Story by: Cliff Boodoosingh     Date: Mon, June 22nd, 2009          ... more from Cliff

Rolling with the Social Networking Crowd at SES Toronto

For the Search Engine Strategies conference (held in Toronto June 8-10) to stay relevant, it must cover social networking. It has to be addressed fully and so it was. There needs to be a Twitter strategy in the marketing mix, so we're told again. It's no longer just doing what you can to climb up in the search rankings on Google. There's got to be You Tube videos. And people have to be discussing your brand, so get out there and create buzz.

That's what I got out of the conference upon reflecting on the first two days. Sure you walk away with some tips on Google Analytics, site architecture and building links, but that stuff is taken for granted now, isn't it? After a few years, how could it not be?

What is the big picture? It's about connecting to your audience, your community, your customers. How do you do that?

Tara Hunt, author of The Whuffie Factor and a social media expert, has definite ideas on this. Turn that bullhorn around and focus on the individual is what she'd start off with. Don't merely shout out what you are doing, try and listen. Become part of the community you serve. Understand and respond to the community's needs. Create amazing customer experiences.

Emanuel Rosen, author of the Anatomy of Buzz Revisted echoes these sentiments. The foundation to stimulating good word of mouth is great customer experiences, he reiterates. And it could come from simple ideas as long as it leads to a good story. One example Rosen uses is Blake Mycoskie's start up company, Toms Shoes. Mycoskie, while in Argentina a couple of years ago, found some cool canvas shoes that he liked and on the same journey found poor kids running around in the streets with no shoes on their feet. An idea was borne. He'd redesign the shoes, sell them, and give away a pair to a child in need for each pair he sold.

It doesn't take too much imagination to realize that this is a perfect customer experience story and displays authentic connection with people. Not surprisingly it created tremendous buzz and success thanks to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, blogs... you know the usual social networking suspects. But it also caught the eye of Obama's Economic Development Team and Mycoskie told his business success story at the White House.

The idea of positive and amazing customer service sounds familiar and it's good advice and we've heard it before. The problem is that we've not taken it for granted, it's not second nature yet and we'll get beat over the head over and over until it resonates like: You've got to build links; You've got to tweak your title tags; and Content is King.

Count on plenty more of social networking tips, tools and ideas when SES rolls around in 2010.

Story by: Cliff Boodoosingh     Date: Fri, May 22nd, 2009          ... more from Cliff

Good Times for Twitter

It doesn't bother me in the least that I'm not an early adopter. I have friends that got the iPod way before it was cool and sold the very first model, upgraded a couple of times, before I even ordered mine.

So when the Twitter craze took hold, I snuck a peek but it never seemed 'all of that'. The fact that I wrote 'all of that' is probably reflective of where I am on the trends bandwagon. However, I do have to take pause and say who would have thought tweeting that you just woke up and are making plans for lunch would be part and parcel of another social networking juggernaut.

Okay, there's cynicism there but on reading dozens of articles recently about Twitter I've found that amazing things do occur on that network. Namely, discussing strategy on tumor surgery, solving crimes, reporting on breaking news, relaying consumer opinion and providing useful and timely information besides what the lineup is like at the grocery store.

Even the Web hosting industry is actively participating. Hivelocity is sending tweets on server specials and UK's DediPower is hosting a popular Twitter aggregator site that is ahead of its time.

Am I too late to the party? Hardly. It was just reported by comScore that Twitter grew 131 percent in March 2009 to 9.3 million US visitors. That's a jump of 5 million from February. I guess pondering which variety of red wine to buy might make for some good tweets. Maybe not.

Story by: Cliff Boodoosingh     Date: Mon, March 2nd, 2009          ... more from Cliff

Web Hosts Ahead of the Marketing Curve

Businesses should always strive to enhance customer experience. It's the way to drive conversions online and hopefully make more money. I'm always curious to find out what companies are doing differently to achieve this. Luckily, there are surveys conducted regularly to help gather the information.

Enter the Adobe Scene7 2009 Survey: Online Customer Experience -The Next Generation.

After going through the 39 page report, it was noted that approximately 32 percent of respondents (worldwide) plan to add blogs and user ratings in 2009. Here's the the excerpted list of the top planned features for 2009:

* Blogs: 32%
* User ratings, rankings, comments: 31%
* RSS: 26%
* Syndicating content to social site: 23%
* User-generated visual content: 22%
* Desktop widgets: 21%
* Live chat/Instant Messaging: 20%
* User-generated ratings/contests: 20%

Visit your Web host of choice and you'll notice that they are well on their way on these features, which means, improving on them should be the goal for 2009.

One thing that did catch my eye was that 360 degree spin (the Adobe product not the damage control shenanigans) is a feature planned for deployment by nearly 30 percent of the companies surveyed. This feature is great for checking out cars, cell phones and hotel rooms. What about for servers and control panels? I haven’t seen it yet but Web hosts catch on pretty fast, don't they?