The Secret of High Level Organic KPIs

There’s a huge variety of online marketing metrics for you to chose from. Many of them are either essentially useless (pageviews) or too granular to tell a real story on a site-wide level (bounce-rate).
If  you’re the CMO or VP of Marketing, what KPI’s do you really need to see so that you’re reasonably well informed about the performance of your organic search program against the half-dozen other channels you’re responsible for?
I had a great question from a client this week wondering if they should move from 2 KPI’s to 3 for their high level dashboards.
Hey Chris, quick question: other than [...]

Four Practical Ways to Measure Social Media

Not long ago I sat in on a webinar on social media measurement. I should say I sat in on some of it, because I left after 24 minutes. That’s about 23 minutes longer than I should have spent there.
There’s two types of conversations we can have about social media, and measurement in particular: strategic and tactical.
They need to happen in that order and you need to understand the difference. This post is a tactical one.
If you don’t already understand the need for a clear strategic understanding of your business, your online presence, customers and competitors both online and off, [...]

Twitter Announces Sponsored Tweets Platform

Today Twitter released it’s Sponsored Tweets advertising program.
In a nutshell, it gives advertisers the ability to move their tweets up in the timeline. As the New York Times article says:
Starbucks, for instance, often publishes Twitter posts about its promotions, like free pastries. But the messages quickly get lost in the thousands of posts from users who happen to mention meeting at Starbucks.
AdAge posted an example of an @Starbucks promoted tweet.
To begin with, the ads are being offered on a keyword focused CPM basis. There is a maximum of one sponsored Tweet will be shown on a search results page. Right [...]

Long Articles – Another Canonical Tag Use

The canonical tag has a lot of applications, and one of them is helping to simplify duplicate content issues. One of these situations frequently occurs with long pieces of content which have been broken out over several pages to improve usability. This is common for content publishers such as newpapers, but also happens with other types of sites. It’s common to use pagination links such as these ones (from Lester Chan’s WP-Pagenavi plugin) to help users and engines find the rest of your article. 

One great B2B content development strategy can be publishing transcripts of webinars, podcasts or conference calls. These [...]

The Facebook Landrush – Vanity URL Gold

 
As I write this there’s an automated countdown clock in another browser window counting down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until millions of people will flood the internet in search of the perfect Facebook username.

On June 12th at 12:01 a.m.  EDT Facebook will go crazy. Everyone who was previously assigned a user name made up of random numbers (id=123456789) will be able to obtain a username similar to what LinkedIn offers. (Official announcement here)
I can now shed my previous Facebook identity (120400011) become facebook.com/chris.davies, or if that’s not available perhaps w.chris.davies to match my LinkedIn account.
They’re limiting the potential [...]

Banner Ads on YouTube – 1990 Style

YouTube’s been experimenting with a variety of advertising models. In-video overlays, promoted videos, traditional blocks of adsense….they’ve been testing all sorts of things in the hope of monetizing the most popular video search engine on the planet.
Today it seems we’re going back to the 90’s with a large banner across the top of the homepage.This screenshot was taken on a Canadian IP address without being logged in to YouTube. (For readers outside of Canada, Rogers is a telecom company which just released the Android phones in Canada. They’re also the exclusive carrier of the iPhone in Canada) 

 And when the banner [...]

Why Would Google Acquire Twitter?

It’s possibly one of the fastest moving rumors on the internet (perhaps thanks to Twitter): TechCrunch has reported Google may be in talks to acquire Twitter. Whether it’s just a rumour, or the talks are fairly advanced, it’s worthwhile to take a step back and examine why Google might want to buy a service like Twitter, and what that might mean to either company.
Google Can Do Anything, Why Can’t It Make A Twitter?
Google knows what it’s good at. Like any smart company, they focus on what they’re good at and strategically outsource the rest. They also know that there are [...]

Participate in Our B2B Marketing Survey and Win!

As most of you know, Enquiro Research works tirelessly to put out excellent B2B focused research. Now it’s your chance to be a part of it.
We would like your input in an online survey, in order  to understand more about  your experiences when making business purchase decisions, and/or going through the process of short-listing vendors and business solutions. By completing the survey you’ll be adding valuable insight into an area of business that is undergoing tremendous change.
The survey will take you 15 – 20 minutes to complete and you could win a $25 Starbucks card to thank you for [...]

Free High-Quality Text Links!

One of my favorite posts on linking comes from every SEO’s favorite Googler, Matt Cutts. It tells you how to use Google Webmaster Tools (WMT) to identify 404 pages with incoming links. A link to a page that doesn’t exist is just wasted link juice, and Webmaster Tools is a great way to find broken pages and redirect them to the right page. It’ a great way to do more with what you already have.
Today’s linking tip also comes to us thanks to Google WMT. When you have a page or post on your site which manages to attract [...]

Business.com – What Works for Business Contest

Our friends at Business.com are trying to encourage businesses to share successful business solutions with others in order to generate prosperity in today’s economic decline. Enquiro is proud to be involved with a competition of this nature.
The What Works for Business Contest is designed to help shift the focus from what’s wrong with the economy to what businesses can actually do to survive and thrive in 2009. Business.com wants to reward businesses showing ingenuity and resourcefulness during these uncertain times.  They also want to share business solutions that have worked for others with businesses who are struggling to find answers to tough questions.  
Have you [...]