10e20 Blog

This is a look at Vanessa Fox’s informative webcast called Search Marketing 101 - Does My CEO Really Need A Facebook Profile hosted by Search Marketing Now.

When people think of social networking, Vanessa feels they tend to think of the high profile stuff like MySpace and Facebook and these are great examples, but she stressed that there are all kinds of social networking. Social Networking is anywhere people are talking online. From a corporate perspective, what you are interested in - is where people are talking about you and are talking about the topics you care about (competitor brands, issues that involve your brand).

Examples:

• Digg
• Faves.com
• Amazon (is social networking because of customer ratings and reviews)
• Blogs (big place where people talk about things - voicing opinions, posting comments)

“Contact Us”, “Learn More”, “Click Here”, “Free Money!”. OK that last one I made up, but we have all seen these calls that ask us to do something.

Calls to action in interactive media are usually buttons or links that begin a process. Making these important calls stand out requires some designing further than, and in addition to, the underlined hyper link.

The text and words used in calls to action are topics of another discussion. For this tutorial I am focusing on the design elements of a graphical button and specifically simple gradients with a 1 to 2 pixel gap from the border created in Photoshop. This tutorial is similar to the previous one on creating cool graphical text, but changing a few things and applying it to buttons.

Last week I wrote about how to create great header graphics for linkbait pieces. Now I would like to go a bit deeper into that and explain how I create graphical text, text that is an image, that stands out and screams to be noticed.

Like the last tutorial mentioned, it is important for your article to have an image associated with the content of the article. When you go on Digg and see a link to a story without an image or photo what do you do? Well, I tend to not click on that story and move on down the line. The same holds true, to some degree, to linkbait pieces and the inclusion of catching header graphics.

Last week I was featured in a USA Today article about the craziness that continues to swhirl around Yahoo. Will it be AOL? Will it be Microsoft? Will Rupert jump in? Jeff Graham wrote an interesting article about what a combined AOL-Yahoo company would be like for users. Personally I feel that a Microsoft-Yahoo combination makes more sense (and this was reflected in my comments):

AOL and Yahoo “are shells of their former selves,” says Chris Winfield, president of New York-based 10e20, which helps companies with their search-advertising campaigns. “I don’t see how combining them makes either stronger.”

and then later:

MySpace has a rich $900 million deal for Google to provide search ads on its site. Put MySpace with Microsoft and say goodbye to the Google deal, says Winfield.

“Microsoft-and-Yahoo is the only legitimate shot at a real competitor,” he adds. “Microsoft has the drive to compete. The same can’t be said about (AOL owner) Time Warner.”

When you need to focus the attention of the reader to a certain area in the text or story pull quotes are the best method. Pull quotes are small pieces of the story or article that is being repeated and set in a larger size font and placed near the middle.

The idea is to pull the reader in further and also pull text from the main body of text. You have seen these allover, if you read an article online or in print today it may have had a pull quote in it and that may be the first thing your eye went to and read.

For this ‘How to…’ I am going to use a linkbait piece from PC World called 10 Cool Gadgets You Can’t Get Here-Yet. The piece tells about how often the coolest gadgets originate overseas and usually in Asia.

The information is interesting enough to hold my attention and I want to see which gadgets they selected and also find out what it is that I can’t get-yet.

However the main graphic header is obvious and could have been worked on a bit more to capture the interest of those people that may be on the fence about whether or not to read further into the piece. So lets get into how I would have used stock photos and created a more compelling graphic to try and lure some more eyeballs into the piece.

This is a recap of a teleseminar I attended which was given by Steve Harrison. It was “Seven Things You Absolutely Must Know to Get Publicity in Major Magazines and Newspapers.” The intent of this call was to give information on how to get publicity and to impart this information; he provided mini interviews with various people involved in PR. Based on the information the speakers provided - there were actually more than seven things to know - there were 14!!

Silent Endorsement

He stressed that just one feature article about you in a major publication can bring you a flood of orders - overnight. When you get publicity, you get something that no other kind of marketing can give you - a ‘silent endorsement’. People assume that if you are the one who has been written up in something like USA Today, they figure you must be the best at what you do. It is a silent endorsement.

For this round of the ‘How Would I Do This…’ I am looking at an article on CNN called ‘How do you know your love is real? Check Facebook’. I am also going to tie in my previous post on the overuse of stock photography.

The article from CNN is a news story that is generating 100’s of comments and opinions from people expressing how they deal with relationship status on Facebook.

The photo used is great. I think it conveys right away the feeling of being watched while on your computer. But I would have pushed it one step further and incorporated the Facebook logo on the computer where there is a blue space on the back of the monitor. It seems so obvious to me and would add that extra bit of information to the photo to make it almost tell the story.

Here’s a quick run-down on where I’ll be speaking during April. One thing that I have tried to do is vary events up a bit so that I can come in contact with all kinds of different people from different industries. Here’s a look at April:

SEO Class. This Friday (April 11th) I will be helping out Jim Boykin with his SEO Class. This is the first one since Jim took it over and brought it under the umbrella of his Internet Marketing Ninjas program and features some amazing presenters. I’ll be presenting on social media marketing tactics and attendees will also get to learn from Michael Gray, Greg Niland, Ted Ulle (tedster), Kim Krause-Berg, Barry Schwartz and of course - Jim Boykin. I think it’s pretty much sold out but if you really want to go, email me (cwinfield [at] 10e20.com) and I’ll see what I can do.

OK, before I begin let me say that I use stock photography. Stock photos are a great convenience. I sometimes depend on it, especially in a crunch or when I just need someone smiling and expressing happiness for a call center spot. That being said, there comes a time when stock photography is so obviously staged, politically correct fluff that screams “I am STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY!”

You all know the image, a group of happy employees who all are various ages, genders and races. Everyone is sitting around a desk pointing to a computer screen in some bland office interior.

Sometimes only the top few results are ever used in a stock library search and those photos are everywhere. How do we avoid these pitfalls of overused imagery and photography?