Google is making great things possible for the average consumer. Google TV is abuzz on the interwebs on how it can help the average person get more out of TV – both timewise and businesswise. This calls for a celebration to both corporate and small business enterprises, seeking more coverage areas for their products and businesses. Surveys show that a larger fraction of people who watch TV tend to buy the products that they see on-air; people canvassing for products on the internet fails on this comparison.

We can expect more user-friendly ads popping up (courtesy of AdWords) instead of the conventional commercial breaks when Google dominates the mainstream media. And Google has recently demonstrated in this post on how online advertising can be more dynamic than ever before. Of course, low-spenders won’t be able to wallow in the massive traffic this project will bring in, especially now that videos ads on YouTube are being hoarded by the spending corporations via both banner and interstitial ads.

Social media is becoming pretty hyped out there, and a lot of people are trying to tell you what to do with it and how to handle it. For most of these “gurus,” you can pay anywhere from $27 to hundreds for their social media system.

In my experience, it comes down to the simple principle of treating others the way you would want to be treated, and in twitter’s case: “tweet others the way you want to be tweeted.” So for all you wascaly wabbits out there, just keep that in mind and you will grow the be successful.

Here’s an awesome video from Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing, talking about interruption marketing:

So, the people behind this video also have a book that I’m reading right now:

Inbound Marketing Book, Click For Amazon.com

I am thoroughly enjoying this book.
Not only does it show examples and
good ideas, but it gives specific tasks
to follow for you to put the ideas to
work for your website and/or business.
(I will write a full review soon)

One of the most talked-about topics in search engine optimization in line with website analytics is the Bounce Rate and Exit Rate of landing pages (the first page redirect to after clicking an organic search or a paid advertising link).
To start off, let’s define both of these terms.

Bounce Rate is a term used to quantitatively and qualitatively measure the effectiveness of a landing page and overall site performance. The Bounce Rate measures the number of visitors who view the landing page (via search engines) or URL of a website and close it immediately thereafter, without clicking on other links within the website.

The higher the Bounce Rate, the lower the overall traffic a website receives, since only one page is being viewed. Content-rich pages like wikis have low Bounce Rates, since the links to other pages are in the content itself. Social media sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter have the lowest Bounce Rates since almost everything you’re looking for (people, products, events, organizations) are located within the site itself. This means you don’t have to leave Facebook and use a search engine to find what you’re looking for. The search can be done through Facebook itself.

Websites with high Bounce Rates are prone to stagnation and poor Google SERP rankings. Examples of these websites are information sites that lack “links within content”, “search suggestions” or “relevant topics” that promote visitor interest to scan the entire website for relevant/interesting content. It is important to integrate schematics that will let people take interest in the website.

Other on-page factors are page-load speed. PPC advertisers face this problem because when a certain person clicks the advertiser’s link on Google’s SERP, it may load slowly or partially, leaving the user to unrest, and thus, searching for another website with a similar topic. In analytics, slow-loading or broken links yield tumultuously high Bounce Rates. Regardless of the quality of content a website has, page load speed still plays a key role in driving traffic and boosting ratings.

Other common site problems that contribute to a high Bounce Rate include:

• Too many backlinks (links that divert to another website)
• Irrelevant/poor content
• Dead links
• Pop-ups
• Lack of suggestive on-site content
• Non-use of website optimization tools (see Google’s Website Optimizer)

An example of a Bounce Rate computation for the home page:
Bounce Rate for Home Page = Total number of visits to Home Page/Total number of entire website visits

One useful tip to lower the Bounce Rate to minimum is by integrating an unobtrusive comments/suggestion box on your webpage. This way, you can single out the cause of traffic problems by asking the visitor themselves on what they think is wrong with your website. It’s a win-win situation for both parties.

Exit Rates, on the other hand, (not to be confused with Bounce Rates) are more often the reason why some websites succeed with their campaigns and marketing promotions. The Exit Rate is the rate wherein a certain proportion of visitors click and navigate throughout your website, visit a certain page they are looking for, fill out some forms (to either purchase something or to contact the webmaster), and then exit the website. The Exit Rate is computed by dividing the rate of visitors that left a certain page over the total number of visits of that page. See the example below:

Exit Rate for Contact Page = Total visits and to the Contact Me page (via site search); then, site exit/Total visits to the Contact Me page

Call it unconventional; call it dirty tactics; call it unfair play – in fact, throw every bad comment you can at “Guerrilla Marketing”, but in the end, both of us can agree on one thing – guerrilla marketing works, and it works wonders when incorporated with the word “internet”.

For a start-up business, initial sales figures can be atrocious –that is why most business owners often resort to connivance with top copywriters and marketing gurus to drive sales to a tenfold sum.

But if the words and the ad gimmicks don’t just cut it, guerrilla tactics come into play. But what exactly is guerrilla marketing? How does it work? Below is an answer to your questions.

Guerrilla marketing, is in fact, marketing, per se. The only difference is that the business employing guerrilla tactics uses unconventional methods to market a certain product. These methods often employ the use of hired people to use that business’ products and in turn, those “hired people” spread positive testimonials about the products profound effects, even though half of those stories are either made up or just plain lies.

Consider this: A giant shoe company wants to make it big in the teen shoe industry. The marketing director suggests hiring a bunch of popular high school students in a nearby academy to showcase the shoes to the community. The students aren’t exactly hired – they’re given the shoes for free, which they in turn, successfully promote by discretely telling all their classmates and friends in school how cool their shoes are. The tactic works when those “popular kids” tell their friends that the shoes they’re promoting were bought at a “reasonable price” at the malls instead of telling the truth that the shoes were in fact, given to them (with a catch). That, in itself, is guerrilla marketing. It works 90% of the time and doesn’t require too much blatant advertising. Word-of-mouth is actually more effective than advertising, come to think of it.

In the past, guerrilla marketing was only limited to street/campus promotions, now the web-driven world has opened doors for guerrilla tacticians everywhere.

A few notable examples of how online guerrilla marketing works are listed below:

1. Bribing network communication company officials to divulge active phone numbers and sending out mass messages promoting a product/service/cause.
2. Paying webmasters of popular websites to create a seemingly “unbiased” and “unpaid” positive testimonial of a product/service/cause.
3. Spreading video campaigns on popular video streaming sites like YouTube and MetaCafe, where a seemingly “unbiased” review is aimed to promote a product.
4. Sending out mass spam comments targeted to a specific blog/forum category.
5. Creating scripts on social networking sites that auto-adds users to be fans of a certain product (i.e., contact lenses, beauty products). This can also be done in a clean way by hiring a certain school personality to be the endorser of a product through her photo albums.
6. Creating awareness campaigns that entices users to buy a product. (i.e., the popular Emergency Seed Bank)
7. Paying users to post negative comments on a blog, forum or a video channel of a strong competitor.
8. Using divulged information to gain access to chat channels and personally making friends with leads through chat, empathizing with them and finally getting them to buy the product.
9. Using a referral scheme used by most paid-to-click (PTC) and survey websites that offer more money as you refer more people, thereby promoting the business rapidly as more people sign up.

The above-mentioned not only give us a vivid representation of how online guerrilla marketing works but also does it manifest how viral guerrilla marketing has become.

Fast-paced and incredibly viral – this is how everyone’s online presence shaped the realms of internet marketing.

WordPress is the ultimate toolkit you’ll need to literally start up any web-based business. With nearly 80 million websites using the content management system (CMS) – formerly only a blog publishing platform) – you can’t go wrong at any angle.

WordPress.com is sometimes confused with WordPress.org. While both are owned by the same company and both use the same publishing platform, the .org website lets you download the WordPress software itself and then tells to you install it in your hosting server, giving you full authority over the deployed WordPress package. The .com website however, is like Blogger, because WordPress still hosts the blog and you have to pay for certain upgrades.

Search engine optimization (SEO) friendliness is one of WordPress’ key cerebral advantages over other CMS and blogging platforms. While a regular WordPress blog may look like just some other website you’ve seen, you may be wrong. WordPress-based blogs, on the average, rank higher than other websites that use different CMS platforms. WordPress was designed to help you get noticed on the web, and it hasn’t failed on its promises.

Below is a checklist of features that, in my own opinion, WordPress does extremely well in:

1.) Managing your WordPress CMS is easy. The Dashboard provides a clear overview of the website and its architecture. You can upload almost any file in the gallery. Blog composition is a breeze, since there’s both an HTML and visual editor. You can also add and rearrange boxes/pages to your liking, where you can put widgets and content forms. There’s also the amazing feature to let other people gain access to your Admin Center, letting them post content, and (optionally) giving them the absolute authority to edit everything they see. This is great for business owners who let other people do the blogging for them.

2.) There are thousands of themes to choose from, and they cater to all forms of businesses and causes, so you don’t have to design one yourself. There are free themes that can be downloaded from the WordPress site itself and some more being given away for free by other websites: (http://www.blogperfume.com/45-best-free-wordpress-themes-of-all-time/). But if free themes don’t suit your taste, you can always hire a freelance theme developer to create one for you. But if you think hiring someone to do a theme is too expensive, you can still purchase premium (paid) themes from sites like eCommerce Themes, Theme Forest and Elegant Themes and others like the ones mentioned in this blog page: (http://www.blueverse.com/2008/08/15/top-paid-and-free-premium-wordpress-themes-sites/).

Premium themes, most of the time, have better-looking and flexible interfaces than regular themes and a few others have already been SEO-optimized, like the Thesis Theme from DIY Themes. The possibilities are endless when it comes to designing the theme of your choice and the majority of great themes are free to download.

3.) Plugins are what keep WordPress popular and interesting and most importantly – stable. Plugins and features you’ve never thought a regular WordPress blog would have include: 1.) a mood changer, 2.) exchange rate predictions, and 3.) an event calendar. Truly, the plugins WordPress support have evolved from the basic spam filters to even the quirkiest ideas imaginable. And 90% of these plugins are free, so you’ll never get tired of improving your website’s appearance. A round-up of 2010’s most delectable plugins can be seen in this blog entry: (http://www.solostream.com/blog/wordpress/top-ten-wordpress-plugins-for-2010-part-1/).

4.) WordPress operates under the General Public License (GPL), meaning you can tweak it as much as you like without worrying about lawsuits. WordPress is open-source and very much open to constant improvements (see the Developer page).

Unlike other content management systems wherein you have to pay a monthly fee separate from your hosting, WordPress reduces the bills you pay because it does not charge a single cent for every feature it has.

This is the reason why WordPress theme designers are everywhere. The main benefit of open source software is the availability of multitudes of free stuff that can be integrated into the software. Firefox, as you may seem to notice, is in consonance with WordPress in terms of open-source development, that equals to both reliability and stability, and the numbers of users for the two different platforms are increasing because FREE spells glee.

WordPress, because of its open-source status, has been engineered for performance by the world’s best programmers who believe that everything great should be free.

5.) WordPress, as I’ve mentioned before, was designed and is continuously improved over time, for search engine optimization. It complies with all Google patents and has submerged itself into a deeper architecture that associates itself with all Google standards and algorithms. Many present and previous developers of Facebook have worked for Google, so they know the ropes when it comes to SEO. The evidence for this is that WordPress blogs regularly beats Blogger blogs on page rankings. And don’t fall into confusion if on the next day your blog gets indexed and placed on page one of Google’s SERP.

6.) WordPress is on continuous development and newer versions will be released in just a few months’ time. This is because as Google algorithms change, the need for a reengineered CMS architecture is a must. Plugins are also updated for compatibility.

7.) If you’ve read through the previous checklists, you’ll definitely feel that WordPress is more than just software run by people in an office. WordPress is run by the entire world and the more people who join in on the community, the better. This is the reason why open-source is far more dependable than hardcoded software. If one problem pops up, the entire world feeds the problem to the thousands of developers situated the world over and an overnight fix is released.

8.) Security is compromising issue for most business owners. PHP and SQL injections can breach and hack through almost every website – and WordPress is no exception. But thanks to constant improvement (version updates) and added plugins that reinforce privacy of login credentials, WordPress gets two thumbs up from everyone in the development community.

9.) WordPress is easy to deploy and 100% free to download. But if you’re not into programming languages and the sorts, you can search for easier instructions on YouTube and About.com on how to install WordPress correctly. Patience is a virtue, of course.

If you use CPanel hosting, then you’re at luck – WordPress can easily be deployed without FTP by using Fantastico scripts.

Below are instructional videos to get you started on a WordPress experience you’ll never forget:

Installing via Fantastico: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nxXsROoBYs
Installing manually via FTP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx6EFtJoIJo

Great! Now you’re set! Once you start blogging WordPress-style, do send a message and tell me your initial thoughts on WordPress. I’ll even give firsthand suggestions on how to fully utilize every WordPress feature.

Thank you for viewing my blog. I hope you found this article informative! And good luck to your business!

Subjecting an accomplishment, event, headline or a recent product launch to a press release is very important, especially for start-up businesses that wish to make it big in any given industry.

A press release is a featured article printed on broadsheet, tabloids, and business journals and in the past decade, on popular news websites/blogs. A press release basically entails a product launch or an organized event. Marketers use press releases to garner free mass exposure for their products. The press release typically informs readers of a successful produce launch/event that took place or one that will take place in the coming days.

Imagine a high-traffic website or a nationwide campaigning your product/event for free. That’s the effect of a well-written press release.

One notable aspect of a press release is that it lacks the usual “sales talk” used in flyers and posters. A successful press release will actually define and give full-length information about the product being headlined without using “buy this” and “buy that” elements. The purpose of a press release is to invoke information drives via reputable printed media like newspapers and magazines. It works both ways for both the marketer and broad sheet, because it gives exposure to the product and becomes a space-filler for the newspaper.

When people read the article in a newspaper, chances are, they instantly get the notion that the product being featured is a reputable, since they read it from a transparent source.

But getting your product/event to be published in print and online media can be hard, especially if you have no background of subjecting products/events to press releases. It is imperative to remember to plan and accomplish the following before sending out press releases to various publications. You need to comply with the essential elements of a proper press release format, which can be seen below:

A PERSUASIVE SUBJECT HEADER

Type in “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” at the upper left corner of the letter.
The subject “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” is the generally accepted subject of used in acknowledging the letter as a legitimate press release. Capitalize every letter (don’t worry, it won’t be anywhere near rude.)

THE BASIC CONTACT INFORMATION
The standard format for contact information can be seen below. Make sure to double check the following credentials before sending the letter out.

Follow the format below:
Contact name/Phone Number - John Smith (02467-#### )
Website/Webmail Email – ShortsAreForSale.com (john@ShortsAreForSale.com)
Projected Release Date – December 15, 2010

THE HEADLINE
Use only words that capture attention (i.e., Spectacular, Amazing, Superb, Once-in-a-Lifetime and Ultimate). It won’t hurt if you exaggerated the headline to make it more attention-grabbing.

THE LEAD PARAGRAPH
The first four sentences of your lead paragraph should address the 5 W’s of your press release: who, what, when, where and why. The lead paragraph should also include the dateline (the release date and place of origin of the press release). Look closely on the sentence formation to avoid vague sentences that may result in the misinterpretation of the important details.

THE BODY
After the lead paragraph, the writer should become as aggressive and persuasive as possible, with regards to detailing the the event. Underlining and quoting specific details will also quicken the perusal process. The body text should be as brief as possible, to avoid any confusion on part of both the editor and the reader. Too much text will result in rejection of the press release, since it takes up too much space. Squeeze in as much detail as possible, without bloating the piece with useless text.

THE RECAP
After the body text, you should place a brief summary of what has just been said in order to clarify the purpose and details of the press release. You can again use quotation marks, bolding and underlining on the details you wish to emphasize (i.e., Date, Start Time, Scores, Product Specifications).

***Note****
If you can find a boilerplate (a template that can be reused for press releases, applying minor modifications), utilize it but never forget to edit the words that need to be replaced. Since most newspapers rely on a standard instruction format, try to search for a boilerplate that has been generally accepted by most publications.

Given the fact that most press releases get rejected because of bad writing or plagiarized content, here are some tips that can get you started in mastering the craft of creating successful press releases.

1. Format, format, format. It’s important that you abide by the standard rules in creating newsletters.
That includes:

• Paper size (8 ½” X 11″)
• 1″ margins
• Capitalization of all the words in the headline, except for articles “a” and “an”.
• Double-spacing of the body text

2. For press releases that will use more than one page, put this symbol (###) at the center of the bottom of each page that will continue in the next page.

3. Wordiness of the press release should be avoided. Squeeze in the most important details in the first page of the press release, and try to keep it at just one page.

4. And more importantly, keep in mind that the approval or rejection of the press release will be dependent on the first few words of the headline. Make the headline sound great and catchy that no one will have to guts ignore it. Subject it to peer reviews and base your edits on their constructive critique. Instead of writing Cycling Event on Lewis Wharf, Boston, you can alter it make it attention-grabbing, like “Lung-busting Cycling Championships in Boston! Join now and Feel the Adrenaline Rush!”

Below is a sample of a press release taken from http://www.mediacollege.com/journalism/press-release/format.html

If you feel that the above sample does not correspond to what your audience would likely be reading, you can still download various free templates and boilerplates across the internet to suit your needs.

I hope you learned all there is to creating an effective press release after reading this article.

One major security issue online is trying to protect your email address. Whether you’re a website owner or just someone who needs to post something online, your email is one of the parts of your identity that you need to keep close.

So, there is a great solution, which lets you hide your email address in the form of a url, and its called src.im:

What scr.im does is create a page where it checks if the user is human before revealing the email address, therefore protecting against bots and many hackers.

See an example here to email me: http://scr.im/thewebleap (notice they give you a custom URL)

The best part about it is that its free, and it works well.
Just go to http://src.im to create your page and start protecting your email when you want to make it available for real humans online.

Enjoy!

Google will be updating its algorithm soon after the Holidays and is set to affect almost every website indexed on its pages. Google Caffeine is Google’s next step in innovating its search engine algorithm, giving a whole new feel to search result indexing.

An early web scoop claims that the following criteria will most likely be the major factors that will affect search engine rankings:

• Website speed: most websites that are indexed in Google’s search pages are quick in delivering content/images, so it’s no surprise that page load speed will be a deciding factor if your page will make it to the top of Google’s first-round draft picks.
• Broken links: just like the web is interconnected and interweaved, the Google crawler makes sure that the website is not only content rich, but also intact when it comes to links. It is a plus factor that all links are working properly, because not only do they affect your potential surge in search rankings, but also do they affect your visitors’ impression of the site.
• Bad neighborhoods: reputation is all-the-more important when it comes to getting Google’s attention. If your website is part of a spamming syndicate or hosts a few links that lead to those spam sites, don’t expect too much positive net reputation & site optimization. We do not know for a fact if a barrage of back links promoting your website would still work on the soon-to-be implemented algorithm Google has in store for its users. But just to be safe, regularly check the comments you receive on your website and make sure you’re not doing something dastardly, say for example posting useless content on a high-ranking website without taking into consideration the potential effect this will have on your website.
• The over-all quality of your website: Content is everything, experts say. If there’s one commonality we notice on high-ranking websites – it’s the overall content and layout of the website, which pleases our senses, that makes it stand out among others. Original content and SEO-optimized articles are the key factors that make a huge impact on search engine rankings. Too much clutter or widgets will only worsen the status of your site. The idea is as simple as this: write rich content, get rich results.

To be sure that you’re Caffeine-ready, make a checklist if you’ve accomplished the following tasks:

1. Check your comments and linkbacks for spam content/urls. Google does not like when one website promotes a spam site. Clean up on the content a make sure not a trace a of spam is in your website.
2. Refurbish the design if necessary. If your website is lacking the snazzy appeal top-ranking websites have, invigorate it by applying a neat-looking, fast-loading and user-friendly template. People like the minimalist and intuitive features of Twitter and Facebook – that’s the reason why they flock into these sites.
3. Google favors social bookmarking. If you’ve been missing out on the fact that most websites get much of their traffic driven by social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, Delicious, and Furl, guess what – it’s time to take the leap by using these bookmarking sites to your advantage. Not only will you get loads of traffic if the content your produce catches their attention, but also will you get to know more about how the web community works. There’s no end to the massive community social bookmarking sites produce.
4. If you’ve already done all of those listed above, remember that it is not enough that you follow protocol, don’t stop there… innovate. If there’s one thing both the average user and Google like about a website, it is always authentic and most often offbeat content.

What are your thoughts on Google Caffeine? Please reply below.

I recently went through the Inbound Marketing University and loved it! (unfortunately I didn’t do it in time for the certification exam which for some reason ended after around 2 days)  It was all completely free too, which is truly crazy for the amount of information I got out of it… Gotta love corporate sponsors.

Inbound marketing, for those who don’t know the term yet, is basically a way of marketing to have customers come to you instead of going out and bothering them. Folks, this is really big stuff. The book “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media)” (by the same people) goes into this much, much deeper. I am enjoying reading the book now and will post a review when I finish reading it. For all the notes I’m taking, who knows when I’ll finish. Its got great concepts, but also great practical tips and actions to take.

Because we are all becoming increasingly skilled at tuning out the old forms of outbound marketing, inbound marketing is a new spin on a timeless concept that is now more relevant because of all the new forms of information on the web.

Hub Sport, who is the company behind IMU (Inbound Marketing University) have a couple great videos on youtube, but here is one that I saw and loved. If anyone from Hubspot is reading this, much love you guys from a fellow massachussian (?) Great job.

P.S. For people interested in the IMU, just check out InboundMarketing.com and sign up for the free video courses. I also highly reccomend reading the book (click here to get it on Amazon). Also, the woman singing in this, Hubspot’s Rebecca Corliss, is the host for all of the videos in IMU, so its even funnier seeing her in both completely different modes.

So what did you think of the video? the book? Inbound marketing in general?
Please leave a reply below, I wanna hear what you have to say! (and answer any questions you have)