I have this morning received a presentation from a company in our arena of the Marketing, Online and New Media space. Within this presentation a ‘new word’ was used time and time again. The word in question? IMPACTFUL. Now, being a fan of the English language and it’s continued progression, my immediate reaction was to reference in Google.

In my opinion, the first description was quite apt - of which can be seen at the following URL (or by typing ‘impactful’ into Google.co.uk) http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=impactful
or can be seen below…

“A non-existent word coined by corporate advertising, marketing and business drones to make their work sound far more useful, exciting and beneficial to humanity than it really is. This term is most frequently used in “team building” seminars and conferences in which said drones discuss the most effective ways to convince consumer zombies to purchase crap they clearly do not need or even want.”

In summary, the use of this word clearly demonstrates a distinct lack of vocabulary from the writers point-of-view. Maybe the use of words like, ‘effective’, ’successful’ or maybe ‘has impact’?

Ian

Be Search Friendly
What is the point of having a great site if no one ever sees it? None of course!
Before creating your content do you keyword research, what terms your audience or users to your site are likely to search upon, and what keywords they will use. Build the structure of your content around your search engine optimisation with these keywords and keyphrases.
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The challenge was to increase Outline Skincare’s online presence to increase web traffic, generate sales and increase ROI, while actually driving down overall marketing spend.

Miromedia were recommended to Outline as specialists in search engine optimisation, pay-per-click, email broadcasting, link building, online PR, and social media

The solution was an online marketing strategy which included removing programming issues, managing and adding keyword strategies, content creation and restructure of page layout.

Benefits Since working with Outline when compared to the same previous year period, we have achieved:

• 46% increase in turnover when compared to this time last year
• 60% decrease in marketing spend

And most importantly this was all achieved during a recession!

To download the Outline Case Study please click here.

Permanent or semi permanent make up, as it is sometimes called, is an exciting, revolutionary treatment to enhance facial features. It is a highly skilled, state of the art form of cosmetic tattooing also known as Micro-pigmentation or intradermal cosmetics. Annalou is one of the UK’s leading clinics and with a quickly expanding client base they called upon Miromedia to design and build a new site complete with easy to use CMS and a powerful SEO redesign.

Utilising the new Miromanager 2 Content Management System for the new Annalou site, Miromedia where able to create a faultless and intuitive backdoor solution for Annalou. It is a CMS that will serve Annalou for the foreseeable future, allowing for effortless updates and image changes. Along with the search engine optimisation redesign, which is due to begin this week, Miromedia have also added a Facebook portal to keep fans of Annalou up to date with company and industry developments and gossip.

Purchase of MySpace four years ago by Rupert Murdoch heralded a new dawn for social media and social networking. Suddenly these sites were big business. With a 330m price tag many scoffed, but critics were later silenced when a 670m advertising deal with Google for three years was agreed!

Soon however that deal will come to an end and with it more than half of MySpace’s entire revenue. But there are far more important concerns for MySpace and for British born Bebo. Bebo was purchased at a staggering 640m in March of last year by AOL. Those concerns are the decline of these once all dominant sites at the fickle hand of social media users.

The Losers
Surely such big sites can’t just head to obscurity and disappear? Don’t be so sure, British social networking site Friends Reunited enjoyed a 120m purchase from ITV four years ago and was recently valued at one sixth of the figure. The decision to swap from a paid model to a free one came way too late. Users have voted with their feet, the brand is damaged and they won’t be coming back.

Bebo’s traffic dropped 24% this year and now stands at 9 million. As original Beboers come of age they migrate to Facebook suggesting a digital coming of age, Bebo’s biggest problem is that new younger school kids aren’t replacing them below. By Hitwise’s estimates, Bebo’s unique users have fallen 18%, from 8.5 million in April 2008 to 7 million one year later, while Facebook has seen 63% growth to 23.5 million unique users.

Further problems are predicted for MySpace and Bebo, both sites are in comparison very expensive to run and a decline in traffic is hitting their cash flow hard. Add to this MySpace’s deal with Google which is about to end and Bebo’s financial backing in doubt following AOL’s disbanding from Time Warner.

The Winners
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are enjoying massive increased popularity however. Twitter for example, has seen a 4,000% increase in new users since the start of this year to 2.5 million unique users a month. Add to these 3rd party apps which add another half of this traffic leading to an even greater impact! Facebook now control 45% of all social media activity on the internet World wide.

Most interestingly it is those social networking sites that have refused to sell to large greedy corporations that have ultimately succeed. Twitter more recently refused a huge deal with Google to advertise on the site.

And while large companies scratch their heads wondering what happened, it seems to me obvious that the reason for the decline is the worst marketing sin of all: assuming your audience are mindless fools, incapable of resisting advertising messages. MySpace is advert saturated, Bebo is advert saturated, and Friend Reunited charged you to watch their adverts. We are savvy, we don’t like adverts, and if the site is advert saturated we leave.

Even facebook fell into the trap, changing its simple and appealing interface for a multi-paged and advert heavy profile. An exodus I’m sure would have taken place had Facebook not been the best of a bad bunch. This could still see the end of Facebook in the next few years?

Ric McHale

Note - 80% of all internet emails are spam.

With such a high amount of emails considered as not relevant, email clients (such as hotmail) always review an email’s content before making it available to view.

Avoid emails going into the spam filter.

A well constructed email will always contain text body content. It is possible to include links and images, but a good mix of all three is preferable. Emails that include only images or links will often find their way into a spam filter, hindering the opportunity to get the message across.

Ideally, to get through all spam filters, an email would have only text. However, in a sales environment, it’s very difficult to get your message across in such a basic format. Pictures give the recipient an idea of what you are about, or what products are being sold, links take them through to areas in your site that convert interest into revenue.

Practise

Don’t be afraid of testing you emails in different email clients (such as gmail or hotmail). For the most part these email clients are free and you can make great use of their spam filters, at no extra cost.

Julian Wilkins

When constructing your advertisement emails, it is important to remember that spam filters examine every part of an email. Additionally, emails should include ‘best practice’ components, such as ‘unsubscribe’ and ‘alt tags’ for the sight impaired.

Spam filters are making it harder and harder to send out successful email broadcasts. They consider content such as ‘free’ and ‘10% OFF’ as spammy words. Images and links can also be considered as spammy and can trigger an email as spam. These things can seriously interfere with a company’s attempt to convey its message.

Starting with the subject line.

In the subject line it’s important to avoid words that can be a spam trigger. Unfortunatly there is no definitive spam list, and common sense is the most useful tool when reviewing your content for spammy words. Avoid sales words such as ‘discounts’ and ‘offers’, which will reduce your chances of sucssessfully navigating email clients spam filters.

Interesting point.

Recently I was talking about ’spammy words’ with Skip Tidar and found his experiences most interesting. Skip gave one example of a movie by Vin Diesel called XXX, which is not a porn movie, where the email broadcaster was able to get the email through spam filters. Skip believes that even the most high risk words can get through a spam filter, if the rest of the content is low risk.

If you have to add a word that may be considered as spammy, it may be best to open some email accounts, such as gmail or hotmail. Then send your email to them, to see if you get through the spam filters.

Julian Wilkins

It is now possible to have the entire world in the palm of your hand and at the (iPod) touch of a button as Google have today launched Google Earth for iPhone and iPod Touch. The app is free and downloadable from the iTunes App Store. It contains all of the same functionality you would expect from Google Earth including, geo-located wiki articles, photos, 3D terrain modelling and so on.

I have too been watching the US, UK and arguably, the western world economy unravel over the last few months and weeks. And rightly so, there is much concern amongst business owners about the direct impact this will have on the UK ecomony.
One of the questions I get asked on a more and more frequent basis is will Miromedia suffer? Being a marketing based business, Marketing is usually one of the first costs to be slashed.
My considered response is the same for all. In times of need, we all look to cut costs (it’s not a bad practise in good times too). However, do you really want to be slashing at a proven, scalable and direct sales channel that if exploited, can bring a substantial return on investment? Do you want to be reducing a marketing channel that is accurately measurable and can touch a huge and targeted audience for a relatively low cost?
If your looking for effective sales channels to market your products through, then the internet is not only the way forward when times are good, but also when times are bad. Yes, it depends on what business you are in and yes, it does have to be considered as a marketable product or service online. However, I’ll leave you with this thought. If your looking for value for money or price/service comparison, where do you look?

Using images on your website will boost the website’s visual appeal. You can transfer a lot of information by using images, and make your site more interesting.

Consider the purpose of the pictures carefully; will they be products. Or perhaps you want to convey an emotion (like trust). More often than not a website will be full of text or images that are not relevant to the page. Good picture quality is also important, so consider where you get your pictures from.

The only resolution for website image is 72dpi (dots per inch). For anything larger you will need to check the compression of the image, as this may affect the loading time and may enlarge the image on screen. For images that are larger than 72dpi the general compression is 60%.

After you have put images onto you web page it’s also important to check the load time, as this will dictate a good user experience.

Julian Wilkins - Search Consultant
Miromedia SEO & Managed Online Marketing Specialists