Freestyle Media auctioning itself off on eBay

www.24hourwebteam.com

We are about to start an auction on Monday to auction a Freestyle Media web team off! Its pretty crazy. Essentially the highest bidder gets to use a web team for a 24 hour stretch. 12pm to 12pm the next day. We are going to have web cams, microphones and other things so that you can watch the web team live!

Here is my simpleton drawing of how its going to work:

We need some bids so spread the word and lets get the bidding happening on Monday!

Linuxworld conference

Went to linux world yesterday! It was very interesting meeting all the people in that were into opensource systems. Its amazing the transformation that has occured in that industry. Big industry players like Fujitsu, Novell, HP and IBM are all getting into open source. They are either sponsoring a development or developing something themselves.

There were plenty of geeks at the event and I just thought all the time about the adoption of innovation curve and watched all the pioneers wandering around complaining about how all the advertising sucked and how sales guys dont know what they are talking about. Thats a true pioneer if I ever heard one. Doesnt look at flashy ads and doesnt want to be told what to buy. Self referencing pioneers have nothing to reference but themselves!

Checkout my Red hat!

Behold the power of Google!

It has only been 2 months since Google last made it to the press for giving BMW and Ricoh Germany the "death penalty". And now they're back on the news again for blacklisting yet another website for using "unethical" tactics to increase their search ranking. Only this time, they retaliated back by suing Google.

When you read the story about KinderStart.com you cannot help but to think how powerful Google has become. If it was Yahoo or MSN Search that banned the BMW or the KinderStart websites, would it have received the same publicity on the news? I would think not. So this is really a compliment to Google - ie. the importance for businesses to "get along" with them.

According to the lawyer of KinderStart.com, getting banned on Google meant the loss of 60-70% of Internet traffic to the website. Ouch!

Promoting a website offline

Marketing an online business is just like any other business. I like fishing where the fish are. Market in places with high concentrations of people. We have just launched our own online poker store to sell chipsets, poker tables and poker books. In order to promote the website we have entered 5 people into the corporate games poker tournament.

We wore the t-shirts and got a rousing response. You can see the full post here on my poker blog.

The point is the online store built its brand with its target market and I found myself quoting prices of tables and chipsets on the spot. It doesnt matter that its an online business, you still have to market it.

Population and internet users numbers

I know marketers are well and truely into numbers, so here are some numbers on internet usage and populations within the oceanic region.

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats6.htm#oceania

Did you know there are 14,189,544 Australians online.

Introduction to online marketing seminar

Thank you to everyone who attended the seminar. If you need some more details of executions or ideas/samples with numbers as to what the results were please dont hesitate to email me.
I will continue to post campaigns with results and estimated costs going forward

Here are the slides

If you have any comments about the seminar or have some suggestions for a topic just email or post a comment.

Blog on!

Offensive content

Im an online marketer and I have seen a lot of things in my time. The weird, wacky, fun and offensive. Having said that this was just way too strong for me:

http://www.clashradio.com/DVD/sullivan-video/
Be warned that this video really offended me.

Perhaps I am ignorant about populations of animals because I have watched too much TV, but I thought that hunting elephants, hippos, lions and tigers was not an ideal way to preserve our ecosystem?? Im an armchair environmentalist but hey, this is just a bit too strong for me.

How about this for a comment:
Please Note: The video clip that you are watching is but a small example of the life and death confrontations offered in my movies.More than anything. it demonstrates my manner and method of hunting dangerous game. Rather than shooting the great and noble beast into oblivion from a safe distance, my clients and I choose instead to walk up and give the animal a choice of how he is to die in battle.This explains why my movies are the most watched and talked about hunting movies in the world.

I want to start up a digg and see if anyone else agrees?
http://digg.com/videos_sports/Hunting_movies_offend_me_greatly

What is going on here? I just do not get it.
This is too aggressive

Search engine changes to blog #2

I have found the blog in the engines!
Google position

9th rank. I think because there is not enough links pointing to the website for the keyword online marketing sydney it is not getting good enough results.

I am going to make these modifications:

1. Change the title to "online marketing sydney Fred Schebesta"
2. I dont think there is enough copy on the website and enough pages to surf to. I.e. a sitemap would be ideal. I am going to move this blog to a different blog system that allows categories. Right now I am looking at wordpress.org because its in PHP.
3. Register the blog with the major directories including dmoz.org and some others. I have previously submitted the website to the search engines and I think this has given it its listings in Google.

And lets see how that goes. Got any suggestions or want to link to this site and help me? Comment away

Others
"Online marketing sydney" search engine marketing case study #1
Search engine optimisation changes #3

Introduction to Online marketing seminar

Im giving a free seminar next wednesday. If you want to come along just signup here.
Register

Its an overview of online marketing. Wednesday the 22nd of March.

• Search engine marketing (No where as detailed as this weeks seminar.)
• Blogging and podcasting (This is the way of the future and I want to give some insights.)
• Email marketing
• Websites - The good the bad and the ugly. Briefly discuss concept of websites being a sales tool not just a information source. Also a sneak peek at web 2.0!
• eCRM - the basics as to what you need if you dont already have a CRM system connected to you website
• Content management systems
• Website statistics
• Online media and banner advertising
• Viral marketing and online games - what makes a good viral and what doesnt.
• Affiliate marketing - Overview this and just brush over it. Affiliate networks are a tough gig but they need to be done.
• Webcasts - Broadband is in and so is video.

Podcasting in Australia

You see them everywhere. Yes them... people with white earphones walking around the city, on their bikes, sitting on the train, and even doing their daily jog. And hey, this might be you!

Ever since the iPod craze swept this country a few years ago, we've seen an ever growing demand in portable music players for people of all ages. And of course, this trend is witnessed in many other countries throughout the world.

So now that we have scores of individuals each owning a personal music device with the capacity of storing hours of audio, has this opened up a new door of opportunity for direct marketing in the Australian market?

I would think so, and so do many others. And one of the ways is through podcasting (a "podcast" is like a radio show that you can download onto your music player and listen to it when you want). That's why traditional radio broadcasters such as the ABC and 2DayFM has jumped onto the podcasting bandwagon, allowing listeners to download some of their shows.

One major advantage of postcasting over traditional radio is that listeners can choose what they want to hear (be it horseriding, cooking, theology or yoga) and when they want. In the past, there were limitations in storage and Internet bandwidth for this to take off. Now this is no longer an issue.

First of all, I think there exists an opportunity to launch a podcast directory for Australian podcasts. I've yet to find a "good" podcast directory where I could search for content relevant to Australians. What's the use of having your own radio show when people couldn't find it? But having said that, I don't think it'll be long for some person/organisation to come up with one. Even http://www.podcastdirectory.com.au/ is taken.

For Freestyle Media clients such as Sanitarium, I believe there's an opportunity for them to expand their online Nutrition Service to include podcast downloads too. The only Australian health-related podcast that I could find is the one by the ABC - and I found it so BORING! So I think it'll be pretty cool to have an Aussie podcast about healthy living, dieting, etc.

What are your ideas?

Search Engine Marketing 101 seminar

http://staging.freestylemedia.com.au/SEMSeminar150306.ppt

Here are the slides of the seminar that I put on this morning.

Keen on comments and suggestions

Online marketing agency vs Chop Shop

Whats the difference between a professional online marketing agency and a chop shop when it comes to your online marketing? Whats the difference?



Chop shop (Your down the road supplier working from their bedroom floor. Some of the big advertising agencies use these guys and mark their services up. Most marketers cant tell the difference between a well built webiste until they feel the pain down the track. I have noticed that this is slowly changing and marketers are realising advertising agencies are good at advertising not online.)

Pro

• Cheap (In the short term. But more expensive in the lifetime of your website)
• Get the job done
• Less documentation

Con

• No search engine rank for website that is developed
• Unreliable; are they going to be there in a few weeks? What will happen to your online marketing?
• Thinks that the website is just means to an end.
• Code is not scalable and cannot be cost effectively maintained nor upgraded.
• Difficult to modify website
• Strange errors keep appearing.
• No documentation means no formalisation of what you are actually getting.
  

Online marketing agency (Professional online marketers. They know the value of a visitor and how much it costs to get them there and they know exactly what to do with them when they are on your website to make that cash register ring.)

Pro

• Gives you good search engine rank
• Ensures your website coding is viewable on all browsers
• Knows and works with you on your website to turn it into a sales tool
• Cost effective since work that is done doesnt need to be redone; website is scalable and can be built upon. Less investment required in the future to maintain and upgrade website
• Documentation of what is to be delivered.
  

Con

• More expensive in the short term (initial outlay is larger but cheaper in the longterm.)

Keen on your ideas.

"Online marketing sydney" search engine marketing case study #1

I have decided to give my blog a bit of meaningful credit and try and get my blog into the search engines and start getting some traffic to it.

Pagerank = zero/10

Right now my blog has zero pagerank with Google. This means that not many people are linking to it and Google doesnt consider it a valuable website. I need to rectify this. The way I am going to do this is by getting websites with pagerank to link to my blog. I have requested a link be created from the Freestyle Media (PR 5) website to my blog. I am keen to put this link in the sitemap page of the Freestyle Media website.

Last 25 words
The last 25 words of content need to contain you keyword. I have added a footer paragraph today which contains the keywords "Online marketing sydney". Lets see how that performs. I have also added a link back to the homepage in the footer.

Most of my techniques and ideas are either self developed or I have learnt them from the USA. We will track this performance with the engines and see how we go?

Next
Search engine changes to blog #2
Search engine optimisation changes #3

Google vs Microsoft

Lets face reality. Google probably wrote its word documents on Microsoft. It probably opens up Microsoft every morning on most of its PC's. In the big technology swinging Silicon Valley right now I think everyone is kidding itself if it doesnt realise that Google is trying to take over every single piece of Microsofts turf.

Google just purchased writely, a word processing program built into browsers. The only differences are its online, you can post to your blog (do I here Blogger), you can share docs 10 times easier and its got that vanilla feeling WYSIWIG interface like Word.

Why in the worl would Google not envy the monolith of the Vally and try to systematically replace Microsoft with a good old Google?

My bet is... They are!

Brand vs Search ROUND 2

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

New website launch

Launching a new website is a process which I can assure you I have been through many times and can go really well and also really badly.

Here are my top 3 things to watch out for:

1. No errors - When you launch your new website ensure that there arent any errors. I know you have been looking at this site for 3 months now, and you hate it. You loved it when you saw the first designs. You showed other people and they loved it. But you began to grow apart from each other and now it has descended into a relationship of hate. But you have to be the bigger person in this relationship with your website.

• Check that EVERY SINGLE link works.
• No Spelling mistakes
• Every image comes up
• All pages load correctly in internet explorer
• No pages are missing.

The worst thing I have found to happen here is that you have put all this work in and now someone points out that the company name is mispelled on the homepage and all hell breaks loose. There is no need for the corporate alarm bells to sound. Just take it easy and fix it before it happens. I cringe at the emails where a big client of a company tells the CEO that something is wrong with their website. The marketing people cop more grief than is due. Having said that, its our job to get it right.

2. Tell people about the website - email your best customers and tell them. "We have created new website to better service you and help you . I like it when companies redo their websites. I find the new ones are better. I like seeing how the company has thought about their business and their clients and what is important to them and how they have solved this problem. I am an online marketer so I might see it a bit differently to most people. A normal customer will go, "WOW, its new its new! What do you have for me? What are you going to give me? I want more and I want it because its NEW!" Free download, Free voucher .. whatever. Give them something. Rehash an old offer and jam in on the homepage. It will seem brand new to them!

3. Commence promoting the website and tracking - Immediately after you have launched your new website commence the process of promoting it. You need to start "Returning" your investment. You need traffic, hits, people. You need sales, leads or bookings. My suggestion and pardon my flagrant self promotion is to pick up the telephone and call 02 9818 7300 and speak to Fred Schebesta or just email me to get some professional advice. Corporate companies need to be professional in their websites and also in their online marketing. I would write a brief and go to an agency and say "Hey, we just dropped $100,000 with you to build this site. How are we going to get some traffic." They should come back to you with some ideas. My advice is to ensure that any promotion is focused around search engine marketing, email marketing and other online media. I suggest you start with the cheapest online media and move your way up.

Tracking is all about hits, clicks and camefroms. Your level of analytics depends on budget. Most of the corporate clients will use some form of tracking system over the top of the website statistics program. I suggest this:

1. Use your website statistics program for basic stats. Unique visits (The number of unique people who come to your website.), referrals (Where did the users come from before they went to your website. I like this one because you get some good info about which search engines are working well for you. Also which other websites links are working well.), page impressions (The number of pages that were displayed. This is very important if you are looking to sell advertising space. Since you will sell these impressions individually.)
2. Use a specialised analytics tool for campaign tracking like SEM or SEO. If you are a big ecommerce company then you will need to use an analytics tool for everything you do.

Here is a website we recently launched:
http://www.pmigroup.com.au/Default.asp

Its always a big thing when we launch a new website and I think this one is a pearler.

Brand vs Search ROUND 1

This is going to be an ongoing debate and saga between brand vs search.

I have noticed more and more a great divide and saga developing between search engine marketers and brand managers. Each person has a valid concern and a worthy challenge although sometimes their suggestions conflict.

Search engine marketers objectives
1. Get to the top of the major search engines
2. Drive as much traffic as possible from the search engines
3. Modify the company website to be as search engine visible as possible.

Brand Managers objectives
1. Build and promote the brand.
2. Mantain the integrity of the brand
3. Use the brand awareness in peoples minds to influence purchasing decisions at time of purchase.
4. Modify the company website to promote the brand and stay within the brand message.

Conflict 1. Homepage Title and content

A search engine marketer wants to populate the title and homepage of a company website with keywords that they are targetting to improve page relevance. A brand manager wants all the copy on the homepage to be within the brand guidelines and promote the brand personality.

The conflict occurs in that the copy that a search marketer would use is not going to read aswell as if it wasnt search engine marketed. That a particular word or keyword appears over and over doesnt do your page much good. On the other hand if there is no search marketing of the homepage copy the site will not rank aswell in the engines and the brand will not be promoted as much.

Forgive me world for I have marketed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAGr3mVVUwE&search=microsoft%20ipod

This clip rocked me a bit. Sometimes I feel this over marketed way. We produce these things and dont really think about what the end result is.

I really really appreciate how hard it would have been for Apple to roll out that packaging. Its clean simple and stands out in this marketing infested product category.

My respeck goes out to da peeps over at Apple. Having said that I am typing on a Microsoft platform, using internet explorer and I was sent this clip from outlook.

Which glasses do you like best?

This is your chance to vote which glasses you think look best?