Archive for category Internet marketing
Social Media Marketing is on the Marketing Menu
Posted by admin in Internet marketing, Social Networking on June 28th, 2010
Social media marketing is becoming increasingly crucial to the growth of businesses. This has become evident for our friends at Weslayan Café, a great little restaurant owned and operated by good people that serves tasty food that is close to Marion. They have recently asked their customers to partake in the social media scene by asking them to post reviews on many dining directories.
“To Our Loyal and Appreciated Customers:
We love having you here at Weslayan Café, and your continued support is what keeps our doors open; however, word of mouth, mail flyers, etc., don’t do much for business growth. The advent of smartphone growth and computer usage make dining ‘social networking’ not only a helpful but extremely powerful tool in increasing our customer base and subsequently being able to do things like add more variety to our menu, extend our hours, hire more employees to expedite order speed, etc.
That’s why we would love if you could take 10 minutes or so to take advantage of websites like citysearch.com, yelp.com, 29-95.com, or b4-u-eat.com to post reviews of our restaurant so others can hear about our great food!
Thanks,
The obvious purpose of these sites is for current customers to share their opinions and experiences and for potential customers to see the reviews for a restaurant (or other products and services) and, hopefully, make a decision to dine there. Business owners also benefit from these sites. Much like comment cards, online review sites help businesses learn what their customers think about the products and services they receive and can use the reviews to improve many aspects of the businesses.
General directories, such as yelp and citysearch, provide reviews and information about businesses around various cities in different categories. Sites such as b4-u-eat.com and 29-95 are specifically targeted to restaurants and businesses in Houston. To get listed, businesses submit their information and usually pay a small fee. Because the directories verify the information, they are considered ‘authoritative’ in the eyes of the Google bots. However, since general interest directories like yelp hold a broad range of interests, they may not hold as much authority as the more specialized directories focusing on a narrower field of interest.
For more information on social media marketing for your company, contact The Marion Group at 713.623.6444 or email us at info2@marion.com.
RSS Feeds are Simply Great for Syndication
Posted by admin in Internet marketing, Search Engine Optimization on June 25th, 2010
A goal that marketers have when building their websites is to keep customers and prospects informed with the latest news about their business and keep them coming back for more. One online tool that helps is an RSS feed. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, blogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever is interested.
RSS feeds solve problems for people who regularly use the web by allowing them to easily stay informed by having the latest content get taken from the sites they are interested in. People save time by not having to visit each site individually. An RSS feed is a great addition to blogs for people on the go and many blogging tools have built-in RSS feed features. Users can subscribe to a feed by clicking on the ‘Subscribe’ link on the feed’s page. To view the subscribed feeds, users can choose to use their browser’s ‘Favorites’ tab or their iGoogle or My Yahoo accounts.
The number of sites offering RSS feeds is growing. RSS feeds provide many features and benefits for both the publishers and viewers of the feed including.
- Individuals opt-in to feeds for sites of interest and control the flow of information that they receive.
- RSS does not burden the publisher with maintaining opt-in lists or following strict privacy guidelines.
- You have direct access to your subscribers and guaranteed delivery of your content
- RSS feeds can improve your internal content syndication for corporate communications and provide information to remote employees and sales teams
- Publishers are able to create keyword-rich content. Syndicating your content builds up inbound links and positively affects your search engine rankings
For more information on RSS feeds and how Marion can help you with them and other internet marketing tools, please email or call 713-623-6444.
The Internet Can Make You Global Player
Posted by admin in Brand Building, Internet marketing on April 8th, 2010
If you think your company is regional player only, then you may be underestimating your role. Perhaps you can step onto the world stage and become a global player! Marion has done exactly that with websites and brand positioning services for companies and professionals that:
- Are restricted geographically in selling branded equipment, but have no such restrictions selling the parts for that equipment anywhere.
- Manufacture custom engineered products of branded equipment where the equipment unaltered has regional distribution only.
- Sell customized commodity products. (One of our customers has become global selling custom printed plastic bags.)
- Have a unique skill that people will travel for, such as revision rhinoplasty or all-on-4 dental implants.
And you have not missed the show! Global Internet usage is still in its infancy. According to Internet World Stats News, over 1.8 Billion people used the Internet last year. As you can see in the table below, the year 2009 ended with 1,802,330,108 Internet users. This represents a mere 26.6% penetration rate globally, making it apparent that there is a lot of room to grow across the world.
| Internet World Statistics Report Internet Users by World Regions – December 31, 2009 |
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| Region | Population | Internet Users | P. R. | % Users |
| Asia | 3,808,070,503 | 764,435,900 | 20.1 % | 42.4 % |
| Europe | 803,850,858 | 425,773,571 | 53.0 % | 23.6 % |
| North America | 340,831,831 | 259,561,000 | 76.2 % | 14.4 % |
| Latam / Caribbean | 586,662,468 | 186,922,050 | 31.9 % | 10.4 % |
| Africa | 991,002,342 | 86,217,900 | 8.7 % | 4.8 % |
| Middle East | 202,687,005 | 58,309,546 | 28.8 % | 3.2 % |
| Oceania, Australia | 34,700,201 | 21,110,490 | 60.8 % | 1.2 % |
| Total World | 6,767,805,208 | 1,802,330,108 | 26.6 % | 100.0 % |
| Source: Internet World Stats, estimates for December 31, 2009. Notes: a) Population data comes from the US Census Bureau; b) Internet estimates come from ITU, Nielsen Online, GfK, official telecommunications regulating agencies and other trustworthy sources; c) Mexico is included in Central America and Turkey is included in Europe, according to the United Nations grouping; d) P.R. means the Penetration Rate, in percentage. Copyright © 2010, Miniwatts Marketing Group. | ||||
Source: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
To go global you need do some brand building, particularly brand positioning, to reflect what services or products you can provide for customers all over the world. Then, you need a custom web site design that states your brand message clearly. The website must be Search Engine Optimized (SE0) and you must do some Internet Marketing.
Need help? Call Marion at 713-623-6444.
Microsoft & Yahoo! Get In the Paid Ad Bed Together!
Posted by admin in Internet marketing on February 19th, 2010
One Account Can Now Manage Paid Ads on Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Properties and Partner Sites
By end of the year or in early 2011, Yahoo! and Microsoft will share the same bed to create the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. The new YMSA will enable a new, unified search marketplace combining the Yahoo! and Microsoft paid ad networks. Now, Marion Internet Marketing Specialists can purchase ads for our customers through one account covering both search networks.
We can log into one place – the Microsoft’s adCenter – to manage campaigns with greater efficiency and a better ROI. With just one buy, the ads we place for our customers can reach users of Yahoo! and Microsoft sites (MSN.com and Bing.com), as well as their premium partner sites. The combined effort of the two companies will help us reach more customers for our clients with greater ease and efficiency.
With just one account for the two networks, we will be able to reach up to 150 million searchers and get approximately 62% more search volume than on Yahoo! alone.
To help drive future growth in search volume, Yahoo! will continue to significantly enhance the search experience on their leading web properties. They will deliver new features and innovations in the form of new content and web products used by hundreds of millions of consumers.
Microsoft will continue to innovate the underlying technologies that drive high quality algorithmic and paid search results.
With this alliance, the combined Yahoo! and MSN share of searches comes to about 23.75%, leaving Google still very much the King of Search with a 72.25% share according to the latest info from Hitwise.
If you are interested in Internet Marketing Services at Marion that include paid ads not only on Yahoo! and Microsoft sties, but also on King Google, call us at 713.623.6444 or send us an info2@marion.com.
What’s the difference: Web vs. Internet
Posted by admin in Internet marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Uncategorized, Web Design on February 3rd, 2010
Ever used the terms “Web” and “Internet” interchangeably? Like “Surf the Web” or “Browse the internet”? Most of us have. But the truth is that the Web and Internet are different.
The Internet is a huge network of networks- it connects computers together, so that they can communicate and trade information. If a computer is connected to the Internet, it can exchange information with any other computers that are also connected.
The Web (aka World Wide Web) is just one way of accessing the Internet. The Web is an information-sharing application that is built on top of the Internet. The Web cannot work unless the Internet is connected. Simply put, the Web runs on top of the Internet the way a train runs on tracks.
When you are shopping on Amazon or watching videos on YouTube, you are using the Web. However, when you send an email, you are using the Internet, not the Web. The Web is by far the largest and most widely used subnetwork of the internet.
Here, at Marion, we provide a wide range of Internet and Web marketing services. For the Web, we can increase traffic to your page through our Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing. For the Internet, Marion can create and broadcast e-newsletters, so that you can stay in constant contact with your customers. Check out our full range of online marketing services or contact us today at (713)-623-6444.
Google Still King of Search in December 2009
Posted by admin in Internet marketing, Search Engine Optimization on February 1st, 2010
Experian Hitwise announced that Google accounted for an amazing 72.25% of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Jan. 2, 2010. Trailing far behind, Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask.com received a mere 14.83%, 8.92% and 2.54% respectively. Trailing even further behind, the remaining 66 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.48% of U.S. searches.
Searches of one word comprised the majority of searches, amounting to 24.34% of all queries.
View the rest of article.
At The Marion Group, our customers rank consistently high on searches on Google. Let us do the same for you. Call us at 713.623.6444 or email us info2@marion.com.
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