IMPERIAL NEWS

The second you thought social media was getting old and tired, these new businesses make you think again.

LikeBids: Social Media Auctioning

 

LikeBids is a social media infused auction/coupon/contest site, geared to encourage and motivate users to use word-of-mouth marketing. LikeBids users win coupons by Liking them and encouraging others to do so. When a threshold number of Likes are reached, a coupon is emailed to everyone who clicked. By liking, you can also when gift cards to that store. For example, I want an Old Navy coupon, so I like it. When 5 people have liked it to, the coupon is released and sent out. So I get the coupon and I am eligible to win a $25 Old Navy gift card! Pretty sweet deal!

myTab: a Social Travel Gift Card

With myTab you can book trips, see where your friends are traveling to, view events around the world that might inspire a trip, add wish list trips for yourself or a group, and comment on friends' upcoming trips. You can also Gift travel cash to your Facebook friends for their birthdays, weddings, or for no reason at all!

If anything, this site is sure to encourage travel and make for an easy, fun gift idea!

 

OpenSky: Twitter for Curated Shopping

OpenSky is  a customizable online shopping experience. It's kind of like Twitter, Shoe Dazzle and a Daily Deal Site, all fused into one glorious social shopping site. When you sign up, you are assigned celebrity "curators" according to your interests. From there you can "follow" more curators, just like you would in Twitter. Your curators recommend products and hold flash sales on a few products at a time.

For example, you really love Molly Sims' fashion sense, so you follow her. She then recommends products, providing an explanation on why she chose that item, and runs a sale on one item a week.  

 

By 2014, it is projected that more users will access the internet from their phone than from a computer. Making your site mobile is a necessity at this point… especially if you use social media for your business, but doing so is really much easier than you may think… especially if you high Imperial Marketing Concepts  to make your site mobile!

Here are some tips in case you do try to attempt it yourself:

1. Eliminate some of the content. Screens are smaller, which means the fonts are smaller, which means it’s highly unlikely anyone's going to read pages of text on your website.

2. If you have a form, keep it simple: name & email. No one wants to fill out long forms on a phone.

3. Try to limit the size of files and images on your mobile site so your site will load quickly.

4. Take out the flash (moving content on your site). It won't show up on Apple devices (iPhone/iPad)

5. Implement click to talk phone numbers so users can easily call you without needing to dial your number.

 

6. If you are a brick and mortar business, make sure your location is “findable” to mobile searchers.   

Facts and Stats:

The web is full of fun facts and statistics about mobile internet usage, so for your convenience, I have whittled them down and outlined the most useful information for you and your business.

•    * According to the Pew Internet Project, 33% of mobile users have a smartphone.
•    * The US m-commerce (mobile commerce) market will be US$31 billion by 2016.
•    * In August 2011 mobile browsing represented 7.1% of all worldwide browsing activity.
•    * Between 2/2009 and 8/2011, mobile browser share grew by 1000%.
•    * 25% (1 in 4) of mobile users expect to access the web from their device at least once a day.
•    * For online-only retailers, a mobile site can increase consumer engagement by as much as 85%.
•    * Website visitors are 51% more likely to do business with an online retailer if it has a mobile site.
•    * Mobile users are 88% more likely to do business with Auto Dealers if the website is optimized for mobile.
•    * In 2010 it was estimated that only 22% of the Alexa top 500 websites have optimized for mobile.
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A common misconception of search engine optimization (SEO) is that websites on the first page of Google, pay for it (monetarily), but this could not be farther from the truth. There are hundreds of tips and tricks for becoming number one, but there is no secret way to somehow "pay off" Google.

One of the most critical errors businesses make is ignoring SEO in the initial web design process. Many of these errors can be covered up or improved slightly, but large gaffes in design can cause long term traffic loss and a quick path to an unsuccessful business.

Therefore, I would highly recommend that you hire an SEO/Web Design expert to create your website and optimize it for you (like Imperial Marketing Concepts). This will assure you that it has been done right and that the back end SEO processes are complete. It is far more difficult to go back and optimize (on the back-end) once the site is already established.

Even if you do hire us to do your website/seo, it is important for clients to understand these points below, because a lot of times clients will demand certain elements within their website that we know are not SEO friendly, and quickly dismiss our suggestions because they do not have a proper understand of SEO.

Here are some solid tips for the first steps of creating your website, and your site content:

1. DOMAINS: Pick a short, relevant url. I like to recommend using a .com, because while search engines may not discriminate, people do and having a .com address makes your business seem more legitimate and it helps users to avoid mistakes like accidentally going to yourdomainname.com instead of yourdomainname.biz. However, if your domain name is not available in a .com, do NOT add hyphens… Studies suggest that these are seen as a poor quality signal to the search engines, and they retain many of the same qualities as the URLs that keyword stuff (like discountcouponpromos.com): lower clickthrough rates, and a strong sign that your website is not one worth linking to.

2. URL STRUCTURE: The biggest, and most difficult to repair problem with many websites is their initial URL structure and Site Architecture decisions. For a contact page, your site should simply be www.yourdomain.com/contact/ NOT www.yourdomain.com/website/funny/penguin/content/contact/

3. CONTENT: If you read my last post, you probably got a good idea about good vs. bad content. But just to recap, there are a few problems that arise here: not enough of it and duplicating it too often. Not enough content could include having little or no information in the first place, placing everything in tables, or putting your text into flash or javascript. Duplicating is when a website repeats content on several pages, most often product pages. Search engines see this as a duplicate content error and cause some pages to be deindexed or devalued, or worse, make the search engine hate the entire site.

4. COOL IT ON THE FLASH: Some websites will use Flash and JavaScript too heavily and completely ignore standardized text. This text is a strong sign of keyword relevancy to search engines and is vital to get pages to appear properly optimized for a search term you want to rank for. Search engines do NOT read content within flash/javascript.

I think that's a good starting point. Whether you use Imperial Marketing Concepts or take these first steps yourself, make sure you follow these rules now so you can avoid a major headache later on.

Preface:

The single most important part (in most cases) of modern business marketing is your website. In a world of rapidly progressive technology and accessibility, your website establishes the core of your business… the who, what, where, when and why… to the world, which is of course made up of the existing customers and the potential customers who give your business a purpose (and you a pay check)! Writing about the importance of having a website seems rather futile, so lets assume you have a pre-existing website for now.

Issue One of "The Brand Before Time Series"

CONTENT IS KING

Content is everything when it comes to websites, for many more reasons than I could ever explain, but here are a few bullet points.

- People want and need information. People are obsessed with information these days… and the act of getting it as quickly and efficiently as possible is instilled in us. Now, you could go and put everything there ever was to know about your product or service, but like I said, they want it quickly and efficiently… they don't want to have to scour your site over their short, 30 minute lunch breaks… they want to obtain the information they want and/or need so they can get on with their lives. So my suggestion is to:

1. Organize your site well so it's easy to find specific information and/or products.

2. Include timely, relevant, useful, and helpful information. This make your company seem up-to-date and committed to serving the online community. It will also significantly stimulate your SEO efforts (I will go into detail about this in another post).

3. Include lots of information (but be careful of what you share with the world)

Let me explain this last one with a really great example… My grandfather started an engineering company in 1941. He invented and patented some ground breaking technology in the engineering industry and his business thrived because of it. Well, once having a website was "the thing to do," they joined the crowd, putting up a fair source of information about the business, products, processes, etc. Although they obviously didn't include blueprints of their machines in their website,  there was just enough information for an "unnamed car manufacturer" to figure out and steal their patented designs.

The problem is, with certain industries, it is almost impossible to put up any information without "giving anything away." Even so, I believe there is a way to provide just enough information to attract new business and to cater toward existing clients as well. Despite what happened, my family company's current site is still home to a plethora of important information… they just had to take out the little snippets of revealing content that was originally put on the site.

MORAL OF THE STORY

While creating the right content might be difficult (and sometimes risky), it is absolutely necessary to put in the proper amount of time and thought into creating plenty of great content for your website. Otherwise, you will remain invisible to current/potential clients and to google.

[EDIT]

I had to edit the blog I wrote for today, because as you might have heard, Steve Jobs passed away this evening. So this post is for him… because changing the world is not an easy task and a mind full of pure innovation, creativity and possibilities is something to be celebrated.

It is no secret that Steve Jobs has changed the world by tenaciously seeking the "impossible" and making "modern technology" a thing of the past. Jobs' desire for innovation (is/was) admirable, to say the least, but this time, he's really really got something.

I watched the entire iPhone 4s Keynote from Apple's feed in Cupertino, CA. and all I can say at this point is "WOW." Needless to say, I will be pre-ordering my iPhone 4s Friday at 12:01 am.

I don't care if you're a Mac or a PC, iPhone or Droid… A recent survey by PriceGrabber tells us that 35% of mobile users will buy the iPhone 4s. So, if you're a smart business owner, or just a person who finds joy in the progression of human kind, you will read on.

Here is how the iPhone 4s and iOS 5 will change social media:

1) Deep Twitter Integration: Twitter is integrated into iOS 5, so you can sign in once under Settings and begin tweeting directly from Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, and Maps. You can even start typing a friend’s Twitter handle and iOS will autocomplete the rest from your contacts.

2) Siri Assistant: Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and use social media. Siri doesn't just understand your voice, it understands what you mean. You can ask it things like "Do I need an umbrella today?" and Siri will give you an answer, based on the weather that day.

So you're thinking... "Well super… What does this mean for social media?" With Siri and deep twitter integration, people will share more and when people share content, they naturally seek to consume content.

But here is my favorite part. This goes right along with my blog post last week about how reviews could make or break any business with a product or service…

You can tell Siri: "Find me a great Italian restaurant in Atlanta" and it will instantly find Italian restaurants in the specified area and then organize them by rating. See it in action. (Fast forward to 76:15 see this feature in action… or watch the whole this because it is so cool)!

Also with Siri, users will be able to tweet and text just by speaking to their "humble personal assistant." More tweets mean more potential buzz for your business! Fast Company calls the result is "A perfect storm of technology that will bring fast, integrated face recognition tech to every hour of millions of iPhone users' lives. Things will change."

3) Dual-core A5 chip (the same chip that is in the iPad2)… In other words… crazy fast and uber powerful. So the more time people save by accessing content quicker, the more time they can spend shopping or exploring your site and/or social media.

4) Video Camera that takes true HD Video (1080p) and an 8MP camera with all-new optics and face detection You can surely expect people to take pictures of everything they see and experience (think: your products, your store, your displays, your food…) and then tweet about it. Now if that's not good for business, I don't know what is!

According to a recent Fast Company article, "Because face ID will be laced throughout the OS, it means social apps like Facebook and perhaps Twitter will be able to be sensitive to the ID tags, embedding them in automatically-generated status updates (should you enable such a feature). The use of face IDs could be a part of any future NFC credit card system, with the iPhone's front camera taking a quick peek at the user's face to check the account owner is indeed activating a payment, not some thief it doesn't recognize."

Not to mention…

 

5) It works all over the world (by using BOTH GSM and CDMA technology)

 

6)  It has a "Really long battery life."

7) It comes with iCloud where you can store unlimited music, photos, videos, data, contacts, etc.

8) Triple encryption for ultimate protection of your data. You can even securely access private corporate networks through industry-standard VPN protocols.

Honestly, I could go on all night… but you get the point. For more Info, watch the iPhone 4s Keynote or just the overview of the iPhone 4s.

And in his memory… check out this great article on Steve Jobs.

 

 

 

Social media is important. If you don't believe me, google it… or read one of the thousands of books and articles on the topic. But I'm not here to convince you that your company needs to utilize social tools (not today at least). For now, we'll just accept it as fact: Social media is important.

The problem is, the term "social media" encompasses six different categories of social media: collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia), blogs and microblogs (e.g. Blogger and Twitter), content communities (e.g. Youtube), social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), virtual game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft), and virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life). Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few.

I wouldn't dare attempt counting all of the platforms inside each one of these horrifyingly broad categories. Lets just estimate it at a billion.

 

 

So which one is the most important? Most effective? Most urgent? While answering these questions can be a daunting task, one form of social media that has stuck out to me time and time again are Reviews. Whether your company offers a product or a service, your reviews can make or break your business in a heartbeat. Most of the time reviews are interconnected throughout the internet and when someone types in your business into google, and sees your single, pitiful star next to your business listing, 9 out of 10 people will completely write you off and take their business elsewhere.

Granted, some people are just ridiculous and make it a point to make you look bad because their seared tuna was too cooked, but that is why we (Imperial Marketing Concepts) offer reputation restoration. We resolve negative, false or just plain ridiculous comments and/or claims.

It is common knowledge that people are more likely to complain about a service or product, rather than praise it, but that is why we have a "reviews" section on all our clients' Facebook pages. That way the business can encourage and reward customers for their positive reviews.

Sure, most forms of social media are beneficial for even the most obscure business, but if you're reviews do not accurately reflect your business, and you do not seek to restore your reputation, no amount of social media marketing could ever save you.