Advertising: Online and Traditional

Dallas Social Media Marketing Consultant and Trainer Lee Thurburn offers advice on how to kick off 2010 with social media marketing. We have all heard plenty about Social Media. The last decade may be best recognized as the time when the concept of Social Media rose and gained a foothold in both our national psyche and in our technical lives. We all know about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube. Most of us have an account with one or more of these online services, but, for the most part there has been very little real business done through these systems. Pronouncements are abundant that social media is the business tool of the future and the truth is that we will most likely see that over the next decade social media will become  [more info...]

Dallas Social Media Consultant Lee Thurburn, President of NetOffer, offers specific advice on how to use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to market your business. One of the key things to keep in mind is that blatant sales pitches are generally considered extremely impolite and inappropriate on all three of these services, with a few exceptions. With that thought in mind you should focus your efforts on being a good 'citizen' of the community before you start trying to use your status as a good citizen to promote your products or services. Q: What does it take to become a good citizen? A: For the most part the secret is to share things of value and interest with others. That leads to the next question... Q: What kinds of   [more info...]

Dallas Business Social Media Marketing Expert Lee Thurburn, President of NetOffer, Inc., explains the concept of synchronicity and why it is important to search marketing. According to Wikipedia: Synchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are causally unrelated occurring together in a meaningful manner. To count as synchronicity, the events should be unlikely to occur together by chance. The reason that synchronicity is important to Search Marketing is that the concept that they are causally related means that there is a heightened level of importance that is directly related to the frequency of occurrence of the events. Stated another way, if a specific search term occurs more than once in an article the probability   [more info...]

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Dallas Social Media Consultant Lee Thurburn is reprinting this article by a recognized social media expert: Social Media Puts Fortress Journalism Under Siege By John Sylvester (c) 2009 In a recent report by Peter Horrocks, Director of BBC World Service, it is clear that as society becomes more networked, the fortress mentality of the mainstream media is increasingly under siege by social media, but they are adapting. There's a lesson for us all in this. For so long now, Web 2.0 has been working in the background to subtly but unwittingly undermine mainstream media, especially in America where, for example, RSS is understood and used far more readily than in most other nations. In this, the role of the "fortress journalism" is bei  [more info...]

Dallas Business Social Media consultant Lee Thurburn, President of NetOffer, shares what he calls the Monte Cristo 'sandwich' recipe for BLOG success. Have you ever had a Monte Cristo sandwich? If so you know that if it is prepared correctly it is one of the most delicious sandwiches ever invented. Now the wikipedia recipe for a true Monte Cristo has it fried then served, but variations that I prefer have it covered with melted cheese. Basically, a Monte Cristo Sandwich, according to my recipe, is two layers of toast, covered with melted cheese sauce, and with meat in the middle between the toast. If we use that analogy for creating a BLOG you can think of the BLOG this way: Cheese on Top = BLOG Title Top Layer of Toast = 1st P  [more info...]

Dallas Social Marketing Consultant Lee Thurburn, President of NetOffer, Inc. provides a variety of ideas for BLOG Content. One of the challenges that many business people have when they consider starting a BLOG marketing campaign is deciding what to write about. I think that a good starting point is to consider what NOT to write about. The first thing that most business people think of writing about is to create a sales pitch and place it in a BLOG. That 180 Degrees off target. The best topics to write about are topics that contain story based information about how the products and services that you offer can benefit people, but not in a sales-pitchy sort of format. Some good alternatives are: Case Studies - a case study about a c  [more info...]

Business Social Media advisor Lee Thurburn gives tips on writing BLOGs. Lets face it, you have two audiences and the most important one is Google. No GOOGLE = No CLIENTS! Of course everyone wants to have prospective clients see their wonderful content and wonderful content starts with a snappy title that captivates attention and causes the reader to click on the title and get more information. The problem with snappy titles is that in the attempt to create a really cool title people often forget that the main purpose of the title is to get Google to properly index the article so that someone searching for your type of business can find you based on the title. What this means is that each title should focus on what I call a Specific  [more info...]

Business Social Media system creator Lee Thurburn, President of NetOffer, Inc., offers advice on writing articles about your business that people will want to read. Most business owners and managers, even marketing managers, have difficulty figuring out what to write about when they first engage in a social media campaign for their business. In a prior article (Business Social Media improves TOMA score with Classified Ads) I described general topics about which you can write if you are having trouble understanding the kinds of information that people are generally interested in received. But when you decide that you want to actually write about your business it may be helpful to consider the following possible subjects to write about.   [more info...]

Business Social Mediasoftware provider NetOffer, Inc. integrates Classified Ads with a miniBLOG system to make social media more business friendly. In a previous article I talked about how most business people using social media go through at least a couple of phases. The first phase is thinking that social media represents a great new way to spread the word about their products and services to a new audience. Sort of like broadcast email marketing. Hopefully the new social media user will arrive at the realization that social media is not about marketing but is about sharing 'information of value' with others. What stumps many people is figuring out what the 'information of value' is and how to relate it to the products or services tha  [more info...]

Effective use of social media requires that businesses think differently. This article offers specific steps for effective use of social media by businesses. Business owners who are new to social media usually go through a couple of different stages of awareness and use as they learn the lessons of social media etiquete and effectiveness. The first thing that most business owners think of is "Great. Another way to push my products and services out to the market!" Actually, experience shows that the very worst thing that you can do in a social media environment is to treat the media as if you were a traditional broadcast media and start trying to push messages out to those who have connected to you. Think of social media as being an an  [more info...]

With the proliferation of social networks like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Twitter you can spend your entire day staying connected to the detriment of your real life. How much is enough and when do you cross the line from enough to too much? I have spent a lot of time considering this recently as more and more people that I talk with are having trouble understanding what the true benefits of online social networking are and as they weigh those benefits against the costs. What are the costs? The main cost is time, and as anyone over the age of 40 knows, time is valuable. In fact, the older you get the more valuable time becomes... but we will not digress into that discussion. Lets take a quick overview of the origins and growt  [more info...]

Lee Thurburn, often referred to as Mr. Google, describes in detail what rich media content based search marketing is and how you can use it to grow your business. Ever wondered why the most sought after American export is the produced in Hollywood? Ever wondered why people around the world crave movies and television shows that are produced in the U.S.? I think that the answer is that Hollywood has attracted the most talented group of writers that can be found anywhere in the world. True, other countries and other parts of the U.S. produce quality theater, but, as soon as a writer gets enough experience to get hired by a studio in Hollywood they head that way. Why? Because Hollywood pays best and they get to interact with other creati  [more info...]

Click Fraud is a significant added cost if you use Pay-Per-Click marketing. Click fraud is not a problem if you use a content based search marketing strategy. As discussed in a recent article about content based search marketing I stated that one of the major reasons that people have taken the Pay-per-Click advertising model into their marketing mix is that it is so easy to implement and you can basically pay your money and sit back and see traffic to your website based on the click-through rates. The ugly downside is that the more expensive your search term is (more competition drives up the cost per click) the more rampant click fraud is. Some estimates of click fraud are that the fraud percentage approaches 50% of the clicks, espec  [more info...]

Content Based Search Marketing is at the core of what the Internet is about. Back in the mid 1990s when the Internet first began to reach critical mass everything was free. I first heard about the Internet in the early summer of 1995. I was fortunate to get involved during that summer and managed to start an ISP that eventually became a public company. During the time from 1995 through 2000 there was rapid growth in all aspects of the Internet along with a growing concern for how this wonderful new technology would end up paying for itself. Many of the early businesses that became household names stuggled to find a revenue model that would support their growth. The problem was that people were competing with each other for traffic wit  [more info...]

Rich Media Content Based Search Marketing is the most effective way of gaining top position in search engine results pages when you want to get your message noticed. A definition of some of the terms used may be useful: Content: the message that you want a consumer to hear, read, or see that will explain to the consumer why they should elect to contact you and do business with you. Rich-media: using tools other than just text to deliver your message. Rich media includes videos, audios, flash presentations, photos and pod casts to deliver your message. Search marketing: using search engines to deliver your content to your audience. Since search engines have very specific 'metrics' that they measure when gauging which websites to d  [more info...]

There has much written about the changing SEO landscape. The simple fact is that Search Engines no longer rely as heavily on Meta-tags like they used to. Back in the 'early days'... way back in the 20th Century, and even as little as 3-4 years ago the importance of Meta-tags was greater than it is now. Now, the only Meta-tag that is still important is the Title Tag. The Title Tag, which can be either a Meta-tag for Title or simple Title tag, is still of primary importance to the Search Engines. The Meta-tags for Keywords and Description are dramatically less important, however, there is still value in having them properly configured. It has been my observation that over 50% of the websites that I am asked to review have problems with  [more info...]

It used to be that Meta-Tags were King. That is also no longer true. It used to be that Content was King. That is no longer true. It used to be that Search Engines did not like Frames, Java, and Flash. That is no longer true. What has changed? Search Engines have become more sophisticated as the Internet has grown. The ability of Search Engines to determine how valuable your site is based on the only metric that really counts. If you boil all of the different things that search engines look at down to the fundamentals what they want to know is whether or not other people value your site when then need information about a search topic. How do they make that determination? Simple. They look for three things, in roughly this order:  [more info...]

Many small business owners are members of local networking and referral groups that meet on a weekly or monthly basis. The purpose of most of these groups is to build relationships with other businesses with whom you become comfortable referring business. Groups such as these make an excellent network within which you can build a BLOG Network. A BLOG Network is a group of BLOGS which have links between themselves. The concept is very simple and is best explained by an example: Lets say that you are in a weekly Referral Group with 10 other people. Each of those people set up a BLOG and post entries on the topics that pertain to their businesses. Each of the BLOGs invite each of the other Referral Group Members to post comments with lin  [more info...]

If you are like me you have become frustrated with the high cost of marketing and the lack of results from many of the available marketing mediums and programs that exist. Sure, everyone tells you that they have a great way to get your message to the market but when you ask about a guarantee they will either laugh out loud or they will simply state that they can not offer a guarantee. The fact is that if they were truly confident of their ability to generate results... if they truly knew that they could deliver your message to a quality audience... they would not laugh. NetOffer can guarantee results! How? We own our own medium. We have a Classified Ad system similar to Craigslist.org. We have an Online Directory system similar   [more info...]

You have something to sell and you want to sell or promote it over the internet. Great. First you need a strategy to drive traffic to a Landing Page where you deliver a specific, strong, call to action. How do you deliver a strong call to action? Easy. You use a combination of technology and graphics and old fashioned text to quickly capture the visitors attention and get them to abosorb your message. I would like to invite you to check these client websites to see what a strong call to action can look like: 1) Joes Collision and Detailing is an auto body shop 2) Plano Chiropractic Clinic is located in the North Dallas, Texas area. 3) Underwood Speakers Bureau provides speakers to groups. 4) Tornado Alley Roofing is a multistat  [more info...]

The field of Search Engine Optimization is filled with countless businesses that offer inumerable solutions. The simple fact is that getting your website to the top of the organic search section is dependent upon some very simple factors: Inbound Page Links Content Quality Time Lets talk about each of these factors in turn. Inbound Page Links Ever since Google developed the concept that a website with more inbound links and inbound traffic is exhibiting a higher value ranking than other websites all search engines have changed their search algorithms to incorporate that concept into how they display search results. Inbound links are the number of other websites that have a link to the target website. Inbound traffic is a coun  [more info...]

Video Blogs are similar to text blogs in that they offer a great vehicle for conveying information to the public. Naturally, many people will prefer to watch you talk about a subject as opposed to preferring to read a text blog. Unfortunately, the search engines can not easily catalog the content of a video like they can text so it is important that the keywords and description attached to the Video Blog clearly describe the content. It is through the keywords and descriptive text that the search engines are able to properly indes the content and provide links to your Video Blog in appropriate searches. NetOffer uses Video Blogs with well documented keywords and descriptions to assist in marketing your website. Search engines can easily   [more info...]