Not every company believes they should be writing blogs, but that doesn’t mean they don’t find blogs important. Just listen to Steve Swasey, Director of Corporate Communications for Internet video renter Netflix: “We don’t have a Netflix blog by design—our philosophy is to let our customers speak.”
I've spoken before about how the Internet turns marketing into a conversation. Lots of people have. But it's not a new idea. In fact, I was lucky enough to work with one of the people that figured it out first, although I frankly didn't grasp the significance of what he was saying at the time.
Last year I talked about the Three R's of Web Marketing, to be real, relevant, and responsive. But the truth is that being real is challenging. Let's take a real-life example—do you expect product manufacturers to post product reviews?
We've all seen customer-posted product ratings and reviews on retail Web sites. Amazon's got 'em. Shopping comparison engines do, too. And customers love to read them.
We’ve explored what catches searchers' eyes on the search results page. The next step is the click.
What makes searchers click a particular result?
In the past, we've urged marketers to do it wrong quickly. But how can you make quick content changes when you have to translate into other languages? For global companies, translating their content into other languages can be a time-consuming process that delays the launch of new pages and campaigns. So, exactly how do you speed up your ability to change content when you have to do all that translating at the end?
If you’re like most companies, you spend a lot of time obsessing over your home page, but maybe not enough time on your destination pages. As a proponent of doing things wrong quickly, I don't recommend spending hours on each page trying to make it perfect. So, instead, what’s a quick way to check out the information architecture of those pages?
What are searchers thinking when they stare down a list of search results? Actually, the first thing to keep in mind is that searchers don't stare at search results. They don't even read them. They scan them. They quickly skim the page hunting for the word they typed into the search box, along with a few other words they're thinking but didn't bother typing.
I've written in this space before about Web site searcher behavior, but I don't think I've ever talked about how it feels to search. To do so, I think it helps for us to compare the way it feels to search for information to the way it feels to search for a physical destination. I believe that we human beings have many of the same neurons firing when we engage in those two tasks. So, how is searching like traveling? I think it's all about feeling "in control."
A great deal of our book, Search Engine Marketing, Inc. turns on the business case for search marketing.
When I talk to veteran marketers, some of them are concerned about the changes they must make to adapt to the Internet.
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