Internet Tech Boston

I work for an Internet Marketing company. That means my team works with a client organization’s existing marketing or brand development group. We bring to bear the most effective internet tactics that currently exist, to translate their existing brand and message to the web and help achieve their overall marketing goals. In other words, we understand that the internet is only one channel. It must work in concert with all channels such as print, TV, radio, and tradeshows. The objectives accomplished online must support the organizations overall marketing objectives.

This concept has always been apparent to me, but for others it has not. This “realization” has given rise to the concept of Integrated Marketing. Integrated Marketing is the act of combining several marketing channels to communicate the same marketing campaign. For example, a TV commercial directs viewers to visit a specific web page to place orders. More complete examples tie in several channels with the same branding and messaging – TV, radio, web, email, billboards, print advertising, guerrilla marketing, etc.

Consider your own marketing efforts. Not all organizations have budgets and resources for TV commercials, but any organization that’s been around for a few years has accumulated marketing campaigns and assets. Are they integrated? Does it appear to belong to the same company, even? When thinking about your next marketing campaign, be cognizant of the fact that all channels and materials (past and present) contain opportunities to both help and hinder the overall effectiveness of your efforts.

Above all else, make sure that all outside consultants and agencies share this same mindset. If your marketing efforts are silo’d into individual channels that are not aware of one another – you and your organization is missing out on huge opportunities.

Yahoo! has launched an invite-only beta of their new social networking site: Yahoo! Mash.

I created my online profile and have spent only a couple of hours customizing and inviting a few colleagues to join. My first blush opinion is that it’s basically a rip-off of MySpace, Facebook, and/or LinkedIn. A big part of me thinks Mash is just a johnny-come-lately response from corporate suits afraid they’re missing the next big wave. I’m not sure it has any real value for B2B marketers at all, but the jury’s still out.

However, if you’re into this sort of thing as a personal networking tool, it’s kind of interesting. Namely, other people can update your profile. I guess the concept is to leverage user-generated content not only about other people, places, and things; but also about yourself to. An article by Rafe Needleman feels that Mash has borrowed from the best

If anyone’s interested, let me know and I’m happy to invite you in.

The irrational exuberance building in the investment world related to all things Web 2.0 is spilling over into the world of long-established businesses with solid, healthy Internet Marketing initiatives. Now, you can hire all sorts of consultants that are more than willing to help you “install a blog” or “implement a social media strategy.”

For everyone out there that understands what Web 2.0 is, its place in an overall Internet Marketing program, and is not running for cover just because the corporate social media strategy has not yet been codified at their company; take heart – it won’t be long before our abuse of the newly emerging semantic web (oops, I mean Web 2.0) will cause us to distrust and dismiss all this glorious content we are all so busy generating.

Online collaboration sites, usually powered by wiki’s, were the first seedlings of the Web 2.0 forest. Now, creating false entries on Wikipedia, aka “gaming“, has become the norm. This has given rise to sites like WikiScanner which provide tools to help web visitors identify false contributions. I’m guessing if a typical web user feels the need to use WikiScanner to verify the validity of Wikipedia editors, it’s not a good thing. What good is all this user generated content if you can’t trust any of it? In other words, as WikiScanner usage rises, you can bet Wikipedia usage will fall.

Blogging won’t last much longer in it’s current state either. Wal-Mart recently got caught with it’s faux blog or flog titled Wal-Marting Across America. Seriously, who loves Wal-Mart that much anyway? That’s just one of many, many instances of big business abusing the Web 2.0 concept. For the rest of us who blog under the best intentions, see Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur and know that “we’re assaulting our economy, our culture and our values. Web 2.0 is pushing us back into the Dark Ages.”

Another sign that this Web 2.0 phenomenon won’t be around much longer is the general sameness of the companies trumpeting their new services. As far as platform services, there are 2 main flavors of Web 2.0 startups. One group allows me to “manage everything in one central place,” and the other makes it “incredibly easy to collaborate” with others. They all look the same too.

I know you must be thinking: “Internet Marketer has bad day at the office and rants on his blog about all things Web 2.0.” Well, partly right. I and my colleagues do the best we can to provide real services to address real business problems and provide measurable ROI. All this Web 2.0 is getting in the way.

With the proliferation of Content Management Systems (CMS), the job of writing, editing, proofing, and publishing content has largely passed from the hands of web developers and into the hands of marketing generalists. One of the first questions related to this topic that I’m usually asked is, “How much content should I put on each page?”

From both a user-experience and a search engine optimization standpoint, the answer is always always – not much. Here’s an excerpt from Search Engine Marketing, Inc. by Moran and Hunt, published by the IBM Press:

Keep it short. Search Engines will index as many as 100,000 characters on your page, but it is virtually impossible to maintain strong keyword density over a long page – the best pages are usually less than 1,000 words.

Understand that when Moran and Hunt say “characters”, they are including all the HTML code that displays images, flash, your navigation, and all other formatting attributes of your web page.

If 1,000 words is the max for a search engine, then what’s the max for your users and general readability? According to Yahoo! Search Marketing’s Advanced Search Expertise: Take Your Campaign to the Next Level, here are two rules to go by for content development on the web:

• According to Web Usability expert Jakob Nielsen, people read about 25% slower on the Web, and recommend that you sue 50% of the copy that you would in printed material.
• 300 words is the first threshold for reading comprehension, so keep them above the fold.

Finally, the best advice I’ve read on the topic of content development is Steve Krug’s Third Law of Usability, from his bestseller Don’t Make Me Think.

Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what’s left.

Good luck, and remember what Steve Krug says – Omit needless words!

Website Redesign projects can be large, time-consuming, and expensive. From the beginning phases of selecting the right agency to partner with, to creating compelling user-interface designs, to the implementation of Content Management Systems and other back-end functionality – a complete and professionally built web site will be a time consuming endeavor. Applying the old adage that “you get what you pay for,” your investment in time, money, and resources should pay off in a strong online brand that generates inbound traffic and leads, accomplishes your defined set of activity objectives and provides measure ROI.

When working on a redesign of an existing website, don’t fall into the trap of “throwing the baby out with the bath water.” Your old website has some value – especially if it has been in existence for some time. The major search engines have indexed your site and assigned specific page rank to each of them. When companies completely overhaul their websites as part of a redesign, this typically entails reordering pages and otherwise changing the web address of pages. When Google revisits your site after the launch of your redesigned pages, it won’t find the pages it had previously ranked. If you don’t leave explicit instructions to the Google on where that page has been moved to, Google will simply delete that page out of its index.

You don’t want to lose your old page ranks when your new site launches. To prevent this from happening, create an address list of all old pages and their new page addresses. Implement this list into your web server as a 301 Redirect list. A 301 Redirect is an instruction given to the search engine indicating that the web page address it has in its index has been permanently moved to a new address. A 301 Redirect will cause the Search Engine to update its index to the new location, and will help ensure that all the effort spent on Search Engine Optimization, link building, and content creation from your old site, is transferred to your new site.

Ever notice how Radio Stations have some of the worst websites on the Internet? In a world where the Internet has reshaped the way commercial music is distributed, paid for, and listened to, the major radio stations continue to treat their websites as little more than online billboard for on-air personalities. These websites look they were designed and maintained by the world’s slowest interns.

Pictured above, WBCN.com is at the top of the list. Each of the content areas you see in the thumbnail above contain moving pieces. I nearly had an epileptic seizure upon visiting the homepage.

The website for WYSP in Philadelphia has a splash page. It looks half-way decent, in that I don’t feel the need to consult my doctor after viewing their website. These days, however, it is customary to have more than 1 page on your site.

KROQ in Los Angeles is one of the better sites I saw, but still not that great. Too much content (scrolling way down below the fold), and some placeholders for features that just didn’t work, such as “Now Playing.”

Curious as to what I assumed was a Rock-Radio-Internet-phenomenon, I did some Google searching on “worst radio station websites” and found a link to “Radio Mall: Programming Your Radio Station’s Website,” pictured above, and all became clear. Evidently, everyone in radio has taken this guy’s course. By the looks of his own site, he clearly is neither a designer nor a programmer. Nobody will fully know how many Radio Stations have been contaminated by this online predator, but in looking at the overall landscape, I’d say quite a few.

I recently discovered BrowserShots.org and it has improved the quality of life of QA Engineers at Embarc greatly. Simply put:

Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.

Working at an Interactive Agency as long as I have, I’ve seen how the Quality Assurance team has been required to maintain a small farm of desktop machines running all the most common browser versions. Switching from machine to machine to validate a properly formatted web page takes time. Trust me. This free service has automated a very manual process. Thanks Johann!