Digital Mindshare Forum

Digital Signage

2008-12-09T19:09:17-05:00

I thought this might be an interesting read. We spoke about digital signage…here is whats new

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/business/12/07/08/pldt-launches-digital-signage-network-solution

In-Game Advertising

2008-10-21T19:21:55-05:00

In-game advertising is gaining popularity among advertisers. Since more and more males, ages 18-34, are watching less TV in favor of playing video games, it is now being used as a medium in reaching them. In an effort to reach this demographic, even presidential candidate, Barack Obama has been confirmed to have a billboard ad in the game “Burnout Paradise.” This is definitely a very creative advertising channel that targets this group. But when these guys are so focused on the games that they are playing, do they really pay attention to these ads? Is it really an effective tool?

Obama Is Campaigning on Xbox

Obama Says ‘Yes We Can!‘ to In-Game Advertising

The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing

2008-10-21T22:38:54-05:00

Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy
Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others’ resources

(To read the full article please click on the link below.)

The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing

The Web as a Narrowcasting Tool

2008-04-29T06:34:06-05:00

Check out this article from NYTimes.com (may require free registration.)

WB Network to Return as a Web Site

It seems the WB network is back, but not on TV. They’ve relaunched as a Web venture and are very focused on their core audience(s).

What other examples of Narrowcasting can you share?

-Gene

11 Web 2.0 companies that might not survive the economic downturn (CNET)

2008-10-13T13:55:31-05:00

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10063020-2.html

(my favorite, Twitter, is on there!!)

New beta site to manage social networks

2008-10-10T14:04:26-05:00

From Cynopsis October 10, 2008

If you’re into the social networking craze, chances are you have more than one profile out there and updating them one at a time can be an extremely laborious process. Enter Ping.fm, which went into open beta last month. It allows you to post to multiple social networks simultaneously instead of having to log on to Facebook, type out a message on Twitter, then call up that Pownce page you keep forgetting to update. Ping.fm allows you to post from a variety of inputs such as email, AOL Instant Messenger, Google Gadget or via an iPhone web app. The founders keep adding cool new features as well such as bookmarking tools from Delicious and Diigo. A brand new tool powered by voice-to-text technology company SpinVox allows you to speak your posting into your cell phone and pass along the message to any of your networks in text format. This could be a just the hands free app you need when you’re stuck on the 405 (or fill in appropriate road) this afternoon.

This is somewhat random but i found the second paragraph interesting -

Are people holding hands as much as they once did? That’s impossible to quantify. But Gregory T. Eells, the director of counseling and psychological services at Cornell University in Ithaca, said he didn’t think so.

“I see more people on their cellphone than holding hands,” he said, adding, “To some extent we are trading real face-to-face relationships, where there’s touch and body language, for electronic ones.”

Outranking Competitors in Search Engines

2008-10-04T01:10:27-05:00

Last week, we had an excellent lecture on some great tools for creating a digital strategy. I was hoping to ask some very specific (and rather technical) questions about outranking competitors in search engines, so I hope you’ll bear with my train of thought in this particular post. For those who would care to respond, I’ve highlighted my specific questions in bold so that they’re easier to find.

I recall that a tool called Yahoo Site Explorer was mentioned. From what I gathered, it seems that if you were doing research on a competitor’s site and you want to outrank this competitor in search engines, this Yahoo tool can tell you how many links are pointing to your competitor’s site. That way, you can create more inbound links than your competitor to improve your site’s rankings.

Now let’s say that your competitor is a mortgage site and different words are chosen as anchor text to point to this particular mortgage site. Sometimes the anchor text pointing to the site could be “mortgage” or “home loans” or “realtor” or some other keyword.

My question is, what if you want to outrank your competitor based only on a specific keyword, like “home loans” for example? Is there a tool that can tell you how many links are pointing to your competitor’s site for a particular keyword? Assuming your site and your competitor’s site are about the same age, will you be able to outrank your competitor in search engines just by having more topically-related anchor text links pointing to your site?

Also, I understand that there are different factors affecting your site’s rank in search engines. While search engine algorithms change very often, and it would be wise not to make search rankings your main source of generating traffic for your site, are there at least some things we can keep doing to keep our site’s search rankings as “stable” as possible? I read that some of the things that affect ranking are: how often you update your site with fresh content, how many quality inbound links are pointing to your site and how old your site is. The more often you update your site, the more quality inbound links pointing to your site and the older your site, the better your search rankings become. Are there other factors to consider for our site to rank well in search engines?

Social Media Ad Council - First Industry Effort to Define Standards for Social Media Advertising

2008-10-07T17:11:31-05:00

Some of you might have heard of the recent launch of the Social Media Ad Council (SMAC). The Boston Business Journal states that “The goal of the SMAC is to create a common vocabulary, standard buying units and uniform measurement methods for marketing within social media.“ It would be great to see what they come up with, especially with regards to the measurement methods.

Here’s a link to a brief article on this initiative:
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2008/09/15/daily35.html

Digital Strategy Tools and Resources

2008-09-28T14:10:47-05:00

Hello,

For easier reference, I thought I’d list (and hyperlink) some of the digital strategy tools/resources mentioned in class so far.
I’m sure there are more. Please feel free to add to the list.

ONLINE INTELLIGENCE, TRENDS, ETC.

Google Insights for Search - See what the world is searching for
Microsoft adCenter Labs - advertising and data mining tools

WEBSITE & COMPETITIVE INFO
Compete
Alexa
Google Webmaster Central
Google Analytics
Yahoo Site Explorer
SEO Book’s Rank Checker Tool for Firefox
SEO Book’s SEO Tool for Firefox
Quantcast - For info on visitor demographics

KEYWORD RESEARCH

Google Sets - Keyword brainstorming
Google AdWords Traffic Estimator
WordTracker
NicheBot

SEO
Internet Business Promoter (Axandra) - Tells you how to optimize your site for search engines

OTHERS
Google Knol - For getting inbound links to your site

Four Social Media Questions You Must Answer in an Economic Downturn

2008-10-07T13:18:21-05:00

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/10/07/the-four-social-media-questions-you-must-answer-during-economic-downturn/

Great piece.