Article Categories

• Advertising
• Affiliate Marketing
• Article Marketing
• Blogs & Podcasts
• Branding
• Business
• Cloud Technology
• Ecommerce
• Email Marketing
• Facebook
• Google
• Keywords
• LinkedIn
• Linking Strategies
• List Building
• Local Search
• Marketing
• Miscellaneous
• Mobile Applications
• Page Rank
• Pay Per Click
• RSS
• Sales Copy
• SE Optimization
• SE Positioning
• SE Submission
• SE Tactics
• Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Security
• Social Media Marketing
• Social Networking
• SPAM
• SPN Featured Articles
• Technology
• Video Marketing
• Virtual Office/Telecommuting
• Web 2.0
• Web Design
• Web Development
• Webmasters
• Website Promotion
• Website Traffic
• WordPress
• Writing

SiteProNews Blogs

• Editor's Corner
• Darren Dunner
• Jerry Bader
• John Sylvester
• Kalena Jordan
• Mel Strocen
• Titus Hoskins

Branded Video Entertainment – The Gum Wars Heat Up

By Jerry Bader

It looks like branded video entertainment is the marketing battlefield for companies looking to engage their audiences. The recent success of Orbit Gum’s branded video entertainment campaign promoting their brand of chewing gum seems to have sparked some interest from other brands. It didn’t take long for the people at Dentyne to come up with a clever branded video of their own. This one combines a couple of geeks with a rap musical score in a very effective branded video campaign.

Check out the video for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ov1DDjHt8c&feature=player_embedded#!.

We told you branded video entertainment was the perfect Web marketing vehicle. It’s here and it’s clear that it is what Web viewers want and what they will accept as a new form of Web advertising.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Sound Marketing Is Catching On

By Jerry Bader

In a new article “A Sound Approach to Marketing” by MP Mueller, published in “The New York Times” online version, Mueller states: “Sound can build such a strong emotional connection. And most of our purchasing decisions are made based on emotions. Leading brands know that and spend time and money getting just the right soundtrack for their large budget commercials. ”

Sound design, music, and audio effects are usually the last thing small and medium sized companies think about when they hire someone to create a Web video or when they try to create a video in-house; and that is a mistake. Slapping on some royalty free music clip or adding some hackneyed effect is not the way to make an emotional connection, build a brand, or engage an audience. If you want to learn more about how to use sound effectively check out the blog article, ‘How Sound Design Affects Customer Response and Action” at http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/blog/how-sound-design-affects-customer-response-and-action.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

How To Get A Web Video Campaign and Have Someone Else Pay For It

By Jerry Bader

Need a Web Video campaign but can’t afford to pay for it? We get approached all the time by small businesses that would love to have a Web Video campaign but their budget is just not enough. Well if that’s a problem, Lady Gaga has the answer.

In a recent article “Product Placement Grows in Music Videos” by Joseph Plambeck in The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/business/media/06adco.html?_r=2&ref=business), Plambeck describes how record labels use product placement to defray costs and create new revenue streams. Check out the Lady Gaga video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVBsypHzF3U and see how many product placements you can spot.

Additionally, one of the first things you’ll notice is that it resembles a movie which takes the production beyond a mere performance video and places it in the category of branded entertainment (see “Web Advertising’s Future Format: Branded Entertainment” http://www.sitepronews.com/2010/06/27/web-advertisings-future-format-branded-entertainment/). Even in times of tight budgets, there are always ways to get what you need. It just takes thinking out side the box.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Statistical Justification for Web Video Is Everywhere

By Jerry Bader

As a follow-up to the article “Web Advertising’s Future Format: Branded Entertainment” I thought readers might be interested in some statistical justification that arrived in my in-box from two different sources. Check out the Online Media Daily article by Joe Mandese “Internet Emerges As Fastest Growing Segment Of Paid Product Placement” at http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=131054&nid=115967and the Wayne Friedman’s article in MediaDailyNews, “Online Ads Surpass TV Ads In Recall, Likability” at http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=126671&nid=113593.

Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design and marketing firm that specializes in Web-video Marketing Campaigns and Video Websites. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.

Is howling mad King Rupert a visionary in disguise?

By John Sylvester

In TechCrunch’s “The Madness of King Rupert” by Paul Carr he reports, incredulously,  that News International is to install a turnstile on its websites this June and wonders whether Murdoch is simply a barking latter-day George III or visionary in disguise.

Newspaper sales have been in decline for quite some time now and companies have been searching for a business model that will make money from their websites. News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks said it was “a crucial step towards making the business of news an economically exciting proposition”. Accepted, but is the Times is specialist enough to make that claim? If not, Paul Carr is right and readers will go elsewhere for content when they reach the turnstiles.

The BBC spent a long time looking at how the newspaper industry could change its model, detailed in a 94-page report by Peter Horrocks on the subject. Subsequently, the Corporation came under fire from the Murdoch clan as being uncompetitive, as television license fees pay for its content.

But at TechCruch, the writer had this to say about it: “Really the only possible reasoning – outside of madness – that’s left for Murdoch’s behaviour is that he’s cleverer than all of us. Perhaps if we just watch quietly we’ll soon see the true genius behind his plan. After all, that’s what happened back in the 1980s and 90s when he launched Sky Television – a British-based satellite TV channel. Back then no one in the UK paid for television (we’d been brought up on free to air TV with little or no demand for cable) and there were no signs that they were ready to start – and yet in less than a decade Sky had become one of the country’s biggest broadcasters. Perhaps that’s his plan with the Times as well – make the content of his new online editions so unbelievably compelling that subscribers will be forced to sign up in their droves?”

Compelling. The Times? James Harding, its editor, recently made comparisons with news and the music industry. “People said the game is up for the music industry because everyone is downloading for free. But now people are buying from download sites.” Who exactly is buying from download sites? Not in my backyard they’re not.

According to the BBC, the latest figures show that The Times and Sunday Times have 1.22m daily users but Media research company Enders Analysis told the BBC that anyone who believes the Times papers will get the usual 5% conversion after the paywall is installed is in “dreamland”. She also doesn’t believe Mr Murdoch’s strategy represents the endgame for his loss-making papers. “If it fails, Murdoch will think of something else. He has been supporting his loss-makers for years.”

Paul Carr believes that “moving its content behind a paywall will be the death of the Times; one of the world’s most respected newspapers and a British national treasure. Even with a relatively modest subscription cost of £1…it has been shown time and time again that the hassle factor of making even a small payment to access a website will result in a haemorrhaging of readers.”

Another source, Emily Bell, writing for The Guardian, says that: “The paywall, the value gate, the towering edifice of unharvested cash, call it what you will, the debate about paid-for content on the web is increasingly about anything but the actual sagacity of putting a turnstile on your website,” arguing that quality journalism is the real issue at stake.

Specialist publications, like the Economist, Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times already have audiences who are charged for digital content but I would not place the Times in this category.

Philosophically, Ms Bell continued: “The paywall debate at heart is partly pragmatic, as the risk of implementing the strategy is high and the rewards are unknown; but also philosophical, about whether journalism is viewed as a commodity or a democratic necessity.”

However, one comment by “Ariel Bender” on TechCrunch’s “Howling Mad Murdoch” article said: “It won’t be long before the New York Times joins the WSJ on the iPad as a paid app. Before too long everyone will take a stand against Google’s vampiristic business model, leaving them to choke on their own hubris and die. That will be a happy day, indeed.”

Harsh, but if Bender has it right, then maybe Howling Messiah may be a more fitting epitaph when micropayments find a common platform.

Find the Web Contrarian In You

By Jerry Bader

In the beginning there were websites, and marketers looked upon them and said, they were good. Websites begot search engine optimization and the number crunchers looked upon it and said it was very good. Search engine optimization begot social media and everyone looked upon it and said, this is hot. MySpace begot Facebook that begot Linkedin that begot Twitter and everyone said, “I got a headache,” to which all I can say is remember Tulip Mania.

The Tulip Mania

In 1637 speculation in tulip bulb futures hit its peak. Contracts for tulip bulbs were selling for more than ten times the annual income of a skilled worker. And of course this was followed by a disastrous collapse foreshadowing what was to come some 292 years later.

In 1841 Charles Mackay wrote “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” that outlined how following the crowd can lead to unfortunate results. Such patterns of mass-behavior continue today without letup, and with dire consequences as can be seen in the recent economic meltdown.

Despite this continual repetition of behavior some have learned to use The Theory of Contrary Thinking as a marketing communication principle that avoids the lemming-like behavior of most people, and more to the point most businesses. By the way, lemmings do not commit suicide by running off the Bow River Bridge despite the 1958 nature film by Uncle Walt.

Just because everyone does it, says it, or promotes it, doesn’t make it right or effective. There is nothing wrong with participating in many of these social networking vehicles, but they are only one vehicle and should not be used to the exclusion and investment in other forms of marketing communication.

If you want your business to standout from your competitors in an overcrowded marketplace, namely the Web, then you have to think differently. No one becomes a market leader by being a follower. Finding the contrarian in you is not easy for most business people trained in technical skills, accounting, and strict bottom-line decision-making. But business is more art than science and unless you adopt a more creative approach to how you communicate to your audience you will be caught in the next version of tulip mania.

China’s social media stance inflexible, insular and unsustainable

By John Sylvester

China’s data mining activities last month provoked fierce opposition from Google executives. Since then there has been silence, but China’s banning of Western social media whilst pursuing its own, is an isolated agenda that is hopelessly flawed.

Since the “Great Mexican Standoff” between Google and China appeared in the Press last month, Google is still censoring its results a month after its executives took to provocative public outpourings on China’s laws that demand the removal of search results that China’s government considers either “subversive” or “offensive”.

Now, Google officials are keeping “mum” about the company’s position, although they now say it might “parse its Chinese search results” for several more months while it looks at “steering through this political and cultural minefield” in search for compromise.

From the very beginning, it did seem to me that Google was playing along with the US government’s concerns about China throwing its weight around, which it is increasingly prone to do. Google, it seems, wants to find a way to stay and the Chinese government doesn’t want Google to leave because that would mean a “loss of face”. Last month’s announcements may have been sheer bluff, backed up by the US position of China being seen as increasingly unruly global bully, but the stalemate continues to bite.

From blocking or closing down thousands of Western blogs and social-networking sites with accusations that the US is seeking “information hegemony”, the Chinese government made it clear that its media policy platform is to isolate its population from “negative opinions” from the West.

While it is illogically inconsistent that China’s political model, which combines free-market principles with spoon-fed state enterprise, intolerance and human rights abuses is viewed by some as an alternative to disillusioned Anglo-Saxon casino capitalism, it is no answer to retreat into socially hermitic seclusion.

Maybe this pseudo-alternative is attractive to the dispossessed, but it is worth noting that the Chinese have copied the West’s social media models to fuel its own online social discourse. And while market pressures feed on the need to continue with its double-digit economic growth to ward off any possible backlash and a redux towards social instability, its central bank has still had to apply the brakes in the New Lunar Year on its overheating economy.

There have been reports over the growing signs of conflict among its people, with a higher crime rate and a growing gap between the rich and poor. So it is no wonder that the internet has become a primary medium for anti-Chinese forces to “subvert” the State. This has led to overriding social supervision in applying new standards for public security agencies to enforce, which Google is now caught up in.

Last week, the launch of Google Buzz sparked news agencies into reporting that it is highly likely it will be censored alongside Facebook and Twitter, which have already been banned. It is worth noting though that, according to a Netpop Research study, the Chinese are twice as likely to use chat and three times more likely to micro-blog, blog and use video conference than American users.

According to socialmedia.com: “The demand for social video site Youku, Facebook-like site Kaixin, and instant messaging service QQ have seen a surge in popularity over the past year alone, with Youku experiencing a five-fold growth in its revenue over last year, bringing in the equivalent of 29 million dollars in 2009.”

While we in the West may shrug our collective shoulders that what happens in China is of little interest to us, the country’s online population is expected to reach 500 million in 2015, and that is of great interest to global corporations like Google, whatever the restrictions.

But neither isolation nor opprobrium is the answer. It may take years to resolve but as Lord Mandelson, First Secretary of State to the British government, summed up in an op-ed on Sino-Western co-operation: “…A billion-person blocking minority is not an obstacle to global governance; it is the end of global governance.

“The dilemma for Europe and America is this: We cannot dictate China’s development or the solutions to its problems. But we do not have the luxury of ignoring them either.

“Europe and the US need to recognise that China will not simply accept a model of global governance or multilateralism that it played no part in designing, or which it feels does not reflect the imperative of its growth and stability.

“But China needs to make it clear that it understands that China is too big, the challenges too great and the global village too small for China to retreat into inflexibility or insularity. We may have to show some patience, and nerves for the occasional friction, but one way or another, we all need China to succeed and we all need China to start leading.”

Ideally, both the Chinese government and the West — including Google excutives — would be wise to heed these fine words and start working towards some form of co-operation that can one day be accommodated into a global, homogenised social-media contract of understanding.

But just understanding China and its culture is a one-way street that is doomed to fail. Instead, China has to understand Western values also. It is not just a “handful of Western reporters” who support human rights in China, but all of us. This is one of the prime reasons behind the discord and why China finds the need to censor the internet so intensely and therefore set up proprietary clones of Western-based social media sites.

China would do well to get off its high horse and stop bossing countries around, like the US. Threats on sales of arms to Taiwan, the meeting of the Dalai Lama and kicking Google into touch are adolescent and primitive means of establishing a workable detente.

————————

V9 Design and Build (http://www.v9designbuild.com) produce tasteful web design in Bangkok, Thailand, including ecommerce shopping cart solutions, with functionality that allows owners to set up and maintain their online stores.

WordPress Security – An Ounce of Prevention is Better than a Pound of Cure

By Ben Kemp

WordPress STD’s (Security Transgression Defilements) are a common occurrence. WordPress-powered websites are far from being immune to hackers, although the latest release/s address many earlier security issues. WordPress, like other content management systems and forums such as phpBB, vBulletin, is a major target for hackers and spammers. Basic prophylactic measures, or condoms for WordPress STDs, need not be complicated or expensive.

Those involved in hacking WordPress usually want to use the sites as concealed (cloaked) link farms. Its rare that actual damage is done to your site, and often the site owner remains blissfully unaware that there’s been any interference. Some of the link injection systems are extremely sophisticated! Testing for enemy action can be as simple as opening your site and choosing View / Source and reading through the content of the <Head> section down to, and including, the <BODY> tag. The link injections I’ve seen are usually immediately after <BODY>. Is there a long string of HTML code containing links to dozens of sites you know nothing about? If there is, you’ve been violated, and have a WordPress STD (Security Terminated Deficiency)!

The web is at war, threatening Web 2.0′s interoperability

By John Sylvester

It is now becoming apparent that Tim O’Reilly’s vision of the web being “One Ring to Rule Them All” and “Small Pieces Loosely Joined”, is coming apart at the seams as the big media company News Corp and Microsoft join hands to threaten Google and, in turn, Web 2.0 itself.

In “O’Reilly: The Web is at war, and it’s making me sad” (see http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10399710-36.html), we have seen over the past few months that News Corp has stepped up the stakes in its battle to block Google from indexing content from Rupert Murdoch’s online media titles, and that now Microsoft is said to be willing to pay Time Warner and News Corporation, among others, to make these sources available exclusively through Bing, it’s new search engine.

During this time, and many articles later, Rupert Murdoch has criticised Google for “kleptomania” and has threatened to cut them off from all his online publications. That is not quite as easy as he thinks, though, as nearly a quarter of all traffic to the Wall Street Journal’s website, for example, comes via Google. Microsoft, for their part, is willing to spend up to 10% of its operating income over the next five years, which could add up to a sum somewhere around $US11bn. Tim O’Reilly, who coined the term Web 2.0, questions the war for the control of the web, which directly contradicts his “interoperable platform” concept.

Not all agree though, as the Economist argues that, “a handful of well-funded and powerful platforms, locked in heated competition, could be better for consumers and generate more innovation than Mr O’Reilly’s vision of an internet made of many ‘small pieces loosely joined’.”

The bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001 was a turning point for the web and, with it, the concept of “Web 2.0″ was born. Its web pioneer Tim O’Reilly warned an audience at a recent Web 2.0 Expo that he thinks “we’re headed into another ugly time”, meaning that the corporates are ganging up on Google’s dominance, with Rupert “Dr Evil” Murdoch leading the charge and threatening to pull News Corp’s content carpet from under Google’s feet.

In the same CNet article, it says that: “O’Reilly’s attitude isn’t ‘bring it on, and get me a large popcorn with extra butter, while you’re at it’. Rather, he hinted that at least in some cases, he’s willing to embrace Google as a big, cuddly, benevolent dictator in the midst of it all.” Rather like Stalin dressed up in a Winnie The Pooh fancy dress outfit, maybe?

But with all fancy dress parties there are reactionaries in the mix, as Barbarian Group executive Rick Webb announced: “Setting aside the boo hoo, the internet is becoming a bunch of walled gardens arguments, when rational people have conversations about how to make the web actually usable and not 95 percent piracy, spam, and fraud…”

All this aside, it is becoming clearer by the day that the web is heading into a full-frontal period of bloody competition that could kill the concept of the web’s interoperability as we know it today.

In radar.oreilly.com, Mr O’Reilly clearly states that: “And so we’ve grown used to a world with one dominant search engine, one dominant online encyclopaedia, one dominant online retailer, one dominant auction site, one dominant online classified site, and we’ve been readying ourselves for one dominant social network…

“It could be that everyone will figure out how to play nicely with each other, and we’ll see a continuation of the interoperable web model we’ve enjoyed for the past two decades. But I’m betting that things are going to get ugly. We’re heading into a war for control of the web. And in the end, it’s more than that, it’s a war against the web as an interoperable platform. Instead, we’re facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill.”

In a postscript, he predicts that: “Microsoft will emerge as a champion of the open web platform, supporting interoperable web services from many independent players, much as IBM emerged as the leading enterprise backer of Linux.”

————————–

John Sylvester is the media director of V9 Design & Build and an expert in search engine optimization and web marketing strategies.

Video Microsites – The Brand Story Campaign Solution

By Jerry Bader

Everyone wants to do more business. Everyone occasionally runs a promotion, a new marketing initiative, a product launch, or a new seasonal lineup. Everyone has a website stuffed with all kinds of content ranging from the important to the useless. But only the truly smart business minds understand that campaigns require their own space and identity if they are to succeed. And when it comes to using the Web as your vehicle for such a campaign, the obvious solution is a Video Campaign Microsite.