My Journey Down the New Media Road

 

Feeling lost and overwhelmed when starting down New Media Road.

When I started the New Media Drivers License journey, I really felt lost. I had heard of the roads that led to the digital tools and new media outlets, but never really drove on them for my personal purposes, let alone my professional. I knew new media was the direction of my profession. I knew I needed to jump on the New Media Road and drive fast to catch up to my fellow marketing professionals. I knew with the right GPS system, I would be navigating the New Media Road like a pro. And, thanks to MSU, I found the right GPS system in my New Media Drivers License course with Derek Mehraban, the electronic voice that helped me stay on course. Thanks Derek!

With the right direction, navigating on the New Media Road is exciting.

I look forward to our last class to have the opportunity to share what I learned during my drivers training course. My central point to my fellow marketing communications professionals and new graduates in the field is: This course will provide you the pathway to effective web-based communications. Why does this matter? You can become your company’s new media expert…creating profitable relationship with customers. In today’s economic uncertainty, this is invaluable to a company. 

I plan to support my core message by sharing stories of my plans to:

Rough outline for Step 2 in my presentation preparation

• use social media (blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, chat rooms, message boards) 
• enhance web marketing (personas, content-rich website, wikis, SEO techniques, Google tools/ads)  
• post to online media rooms (RSS feeds, PR news sites)

I’m excited to be driving on the New Media Road — it’s the road to new customers for my company and the road to an expanded horizon for me.

I would highly recommend all marketing communication professionals jump aboard The Digital Bus and obtain a New Media Drivers License. It’s the road to success for your career.

Learn The New Rules of Marketing & PR

 

New Edition of The New Rules of Marketing & PR

 

Just this year, award-winning marketing strategist and best-selling author David Meerman Scott  

David Meerman Scott

released an updated version of The New Rules of Marketing & PR. This book is an excellent guide to help marketing and PR professionals leverage web-based communications to successfully reach consumers. Meerman Scott’s new updated version provides fresh insight on incorporating social media into marketing strategies.

 The New Rules of Marketing & PR offers a wealth of information on creating web content that will not only draw consumers into a site, but will also influence their buying decisions. Meerman Scott also shares the new public relations rules to effectively reach the media and consumers directly. Plus, he shares best practices on podcasting, blogging and social networking, showing how companies have transformed the way they communicate with consumers using these tools.

Professionals like Don Dunnington, president of the International Association of Online Communicators, recommends The New Rules of Marketing & PR. He says: “Revolution may be an overused word in the describing what the Internet has wrought, but revolution is exactly what Scott embraces and propels forward in this book. With this rule book to the online revolution, you can learn how to win minds and markets, playing by the rules of the new media.”

I’m glad my MSU professor  Derek Mehraban, Ingenex Digital Marketing President, selected The New Rules of Marketing & PR as the textbook for my grad class  New Media Drivers License. I would highly recommend all marketing professionals read this book. It is packed with marketing strategies that can be implemented immediately to create real solutions for your company. Whether your goal is branding or generating sales, Meerman Scott provides proven tactics to achieve your company’s goals. It’s the best $16.95 investment I ever made. Check it out… The New Rules of Marketing & PR table of contents. I think you’ll want to invest in this marketing guide too.

I like this book so much I promoted it on digg.com and submitted a press release on pr.com.

Press Release for Scott's book

Become the New Media Expert for Your Company

Now is the time to optimize your career by helping your company use new media to brand itself as a trusted resource and develop a profitable relationship with customers to increase sales. Learn how you can transform

Julie Dahl, 30, DMC Marketing Manager: "This course was great! By implementing the new media ideas I learned in this class, I was able to generate $1m in revenue for my company."

new media strategies into real-world success for your company by enrolling in Michigan State University’s New Media Drivers License course. This dynamic, graduate level course provides the essential knowledge and practical skills for marketing communication professionals to become that indispensable employee who maximizes every budget dollar. This course covers all digital communication tools including:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Blogging
• Podcasting
• New Marketing
• Digital Public Relations
• Google Tools
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

 This course will sharpen your online marketing skills, helping you become the demanded professional with career mobility and advancement potential. You’ll have what it takes to positively impact the virtual world, your company’s bottom line and, most importantly, your career.

Jump on the Superhighway to Success

Internet marketing guru Derek Mehraban, president of Ingenex Digital Marketing, will teach the New Media Drivers License course three times in 2009.

Complete the form below to receive a course syllabus for New Media Drivers License offered by Michigan State University.

First Name:

Last Name:

Email address:

Sign up for the course now! Select Adv 490 Section 701

Search Engine Optimization Enhances Website Traffic

About a year ago, we rebuilt my company’s website. We spent a lot of time on the content and navigation. Now as I research search engine optimization (SEO) for my New Media Drivers License course, I’m finding some steps we need to go back and revise or actually do.

According to David Meerman Scott in his book The New Rules of Marketing & PR , content is key. Derek Mehraban, President of Ingenex Digital Marketing, dittos this belief. Mehraban stresses the need for strong headlines, relevant subheads, clear and concise copy with links to strengthen the story in order to increase your ranking on searches.

Plus, it’s critical your content features information your buyers are looking for. Which is why Scott recommends to do a buyers persona profile which should include: “the typical buyer’s background, daily activities, and current solutions for their problems.” This step will help you see through your buyers’ eyes. As Scott says: “…you want your (buyers) to encounter your Web content and …say: ‘Yes, that’s me. This organization understands me and my problems and will therefore have products that fit my needs.’”

Because great content influences more visitors and potential patients, our hospital will be going back to ensure every page is aligned with our buyers personas. If our visitors view us as having great content, we have a better chance of our visitors spreading the word about our site through social media tools like  Delicious, Digg, and blog posts as well as generating patients.

Another recommendation from Scott is not to optimize on general keywords. It’s impossible to get to the top of the search with general keywords. This is where Google AdWord ‘s keyword tool can help discover the best keywords and some variations you may not have considered. Google also offers Webmaster tools which reveal the top search queries for your website. Plus, the website optimizer allows you to create 2-3 different pages in order to measure how web users react to different images, headlines and website copy. These three Google tools will help us move near the top of the web users’  searches.

Additionally, Scott encourages search engine marketers to create landing pages specific to the different website searches. The fastest way to lose the web user is to take them to a general page that requires them to click through your site to find what they were searching for. Don’t try it; you’ll lose them. Instead take them to a landing page. According to Scott, good landing pages are short, simple and provide valuable information, not advertising. Once you have a potential buyer, you can point them to an e-commerce page. 

The Google SEO Starter Guide is another great reference for search engine marketers. This guide shares the importance of short, accurate titles for every page. Titles will affect your inclusion in web searches, especially if they are left on the default of “untitled.” Search engine marketers are also encouraged to add meta tags which is the 1-2 sentences that appear after the title in the search engine’s search results. A solid description of your web page can be the turnkey for web users to select your website over others. Lastly, the guide suggests changing your pages’ URLs to something descriptive and easy to remember since it can encourage some web users to select your site from the search’s many choices.

Our corporate website has implemented many of the SEO recommendations and often times is near the top of search results. Now it’s time for our hospital to do the same.

Twitter vs LinkedIn vs Facebook

As I experimented with the three popular social media tools — Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, I was confused why a person would use all three? I certainly see benefits of all of them. Personally, I liked Twitter for its quick read 140 word messages.  LinkedIn re-acquainted me with professional colleagues I haven’t talked to in a while. I also found an eMarketing Association Network that I requested to join which looked very interesting. Facebook re-acquainted me with old friends from school and past jobs. Plus, I joined my professional organization’s group and saw an upcoming event that I’d like to attend.  

However, staying up with all of them is too much for me. For now, I think I’ll focus on LinkedIn for my professional connections and Facebook for my personal connections. My goal is to stay connected and reconnect with professional colleagues and friends through these two social media tools.

Twitter seemed too much like chit chat for me. I also don’t like strangers following me. Although, I was surprised to hear the airplane that went down in the Hudson River was first reported on Twitter — they out scooped the news media. I guess if I had a phone that received the messages instantly, I may feel differently about Twitter. But my Verizon work phone is not like my husband’s and sons’ Iphones. As much as people send Tweets to each other, my text message bill would be outrageous and work would not be happy with me.

To buy or not to buy pay-to-click ads

For an assignment in my New Media Drivers License course offered by MSU, I created a Google AdWord Ad. This pay-to-click ad, that is supposed to appear on the right of the Google search page, was for my blog. Google makes it very easy to create an ad and offers many tools to make the ad as successful as possible.

Keywords are essential to the ad’s success. Google’s keyword research tool is very helpful. Using this tool, I found the original keywords I choose were not very popular for searches which was probably why I only had 3 impressions after 24 hours. I changed my keywords to align with the most popular searches. However, because the ad rotations are dictated by the dollars the ad owners are willing to pay for keywords, my ad still did not come up. For this experiment, I put a low $5 limit on my monthly click fees. One of the popular search keywords that related to my blog was email marketing which had 82,000 searches/month, but had a $11.55 per click suggested bid — this one click was higher than my total monthly amount. I also found adding a targeted word like healthcare dropped the search matches to 52 -230 searches per month, and the suggested bid per click rose significantly from $3 to $7.03. Using the keyword tool, I learned the competition for the keywords I wanted is fierce and expensive. I would need to spend a lot more money than my measly $5 budget for my ad to appear. 

Trying to get my ad to appear was very frustrating. I spent hours and hours, days and days Googling my keywords. I understand most of my keywords would be taken by advertisers with much bigger budgets. But why wouldn’t my ad appear when I typed in my own name which I selected as a keyword. There was no competition for that?!?! This made me even double, and triple, check that my account was active.

Yes, my Google AdWord Ad is active, but why won't it appear?

Yes, it does say my account is active, yet the ad never appears. Google claims that the ad won’t appear on every search due to my budget, the amount per keyword I’m willing to pay and the  number of competitors. However, again I wonder, why when I search Renee Shimmel does it not appear. Google took my $5 activation fee and will charge my account when hits occur, yet no hit can occur because they won’t put up the ad — not even when you look through pages and pages of sponsored ad links. According to my impression summary count, it supposedly is showing up for some web users, but I’m wondering if it is a just scam. 

I always been a little skeptical on how effective these Google pay-for-click ads have been, now I’m even more skeptical. My multi-hospital organization has purchased these ads to promote videos on key healthcare services we offer. Our ads are on both Google and Yahoo; we also post the videos on our website and YouTube. Yahoo got more hits than Google and YouTube blew out both. Ultimately, our website does the best, although I must admit much time has been invested in search engine optimization to make it successful. Unfortunately, we can’t track if these web watchers turn into patients due to our patient tracking system.

Frustrated and skeptical about these ads, I decided to ask some friends a few questions about their web searches and use of the pay-for-click ads. I sent out 39 short surveys to see if they use Google’s search engine, do they look at the ads, did they ever clicked on the ads, and have they ever bought an ad for their company. I received 25 surveys back, everyone used Google’s search engine regularly. This informal survey revealed 32% of the respondents look at the ads and another 28% periodically look at them; 40% never look at them. Do they ever click on the ads? 36% said they did, 16% claimed periodically they clicked on them and 48% said never. Of the respondents, six  had bought a pay-for-click ad. Half said it wasn’t successful for them, one said fairly successful and two others endorsed this marketing idea. One specialized online train retailer claimed he promotes his business exclusively through the web and his website tops 50,000 hits a day worldwide with much of his success due to the pay-for-click ads. I believe his success is due to the lack of competitors so can pay a minimal amount for his keywords to get in the top 3 on the first page. Also, some respondents told me they were more likely to pay attention and click on the ads when looking for a service/business than if they are just searching for information. This mentality would also contribute to success to drive buyers to his site. For healthcare though, most often organizations/doctors are supplying health information and thus are selling services in a soft sell approach rather than a hard sell approach, which the train retailer can do.

From this experience, I agree with one of my survey respondents who claimed: Google pay-for-click ads were more effective in the past than they are now. I believe it may be because of today’s large number of online competitors due to the fact the web is fast becoming one of the top resources for information. Thus, advertisers with small budgets can’t compete against the deep-pocket advertisers who appear in the top 3. If you can pay to be in the top 3, then you may have a chance of getting approximately half the web users to view and click your ad. In my opinion invest your resources and time in search engine optimization so your site will appear in the main search result area. Then you have 100% of the web users looking at your information and potentially going to your site.

Digit Marketing Differs from Direct Marketing

Thanks to the help of Google Blog Search, I found an interesting digital marketing blog by Acxiom Digital.

Kevin Johnson, president of Acxiom, posted a comment titled: The Digital Divide: Differences between online and offline direct marketing. I thought this was insightful and important for marketers to keep in mind.

Johnson states: “The typical direct marketing campaign starts with an offer and the universe of consumers. Direct marketers then “cut a list” – a small subset of the prospect universe – by carefully eliminating great swaths of the population who are less likely to respond to the offer. Good e-mail marketers, on the other hand, take precisely the opposite approach. They start with every person for whom they have permission to mail and then carefully select the best offer for each individual on the list.”

I could relate to what he was talking about as we just finishing a big direct mail campaign where we started with an offer and narrowed our list to those who would most likely respond from our universe of potential customers. 

Now we are preparing for a new online marketing campaign to women. I really hadn’t switched my thinking. Now I see I need to think of the large email universe I have and back into the promotion/offer. As Johnson notes, this online approach is opposite from the offline direct mail approach.

I only wish the link to the whole post would have appeared; the DMNews link wasn’t functioning or it was taken down so I could only read the teaser on the blog. I was definitely teased for more. 

The next post titled: New Customers are a Good Thing, Right? by Jose Cebrian, from Acxiom’s Account Management, made some excellent suggestions for email marketing. He suggested having timed email messages that drive the reader back to the company’s website for value-added, relevant information.

To connect our hospital’s women’s services with current gynecological patients as well as women we have met at various events who are potential patients, we wanted to send monthly women-specific health tips. I liked Jose’s advice to drive them to the web for value-added information. We know online copy needs to be short so limited health info can be included in the email. I envision a right hand column with links to additional relevant information on that health issue and our related health info videos. Also we can include some national organizations’ links that may have even more information, but aren’t competing against us. This will set the hospital up as a healthcare resource in the women’s minds.

I also liked Google’s short surveys at the end of their tutorials. We could include a short survey asking what other health issues the email receiver would like information on to help us align our emails to the masses as Johnson suggested earlier. 

Acxiom’s information was posted back in late 2006, but I still think this digital marketing advice is relevant.