In his new book Game-Based Marketing, Gabe Zicherman and co-author Joselin Linder explore how businesses can drive revenue and customer loyalty through rewards, challenges, and contests. Before Gabe pointed it out to me, I didn’t quite realize how much game-based marketing had come to dominate so many aspects of marketing. From frequent flier programs to McDonald’s famous Monopoly game, game-based marketing is a huge part of advertising. Here’s an excerpt from the book’s description:
(more…)

During last week’s F8 Developer’s Conference, Facebook announced its new Open Graph platform, which will connect the world’s largest social network to the rest of the internet. Using this new platform websites will be able to incorporate information from Facebook, making it easy to tailor content to user’s interests. In short, Open Graph will make it easier using Facebook… even when they’re not on Facebook’s website!

(more…)

Blue Fountain Media’s Gabriel Shaoolian recently gave a seminar on Online Reputation Management . Today Blue Fountain Media has released the full Powerpoint presentation, which can be viewed below:

Tomorrow, 4/16, marks what is sure to become an annual celebration of social media: Foursquare Day.

What is Foursquare?

Foursquare is an app (available for most modern smart phones) that encourages users to “check in” when they’re out and about. Bars and restaurants are the most common places–anywhere that you might hang out for a while. Checking in sends a ping to your friends so they know where you are. The app also allows users to share tips and compete to earn virtual badges of honor for completing certain tasks (e.g. “School Night” for checking in somewhere after 4am Monday-Friday). The most frequent visitor to each venue is crowned the “mayor” of the venue. While it was released at Austin’s SXSW festival in 2009, Foursquare has gained tracking in recent months, having added nearly 1 million users since the start of 2010. (more…)

Google Eyes by Blue Fountain Media is a plugin for Google’s Chrome web browser that allows users to quickly pull up the Google Cached Text-Only version of nearly any website. This is an excellent way to view a website through Google’s eyes.

One cool use is to quickly and easily check the raw structure and layout of a page and see how well it’s header tags are optimized.

Once installed, a “T” (as in “Text-Only”) icon will appear on the right-hand side of your address bar. To activate Google Eyes, visit the site you want to look up and click the “T” button.

[DOWNLOAD]

(more…)

Big Gains From Small Edits

In the world of Email marketing, there is always room for improvement.  Sometimes, the biggest improvement can come from the smallest of edits.

The most minor adjustments to your email template have the potential to cause click-through (the % of people who actually click on a link) and open rates (the % of people who open and view an email instead of just ignoring or deleting it) to suddenly skyrocket, and in turn, drive large amounts of sales, traffic, sign ups, or conversions. However, the only way to truly learn from your template adjustments is to implement them one at a time utilizing classic scientific procedure. By isolating your adjustments, you can learn which varying factors improve your campaigns and which hurt them.

(more…)

On March 25, Blue Fountain Media CEO Gabriel Shaoolian was a featured speaker at the Business Development Institute’s Seminar: Social Reputation Management, Protecting & Strengthening Your Brand Across The Social Web.

(more…)

“Where I’m At” Social Media

Foursquare, the latest trend in location-aware social media, is a tool that allows users to “check in” to just about anywhere, alerting their pre-approved friends of their wareabouts. Users can check into restaurants, bars, their offices–anywhere they want. If they want to check into somewhere not in the database, they can simply add it themselves.  Here’s CNN’s explanation of Foursquare.

Trending on Foursquare

Foursquare uses an algorythm to calculate “trending” places. That is, they monitor checkins and when a particular place is more happening then the places around it, it gets boosted to the top of the local list and will begin “Trending”. (more…)

Social Media has opened the door to a host of new marketing opportunities. Where major advertisers like Unilever were once limited to print, radio, television, direct mail and billboard advertising, the internet has opened up a host of new promotional opportunities for brands large and small.

Unilever, you may know, is the company behind such iconic ice cream brands as Breyer’s, Good Humor and Klondike Bars. They have long been ahead of the curve when it comes to advertising and marketing (“What would you do for a Klondike Bar?”).

It shouldn’t be surprising that Unilever understands new media as well as they do old media. They are now reaching out to influential bloggers, offering them free tastes of some of their classic products. Today, a virtual cornucopia of ice cream products arrived at the offices of Blue Fountain Media. When the feeding frenzy was done, the ice cream was gone, but the good will remains.

Does this kind of marketing work? The fact that you are reading this should provide the answer.

As marketing specialists, we at Blue Fountain Media appreciate creative work done by others. Our hats are off to Unilever for their blogger outreach!

We regularly counsel clients on how to leverage social media to enhance their marketing efforts. We help our clients with blogger outreach, Twitter and Facebook promotions and dozens of other social media platforms. If you are looking for help with social media outreach, online marketing or any web-related project, please give us a call at 212.260.1978.

Again Unilever, well done!

Blue Fountain Media’s Director of Marketing, Alhan Keser, was just featured in the Wall Street Journal and Smart Money’s SMSmallBiz.com in a story covering Pay-Per-Click advertisements. In an extended interview, Keser helped explain why paid advertisements resulted in higher conversion rates–the ratio of users who actually make a purchase–when compared to the organic, unpaid search results.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

The reason for the differential: Conversion rates tend to improve as shoppers progress through the buying cycle, says Alhan Keser, an SEM specialist at Blue Fountain Media, a boutique web site development and online marketing firm in New York. Although search engine users typically troll organic results to conduct online research, they start favoring sponsored links when they’re ready to buy, he says. “Most people who click on ads are ready to be sold to; they are at the buying stage,” Keser says.

Keser is a certified SEO and SEM expert, meaning he is well versed in all aspects of marketing through search engines–both improving organic results and paid results. Keser has previosuly been featured on Entrepreneur.com, in the Google section of About.com and is a guest expert for Ultra Light Startups–a forum for technology entrepreneurs.