| LED Digest 2469: Marketing on Facebook |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom www.GetWebContent.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. August 13, 2007 Issue no. 2469 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ==================== --== Marketing on Facebook ==-- ~ Steve Birk "Looking forward to hearing more on your thoughts about Facebook." <Moderator Comment> ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Pop-ups and Pop-unders ==-- ~ Tom Aman "...creating them involves a fair bit of effort with very little, if any, return." ~ Renee Kennedy "...ask to run a test to see if it will work." ~ John Smart "On a similar note, I just got a Wii!" --== What to do with a Second Domain? ==-- ~ Martyn Gay "This one can be chalked up alongside the other SEO myths that many 'experts' like to peddle." <Moderator Comment> ~ Will Bontrager "Domain longevity may be a factor in search results positioning..." ========== NEW =================================== From: Steve Birk Subject: Facebook > I've been exploring Facebook a bunch, > it's really an interesting platform. - Adam Audette, LED Digest 2466 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1877/190/ Apparently so has Wal-Mart, who just launched the "Roommate Style Match" group on Facebook, in the hopes of grabbing a larger chunk of back-to-school shopping dollars. http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSN0843464220070808 Looking forward to hearing more on your thoughts about Facebook. Obviously when the worlds largest retailer uses this social networking site in the hopes of increasing sales, then that may raise some eyebrows and make people wonder just what is this Facebook anyways? It does me... Regards, Steven Birk http://MedicalNewsCenter.com Complete, Current and Credible Medical News Coverage <Moderator Comment> Thanks for these comments, Steve. What Wal-Mart (and everyone else marketing on Facebook) is really interested in is leveraging the huge numbers of users on the site (I know, duh!). Let me make that comment more productive: Facebook represents a massive closed community (in the sense of a proprietary platform and large reach), but with an open API that allows absolutely anyone the ability to leverage it for marketing purposes. The challenge of Facebook and other closed social platforms, is that they're reinventing the Internet as a closed Web. The opportunity for people like me who practice Internet marketing, is to market on the platform using the tools Facebook provides. This is what Wal-Mart is attempting to do, and as a marketing move it's actually pretty interesting for a few reasons. One of the assumptions you make when you launch a Facebook group is that the community will do the driving. No matter how careful and strategic the messaging is by any company engaging this network, in the end it's the users who populate and thus define a group. In other words, Wal-Mart is opening themselves up to public criticism on Facebook. Here's the group so you can see what I mean: http://snurl.com/1phwm [facebook.com]. Note the debate and criticisms already forming there. In a sense this is good for Wal-Mart because they must address this type of criticism if they're going to enter the demographic they're targeting here (college kids). So the key is what they do with that challenge: they've created a group for discussions to happen, now they have to work on company transparency in addressing the complaints and criticisms launched at them. I wonder why they didn't simply create a Facebook app instead? An app is a cool viral way to "plug in" to the social community without necessarily giving them a platform to rail you with. At first glance, this move by Wal-Mart reveals a real lack of insight into Facebook and social networking. Unless they're prepared (and staffed) to deal with the community getting out of hand on their branded group, the camel's nose is already under the tent and about to pull its head up. Is Wal-Mart prepared for marketing on Facebook? It remains to be seen. -Adam ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Tom Aman Subject: Pop-ups > First off, I hate [pop-ups and pop-unders] but I have > a big client who wants to use them. I want to make > one last pitch to talk him out of it and I need your help. - Brett Atkin, LED Digest 2468 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1879/190/ Just a quick thought - since most browsers are usually set to block pop-ups / unders, maybe a fast pitch would be to find a site or two that is attempting to use them and show the client that they are usually blocked. This means that creating them involves a fair bit of effort with very little, if any, return. A quote from Wikipedia may also help: ------------------------ "Opera was the first major browser to incorporate tools to block pop-up ads; the Mozilla browser later improved on this by blocking only pop-ups generated as the page loads. In the early 2000s, all major web browsers except Internet Explorer allowed the user to block unwanted pop-ups almost completely. In 2004, Microsoft released Windows XP, SP2, which added pop-up blocking to Internet Explorer." ------------------------ In most cases, pop-ups / unders only serve to annoy the surfer except in very specific cases (some outlined in the Wikipedia entry - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop-up_ad ) Also of interest, check out http://www.popuptest.com/ - this page links to a variety of popups and lets you test your browser's / blocker software's blocking functionality. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Renee Kennedy Subject: Pop-ups Don't try to talk him out of it, instead, ask to run a test to see if it will work. When my bosses come up with new web marketing strategies, I never poo poo their ideas. It's always best to run a test, start slowly and then build up to a more grand campaign, if the tests prove worthy. You could get data from other products and other companies, but that data may not prove accurate for your company and your product. Therefore, it's always best to test these things out. Also, think of the experience that it will give you, put another strategy under your belt! Renee Kennedy -------- new post - same topic -------- From: John Smart Subject: pop ups and unders I think we can all agree that no good ever came from a pop under. (If it is so good, why hide it??) I now use pop-over's. They are terribly cool! It is borderline AJAX, and basically opens an iFrame that appears above the page. It isn't hard to learn, and is both powerful and cool looking. I use it on a lot of sites - anywhere I would use a pop up, or want the link to keep the guest focused on the main site, yet get that nugget of data. Visit: http://jquery.com/demo/thickbox/ Now, there is a bit of a learning curve for downloading all the code! I had a real hard time getting it, then it had the wrong name, so I had to rename the file (which concerned me a little). It is so worth it! Unless you are expecting i-Phone traffic - it stalls the i-Phone browser and you have to reload the page to keep going! I am sure patches will soon be available. On a similar note, I just got a Wii! Lots of fun, you should get one - however, you can (with a US$5 download) browse the internet with it. It works very well, but should we design for this target? So far I have used it to look at houses, look up data about games, and order a pizza. Not sure if there are any potential emerging markets here? Any of you seen Safari Wii on your stats files? (It is a version of Safari that is available for it!) John Smart InternetDesign.com A Human Touch in a Digital world. ============ Sponsor Message =========== Want a fresh pizza delivered? Call Domino's. Want some fresh web content? Visit GetWebContent.com. We deliver fresh, we deliver fast and, unlike Domino's, every pizza copy we bake is different. We custom write it to fill your order and then burn the recipe. After that it's all yours to use on one site or 1,000 sites. www.GetWebContent.com/LED fresh, fast and only for you. ============ Sponsor Message =========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Martyn Gay Subject: 2nd domain > ... it would be just a variant of the same domain name > and inevitably we would have some of the same product > lines on both sites would Google view this as duplication > and penalise us? - Gillian Fernandez, LED Digest 2468 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1879/190/ We've constantly had SEO "experts" tell us (and worried clients) that running separate but similar .co.uk and .com sites (or even aliases on a single site) can lead to a penalty from Google for duplication. The belief is therefore that Google penalises our sites for doing exactly what they do - check out www.google.com and www.google.co.uk - different but similar content! Of course the reality is somewhat different. In its webmaster guidelines, Google expressly suggests using a German .de domain for German content! http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359 So what is more likely is that Google will only show what it considers the most relevant of your 2 URLs to a particular user in the search results. Again, in this article Google makes it clear that it penalises only illegitimate duplicate content that is trying to manipulate search results. Matt Cutts (as an employee of Google) is always an excellent source for an insight into Google's policies. I haven't found him quoted directly on this, but I found this reference with some notes about his contribution to a discussion on this topic. http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/003398.html ------------------------- "Matt Cutts - Google Not prepared, but informal remarks. High order nits: what do people worry about? He often finds that honest webmasters worry about dupe content when they don't need to. G tries to always return the "best" version of a page. Some people are less conscious. The person claimed he was having problems with dupe content and not appearing in both G and Y. Turns out he had 2500 domains. A lot of people ask about articles split into parts and then printable versions. Do not worry about G penalizing for this. Different top level domains: if you own a .com and a .fr, for example, don't worry about dupe content in this case." ------------------------- The lesson from both these authoritative Google sources appears to be clear... running similar sites for different country-specific domains is legitimate, and won't be penalised (unless they detect some type of illegitimate attempt to manipulate search engine results). This one can be chalked up alongside the other SEO myths that many SEO "experts" like to peddle. Martyn Gay Cactusoft Ltd Shopping Cart Software www.cactushop.com <Moderator Comment> An oft-cited page with information from Google on dupe content is here: Deftly dealing with duplicate content http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/deftly-dea... -Adam -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Will Bontrager Subject: 2nd domain In response to the post by Gillian Fernandez. Domain longevity may be a factor in search results positioning, assuming the site is updated every so often. It may be worth keeping the other domain if only for that reason. If hosting expense is a consideration, the other domain might be moved to a cheap hosting outfit. To sidestep duplicate content issues, instead of catalog products, the other domain might be populated with lingerie-related articles -- literature about what determines quality (or trash), attitudes in different parts of the world, what to wear in which circumstances to create certain impressions or reactions. "Read in the privacy of your home" PDF documents might be available for download. Articles and documents would link back to the catalog domain. Will Bontrager http://BontragerCGI.com/ ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by: GetWebContent.com The Web's Most Experienced SEO Content Providers. 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