I want to add facebook fans with a sweepstakes. My colleague thinks it’s terrible idea to drive people away from our own site. Advice?

Based on my past experience on numerous assignments around the globe it’s about putting a sustainable strategy behind it.

This knowledge is based on the discussion you’ve been having with your colleague, which I’ve had with several entities, yet I don’t concur with either of you.

Yes, your website should be your prime focus in your strategy, but it’s also important to gain visibility for the brand on platforms like Facebook, et. al.

BOOK MONDAY: Learning marketing from the porn industry

Ok, this is my favorite chapter of the book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ) simply because if there is one industry out there on the web which really has to compete it’s the porn industry.

This implies that they really know their stuff when it comes to branding, search engine optimization (another topic appearing in a few weeks), search engine marketing, etc.

So here we go:

It’s sad but it’s true: if there is one industry on the planet that is fighting for market-share more than any other, it’s the porn industry.

Naturally they are the ones you want to look at when it comes to doing good search engine campaigns, link building, link popularity etc.

Yet the issue we will be focusing on is another impressive and innovative thing they have done to get the attention of the customers they want to sell their non-free products to.

If you do a bit of research on a specific sexual practice, kink, fetish, or whatever you will find out that a lot of the highest-ranking search results are forums or other internet communities containing user contributed content.

User contributed content attracts a lot of search engine traffic because 10000+ users registered on a website with a discussion forum, personals, pictures, etc. can generate a lot more content a day than you will ever be able to. And the best part is that this content is highly diversified and free.

The reason these pages rank so high is because they appear to be informative communities, which have nothing to do with any company trying to distribute products over the web. For non-observant people this is true.

But if you pay attention to the advertisements placed on this website, you will soon find out that most of the links, banners, and what not link to one specific provider of sexually explicit content over and over again.

Ok, let’s get away from the nasty section and move to the good side of life again and what you can learn from this practice.

No, please do not go ahead, cash out a life insurance and create a porn portal. You’re lacking the experience, trust me.

Furthermore, let’s not forget the fact that advertising postage stamps on a website for shoe fetish will hardly have the effect you’re going to be expecting.

So let’s stick with the example that you are a retailer for specific, rare, regionally limited postal stamps. We now go back to draining that life insurance of yours and creating a portal for philatelists where they can discuss insights, share information, maybe even find interesting people over the web in other parts of the world.

Since you’re a philatelist and not only a philanthropist, we will have to create an ROI somewhere along the line to make this whole thing worthwhile.

This we achieve by using any available free space to place links, banners, and other advertisements to your online presentation which will not only lead 100% relevant traffic to your shop.

Also, your relevance in Google’s view will significantly go up because the portal we have created is linked throughout the web on several other portals, websites, and blogs through articles your community users have generated for you (free) and other users have posted elsewhere (free). See the win-win-win-situation here?

Since you have links there to the online shop where you sell your stamps, you will gain visibility too and may end up higher in search results.

The fact that you advertise on this platform will in the near future lead to the fact that other people from related businesses will try to buy advertising space on this website which will again increase the demand of this platform and increase the return of investment of this venture even more.

Just a side note here, but an important one: since you officially have nothing to do with this portal you could not care less what the people do on this portal.

Interested? Keep in mind that in my book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ) I point out that it’s inevitable that you have to combine all efforts pointed out therein to really make your appearence on the web count.

If you have questions please feel free to discuss them here or ask them directly be contacting me.

Do clients actually read HTML or hard copy newsletters? What is their preferred method of agency/client communications for updates etc?

No, they hardly do. The problem is that everyone gets so many newsletters a day, that it’s hell of a job just reading the important ones. And if they just happen to be more sophisticated than just reading text and associated downloading large graphics etc., 99,9% land in my trashcan.

Read more >>

Spammers discover Twitter as their new venue to show off

Before any misundestandings arise: Twitter’s architecture is ingenious because you have to click “follow” until you can be spammed!

Seems like Twitter finally hit the tipping point, as Hjörtur mentioned in his post from yesterday. And yes, there are good and sad stories associated to this platform, which @hjortur was also so kind to summarize.

That being said… As a web strategist I am constantly on the prowl for new ideas. Good and bad ones alike. And yesterday I got my first post of a person who twitters updates on a certain product and sent me an invitation to follow them on twitter which marked the coming of the darkage for Twitter-Land Read more >>