

Title pages  http://www.excessvoice.com/web-copywriting-tip29.htm (Follow these tips and you are very likely to increase your search engine visibility.)

Landing pages  http://www.excessvoice.com/web-copywriting-tip7.htm (A reminder to focus clearly on the single action you want people coming to this page from your ad to take when they arrive. If you're disappointed with website conversions from advertising or "search" efforts, this is a "must read and remember" item.)

Long copy  http://www.excessvoice.com/web-copywriting-tip44.htm (Every direct marketer knows that long copy isn't bad copy... only boring copy is bad copy. If you struggle about the best way to present information, be sure to read this one.)

You'll no doubt find other personal favorites here. Read well and write well. Your website visitors will thank you for it by spending more time on your website.

Exploring CMS software for your campus? Teach people to write well.

I had an email from someone recently reporting that the new web person at his college was happy. A new CMS had just been installed and the web leader expected that all would be well now in the world of new web content. But will it? How is that content going to be written and presented on the website? A CMS can be a great tool in the hands of someone how knows how write for the web. Or it can be a disaster in the hand of those who don't.

Can people on your campus use help in writing better web content?

Contact me at bob@bobjohnsonconsulting to bring a Writing Right for Web seminar to your campus. In a half-day session, we'll raise the skill level of everyone who attends and get them off to a fine start on making your web world a much friendlier place to visit.

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Keep in mind the source, as always, but plan to take advantage of the "Featured Trends" and "Featured Research" reports available from Doubleclick's Knowledge Central page at http://www.doubleclick.com/us/knowledge_central/

Two research reports definitely worth reading are "Influencing the Influencers: How Online Advertising and Media Influence Worth of Mouth" and "Best Practices for Optimizing Web Advertising Effectiveness."

Money spent on online advertising is still a small percentage of total ad spending, but it remains the fastest growing area. Even more important than online ads is the link between regular advertising and your website information.

More and more today people are likely to remember a "keyword" or phrase heard or read in your regular advertising and then attempt to use that to find relevant content on your website. And that means when you plan future traditional ad campaigns, be sure to test the words and phrases you expect people to remember in the search engine for your website. If you don't find relevant content, you've either got to

• Change the search so the relevant content is found and displayed high on your list or
• Create the relevant content in the first place.

Make sure that you don't disappoint those in a position to influence others.

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If you need an easy place to find definitions of most (but not all) terms associated with Internet Marketing, then you'll value the Internet Marketing Dictionary.

You can search by letter or within one of 14 categories listed at the first page:

• Advertising metrics
• Advertising specifications
• Affiliate marketing
• Business and ebusiness
• Community and etiquette
• Controversial marketing
• Domaine names
• Free website promotion
• Linking strategy
• Online advertising
• Search engine optimization
• Search engines and directories
• Web design and marketing

The dictionary accepts advertising from companies that offer services for various things you might be reading about, but it doesn't get in the way of access to the definitions themselves.

Curious omissions include Web Writing and Content Management. But all in all, you'll find an impressive array when you visit http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/

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You can''t find a more valuable source of ongoing research about how people use the Internet than the reports from the Pew Internet and American Life project.

The latest is "The Future of the Internet II" and is just out this past September. You'll find it at http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/188/report_display.asp

One of the "major surprises" in this report is the strong belief by many people responding that we are going to lose control of the technology behind the Internet. People are almost equally divided over whether or not increasing loss of privacy (both voluntary and involuntary) will be balanced by increased benefits for Internet users.

The 115-page report presents opinion about how 7 possible scenarios will unfold between now and 2020. Whatever your own opinion, you'll always find at least a significant minority agreeing with you about how the future will unfold.

If you're involved in discussions of any type at all about where the Internet is headed over the next few years, this is indispensable reading.

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Don't miss Erin Kassane's article on "Attack of the Zombie Copy" when you visit the A List Apart website dedicated to "People Who Build Websites."

If the examples of zombie copy don't remind you of university webistes heavy with academic jargon, I'll be surprised. But don't stop with the zombies, continue on through the collection that runs back to 2000.

If you think storytelling on the web is a new topic,  be sure to check Curt Cloninger's December 2000 contribution, "A Case for Web Storytelling."

For continued progress in improving writing quality and impact at your side, visit the 16 articles at http://alistapart.com/topics/content/writing/

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If you want to stay up to date on your campus by reading articles, newsletters, and blogs on Internet Marketing in general and Search Engine Marketing in particular, you won't find a better place than this website.

Robert Clough searches sources throughout the web for the latest postings that you can translate into better college and university Internet marketing strategy and techniques. Best of all, most of what you'll find here is easily understand by "normal human beings" with an interest in the topic and just a little experience. In fact, if you have no experience at all and want to get up to speed quickly, this is still a good place to visit.

The newsletter almost always has something worth reading. I'd recommend this as a natural starting place to stay connected.

Visit http://www.searchengineguide.com/ and explore to find what's best for your interests.

Posted by Bob at 08:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

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How do Search Engines work?

Nothing is hotter in Internet marketing right now than search engine marketing, from paid search advertising to search engine optimization.

If you don't have expertise in this area yet, a fine place to start is with a visit to www.webopedia.com/DidYouKnow/Internet/2003/HowWebSearchEnginesWork.asp to explore "How Web Search Engines Work."

Your credibility is bound to increase after you read definitions of things like a "spider trap" and a "deep link." Be sure to click through to the section that explains "Keyword Stuffing" and why you don't want to do it.

Nobody you meet can tell you exactly what to do to ensure that your website will come up near the top of search lists. The criteria of search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com are closely guarded secrets that change often to keep the search engines several steps or more ahead of the people who try to fathom how they work. That's part of what keeps a huge and profitable industry afloat giving guidance on how to achieve higher rankings.

Content is King

If there's a consensus on what's most liable to work regardless of how the search engines change, its about the importance of content that's important to the audience you want to attract.

I'll have more entries about that as August unfolds and we build a guide to better search engine performance for the "normal human being" like you and I. Lots of good stuff out there.

Posted by Bob at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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The danger at the ClickZ website is simple... there's so much here that you can easily spend more hours than you planned following the discussions and debates you'll find here.

On my visit the day I typed this, the front page gave me four choices: thoughts by Sean Carton on how much marketers can expect to control the content of social blogs by paying people to post on them, followed by columns on Email Marketing and Online Branding... and then my favorite, "The Myths and Math of SEO" by Mike Grehan.

When you visit, you'll see the opportunity to subscribe to one or more of five newsletters from the front page...  Be sure to "Click for more Newsletters" and go to a page that lists far more choices than I'm willing to count. If you can't find something of interest here, then you probably can't find it anywhere. To be an Internet Marketing Champion on your campus, start reading a few that spark your interest and you'll stay miles ahead of anyone you know that isn't also a ClickZ fan.

If you like statistics, or just need a good supply to impress people, this is absolutely the place to start looking. You'll see the link in the left hand column.

Visit http://www.clickz.com/ and make your choices soon.

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If you only have time to visit one comprehensive marketing website each week, MarketingProfs.com is the one to pick. Not only will you stay up to date with diverse elements of Internet marketing, you'll also find articles and blog entries that cover branding, research, marketing metrics, advertising, public relations and much more.

Internet marketing topics include email and search engine marketing, website marketing elements, and regular explanations and explorations of podcasts and RSS and similar tools.

I find that the range of contributors here helps keep realistic expecations about what's possible and what's not. MarketingProfs readers are less likely to fall victim to excessive hype about new technology...  and more likely as a result to be effective campus marketing leaders.

Be a marketing champion on your campus. Visit http://www.marketingprofs.com/ 

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