Archive for December 2010

IMA Updates

Posted on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 by

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and is preparing for a fun and safe new years. Just a quick post to highlight some recent updates.


We now have a presence on Youtube. I created an account that doesn't have any of its own videos but does collect together videos from various people and companies in Adelaide for your viewing pleasure. The channel can be found at www.youtube.com/user/webmarketingadelaide or by navigating to the YouTube tab on our facebook page.

In the new year we have several interviews coming up with successful users of social media and Ian Reilley, Director of Media Mouse.



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Local Search Optimisation Basics

Posted on Thursday, December 23, 2010 by

Local Search refers to the search engine products, directories and other tools servicing search queries that relate to locations, such as 'internet marketing Adelaide,' instead of simply 'internet marketing.

Products such as Google's Places and Maps provide significant benefits to consumers looking for businesses in their local area. Therefore it is important to get your business where the people are already looking for you... and your competitors.

Here are some tips to rank better in local searches:
  • Ensure your address, phone number and any other contact details are easily found on your website. It's probably a good practice to have them on every page.
  • Claim your Place Page/Listing in Google Places. Fill out the page with as much information as possible including photos and video.
  • Associate your Place Page with the proper categories.
  • Make sure your website content is relevant to the keywords you are trying to target.
  • Submit your website to local business directories.
  • Keep your website and place page content current and fresh and try and get both mentioned and linked to in blogs and news articles.
While researching for this article I also came across an interesting article on Search Engine Land about Foursquare. Foursquare is a social media game that is played on mobile devices and requires users to interact with the real world using the Geo location hardware in their devices. Could this be the future of local search?






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Social Media Club Adelaide

Posted on Monday, December 20, 2010 by

Mission Statement: A group of business communication professionals (PR, marcomms, advertising, employee comms, etc) looking to further enhance their social media skills and knowledge about how social media impacts their work and employers/clients.- Social Media Club Adelaide


The group has around 45 members and is administrated by Lee Hopkins, one of Australia's leading thinkers on online PR/Marcomms communication and social media conversations for businesses, who lives in Adelaide. There are various membership options available ranging from Open Membership (Free) to Corporate ($2,499).

Shai Coggins, a social media professional based in Adelaide, gave a presentation on communities and how to manage them at the inaugural event in late October. The presentation was filmed and is available on Youtube, links below.
UPDATE: Some more information about the event including flickr streams and a post presentation interview.

I'll try and catch up with Shai Coggins and Lee Hopkins in the new year to find out more about the group and some of their own work.

If you're interested in similar groups in Adelaide you should check out The Startup Club.




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Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) Basics

Posted on Sunday, December 19, 2010 by

"Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on websites, where advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system."- Wikipedia

The most popular PPC program is Google's 'Adwords,' followed by Yahoo's 'Search Marketing.' It is widely acknowledged as the most effective form of online advertising. PPC is a multi billion dollar industry that is on the rise. Competition for desired keywords can vary greatly depending on your industry, competition and target market.

Setting up and managing a Pay Per Click account/s and campaign/s can take a lot of time and effort but can also result in a great return on investment.

Some terms:
  • PPC- Pay Per Click
  • CPC- Cost Per Click
  • CTR- Click through rate
  • CPM- Cost per thousand impressions
  • ROI- Return on investment
  • Conversion Rate - The percentage of visitors who actually are converted into purchasers of your product/service. It is calculated as the number of click-throughs divided by the number of actual conversions, and the higher the conversion rate, the more effective your campaign has been.




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Affiliate Marketing Basics

Posted on Saturday, December 18, 2010 by

"Affiliate marketing is an online advertising channel in which advertisers (online merchants that sell products or services) pay publishers (independent parties that promote the products or services of an advertiser on their Web site) only for results, such as a visitor making a purchase or filling out a form, rather than paying simply to reach a particular audience" -Commission Junction


Affiliate marketing is a kind of outsourcing that allows the business (advertiser) to focus on their core product or offering while the affiliates (publishers) focus on what they do best, marketing and converting.

Advantages:
  • Only pay when a sale is made
  • Easy to manage spending
  • Easy to measure return on investment
Disadvantages:
  • Affiliates can hurt your brand and reputation if their marketing methods are not carefully controlled
  • You have to compete with them in the search engine
  • Competition from your affiliates drives up advertising costs for your own marketing



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Social Media Marketing Basics

Posted on Tuesday, December 14, 2010 by

Social Media allows you to strike up a conversation with your customers and build a relationship.

Here is a list of some of the most popular social media properties (data from Wikipedia):

Facebook: 500,000,000 users, Founded 2004, General interest
Twitter: 175,000,000 users, Founded 2006, General interest, Micro-blogging, RSS, updates
Habbo: 165,000,000 users, General for teens, over 31 countries world wide, Chat rooms and user profiles.
MySpace: 130,000,000 users, Founded 2003, General interest
Linkedin: 80,000,000 users, Founded 2003, Business and Professional Networking

Facebook and Twitter are the two that most people know about. I find Linkedin useful to connect with industry professionals.




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Website Usability Basics

Posted on Sunday, December 12, 2010 by

Website usability refers to how easy it is for your target customers to use your website. Improving usability can lead to visitors staying on the site longer and viewing more pages and increasing your conversions.

Testing Website Usability

You can test a website's usability by doing user testing. All you need is 5 representative users, a computer and a notebook. Ask the users to do simple tasks on the website you want to test and make notes of where they do well and where they have trouble. It is especially important to do user testing before and throughout a website re/design. (more information on user testing).

source: useit.com



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SEO Basics

Posted on Saturday, December 11, 2010 by

Search Engines rank pages for a given search term using two things... the relevancy of the page to the search term and the importance of the page overall.

  • Relevancy is determined using hundreds of different factors such as page contents, title tags, headings, alt tags etc.
  • Importance is interpreted as popularity by the search engines and again is determined using hundreds of different factors, the main one being incoming links which are seen as votes for the website.
Even if your pages are highly relevant to certain terms you may not be realising your full potential because you are targeting the wrong terms. You want to target terms that your potential customers use to search for your product or service but you also want to target terms that don't have strong competition.

Improving the importance or popularity of your pages and website could be more difficult and will require good quality content and search engine optimisation.

source: SEOmoz



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Trusted Sources

Posted on Thursday, December 9, 2010 by

There's a lot of internet marketing advice out there on the interwebs already, so rather than just adding to that with my own advice I'm going to produce my articles by only referring to a few trusted sources. I have picked four, below, to start. This list will increase over time but these are the ones I am starting with. Theres no particular reason why I chose these four as 'trusted' sites other than that I know they are well trusted within the industry.

Take a look around each, you'll find a tonne of information just waiting to be devoured.



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Internet Marketing Adelaide on Facebook

Posted on Saturday, December 4, 2010 by


I have just created a page for Internet Marketing Adelaide on Facebook. At this point all it has is some basic information but I hope to develop it into a popular and effective tool for furthering the mission of this website.

The page will serve as a case study for Facebook pages. I will post an update at least once a week reporting how the page is going and what changes I have been making. You can help by liking the page by clicking the button in the widget in the right sidebar.



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The Startup Club Adelaide

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The Startup Club Adelaide is a group of 700+ highly motivated web entrepreneurs, internet consultants & technologists. We meet face to face once a month to discuss internet marketing, consulting skills, small business strategy and life over a casual beer.


I haven't had a chance to make it out to any of the events myself but I hear that they are fun, informative and great for networking. The group was started by Geoffrey Kwitko who is an internet and creative marketing consultant and web entrepreneur. You can join the group on facebook and find out more information at their website.





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Mission Statement

Posted on Friday, December 3, 2010 by

To educate myself and others about internet marketing and to help grow the internet marketing industry in Adelaide, South Australia.

My Objectives

  1. Get a job in the Internet Marketing field in Adelaide
  2. Further my internet marketing knowledge
  3. Network with internet marketing professionals in Adelaide
  4. Promote the internet marketing talent we have in South Australia to local, interstate and international businesses
  5. Collect, promote and share research, information and advice from Adelaide's internet marketing professionals
Read about my objectives and strategies in my Internet Marketing Plan.



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