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Remarketing : a smart way to make your display campaigns cost- effective:
No matter how I tailored my campaigns, displays always ended up generating lower ROI than search campaigns. I have tried several types of managed placement but in terms of ROI none of my display campaigns become very successful. Display campaigns serve greater purpose for branding and for that reason, I kept those campaigns live months after months. However, ‘Remarketing’ campaigns target audience in a different way from other display campaigns and most of the times they generate higher ROI.
I will try to describe remarketing in very simple words: if someone visits your site with remarketing tag you can set a cookie to that person and later wherever he visits (under Google domain), your ads can follow that person. For example, someone has visited your shoe company’s online store and came out without purchasing. After two days , if that person is reading an article on an online magazine, your ads can appear along side of the article.
Google’s can provide you with an easy step by step instruction on how to set up a remarketing campaign.
However, when you set up the remarketing campaign, don’t just target the audience who have only visited your site.
- Target those people who have at least navigated several pages or have ideas about your service/product and their price.
- If your site has multiple products, make separate remarketing list for each of the products. For example, if your site sells shoes and bags you should have two separate lists.
- Then show them a special offer (i.e special discount, new promotion) and you will have a higher conversion rate.
With the help of ‘combination’ feature you will be able to make a more relevant ‘list’ of audience.
The reasons to put video clips in your website:
Having a video can dramatically enhance your sites appearance. It can make your site visually more dynamic . Since most of the web- visitors have a very little attention span while reading the web content, video might be an alternative way to deliver your message. Many would find watching a two minutes video clip a much easier job than reading two pages of web-content.
Video humanizes your web page and gives it a personal touch. With video you are not informing your clients about your services or products, you are talking to them.
Video files can bring some SEO benefits, especially, if you can make an interesting video and make it viral through sharing.
According to a July Pew Internet finding, “71% of online Americans use video-sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, up from 66% a year earlier. The use of video-sharing sites on any given day also jumped five percentage points, from 23% of online Americans in May 2010 to 28% in May 2011.”
The following article describes the process of utilizing video for SEO benefits in a great details.
http://ezinearticles.com/?SEO-Benefits-of-Having-Video-on-Your-Website&id=2680731
Editing your web-content
Since readers on the web have very little attention span, many web content writers might think writing for the web takes little effort and should take a form of jot notes. Writing for the web is different but not less difficult than writing for the print media. And I have learned the lesson in the hard way.
So my advice to the new content writer would be: read the articles on how to write web contents, apply the strategies you have learned but don’t get overwhelmed. Even in the fancy world of digital media, a typo is still a typo and an error is still an error.
Though the majority (79%) of the readers might just scan through your text and overlook your mistakes, there will be 21% readers who will read your text word to word. And as a writer, it means, you should always put your 100% while editing your content.
Who needs a Facebook page if you already have a website? Well..
With more that 62 million users all over the world, Facebook is capable of playing a vital role in web-marketing. Here, I will briefly talk about utilizing Facebook at the various levels of your marketing expertise.
At the beginner’s level, your Facebook page can provide you with a link to your website. Links are very important to improve your website’s ranking in search engines. Opening a company page in Facebook is free and you can add the link of your website with no additional cost. Further, it does not require a high level of technical skills. To start with, you can visit Facebook’s help centre.
https://www.facebook.com/help/
At the intermediate level, you can start marketing your products/services through Facebook’s networking. First, you need 25 fans in your Facebook page to get your business address in the Facebook. For example, if your business name is Unique Furniture, with 25 fans you can get a Facebook address as:
www.facebook.com /uniquefurniture
These 25 fans can be anyone with a Facebook ID. If your company sells motor parts in Cleveland and your 13 year old nephew in L.A. or 87 year old grandma in Michigan is a fan of your company, there is no harm! However, gradually, you should try to include the people you have done business with, your potential clients and the companies related to your industry in your fan list. Remember, people as well as companies have their Facebook accounts.
Some key features to utilize:
- Facebook’s status update works like news-feed and you can let your clients know about the latest update of your business simply by updating your status. Try to post at least one update of your business in every week.
- You can plan an event and send the invitation through Facebook. You can make it public for everyone to see or make it private if you want to maintain a specific guest list. People willing to attend can send you their RSVP through Facebook.
- You can display your portfolio or product catalog.
At this stage, you should consider getting some help to give your Facebook page a professional look. You need to invest a certain amount of time on your Facebook page on regular basis. Apart from that, you don`t need to spend any money.
At the pro level, you can use Facebook’s ad centre for paid marketing. People share many of their personal information on Facebook-their age, gender, marital status, personal interest, hobby, education, work, the city they live in and so much more. That makes it easier for you to target your marketing campaign at geographic or demographic level. For example, if an office supply store wants to promote their back to school sale in a certain state, they can only target the high-school going users of Facebook at that state and make their ads visible to them while they are Facebooking. For more information please visit:
https://www.facebook.com/advertising/
Besides, you should continue to develop your networking through Facebook and start exploring other social media such as Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn or your industry specific forums.
One standardized mark-up language for three search engine giants: why every web developer should visit shcema.org.
Finally, the three giants in search engine- Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have agreed to have a common set of schema /html tags that web developers can use to mark up their web-content in order to be recognized by the three major search engines. The three giants together launched Schema.org, where they enlisted those common html tags. However, the website is not just a list of tags. It offers the developers a comprehensive guide on how to use those tags to mark up their web content.
This news brings relief to the web developers, content writers or people working with search engine optimization. As the site said “A shared markup vocabulary makes easier for webmasters to decide on a markup schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts”.
SEO for Flash
If you are thinking how to optimizing your flash based website for search engines, this article might come handy.
http://www.seobook.com/archives/001457.shtml
An interesting article about e-learning
An interesting article that summarizes some common technology and principals of designing an e-learning course.
http://www.e-education.ca/ELearningDesignChallenges.pdf
E-learning for Kids!
Usually, e-learning is popular for people working full-time and looking for developing their skills. However, it also has implications for other age groups. Today, I visited an e-learning site with my twenty two months old daughter!
She is the biggest fan of the animation show Word World. Actually, it is the only TV show that she is allowed to watch. Watching this show she became a little bit familiar with the alphabets. So to test her knowledge, I took her to WorldWorld’s website ( worldworld.com).
Since my laptop had touch screen, she was able to find the letters on the screen and click on them.
It was wonderful to see the fun she was having. The website was very interactive and every time she was able to locate an alphabet she was having a sense of accomplishment.
Review of an e-learning site
When I was assigned in group project to create an e-learning website, I tried to search for an ideal e-learning site to use as my role model. Recently, I took an e-learning course, offered by Microsoft, on Excel 2007. I was comfortable with the structure this course and am satisfied with the learning outcome. So I thought writing down a formal critique of this web page will help me to figure out some dos and don’ts of creating an e-learning website.
I have reviewed the site regarding two main aspects:
Mechanical aspect:
The whole e-learning site projects a serious and professional look. The fonts are Times New Roman. Black and blue are the only two colors used for the entire site. Overall, the website appeared to be a formal place to learn a skill.
The website is very user- friendly. Learners having working experience with Office 2007 will find the interface of the e-learning site very familiar. Besides, at the beginning of each lesson, there is a tutorial on how to use this e- learning site. However, this e-learning site does not recognize people living outside of the Microsoft environment. To log into this site, I was asked to enter my ‘live ID’. To learn this course, a user needs the Windows operating system. So people having Mac or Linux might find it difficult to work with.
The entire course is divided into seven sections. Each section is divided into three or four lessons. If the learners complete one section, they can print the completion certificate. The course is not linear. A learner can jump to another section even without finishing the first one. However, at the beginning of each section there is a lesson overview which becomes redundant after the first lesson. Still to have the completion certificate, a learner needs to go through it at the beginning of every section.
Each multimedia based lesson comes with transcripts. So people having slow internet connection (which is an issue in many third world countries) can access to the lessons in written format. Each lesson has a print option to make taking a print-out easier.
Pedagogical aspect:
The website is very interactive. At the end of each lesson, there are several quizzes. Learners have to attempt to every quizzes to complete the lesson. There is a ‘lab’ where a learner can practice some of the learning outcome.
I found the course motivates the learner to learn in several ways.
- It is a paid course. So most of the learners wants get something out of the course.
- It is a course offered by Microsoft on Microsoft product. So everyone knows the content is accurate and good.
- At the end of the course, a person can take Microsoft certification exam.
The site appeals to all learning style.Most of the lessons are available in visual, aural or written format. So learners having different learning styles can get benefited from the lessons.
The content covers almost all the aspects of Excel 2007. Taking the course not only helps to pass the certification examination it also helps a learner to utilize the program in various ways.At the beginning of each section, the learners will know what they are expected to learn from this section. So they began each lesson with a certain expectation. At the end of each lesson, when that expectation is fulfilled they have a sense of achievement.
The e-learning course is very professionally done. It is interactive, appeals to all kinds of learner and offers a good content. If I ever design an e-learning course, I will definitely use this site as a role model.