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Top Companies Still Bashful About Social Media Presence

posted on April 4, 2011

Social media is a strange animal at times. Everyone is very willing to talk about it. It’s become like all other aspects of the Internet marketing puzzle where it is accepted and now marketers are at the least required to have what I call a ‘cocktail party level’ of knowledge regarding social media. In other words, if you can’t say “Oh sure, we are on Facebook, Twitter and are exploring our mobile opportunities” type brush off that says “I know we have to be there but I don’t know a darn thing about it” kind of talk.

Well, Advertising Age reports that maybe the Fortune 50 are indirectly saying they have this same level of knowledge because only 40% of the them even mention their social media presence on their homepage. The article notes

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Cup of Joe: Is “April Fools” Good Marketing? Just Plain Fun? Or None Of The Above?

posted on April 2, 2011

So, by now you are probably sick of all the April Fools jokes that are circling the Internet. To be honest, my contempt for all the jokes started last year. I mean seriously, isn’t this getting kind of old? Why are we fawning over these ridiculous jokes? And isn’t a bit cliche to pull a prank on the only day of the year reserved for it? It seems that if your company really wanted to gain attention from a prank they would stage one in July, or a time of the year that isn’t known for this type of foolishness. But, despite my disgust for these time wasters, I have put together a short list of this years highlights. Let me know what you think of each.

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Internet Ad Spending Not Equal to Internet Usage

posted on April 1, 2011

Internet ad spending is on the rise, but according to those statistical geniuses at eMarketer, the rise isn’t equal to the rise in actual internet usage.

What they did was look at the amount of time the average adult spends watching TV, reading the paper, surfing on the internet, etc. Then they matched those percentages to the percentage of the overall ad spending dollars by category.

Here’s what they got.

As you can see, people spend most of their media time watching television. By a strange coincidence, the percentage of ad dollars spent on TV is nearly identical. Pretty neat. But after that, things get funky.

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Millennial Media Shows Growth in Local Market Targeting

posted on April 1, 2011

Mobile advertising platform, Millennial Media has released their SMART Lite report for February which gives you a quick look at key stats.

Most notable for this month is a 22% increase month-over-month in local market targeting which was driven mostly by Telecommunications, Restaurant, and Insurance advertisers. As you can see from the chart, nearly half of all mobile ads are now targeted as opposed to a broad reach.

The report also shows that campaigns driving application downloads rose 14% and watch a video grew 13%.

Finally, the report notes that it’s not too early to start planning for back-to-school. Millennial says that back-to-school is the second largest retail period of the year, and 38% of shoppers intended to use their mobile device for price comparisons. 30% of mobile shoppers want coupons and deals on supplies for their kids and if you’re in the shoe biz, then this is your number one time of the year.

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GoDaddy Reputation Managers Must Wish This Was A Joke

posted on April 1, 2011

On the day when the Internet industry prides itself on being funny and trying fool each other into believing something that sounds like it could happen but really hasn’t, you would wish that what GoDaddy’s CEO, Bob Parsons, did was a joke. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look that way does it? His video of his elephant hunt is making the rounds on the Internet and many are none too happy.

Parsons is a free spirit for sure (his bio is here) and he usually could give a rip about what people think about him or his tactics. Who can blame him since he is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War vet (which I personally have respect for). His elephant hunt, kill and butcher video, though, is quickly making him more infamous than famous and if you are the GoDaddy marketing and PR group you probably are having a tough time right now.

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Google’s Latest Tool Identifies Page Speed Issues

posted on April 1, 2011

There has been plenty of talk about just what signals Google is using for search placement. What are the social signals? Will +1 play a role? Honestly, since SERP’s can be so different for every searcher you always have to wonder these days, right?

Well, one SEO signal that has received some attention in the recent past is the speed with which a page loads. Google has always rewarded sites that are coded cleanly and load quickly because it is important to user experience of that page. Another result of a ‘clean’ page is the page loading quickly.

To help measure this element Google has introduced its Page Speed Online tool, which is described in their Webmaster Central Blog.