Ninjas, gurus and other authorities in the arena of social media have been preaching about community and engagement since its inception, and rather than go into a discussion of Leonardo Di Caprio’s career or what the number 528491 means, I thought that, due to some news from a certain company based in Oregon, it would be apropos to give an example that any business can review, borrow or flat out use to its advantage.

The company being referenced is NIKE, Inc. – a company which has only recently adopted the technique of communicating with customers using the full suite of popular social media channels company-wide. While their lack of official presence in the social media world may have baffled some for a while, the one major understanding NIKE had (and has) is of the importance of community. Many of NIKE’s footwear have become must-have items in pop culture. Air Jordans, Dunks, Air Force Ones and the like have huge followings and when news of a new release is dropped, throngs of brand advocates show up to the nearest shoe store to become customers once again. Recent history has shown that the broadcast of such news has been through social media outlets by influencers, insiders and fans and now NIKE is positioned to distribute this knowledge directly.

To show off their newest digital presence in the U.S., NIKE has introduced Twitter RSVP to assist in the management of their product launches at physical, brick-and-mortar Nike Stores. Sneaker enthusiasts simply:

• follow their nearest Nike (owned) Store on Twitter;
• watch for the store to send an RSVP tweet on the designated RSVP day; and
• respond via direct message with the product specific hashtag, last four digits of their ID number and shoe size.

Those who respond within sixty minutes of said tweet are eligible and the footwear is awarded on a “first respond, first serve” basis. Confirmed recipients, then pick up their kicks on the day of the store launch at the specified timeframe in person and with proof of ID.

Do you see what they did there?

They’ve engaged their community using a particular social media channel, added a contest/goal-oriented atmosphere in order to gather response from the audience ultimately concluding with a sale. No, that was not a random amalgam of business related buzz terms—this is the purpose of social media marketing.

While it is true that many companies may not be able to see the ROI of their social media campaign as immediately as a company such as Nike, what we must look at is the process and how it works. The strength of this community is what made this campaign possible and social media is a great way to build a group like this. Through social media you can be empathetic with your community; you can listen to the good and the bad to make your product and experience better; you can further engage with insiders, enthusiasts and advocates. All of these activities help build trust in your brand and that is the most effective way for the sales process to begin. Additionally, these digital activities, along with your direct mail, advertising, face-to-face and other forms of communication bring something even more important to the table when done correctly: lifetime customer value—and isn’t that what we ultimately want?

I know I do.

The Nike Swoosh is a registered trademark of, owned by and the property of NIKE, Inc.

This ultimately gives me an idea of a competitor’s link building strategies, what’s successful, and how I can exploit it for my own benefit. More often than not, this will also help synthesize content strategies (to complement link building efforts) and is a great precursor to identifying the keywords we will use alongside search operators (like intitle:, inurl:, allinanchor, etc.).

Queue the almighty spreadsheet! Yes – an Achilles heel to creativity but a marketer’s best friend to data analysis. First –export a competitor’s backlink data using a “Pro” account from Open Site Explorer (there is a free trial available). Another free “link exporter” can be found at LinkDiagnosis.com (install the Firefox extension for more robust reporting). Tip: be sure to export links from all pages on the root domain as this will give us backlink data for internal pages as well as the homepage.

Format the data to a table. This will make it easier to sort the data and apply formulas en masse.

 Sort by Anchor Text.  This is a great way to quickly identify where link building efforts around target keywords are taking place.  Make note of the groups of anchor text that are keyword focused.  In other words, look for groups of anchor text that exclude the company name.

Sort by Landing Page URL.  I usually find this to be the most efficient way for spotting trends.  After all, it is a dead giveaway on which internal pages are getting links.  An important level of distinction however, lies in whether those links are a result of great content or through general outreach.  The former will better tip you on a link building strategy and the underlying content that is link-worthy.

Sort by .EDU / .Gov / .Org.  This can be done by selecting the entire column of backlinks and then utilizing the “Conditional Formatting” feature in Excel.  Create a new formatting rule for each domain extension.  For example, format the cells that contain specific text containing “.edu.”

Then format the text to a specific color and sort the column by the desired color.  This will give you an idea of any .edu link citations and patterns that coincide.

 Sort by File Path (Text-To-Columns).  In order to sort by file path, we’ll need to convert all the backlinks to columns within Excel.  For this I recommend copying the backlinks into a separate column and removing all instances of “http://www.” and “http://”. The “Text to Columns” feature can be found under the ‘Data’ tab.  Use the backslash (“/”) as a delimiter.

Segmenting and then sorting the file paths will give us a bird’s eye view of any link patterns. Using this method, I’m often able to quickly spot and organize links from blogs, articles, forums, feeds, link pages, magazines, news sources, etc.

Overall, these four approaches will help uncork dozens of link building strategies in a short amount of time. For instance, in recent months I was able to quickly spot some of the following strategies:

• EDU links obtained through donating to and/or sponsoring university clubs or their peripheral sport teams (i.e. fraternities, chess club, ski teams).
• Allowing bloggers and other relevant publishers to utilize your unique images in return for a link.
• Participating in discussion forums hosted by universities.
• Making it easier for EDU’s to associate with your website by offering an educational grant or college scholarship.
• Creating useful online tools that are free to use (ie. calculators, drop boxes, image editors).

Most of these strategies are widely known but taking this macro approach to analyzing backlink profiles is a great way to ensure your own long-term strategy isn’t lacking. It is also important to note that you can (and should) take this approach beyond direct competitors. Some of the strongest strategies may live in spaces outside your specific niche – so analyzing a non-competitor in a highly competitive industry (like travel or finance) is a great way to gain an edge on additional link building strategies.

* The following post originally appeared on the BFM blog in 2010.

A few members of the Blue Fountain Media team asked me to put together a few tips for landing page optimization, so I figured why not go all the way and make an extensive list of tips all in one place.

What I am considering as a landing page here is a page that resides outside of your website, as a page to send targeted traffic, typically from advertising. I have grouped my tips by “principles”, “elements”, “writing”, and “design”. You will find that there is some repetition since some of the tips refer to general principles of landing pages.

If you have more to add, please comment on the post or @reply me on Twitter!

Principles

• As Loveday and Niehaus note in Web Design for ROI, your landing page is like an ambassador, concierge, and superstar salesperson rolled into one. “It’s been carefully crafted to meet, assist, and convert visitors into customers.”
• Your landing page should correspond to whatever the intent of the user is as they visit the page.
• Your landing page should look legitimate.
• Your landing page should be built keeping in mind what the user wants to see, not what you want them to see. Answer the question, “what does my audience really care about?”
• Your landing page should satisfy user expectations.
• Your landing page should reflect your business goals.
• Your landing page should be able to perform the entire sales process. That means offering something that interests the user, keeps them on the page, and makes them want to take an action such as fill out a form or pay.
• Your landing page should capture a visitor’s attention quickly. You only have a few seconds from the moment a user lands on the page to when they click the “back” button.
• Build your landing page assuming that it’s the first time they’ve heard of your company.
• Your landing page should be a continuation of your advertising. Keep your messaging and call to action consistent from your ad to your landing page.
• Your landing page should keep any promises made by your advertising.
• Make the landing page appear personalized to the user.
• Show, don’t tell.
• Although not a landing pages per se, consider every page on your regular website as a landing page – each with a mission to move the visitor along down the path you have chosen.
• Don’t assume anything – always be testing.
• Good design helps support good content.
• Test every element of your landing page to continually improve conversion rates.
• Show your landing page to many different people to get feedback.
• Reduce the options on the page – there should only be one or two ways out (besides the back and close buttons).
• Track all interactions with your landing page through event and conversion funnel tracking.
• Track times of day and results associated to each hour/day.
• Create separate landing pages for each source of traffic. This will really help with tracking.
• Choose the right type of landing page: contest signup, ebook/whitepaper download, register for an event/webinar, consultation request, discount coupon, start a free trial, be notified of a launch, get a gift through the mail.
• If you are advertising for both desktop and mobile devices, ensure that you have separate pages for handle each type of device in an optimal fashion. An iPhone user should not be sent to a page that has been built for a desktop computer.
• Create different landing pages and offers for different sizes and types of potential clients. One size does not fit all.

Elements

• Highlight benefits, instead of just listing features.
• Provide positive feedback, testimonials, awards, certifications from well-known sources and satisfied customers. Do not go overboard here – curate your list to display the most convincing positive re-enforcement
• Give your customers a clear call to action.
• Use a secondary call to action in the case that visitors are not ready to go through with your primary call to action.
• Give an off-line alternative to users such as a phone number.
• Include videos if they help explain an idea. Otherwise, use an image that can perform the same task.
• Display security badges such as Verisign, eTrust, and McAfee
• On viral landing pages, make sure that you treat your share options as though they were secondary calls to action.
• Give away something useful and relevant on your confirmation page.
• Show a phone number and address.
• Don’t use pop-ups.
• If your page has audio, mute it by default with a clear way to turn up the sound.

Design

• Test your landing page in multiple browsers to ensure that it maintains its professionalism.
• Make your design appropriate for your industry. When you’re trying to sell financial services, don’t use glittering, pink bears in your background image.
• Get rid of the main navigation you would typically find on your website.
• Simplify your design to reduce distractions and place the focus on the specific offer, product, or service that you are selling.
• Don’t supersize your logo. Your landing page is about your offer, not your company.
• If you are doing banner advertising to send traffic to a page, use similar imagery on your landing page as is used in the banner ad.
• Use fewer images, but be selective. Choose images that make a convincing point.
• Bold keywords in sentences for people who skim through text.
• Repeat your call to action throughout your page if it requires scrolling so always provide a next step for the visitor.
• Avoid “false bottoms”, or design elements that make it look like a user has reached the bottom of a page. Break up those elements with an image or a title so as to indicate continued content below the fold.
• Do not ask for more information than is absolutely necessary from your users.
• Make page elements look like what they are. If a button is a button, make it look like one, otherwise don’t make images that are not clickable, look clickable. Same goes for links. Be very obvious with all page elements and use conventions.
• Look at your competitors and ask yourself what you would change about their landing pages.
• Keep elements that are critical to conversions in the upper 300 pixels of the page. Most users will not scroll past the fold.
• Use ample white space between content to encourage reading.
• Make your page load fast.
• Keep in mind the F-Shaped pattern in which users tend to read web content.
• Use the same colors, fonts, and styles in your landing page as you did in your ad.
• Place most important messages closer to middle of page, secondary information in sidebars.
• Make your web form easy to complete. If possible, place the cursor into the first field, allow for tabbing from field to field, avoid dropdowns – only use radio buttons, and – whenever possible – auto-populate fields.
• If you are using Google AdWords and your page relies heavily on images, make sure you have search engine-readable text that matches your ad copy. This is for Quality Score purposes.
• If there is ancillary information that may take up a lot of space and should only be shown to those who really want to see, use either on-hover info bubbles or daughter windows.
• Super-size buttons. You do want people clicking on them, right?
• When there is a form involved, be sure to highlight benefits directly in relation to the form, next to the form.
• Give the eye one thing to focus on.
• Use color to make your call to action stand out.

Writing

• Write copy that is grammatically correct. This is key for legitimacy and credibility.
• Match your landing page call to action to what was used in your advertising.
• Match your landing page language to your advertising. That means that tone, vocabulary, and style should remain consistent.
• If your landing page is being used to convert visits from an email marketing campaign, use the customer’s name in the copy and try to personalize the message as much as possible.
• Only focus on answering your customers’ most pertinent questions – rather than listing every detail about your service/product.
• Write in the second person. Don’t write about “we”, write about “you” (the customer).
• Deliver a persuasive message, not a demonstration of your creativity.
• Use long copy for sales and shorter copy for non-committal conversions. It’s much easier to convince someone to sign up for a free newsletter than to purchase a yearly subscription.
• If your copy is long, make sure that it is consistently building a case for your conversion goal.
• Place your most important points at the beginning of sentences and your most important sentences at the beginning of paragraphs and your most important paragraphs at the beginning of sections. You get the idea.
• Place your second most persuasive arguments at the bottom of large sections as users tend to look at the beginning of sections and ends of sections, while skipping the middle.
• Write keeping in mind screen resolutions and what text will be seen above vs below the fold.
• Answer the question “how long will this take?”
• Answer the questions “why?”
• Answer the question “what?”
• Provide numbers that are impressive.
• Keep paragraphs at no longer than 3 lines.
• Express one idea per paragraph.
• Use localized content to geo-target users.
• If you’re giving away something for free and asking for a signup, then give away some of whatever is behind the signup directly on the landing page.
• Use less text and make each word count.

If you are interested in learning more about tools that will help you with conversion optimization take a look at this video:

Conversion Optimization Tools

Take a close look at the following metrics associated with the Web’s latest wunderkind:

• 1.36 million visitors per day.
• 2,702.2% increase in unique visitors over the past ten months.
• 68.2% female users.
• 44.7% of users aged 18-34.

Sound like an audience you’d like to get in touch with? If you want to tap into the fastest growing social network to date, Pinterest has 12 million users who are ready and waiting. The ever-growing and uber-addicted Pinterest fans have taken this virtual bulletin board from a lowly startup to Internet darling in only two years.

If you think Pinterest is only for soccer moms and wedding planners, you’re missing out on a largely-untapped audience of consumers. While the middle-aged female demographic largely overwhelms the site’s userbase, Pinterest’s rapid growth pattern indicates that it is far from done attracting users.

Ready to get pinning? Here are 8 essential (and easy!) steps to be successful on Pinterest:

1. Jump on the bandwagon. As we’ve established, this is one social media channel that is absolutely worth getting involved in. Already have an account? Great! Not signed up yet? Leave your email address in the comments below to get an invite.

2. Create killer boards. Establish boards that focus on lifestyles, not products. Dig deep and decide what the real ethos of your company is, and then create a board that projects your given character trait. Whole Foods gets to the heart of their consumers’ eco-friendly attitudes with a “We’re Used to Reusing!” board while the Travel Channel appeals to followers’ sense of adventure with “Daily Escapes.” Centering boards around a specific feeling or style (which may or may not happen to include your company’s products) will be far more effective than attempting to make one more sales pitch.

3. Link your accounts. Link your Pinterest account to a personal or company Facebook Timeline where your pins will be housed in a Pinterest app. All of your recent pins will appear in one consolidated Pinterest box on your Timeline which makes it easy for your fans to click through from one profile to another.

4. Beef up your captions. The success of an individual pin (determined by the level of engagement it receives) can be predicted almost solely upon the level of visual interest it offers. However, these images will be seen without any of the context provided on their original pages. A caption that captures the interesting/alluring/charming nature of the photo will increase its “sharability.” While you don’t need to provide a web address (it automatically appears under the photo when pinned), include a dollar amount in the caption and Pinterest will add a price tag to the image.

5. Check your existing footprint. Big brands and sites with lots of existing photography may likely already have some of their content “pinned” across user profiles. See if your images, products or photos have caught the eye of pinners by using the following URL (replace “yoursitename.com” with your homepage’s address): http://pinterest.com/source/yoursitename.com/.

6. Reward top pinners. One of the coolest (and also most under-utilized) features of Pinterest is the ability to create collaborative boards with your followers. If tip #5 resulted in a list of people who have regularly posted content from your site, create a board on your profile dedicated to these brand ambassadors. To do so: 1) Follow the profiles of your top users. It doesn’t matter if they follow you back 2) Create a new board or edit an existing one and next to “Who can pin?” select “Me + Contributors” 3) In the field that appears, begin typing the name of your desired contributor; click on their name when it appears 4) Save settings and you’re done! Your board will now appear on your profile as well as the profiles of all contributors. Contributor boards work best when there is a unifying theme for everyone to collaborate around, such as this “Critic’s Corner” board where contributors write reviews of recipes found on Pinterest.

7. Embrace keyword usage. Pinterest’s search function is heavily utilized, especially for recipes, home goods, decorating, style and event planning. If your area of expertise lies anywhere in these domains, it is especially important to include relevant keywords in your captions. A Mashable post from last month announced that Pinterest is driving more referral traffic than YouTube, Google+ or LinkedIn, reinforcing the potential of Pinterest to send high-value visits directly to your product pages.

8. Make your content Pinnable. Anyone who has spent more than five minutes cruising through Pinterest boards will get a definitely feel for the community’s sense of style. If you don’t already, make sure to include engaging, interesting photos on your website and blog which lend themselves to the network’s vibe. While people are able to pin images from any website, adding a “Pin It” button to images adds a subtle invitation for web visitors to share your content.

Have more “Pin-teresting” tips to share? Leave them in the comments below!

Trends in Web design have a tendency to come and go. Responsive Web design, however, is looking more and more like one of those trends that will one day become an industry standard.

Responsive design is the concept of developing a website design in a way that helps the layout to change according to the user’s computer screen resolution. It affects layout (including menus), image/video size, and now even the amount of text you can view on a page as the browser size is reduced. The result are sites that aim to keep the most important elements on screen and prioritized, no matter the browser size and orientation. It’s three most essential elements are:

• Fluid Layouts
• Flexible Images
• Media Queries

With many different approaches, methods and variables at varying levels of adoption and use, it is easy to become confused about the purpose and benefit of responsive design. As Web specialists, we need to understand its value from a design, development and marketing point of view and how using it can create value for clients. Before employing or adopting a responsive design there are several key components that need to be understood:

• Design Process
• Development Considerations
• SEO Impact

 Design Process

Designing a website is a complicated process. Adding a responsive element makes that an even more complicated process –  a desktop site is now the same site that will be viewed also on tablets and mobile devices, except it will look much different. This means that when a site is designed to be responsive, it requires two additional designs: one for tablet size resolution (smaller than 980px wide) and another for mobile devices. Below is a look at The Boston Globe’s use of responsive design below, which is an incredibly text heavy site.

Conversely, a website designed for the Clean Air Challenge has a drastically different look, as the site has different goals and is much more image driven.

Each of these layouts requires a re-prioritization of the content that is displayed on the screen based on the sites established goals as the browser size changes. An ecommerce site with a large complicated navigation menu that is essential for user experience will need to be reconsidered for mobile display.

The fact that your design will be scaled down into a mobile version must always be kept in mind as you are working; including the impact this size change will have on fonts, calls to action, menus, navigation, forms, and other essential site elements.

Development Considerations

As shown above, there are a variety of ways Responsive Design can be applied to a websites layout. This means there are also a variety of development methods to be used. Each application of responsive requires different development processes and approaches. You must also keep in mind that code used is going to be altering the layout of one site to fit the dimensions of three different devices (desktop, tablet, and mobile). Developers need to move away from pixel specific dimensions in layout and adopt and embrace using percentage values in front end CSS files. Absolute values and fixed positions need to be abandoned in favor or flexible layouts, and images need to implemented in ways where the file sizes are kept to a minimum to assist in mobile site load times not being adversely affected. Developers must also consider how external files such as CSS and JavaScript are being accessed so as to not get in the way of site load times. For example, a mobile site has little use for the CSS that controls a Desktop version, but a Desktop version could be re-sized on a monitor to reflect the mobile design. Each project will have its own development hurdles that need to be clearly defined at the outset.

 SEO Impact

Search Engine Optimization is a huge part of what makes for a successful website. It is not worth building a website that cannot be found through an Internet search. This means that SEO objectives must be kept in line with design and development of Responsive sites. Luckily Responsive design lends itself to good SEO, if done correctly. Having all browsers access one site in different layouts instead of three different sites, is better from an SEO perspective. Developing multiple sites can dilute SEO performance because the three of them compete against each other for traffic. So, why not send all users on any device to the same site? This removes the need for re-directs, allows mobile site users to share links that rank easily via social media outlets, and prevents mobile sites from stealing search equity from Desktop versions.

Responsive Design creates more engaging user experiences, benefits SEO, and eliminates the need for multiple site versions for each platform or device. But it is still a new practice, and its adoption needs to clearly understood and assessed on a case by case basis. The process of design, development, and optimization will be affected in many ways, depending on the scale and complexity of your web design project. You may even find that your content does not lend itself to Responsive Design and that using it as a method would not benefit your sites goals. Any of the items discussed in this article could be easily extrapolated further, and there are myriad factors to keep in mind before moving ahead with a Responsive Design. For more information on development methods, general best practices, and live examples check out the following articles on responsive design.

Check out these additional resources:

General Best Practices and Examples
Responsive Design Process
Development Methods and Tutorials
SEO Considerations

For example, let’s say you’ve got a client that has a dozen domains that need to be monitored; each with its own unique analytics to measure. At this point, you’re talking about a lot data to check, verify and monitor. And all this must be done before you can even think about creating an action plan to improve performance. The ability to share this type of information – custom reports, advanced segments and dashboards –  would definitely go a long way in streamlining your efforts.

Google is obviously paying attention to marketers complaints. Last week the search giant upgraded Analytics’ existing custom report sharing and added the ability to share advanced segments and dashboards with other Analytics users, making life a bit easier and definitely more organized.

Here a a few tips to consider when looking for the Share button in these sections:

• Custom Report: In the Actions menu on the table that lists your reports.
• Dashboard: In the top-left corner over your dashboard.
• Advanced Segment: Visit the Admin tab in the top right corner of your account, then select Advanced Segments to enable sharing.

The button will bring up a URL that you can send to anyone, or even publish on your blog.

If you’re like the rest of us, you’re probably concerned with sharing traffic data with just anybody. No need to worry, however, because sharing this link will only share a template, not your site’s metrics. What it does provide a user is the dashboard name, widgets and data fields to be populated with data from their Analytics account.

When you or someone else opens the link, they will be prompted to choose a profile in which to import the custom report, advanced segment or dashboard. They will also have the option to change the name. After that is complete they will see the template populated with data from their account.

Below are five steps to help improve any of your analytics process.

It is important to note that links to shared templates are permanent snapshots that, once shared, allows you to change or delete a dashboard in your account. This will not change the experience for anyone using the previously shared link.

Basic blog dashboard: If you’re working on a blog you can use this dashboard to keep tabs on where readers come from and what they do once they arrive on the site.

Mobile ecommerce dashboard: If you’re getting into mobile commerce (and really, who isn’t these days?) use this dashboard to get an end-to-end view of your customer experience.

Site Performance dashboard:This dashboard contains various speed metrics to help identify issues with your pages or servers. The IT team will like this one.

Engaged Traffic advanced segment: This advanced segment measures traffic that views at least three pages AND spends more than three minutes on your site.

Daily Ecommerce report: Use this report to keep tabs on all parts of the ecommerce lifecycle: acquisition, engagement and conversion in one single table.

So in that spirit we’ve put together a list of the 50 “Best Of” lists covering the online marketing space. Note: Rankings are divided by categories and numbers are only used to prove that we got to 50.

Online Marketing

1. The marketing nerds over at, well at Marketing Nerds, rank the 50 Best Mobile Marketing Blogs You Aren’t Reading Yet. My personal favorite: Flash Widgets blog. Nice stuff geeks!

2. I’ve got 99 problems but finding a blog ain’t one. At least not when I’m viewing Wikio’s list of the 99 Top Online Marketing Blogs. Sorry Jay-Z.

3. Gyutae Park’s Winning the Web website uses Alexa, PageRank, Technorati and Feedburner among other metrics to measure its Internet Marketing Top Blogs. Total number: 370.

4 . The ad industry’s publication of record, AdvertisingAge, has compiled its Power 150 - a daily ranking of the Web’s top marketing blogs.

5. Kaiser The Sage’s (AKA marketing consultant Jason Acidre) has produced his  Top 90 Online Marketing Blogs. He’s obviously been busy.

6. Nicholas Einstein has put together a genius (I know, lame) guide to practical online marketing blogs. It is called Top 10 Practical Online Marketing Blogs.

7. Yvette Pistorio, senior supervisor of Media Research and Beth Blanchard, supervisor of Media Research at Cision teamed to unleash a list of the Top 100 Social Media and Internet Marketing Blogs.

8. The little guys need some love too. That’s why DIYSEO has given us the Best SMB Marketing Blogs: The Definitive List of Small Business Marketing Blogs. Check it out.

9. The team at Blogstorm say a good deal of  blog ranking tables created recently use the hugely inaccurate and outdated Google PageRank as a method of measuring success. Their solution? A table that uses Alexa Rank and Technorati Rank to calculate the popularity of each site. The result is Top 100 SEO & Internet Marketing Blogs.

10. HubSpot created the Hot 100 Marketing Blogs list in order to make it easy for people to discover these top Internet marketing blogs. “We’re continually collecting 3rd party data for several thousand blogs that cover Internet marketing topics.”

11. The Top 20 Digital Marketing Blogs from Sparxoo. The first five below:

• Seth Godin - Of course we had to add one of the most famous marketing gurus of all time.
• Hard Knox Life – Dave Knox brings fresh perspective to digital marketing trends and overall marketing strategy.
• Guy Kawasaki – Guy Kawasaki shares his incredible insights from years of experience at Apple and other leading companies.
• Chris Brogan – Chris Brogan, a social marketing guru, posts the latest insights for marketers.
• AdRants - Steve Hall takes no prisoners in his reviews of the latest ad campaigns.
• Ads of the World – Want inspiration? Check out creative minds from around the world.

12. The 100 Best Marketing Blogs from Cool Marketing Stuff. Direct and to the point, the list from Cool Marketing Stuff is as comprehensive as it is complete.

13. The Big List of Search Engine Marketing & Optimization Blog from Top Rank has it all from blogs that cover SEO and PPC to blog marketing, marketing with social media, content marketing and online public relations. The collection of over 400 SEO and Online Marketing related blogs is assembled by the staff at TopRank Online Marketing.

Search Engine Optimization

14. Daily Blog Tips The Top 25 SEO Blogs list ranks the blogs according to their Google PageRank, Alexi rank, number of Bloglines subscribers and Technorati authority. Somewhere the team at Blogstorm (#9) are shaking their heads.

15. Usually “can’t misses” are reserved for baseball prospects and political candidates, but when 43blogtips put together 18 SEO Posts That You Must Read they obviously had done some serious scouting. Informative and  entertaining these articles are among the best on the Web. Nice job guys.

16. This SEO Linking Building Guide to the best SEO linking building articles (wait, didn’t i just say that?) has it all. Case studies, organic link building tips directly from Google and a great piece by Search Engine Watch about backward link building. My favorite: The 30-minute-a-day link Building Plan from iMedia Connection. Now if only someone could come up with the 29-minute-a-day link Building Plan.

17. It wouldn’t be a 50 Best of List without a Top 10 offering. So here goes: The team at top-10lists.com has offered their opinions on the 10 Best Learning SEO Learning Websites. I think they got it right.

18. Mashable. I’ve heard of these guys. Mollie Vandor just this month weighed in with her excellent 20+ Essential Resources for Improving Your SEO Skills. From beginner (SEO for Dummies) to advance placement degree (Matt Cutts) she’s got it all covered and that’s why Mollie finds herself among the Best of the Best.

Social Media

19. Even a newbie marketer can appreciate a good social media campaign. Nearly everyone has seen one and many of us have been party to one whether we realized it or not. Forbes.com pulls together a great pictorial of the Best-Ever! Social Media Campaigns. Spoiler alert: The Blair Witch Project comes in at #1. Pretty impressive considering it was among the first social media efforts way back in the day (1999).

20. Not to be outdone, social marketing and media blog The Wall decided to go the distance with 40 more and release the Top 50 Social Media Campaigns. Oddly enough, The Blair Witch Project doesn’t even crack the top 50. Guess these lists are a bit subjective. Plus, with these guys being British and all they may have missed that buzz way back when. Still enjoyed their list.

21. Of course, you can’t even say social media these days without wondering what Marc Zuckerburg is doing for lunch. Social Media Examiner apparently also has the Zuck-bug and decided to create a 10 Top Facebook Pages post. Number 1? Red Bull. Apparently they are in tune with their audience.

22. In the case of Smart Blog, the best means the worst: as in Jesse Stanchack of SmartBlog on Social Media put together the best Worst of list this year about The Suxorz Picks the Worst Social Media Moves. Among the gems: Dell’s “Dr. Ashley” campaign, Volkswagen’s “Sluggy Patterson” character, Cisco’s “Ted from Accounting” videos and Smirnoff Ice’s handling of the “Bros Icing Bros” phenomenon.

23. Stephanie Klein of Blogs.com offered up the Top 10 Undervalued Social Media Marketing Blogs while providing several links to each blog’s recent articles. Nice work, Stephanie.

24. Using eCairn Conversation(tm), software technology company eCairn generated the Top 150 Blog Posts. The top five?  Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang, Brian Solis, Seth’s Blog and Social Media Explorer.  There must be something to the eCairn Conversation chart. I think these guys are on to something.

25. Alright, so maybe Social Media Explorer’s 19 Best Social Media Practices is a little outside our purview, but I liked it so its here.

26. And a bonus from those same guys at unlucky number 13. The Top 10 Social Media Blogs of 2011 (and it’s not even over yet!).

Going Viral

27. According to the crew at ProspectMX,  a  viral campaign is a marketing blitz that essentially creates a pitch which is cool and interesting enough that consumers will spread it on its own. Well said. And with that in mind their 15 Best Viral Marketing Campaigns put together an interesting list mixing the old (there’s that Blair Witch again) and new (Old Spice guy).

28. Fall is officially here and the team at Social Times decided to celebrate fall’s arrival with 30 of The Best Viral Videos of Summer 2011. All 30 on this list have resulted in over 1 million views and have resulted in tons of conversions, accoridng to Social Times. Check them out.

Email Marketing

30. And Tamara Gielen at Blogs.com was nice enough to drop her Top 10 Email Marketing Blogs post on us earlier this year. Living is learning.

Pay-Per-Click Blogs

31. Pay-per-click success takes a good deal of focus. Tom Demers at BoostCTR keeps his eye on the ball with his list: The Best PPC Blog – The Definitive List of Pay-Per Click Blogs. Among my favorites: The Certified Knowledge Blog (Formerly bgTheory), Bryan Eisenberg and PPC Blog & PPC Training Community.

32. Want to succeed in a big way? Of course you do and Kronik Media was kind enough to provide a list of Top 15 Blogs You Should Follow to Succeed on The Internet. Read it here and succeed there (wherever there may be for you).

Conversions

33. It’s all about the conversions these days and Kristi Hines at Kikolani put together the most comprehensive 50+ Awesome Posts on Conversions for Unboucne. According to Kristi, there’s something for everyone, from blogging to social media, landing pages to squeeze pages, increasing conversions vs. conversion killers, design, and more!

Web Design

34. The team at InstantShift believes one of the best ways to survey the evolution of Web design over a number of years is to compare different versions of websites. So they decided on taking a look at 15+ Inspirational Examples of Website Redesign.  The results: an interesting comparison of redesigned websites to their earlier incarnations.

35. 9 Best Modern Web Design Tutorials and Articles from Skyje.com identifies the distinctive features that make a modern Web design interesting, appealing and easy to use.

36. Once again Daily Blog Tips served up a top 25 list based based on the analysis on Google’s Pagerank, Alexa rank, Bloglines subscribers and Technorati authority. This time its Top 25 Web Design Blogs.

37. What’s better than a Top 25 Web Design Blogs? How about a Top 30 Web Design Blogs? Well the creative online journal for design Web enthusiasts, Web Design Dev, has given us just that. And the extra five go a long way.

38. 50 Best Web Design Blogs You Aren’t Reading Yet from WWWdesigns Blog. What are you waiting for?

39. We’ve covered the Best, the Top and even the Worst and now we a finally have a Must: 29 Web Design Blogs You Must Follow from [Re]Encoded. Here is a list of the 29 best Web design blogs to subscribe to. “The web design industry is always changing, so as a web designer, it is important to always be ahead of the curve.” Totally.

40. WordPress is a great CMS and the guys at Web Design Fan have provided us with the 20 Best WordPress Tutorial Blogs. Enjoy!

Guerrilla Marketing

41. A firm with the name Creative Guerilla Marketing should know a thing or two about Guerilla Marketing. And they do. Check out The 15 Best Guerrilla Marketing Campaign Example Videos.

42. Ryan Lum, founder and editor of Creative Guerrilla Marketing, delivers again with 10 of the Best Guerrilla Marketing Blogs the Web has to offer.

43. Designer Daily’s 20 Creative Guerrilla Marketing Campaigns proves that it is still possible for creative agencies to make ads that stand out. These 20 certainly do.

Content Marketing blogs

44. The Junta42 Top 42 Content Marketing Blogs list highlights the best bloggers on the Web discussing content marketing. Each blog on the list has been rated by the  staff in terms of content strength, depth, regularity and, to a very small extent, popularity.

Affiliate marketing

45. Hey Geno Prussakov: Nice work.  Want to know something about affiliate marketing? Check out Geno’s Afilliate Marketing Blog’s Top 25 Affiliate Marketing Blog Posts.

46. From Affiliate Top 50: The Top 50 Affiliate Marketing And Make Money Online Blogs In The World. More money, more money,  more money.

The Best Songs

47. One of my personal favorites 7 Awesome SEO and Social Media Songs. Sorry, had to do it.

48. Hey, these guys had a song on my Top SEO song list. Now they’ve landed on my Best of the Best list. This British SEO throws down  with its TOP 5 SEO songs. And unlike me, they don’t put themselves on their own list.

Landing pages

49. Marketers are becoming more and more interested in measuring the ROI of social media.  According to eMarketer, four out of five US businesses with at least 100 employees will be using social media for their marketing efforts this year.  This makes measuring the effects of these marketing efforts even more important. That is why HubSpot Blogs created 20 Examples of Great Facebook Fan Pages.

50. If beauty is truely in the eye of the beholder this list is arbitrary. But we are talking design here people and KISSmetrics’ 5 Beautiful Landing Pages That Prove Great Design Still Sells demonstrates that beauty can indeed be judged.

If your job has anything to do with social media and if you only woke up today, you’ve already heard about the new Facebook Pages roll out which may be better known as Brand Timeline. The redesign has had the business world all a-twitter already, but what we really need to know is how this new iteration is changing the way we use Facebook as a brand. Here are seven characteristics which should be highlighted when putting together your new Facebook campaign:

1. The Cover Photo. This is your chance to express your brand’s identity. The phrase a picture is worth a thousand words may be cliché at times, however, in this situation it rings true. The visual power of this 850px x 315px space allows you to creatively showcase your product, service or even brand culture.

2. The Profile Picture. This was once the area on the old Facebook Pages where we were able to show our creativity. We would, at times, use this image as an area to keep people interested and engaged with our “fans”—changing the visual with each sub-campaign. Now this is the suggested area for the logo. This is because this image is the one that will be shared across Facebook when it comes to Offers, Reach Generator and Premium services all of which have to do with the new way Facebook will serve their Stories and ads.

3. Views and Apps. Nobody panic, your tabs have not completely gone away. They’ve changed the way users view them in this area of the new Facebook Pages. You have four (4) boxes that act as the first four tabs on your old page. From what we understand thus far, you can order the boxes and also create customized images to draw more attention to your Facebook App.

4. The Mystical Floating Bar. While that may not be the actual name of it, when scrolling down the page, this bar will give the user the ability to have a handle on Views and Apps through the Timeline dropdown menu, shuffle through content by month and year with the Now dropdown and view Highlights without scrolling back up to the top.

5. Friend Activity. Not only can users see how their friends are engaging with your brand page, they have a better idea of who likes your brand page lending more trust and more potential engagement on Facebook. People trust friends.

6. Bigger Stories. The ability to have larger format pictures simply looks better. Users will appreciate this fact. Additionally, you can use the edit function in the upper right-hand corner of the post to Pin your post which anchors important stories to the top of a Page for seven days, or Star your story which gives your post in even larger exposure—doubling the width of said image.

7. Milestones. Here’s your chance to identify key moments of time in your brand. If your brand has something nostalgic that you do not yet have on Facebook, simply go ahead and backdate it so it makes sense. If you have milestones already on Facebook that are not highlighted, go ahead and highlight it. Simply go ahead and use the Composer Bar when adding a post and right before posting it, select Milestone.

There’s one take away from all of this well-deserved hullabaloo. The new Facebook Pages is in no way a substitute for prudent strategy. Content still matters. Context still matters. The tool has changed and has added more visualization making it easier on the eye. Designers rejoice you have more room for creativity. Marketers take heed – you’re still needed just as you were before, your tool has been upgraded.

Enter the Owl

We don’t spend a lot on retargeting (it costs very little to target our audience), but it is a major area of opportunity. And I hate lost opportunities. I decided to use some humor and found the image of a small, inquisitive-looking owl, wearing a straw hat. To that, I added a few lines that a used car salesman would throw out, provided by fellow BFMers David Dweck, Matthew Smith, and Bill Ryan. In the end, the ads appeared to work, increasing average CTRs to over 0.3%, a relatively good number for our campaign. Here are the ads that I created, which got us immediately more responses, and ultimately, more conversions.

We created a number of ads that peaked the curiosity of our audience. Many clients called in saying how entertaining it was to be followed around by an owl. That was the first time we’d received such praise for ads.

There were multiple sizes created so that we could have two different messages sometimes show up on the same page.

The free leather upgrade really got people clicking.

We made light of the fact that we were “following” people around. The “I am not following you” banner had the highest click-through-rate.

We marked current events with the ads: after the earthquake on the East Coast, we created an ad referring to it, as well as during hurricane Irene.

All of these ads sent users to this landing page. Notice the continuity in the usage of the owl.

The results

As a result of our “owl” campaign, click-through rates increased dramatically, while conversion rates remained surprisingly steady. I was sure they would drop. What did drop were the percentage of view-through conversions. This could be attributed to audience saturation or the lack of strong branding on the owl ads.

As with our previous campaign, I’ll soon need to update our current owl campaign to feature more diversity. I will test something else out and write about it here. Last time I mentioned how I was able to increase form fills on our Request a Quote page.

If you have any suggestions about what I could test out in retargeting or elsewhere on the Blue Fountain Media website, please let me know via Twitter (@alhankeser).

Large-scale events like Super Bowl XLVI –  where the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots – and the 54th Annual GRAMMYs always bring people together, and the popular social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter only serve to magnify this certainty.

Beverly Jackson, director of marketing/social media for The GRAMMYs, stopped by Social Media Week to give all who would listen the lowdown on how they received 13 million tweets on GRAMMY night.

I hope you’re listening too.

They Are Music

The GRAMMYs made sure to begin with a comprehensive plan of attack built around this year’s theme, We Are Music, and their first point of identification was based on this belief: when thinking of how viewers will be watching The GRAMMYs, remember that they are always viewing at least two screens. By realizing that their audience will have  eyes on at least the television and a computer, the ability increases to forge and organize a social media plan that would be sure to engage and communicate with the millions of viewers.

By understanding how the audience would view their program, they concluded  it was important to have multiple channels on which  people could consume the product online. The GRAMMY plan consisted of five hashtags and pages across the social Web. All instances were branded in some way to add consistency and clarity. Additionally, they sent the details of their plan to record labels and other music companies and organizations linked to the recording artists as possible. Knowing the artists would tweet during the GRAMMYs, they wanted to make sure that those artists were on board and in concert (no pun intended) with The GRAMMY plan.

The connection did not end there. While the well-known, popular social media campaigns took place, GRAMMY Live –  designed for those who chose or had to watch the program on mobile devices –  was taking place. These correspondents covered the event in real time and also had open lines of communications with those viewers through Twitter and Facebook. GRAMMY Live was accompanied by other mobile apps containing segment countdowns as well as other engagement points.

Tweesults

We are now in a time where measuring many social media results is a matter of Twittermetrics, and although I don’t believe they will replace the Nielsen numbers anytime soon, these metrics represent the lion’s share of the measurement of success.

• 3.9 Million explicit mentions of  The GRAMMYs. This does not include artist or presenter mentions.
• According to Social People, Twitter traffic peaked at an incredible 65,000 tweets per second (TPS) during the live broadcast completely obliterating the 12,233 TPS peak at Super Bowl XLVI; and
• 2.5 Million Twitter mentions of Adele – she won a lot of awards, quite possibly all of them.

The most overwhelming results may have come around the tragedy that took place the night before the live show.

The social media world arrived to all of the popular channels in droves after the announcement of Whitney Houston’s passing. Once people were able to see through their initial grief, Twitter’s hot button topic in particular was how would the GRAMMYs remember Whitney? Even though we do not have the official number of social media mentions regarding this question, we do have an idea of what people felt afterwards:

• Buzz around the tribute to Whitney Houston, while diverse, was mostly favorable with 81 percent of people offering positive sentiment; and in what many found to be the absolutely most stunning statistic in the presentation;
• When Jennifer Hudson hit the stage for her tribute performance, Twitter traffic around the GRAMMYs stopped. I’m not talking about a failwhale moment, I’m talking about a social media moment of silence.

What Have We Learned?

The GRAMMYs have shown us how a carefully laid out plan can drive content, conversation and, in terms of what they were searching for in their social media campaign, conversion. They’ve also shown us that it is indeed possible for people to eschew their computers and mobile devices, even if only for a minute or two, for a moment in real life. Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?