One page sites have been around for awhile but it’s this year that I’ve really seen them take-off in numbers.

Here’s why I love them and recommend using them:

• Easy to navigate
  Everything is hosted on one page so there’s no need for breadcrumbs. This event site from the Bay Area Humane Society makes it simple to get the information you need quickly and easily.

• Great for mobile viewing
  The best sites are those that have a mobile version, but for those that don’t one page sites are really easy to navigate on your PDA.

• Ideal for big and small sites
  While initially one page sites were great for short content, recently I’ve seen some built to accommodate heavier messaging and image. Some great examples include this portfolio site from Phil Renaud and this business site for Tower Inspection. If you click through to the site, you can see some of the creative aspects of their navigation.

What do you think about one page websites? Have you used them? Seen any really good ones?

Linkedin is a great website to find tailored job listings and potential employees, but the social network is often overlooked as a potential new business tool and a platform for personal branding. With more than 60 million users (80 percent of which have a college degree) Linkedin allows people to re-connect with past business connections in a professional setting. Even more importantly, Linkedin puts an emphasis on introducing you to people you need to know and gives you the place to have an expert voice in the industry in which you work.

In order to help you use Linkedin in this way, we’ve put together a list of some of our best practices for creating a Linkedin Profile:

• SEO Make yourself searchable. If your purpose for a Linkedin profile is to use it as a networking or new business tool, include key words that will enable people to find you.

• Link your blog to your Linkedin profile. Applications to link your blog posts to your profile such as the Wordpress app are great tools for this. Doing this will also help you get more views for your posts.

• Have a complete profile. Fill out all the areas- specialties, expertise, job role, education, etc. You will appear credible to people who don’t know you well if your profile is complete. Be sure to add a picture of yourself.

• Personalize the message in the invitation box when inviting someone to your network. This will show others you are personable and hopefully make them want to interact with you. Hopefully this will lead to a recommendation in the future.

• Use conversational tone: If acceptable by your industry, use conversational tone while maintaining a professional standard. Using a conversational tone makes you seem “real.” Uptight resume-speak makes you seem unapproachable.

• If you receive a recommendation, reciprocate. Recommending a connection may end up in a job lead or new business venture in the future and it’s likely you will receive more recommendations if you are willing to give them out.

• List your websites properly. When editing your profile, change the title of your website or blog to appear descriptively and searchable on the Internet. For example, change “my website” to “Bailey Gardiner-San Diego PR.” The second title is much more explanatory than the first.

• Include only relevant experience. Do you think your advertising colleague cares about your summer camp counselor job way back when? No.

• Customize your URL. This goes back to SEO. A customized URL makes your profile easily searchable and easy to remember if hearing it via word-of-mouth.

What else do you recommend? How do you use your Linkedin profile?

I hear it time and time again from clients, “Just take our magazine ad and re-size it for the banner ad.”  UGH!

If you are not going to speak to your consumer in the manner in which they are listening, why do it at all?  They probably won’t hear you. And if they don’t hear you, they aren’t going to do what you want them to do. And isn’t whether or not they do what you want them to do how you calculate, say it with me, ROI?

Yes, magazines are a great way to reach an audience with specific interests, incomes and tastes.  But because of that, the magazine reader is in a very receptive mode to the content and messages being shared within the publication.

It’s just not the same with an online consumer.  They’ve got lots of things going on not only in their mind, because they are looking for something specific, but also because there is a lot of noise.  Slapping up a static magazine-type of ad just isn’t going to work.

Here’s some things to think about when it comes to online marketing:

• Banner Ads:

Make your message dynamic & interesting by incorporating rich media, in-banner questionnaires, etc. Something, ANYTHING, to grab their attention. Check out this funny banner ad by Pringles.

Send your consumer directly to the place where they can find the information and create custom landing pages to test your messaging.

• Email:

Whether you use an interest list or a purchased list, these consumers have said, “Yes, please let me know about your offerings.”  Don’t send them junk that doesn’t apply.  You want them to click through, be engaged & even spread the word – not unsubscribe!

• Social Media:

This is not your personal Facebook page where you constantly talk about yourself.  You’ve got to have a strategy to get your fans engaged.  Creating a page and uploading an ad or two does you no good.  If you’re not going to do it right, don’t do it at all.

So what do you think?  Can an ad designed for print work in an online application? What other best practices can you recommend for online marketing?

There are some important questions you should ask when deciding which display network to use.   I have compiled a list of the questions to ask during your search:

1. How many sites do you have? Samples?
2. Do you have any exclusive sites?
3. Do you work directly with publishers or are you a re-seller?
4. Do you have any custom filters or filters that we would be interested in?
5. Do you do category, content, behavioral, and retargeting?
6. Do you allow rich media? What % of sites? What provider?
7. What kind of pricing models do you have? CPM, CPE, CPC
8. Who would we be working with? How much experience do they have?
9. What does your reporting look like? How often do we receive? How quickly can we get it if we need it on short notice?
10. Can you track view throughs?
11. How large (file sizes) can standard flash banners be?
12. Do you offer non-profit rates or grants?
13. Does the network have e-newsletter ads?
14. Do you offer mobile advertising?
15. Is your behavioral data based on visits to a site? Or specific pages?
16. Do you cap impressions to single users? What is your cap?
17. Agency or client minimums? Can we combine client budgets to meet minimums?
18. Are you growing? What is your growth/expansion plan?
19. Ask for reach based on filters- if filters are specific, what is the universe?
20. Do you have automated optimization? How does optimization work?

Have fun!

In the past, we’ve given quite a few tutorials on how to best utilize Facebook or what to measure when reporting on Twitter, but we haven’t really broke down our recommendation for how to go about creating a fully-integrated, well-researched social media campaign.

While it may seem we’re going to back to basics, this list of to-dos can also be applied when you feel that your current social media strategy is getting stale.  I also believe that it should be integrated into your social media plan to reevaluate every six months to ensure that you’re best utilizing your social media budget.

1)  Right off the bat, when beginning a new campaign or revamping, you’re going to want to spend some time listening – where are people talking about your brand?  What platforms are they using?  What types of feedback are you getting – good or bad?  What confuses people and where can you implement customer service to streamline the process?

There are numerous tools to use to measure and evaluate your brand mentions.  Social Mention, Google Buzz and Vocus have all incorporated a tool where you can either log in or have an email sent listing all the platforms that are mentioning your brand (by keyword).  You may find right off the bat that the all-encompassing Facebook strategy you’ve been working on isn’t actually where all the chatter is about your brand.  Perhaps your customers are still using forums to talk about you.

2)  Now that you know where people are discussing your brand, what’s the chatter surrounding your competitors.  What’s interesting is organizations that you may consider your greatest competitors may have no social presence whatsoever – this makes for an even greater opportunity for your brand to capitalize on.    You also may find there are organizations that you had no idea were competitors.  If their campaign is successful, there’s no harm in incorporating some of their successes into your own campaign – just make sure to make it your own.

3)  Once you’ve done your research, it should be clear what platforms you should be using to speak to your current customer base and if it makes sense to join additional networks.  While numerous companies will only focus on Twitter and Facebook, think of what your brand offers.  If it’s a consumer product or service that you find customers don’t know how to use, perhaps YouTube is a platform you use for tutorials.  Are most of your mentions coming from FriendFeed or a particular blog or forum?  Perhaps start there and once you’ve established a presence there, let your customers know that you’re also on Facebook and Twitter and have your own blog.  If you’re looking for foot traffic, create a social loyalty program with FourSquare.

4)  While you may want to dive right in and begin making updates and tweeting to your loyal customers, you should first create a six-month plan and outline goals you have for social media: Do you wish to increase sales on-site?  Do you wish to increase website traffic?  Or are you hoping that you can give your customer service phone line a break?

Once these goals are outlined, the rest of your plan should be fairly simple to fill in.  I can’t stress enough how important it is to have quality content on your pages.  If you insist on having a presence, make it a strong one.  Before you begin interacting or creating your own Facebook tab with FBML, bullet out what initiatives you have monthly, and always check back to remind yourself of your overall goals.

5)  Measure, analyze and report your findings, both successes and failures, to learn what works and what doesn’t within the realm of your brand’s offerings.  Gather screen grabs from fans and followers raving about your social media campaign, or a conversation you had online convincing an individual to visit your venue.  When your client asks for the value of social media (which they will), these will be key in demonstrating the power and value in a successful social media campaign.

Do you think there are any other basics companies should remember when creating or revamping their social media plans?

So here’s my thing with social media measurement – there are like 40 programs out there claiming they can help you measure social media, and not one that actually measures any of the things our teams are reporting on. Every single one of these tools aggregates tweets and blog posts about your brand and then graphs mentions of you and your competitors. But in my opinion, that is such a small, small piece of the puzzle and says nothing about how your social media strategy is directly increasing revenue. Here is my problem with this as a measurement of success for your social media strategy:

1. So there’s a lot of chatter about you in SM - How is that a reflection of your social media campaign? Was there a lot of chatter about your brand before you began social media? Could it be that the chatter is a result of a great PR hit, a new product, a new ad campaign? Is the chatter even really about you? How much of it is spam, or a misspelling, or an unrelated mention? Is it positive, neutral, or negative? Measuring overall volume of social mentions is interesting, sure, but it doesn’t actually tell you anything about how the dollars spent on your social media campaign is influencing your customers spending habits. Rather than a measurement of social media strategy, I see these tools that measure the volume of online chatter as a separate (albeit related) function of online reputation management (and one that should come with its own budget line item).

2. Comparing your share of voice to your competitors - Again, how is this a reflection of your success with social media strategy? So what if your competitor is getting 1,000 more tweets than you are. Are they doing anything about it? Are they engaging with these people? Perhaps they are receiving higher chatter because they are just downright more popular. Social media isn’t magic. If your company isn’t well liked then that will be reflected in a competitive analysis of the social space. Again, there are just too many variables at work here for it to be a true measure the success of your social media strategy.

Alternatively, for social media strategists, I’d  recommend creating a  social media audit (something we’ve done for several our social media clients) and updating this on a semi-regular basis. In this audit you identify top competitors and what these companies are doing in the social space. Then analyze the level of engagement they receive and the tactics they employ. This will give you direct insight into the changes you can make in your own programs and the success that these competitors are seeing as a result of their actions.

3. Finally, my biggest beef with these tools is that what they report are all things we have to gather anyway in the day-to-day execution. In order to run a successful social media campaign you have to be paying attention on a daily, real-time basis to info directed to you, about you and about your competitors. We have various team members set up searches for terms (everything from our client’s name to broader searches like “things to do in San Diego”) and these people are tasked with assessing the needed level of engagement with what they find. Having a tool that I have to log in, and then sort through tons of spam isn’t efficient. Furthermore, when I run these searches directly in Facebook or on Twitter or in Google blog search, I don’t need to switch screens to respond.

Oh yea, and all these manual searches are free.

I feel that I should re-iterate that I think all of these tools are useful, I just don’t think they fall under the umbrella of social media strategy or reporting. I think these tools help with a larger analysis on company success. Additionally, I think that capturing this data should be part of a larger online brand/reputation management (complete with influencer outreach programs, blog comment strategy and quarterly reports to R&D about the online perception of your products and services). Is there overlap, yes. Is this something you can squeeze into current social media campaigns/budgets? In my opinion – no.

So what is it that I do want? I want a tool that helps save me time measuring the success of my strategy. A tool that actually speaks to ROI. I want a tool that easily aggregates everything I am measuring to show the direct result of the actions we are making in the social space. Specifically, I want a tool that pulls everything in and then makes graphs for me.

I want something that pulls in my number of fans, followers and visits to our blog. I’d like to see the number of comments, wall posts, fan photos @ replies, DM’s, RT’s and lists without having to login to each account to capture. I want a tool that auto refreshes Klout score and includes Tweetreach functionality to show the possible Twitter impressions per month. I want a program to pull from Google Analytics to tell me how much traffic came directly from Facebook and Twitter and I want it to tell me how many bitly click-throughs I got per month. Essentially I want all of this to happen without me, or anyone on my team, having to log in and count over and over and I want it all to happen in ONE place. For those few measurements of success that I may never be able to have aggregated (eg. number of redemption from social media contests) I’d like a tool to give me the functionality to add in these few exceptions and then auto graph them. This tool, a dream tool, would simplify reporting the amount of direct engagement with your brand, the increase of traffic attributed from social media, and the money spent as a result of a comprehensive social media strategy. I believe this tool would be a true measure of the success of your strategy, specifically, and could help agencies prove why their social media strategy services are valuable.

So, what do you think. Any programmers up for the challenge? Any social media marketers think they could use a tool like this?

We have many opinions and blog posts at Bailey Gardiner about Foursquare. Most people get the basics of how to use the tool to check-in and how companies are getting creative with Foursquare offers. I’d like to continue the conversation on this tool, by sharing some of the new functionality that Foursquare has unveiled since its launch, as well as, a few of my Foursquare don’ts.

New functionality for users:

1. Find out what is “Trending Now.” By simply looking at the “Places” around you, you can see where the people are. These don’t have to be your linked “friends.” For example, I just saw that Hash House is trending. There must be something great going on there today, maybe I should check it out…
2. You can now see who is “Staff” at any given venue. If you are a marketer, and you manage a venue, you can mark yourself as staff and therefore users know the venue is being managed by someone and that the company is engaged in social media strategy.
3. The “History” section got an update. You can now easily add a category to a venue and see which of your friends checked in at the same venue.
4. The sign-up page was re-designed, making it even easier to sign-up and to see who of your Twitter followers and Facebook friends are using the platform. The ease of this new sign-up form is likely part of the reason Foursquare has seen such a huge growth in users, recently hitting the 2 million user mark.
5. Users now have the ability to opt-out of being a part of the business dashboard. For those who want to keep their check-ins private to business owners, they have that option. However selecting this would be a detriment to many users as they  may be unable to capitalize on special offers/promotions.
6. When you check a venue on the site, you can no longer see the profiles of those who have recently checked in. Now Foursqaure only reports a number, a move that is in no doubt meant to have users feel like their privacy is being protected.

So what do all these changes mean for marketers?

Trending now, accessibly to staff members, improved history, easy signups and upgraded privacy, all make for a better user experience, and are all part of the reason the platform ms growing so exponentially. It’s important for us as marketers to be aware of these changes and adjust our strategy. (Hint, you can no longer tweet at just anyone who checks into your location.)

Foursquare Check-In Here Window Cling, courtesy Foursquare

It is also more important than ever to claim your location with the Foursquare team, so that you’ll have access to the additional analytics provided by the business dashboard.

Finally, from a fulfillment stand-point, it is good for marketers using Foursquare specials to keep an eye on the growth of the platform to ensure they are still able to fulfill their offer. As Foursquare becomes more and more popular, special promos may have to be adjusted or simplified.

And last but not least, some Foursquare don’ts:

As the platform continues to grow and evolve, we’ll see more and more newbies jumping on board. If you are just getting started, here are a few of my Foursquare Don’ts.

• Don’t use your home address to check in. Let’s avoid crazies and stalkers.
• Don’t cheat. Only check-in somewhere if you are really there.
• Don’t auto-sync with Twitter. Don’t clog your Twitter stream with where  you checked-in. Leave this feature as a manual selection so that you can Tweet something about your check-in when it is appropriate.
• Don’t auto-sync with Facebook for the same reasons as above.

When optimizing your website for search engines there are a few rumored tricks that just aren’t worth messing with. Below I’ve listed a few of the most common, and shocking, search engine optimization worst practices.

Hiding keyword-rich text – Sure, you could load keywords in white font on white background or make them too small to the user’s eye and the user wouldn’t be bothered, however, the search engines are smarter than that.

Keyword stuffing – I have shared with you the importance of keywords in your copy. Remember that you do want your keyword all over the place, but you don’t want it in so many places that you start looking suspicious.  For example, don’t use the same keyword in every meta tag and alt image tag.

Just because BP oil is highly searched doesn’t mean you should dedicate a page to it. Dedicating pages to certain keywords is a great idea, so long as you can do it tactfully and with something that is actually relevant to your content.

On that note, when you optimize your content for keywords, remember to make it user-friendly.  Not only does the user appreciate copy meant for them, but the search engines will catch on if your copy starts to sounds strange.

Repeatedly submitting your site to search engines will hurt you in the long run.  Don’t worry; if you submitted it once, they probably got it.

Just because your competitor’s name is searched often, doesn’t mean it will serve you well to add their name to your keywords. That’s just confusing.

Avoid creating duplicates of the same page with little differences between them.  Search engines will catch onto that, to,o and why not put all your efforts into making your one page get to the top rather than a bunch of pages doing OK?

Creating web pages just for search engines also won’t do you well.  On-page SEO is only part of the picture. You will receive very few links to a page that doesn’t serve the user.

Directories=good.  Link farms=bad.

I didn’t even know people use machine-generated pages, but apparently they make search-engine targeted pages to lead to your site. Bad idea!

“Pagejacking” and “cloaking” – To start, it’s illegal. Pagejacking is the act of stealing a highly optimized page from someone else’s site and placing it on yours. Usually it’s then “cloaked” to cover it from the user.

Lastly, purchasing expired domains because they used to have great SEO won’t benefit you either. Google recently changed its algorithm to take Page Rank down to 0 when a page expires (keep that in mind, too, if you’ve been working on your SEO – don’t let your page expire!).

If you’re looking for some more how-to’s rather than how not-to’s, take a look at my previous blog post on how to do SEO by yourself. Also, some of these “tricks” have been gathered from Search Engine Land’s 29 Worst Practices & Most Common Failures: SEO Checklist Part 1. I hope you’ll check it out for more information on the topic.

Stop making excuses.  You know the importance of incorporating video into your online presence.   We have already discussed several of the positive and  viral impacts of video.

So what is holding you back from incorporating video?

Too expensive? You don’t have the right equipment? PISHA!

With all the technological advances out there, making a video is easier than ever.  And you can do it with your smart phone.  Take a look at what Ducati did with the iPhone 4 at Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

Now I’m not saying that you can just go out there willy-nilly and make a video that’s going to accomplish your goals.  You still need to:

• Have a vision: What are you trying to accomplish?
• Have a story line: What is your message/purpose?
• Have a purpose:  What do you want the viewer to do next?

Other than that, have fun with it and…stop making excuses!

What do you think?  Is video important enough to a web presence that you should get over the idea that it has to be a Hollywood production?

It is no secret that social networks are dominating in the online space. People are spending countless hours interacting with sites that offer a social experience, driving millions of visits, page views, ad impressions, and ample traffic every month. And audiences are doing more than just visiting and reading – they are engaging with these pages on a record level – making these sites an advertiser’s dream. As a result of this, social networks are changing the game when it comes to traditional digital advertising. Here are two of the ways we are seeing social media impact online advertising:

1. Price/Pricing model – A recent analysis by ComScore shows that last year social networking sites have drawn an average CPM of 56 cents, which is drastically less than the $2.43 average of the Internet at large. Their sheer dominance in terms of impressions and their ability to reach a defined audience is allowing them to charge a lower CPM by as much as 18%.

In addition to having a lower CPM, social networks also provide an ample amount of inventory. Facebook and MySpace alone account for over 20% of display advertising volume across the web. However, due to their cost per click pricing model, they bring in less than 5% of the total money made from online advertising. This model, although sometimes less lucrative to the site, is attractive to advertisers, who only have to pay when someone takes action on their ad. And sites like Facebook and Myspace can afford to offer pricing models like this due to their vast number of pages and advertising opportunities.

2. Email Content Strategy - Advertisers also have the opportunity to gain eyeballs on social networks without ever making an ad buy. Besides employing their own social media strategy, marketers can modify their email campaign to create content that is likely to be shared. A recent “Global Perspectives’’ survey indicated that consumers are willing to act as brand advocates and connect email content to their social web. According to the study 54% of consumers worldwide would share offers and promotions from email on their social networks, 42% would share news on new products, and 32% should share helpful information such as tutorials and product support. This means that advertisers need to start adjusting their e-blast strategy and thinking about creating content in their email campaigns that people would find “shareable.” This is an opportunity to use a traditional digital advertising vehicle (email) to reach an even larger audience and drive brand advocacy, product education, and word of mouth.

These are only two of the ways that social networks are impacting digital advertising. Are you adjusting your online strategies to take these into account?