Internet Marketing, Social Media, Business | StuckInTheFunnel

Sears continues to ride the Social Media Bandwagon

According to RetailerDaily.com, big time retailer Sears is continuing to make good on their home improvement site: Manage My Home. The site targets consumers working on home improvement projects and provides a portal with products, information and other features sucn as:

• Expert advice and assistance from Sears
• Scheduling delivery of products and home improvement services from Sears reps.
• Helpful blogs written by volunteer homeowners called “Neighborhood Helpers”.
• Advice and tips pushed via Twitter.
• Parts list creation
• Project planners
• Cost estimators

Why is this a good strategy?

Creating a community where you can get free advice, purchase products your project requires and manage your project makes sears a one stop shop for your next home project – if you prefer to use the web for research and planning. This will surely increase the loyalty of Sears’ current customer base and will attract other curious home owners as well.

Twitter Brings Dell 3 Million in Sales

While attending a Twitter for Brands event hosted by New Media Age in London Last Friday, Dell employees claimed that their Twitter account has driven $3 million in sales since it was first created in 2007.

I am curious as to how Dell tracked the correlation of their Twitter activity to their additional sales.

How did they use Twitter to generate these sales? Did they Tweet about specials, direct message followers or gain new customers by finding them on Twitter?

These claims are evidence that when used effectively, Twitter can be a viable marketing tool. However, a recent poll on Linked In/Harris poll revealed that only 8% of marketing professionals and consumers think Twitter is a usefull promotional tool. Are they right or do they just not know how to leverage the SMS dispatch service effectively?

I think as more companies like Dell show off the value of Twitter, more marketers will educate themselves and adapt their marketing plans accordingly.

Oprah Puts the Squeeze on Internet Marketers

Using celebrities to help sell products and increase click through ratings of online banner ads is not a new practice. It doesn’t just impact celebrities, either. During the last presedential election, Internet Marketers plastered President Obama’s face and logo on all types of online creative.

Oprah, a strong force and idol for empowered women has decided that this needs to change. She has teamed up with Illinois State Attorney General’s Office to form a lawsuit against 50 Internet Marketers who have used her logo and other icons without permission.

I first found out news of this from Mashable, who learned about it from Azoogle, a large online affiliate network. Apparently they notified their members of the pending lawsuits:

“The Illinois State AG has filed actions against three parties for deceptive advertising practices in the marketing of acai berry products and other dietary supplements. Please keep in mind that the regulators are choosing to directly pursue affiliate marketers for their marketing practices. The full text of the press release can be found here.

Dr. Oz and Oprah Winfrey have also filed a lawsuit in New York for copyright and trademark infringement against approximately 50 companies, including advertisers, suppliers, ad networks, and affiliates. To put it bluntly, they are very unhappy of their celebrity status being used to market dietary supplements and cosmetics, without their permission. They have specifically listed hundreds of affiliate sites they want discontinued immediately, because the URLs use their name or the sites claim endorsements from Oprah/Dr. Oz. The full story can be found here.”

Honestly, I am trying to get to the bottom of Oprah’s motives here. Many celebrities like the additional promotion they get from Internet Marketers using these tactics, given the product is decent. Does Oprah have a problem with products that are using her image like the Acai diet or is she trying to start a movement that will ban Internet Marketers from using celebrities to enhance their promotions in general?

Microsoft Bing Gains Search Market Share

According to ComScore, Microsoft Bing continues to make small gains on rivals Google Inc and Yahoo Inc in the U.S:

Microsoft, which launched Bing in early June, racked up 8.9 percent of U.S. Internet searches in July, up 0.5 percentage points from June.

Google, the search market leader and Yahoo both lost .3% of search market share dropping to 67.7% and 19.3% respectively.

Last Month Yahoo and Microsoft inked a deal that would allow Bing’s search technology to power search functions for both of the sites’ and power their Internet Advertising.

Needless to say, Bing has been accepted much wider than it’s Live search engine.

Friend Feed CEO Paul Buchheit Discusses Facebook Acquisition

Tech Crunchs’ Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble were lucky enough to sit down with Paul Buchheit – Friend Feeds Co Founder.

Here is the video:

Read the full transcript here:

Fox News Calls Internet Marketing a Scam

I was writing a blog on landing page optimization and came across this page in my Tweet Deck stream:

Full article from Fox >>

 Needless to say, I stopped writing my other article.

 Growing up in the Y generation has given me a different perspective on news. In all honesty, I watch little to no news on television, primarily because I feel that I cannot trust the integrity of the information.

The advent of social media (and the internet) has changed the way people get their information. We no longer have to shift our focus to the television in the morning or evening to get our fill of daily happenings. As the web spawns more user generated content, I anticipate more attention being spent on various non-mainstream news channels.

Fox News’ crack on Search Engine Marketers is downright appalling and juvenile, especially considering they have their own SEO team. Their quote from the article says it all:

 ”Ever wonder why “nonsense” Web sites sometimes turn up in your search results on Google or Yahoo? That’s because search engine optimizing scammers work full-time to create thousands of other Web sites that link to the spam site. For example, the creator of spamlaw.com is hoping to dupe would-be visitors to spamlaws.com, a legitimate site that bills itself as an online security resource.”

More »

Cleaner Retweets on Twitter Mean Less Recognition

A post by Twitter’s blog revealed Twitter’s new method for displaying Retweets on their user interface. The new method displays a link below the Tweet indicating the username of the person who Retweeted the Tweet. (say that 10 times fast). This will obviously cleanup Twitter’s UI, but comes with the cost of receiving less Recongition for posts that are retweeted.

Here is a screenshot:

 It will be interesting to see how the community responds to this, especially since the Twitter community established the RT standard initially. What do you think?

Internet Marketing Surges as Click Fraud Declines

Research conducted by Click Forensics, a web traffic quality expert, showed reduction in click fraud during the second quarter of 2009.

For the past two years, the average percentage of fraudulent clicks of an advertisers total was around 15%.  The number dropped to about 13.9%  at the beginning of the first quarter.  At the end it had dropped to 12.7%.

Click forensics claims that improved blocking efforts and monitoring have been responsible for the the drop in fraudulent clicks.

However, the fight is till not over as stated by Tom Cuthber, president of traffic monitoring:

“Ad networks should pay close attention to such threats [as publisher collusion fraud] in the coming months,”

If the Internet Marketing industry continues to see improved figures like this, it will only be that much easier to sell the benefits of advertising online. Will the percentage of fraudulent clicks ever be as low as say 3%? Only time will.

Internet Challenges Rupert Murdoch and the Newspaper Industry

It’s no secret that growing popularity of the internet has had a direct impact on the circulation of newspapers in the past 10 years. Sitting down with a cup of coffee with the morning newspaper is gradually being replaced by a cup of Starbucks and a smart phone. According to the Business Insider 105 newspapers have closed as of July 4th and 23 of the 25 top newspapers have shown circulation decreases of 7-20%. It is apparent that the viewing of online content and the effectiveness of internet advertisements has taken it’s toll on what used to be the primary news delivery medium for so many readers worldwide.

On Aug 6th, News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch announced that he would begin charging for online news content by 2010.

“Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting,”

Murdoch already charges for online content on the Wall Street Journal’s website. Now the 79 year old chairman wants to charge for all News Corp’s properties. According to Time Magazine, Murdoch does not even have a cell phone and requires assistance when accessing the internet. That being said, his judgment in the matter may be too biased. As it stands now, the majority of readers polled said they would not pay for the content.

Personally, I have never owned a newspaper subscription. My daily does of news always comes from websites, RSS feeds and of course, Twitter.  I do however, rely on news websites for valuable blogging topics. So what does this mean? If the newspaper industry goes kerplunk, will it affect the amount of content published by blog owners? Will publicists rely more on Mashable and similar blogs for press releases?

It will be an interesting development for sure.

Rumor Control: Apple Planning Social Music Application?

This is only a rumor at this time, but the Boy Genius report claims to have some developing details on Apple’s latest release of Itunes. It is believed that Apple’s latest release of their popular music download and management software will allow you to broadcast your favorite tunes to various social networks, which will not only spread Artist’s music, but the Itunes brand as well.

The informant to the Boy Genius Report claims that the app will do the following:

The social networking integration that we reported iTunes 9 would have seems to be part of a bigger social networking push by Apple. We’ve been informed that Apple has plans to tie iTunes 9 into a “Social” application that they plan to release in the future. It was said that the application (separate from iTunes) will be similar to Yahoo’s OneConnect offering and consolidate all your social networking services. (iPhone application? Desktop app? Wasn’t clarified to us).

The application will allow you to broadcast what music you’re currently listening to, allow you to share your music with people on your network, connect with your friend’s friends (no clue on that one), and update all of your statuses at the same time. ITunes 9 will let you broadcast music statuses as well.

As far as the iTunes application organization feature, we’ve been told it allow you to sort your applications alphabetically, by genre, date added, and of course, custom arrangement.

Apple’s strong foothold in the smart phone market will surely help them in pushing this application to consumers. More details to come as the story develops.