As many of us prepare for the heat of summer, the online advertising world is heating up too! There have been several newsworthy items recently, so I thought I would highlight some of the more important ones:
I just returned from the Internet Retailer Conference & Expo held in Boston, where I
was a guest speaker. My session focused on Website Optimization and I covered both traditional SEO tactics, along with newer strategies like Social Media. My session was very well received and it was incredibly exciting to discuss the enormous opportunities available to both small and large companies sitting in the audience.The Conference had a very strong turn out, over 5,000 retailers, attending 5 days of information-jammed sessions and a packed exhibit hall. It was amazing how upbeat everyone I spoke to was with regard to surviving this economic storm. Most Marketers are very optimistic about the future of their company's internet activities, based upon the variety of options and flexibility offered by internet marketing and web site optimization. Many of you are well ahead of the pack, while others still have time to
catch up.
Just about two weeks ago, there was a buzz in our industry related to Microsoft's introduction of a new search engine. For those of you who have not yet heard it is called BING (www.bing.com). In essence, it is exactly the same search listings and paid listings previously found on Live.com (the search engine powering MSN.com). The format of the search results is slightly different, as Bing attempts to give searchers a variety of data, similar to Google's Universal Search. It also has a pretty homepage, with the image changing regularly. There are some wild television ads to promote the new website and search engine, with rumors of spending into the tens of millions of dollars. So — what does it all mean? Unfortunately, I don't think the publicity and rebrand attempt will be enough for Microsoft to cut into Google's market share. I think some of the features the new listings offer searchers are helpful, but not enticing enough by any means to convert steady Google users.
One thing to note, your incoming search traffic (organic and paid) through Analytics will now reflect Bing versus MSN or Live — read our recent Google Analytics Blog post regarding this.
An important announcement this month from Facebook went somewhat under the Radar, so I want to highlight it here for both personal and business users of this Social Media network. They are now allowing anyone with a Profile to create a custom or vanity URL (typically a profile is used by an individual and for personal use). This is helpful to be able to easily have people find you and "claim your name" if it's a more common one.
For businesses, there were two noteworthy updates — one is the option to have a vanity URL for your Page (typically what businesses are set up as and for corporate use). When first offered your company needed to meet two criteria: the page to have been created prior to May 2009 AND it has more then 1,000 fans. For those that did not meet those criteria, Facebook has opened up the vanity url option effective JUNE 28th. WARNING — you are only given one opportunity to choose the vanity portion of the url (reflected as "www.Facebook.com/YourBrandHere"), so choose and type carefully.
The second announcement was the ability to protect your brand or company name from "squatters". Facebook has provided a url (http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_infringement ) for companies with registered trademarks to protect the name/term from being used by someone else in a vanity URL. So even if your company doesn't have a Facebook page yet or hasn't chosen the vanity URL — you can secure it now and eliminate any unauthorized users taking it. Kudos to Facebook for being proactive!
There are always new opportunities, news happenings and changes within this dynamic industry. MoreVisibility strives to keep advertisers educated and ahead of the curve. Don't wait until next months newsletters — stay up to the minute with cutting edge news through our blogs: SEM, SEO, Analytics and Social Media.
