Yesterday we came across a possible Internet fraud and identity theft issue. I wanted to highlight this in case you are also subject to this abuse.
Events (taking place in London) purporting to be "Digital Marketing Modules" (using content, logos and people associated directly with the Digital Marketing Institute) were hosted on 4 different event web sites, namely
Eventbrite
Brownpapertickets
Amiando
Ticketleap
(Click on the image and you see an example of what this person has done)
The perpetrator (who supplied his name and phone number as Simone Savage with a phone number +44 845 299 6048) simply copied content directly from the Digital Marketing Institute web site and claimed to be running a course.
I called this person on the above number and he answered to the name Simone. I asked him about this course and he told me that he was running it in partnership with with the Digital Marketing Institute. I then explained that I was calling from the Digital Marketing Institute and asked him to remove these pages. He said that he would.
I then emailed the Support and legal departments of the hosting web sites (mentioned above) - Eventbrite were back onto me immediately (although they have yet to remove the offending page). Ticketleap have removed the page. I have yet to hear from either Amiando and Brownpapertickets (who are both still hosting this "event").
I have also been in contact with the UK's Fraud Reporting agency (www.actionfraud.org.uk/). I have also been in contact with the Garda Fraud office in Harcourt Square and they reckon that it might be a UK issue.
Please be aware that this is going on. Is there anything else that we can do?
We at Digital Marketing Institute talk a lot about the power of social media for any business today, and are actively preaching the idea of companies following their customers wherever they go online, be it forums, topical websites, niche communities or social networks.
It's great to see that many Irish business are turning the page on traditional advertisement and are successfully taking advantage of social media marketing techniques. However, it turns out following the customer might not be enough, you also need to be online at the same time with your customers.
According to new data from social media agency Buddy Media, companies that post content on their Facebook pages outside normal business hours see engagement rates that are 20% higher than average. The conclusion was drawn out based on engagement by looking at comments and “likes,” and factored in fanbase size.
By timing content to post when consumers are poised to be on Facebook, companies have a greater chance of being seen in a fan’s newsfeed. Additionally, the study found that engagement rates are 18% higher on Thursday and Friday than the other days of the week.
But that isn’t to say that marketers should only post on those days. Amy Morgan, public relations and social media manager at ConAgra Foods, is part of the team that oversees a Facebook page for Chef Boyardee’s Club Mum program targeting moms. The company posts several times a day.
“When you talk about building a community and building engagement, you need to have a consistent conversation,” Morgan said in an interview with eMarketer on February 22. “As far as Facebook, we post usually once or twice a day. It ebbs and flows, but once or twice a day is usually good.”
While the timing of posts often determines how engaged fans will be, their content is also important. Buddy Media found that shorter is better, as posts with 80 characters or less have a 27% higher engagement rate. Certain words also encourage engagement, particularly those that are instructions such as “like,” “post,” “take” and “comment,” as does asking a question at the end of a post.
For the Club Mum Facebook page, Morgan said that asking fans about their children is an easy way to get them to comment on a post. She said, “It’s about making this personal and really allowing the community to help build that conversation.”
Apparently individuals born between 1946 and 1964 have been alienated by a lot of advertising campaigns online, in spite of high activity on the web, especially in online bying.
With estimated 78.2% accessing the Internet at least once a month, turns out baby boomers generation is much more online than thought, and spend significantly higher amount on purchases monthly than the people from 18-34 age group. The new report by eMarketer might prove to be a great discovery for many companies who are looking to expand their market and icrease shares.
“The baby boomers grew up being chased by marketers and advertisers that tailored products and brands to appeal to them,” said Lisa E. Phillips, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Digital Lives of Boomers: Reaching Them Online.” “Now the median age of this cohort is 55, and many boomers feel as if they have dropped off many marketers’ radar.”
Marketers who widen their messages to include boomers would be wise to make their efforts ageless, rather than targeted at an older set.
“Boomers are immediately turned off by association with old age, infirmity and decline,” said Phillips. “Most brands do not want to ‘age’ their products with blatant appeals to older consumers. The win-win is to create an overarching brand message that gives a nod to boomers, but also includes younger adults and even grandchildren.”
This often means turning a negative—fears about failing health, for example—into a positive, such as showing the benefits of products that contribute to a healthy lifestyle.
Google have released the first phase of +1 allowing users to +1 a search result they like. From Google’s post on this:
“Like social search, we use many signals to identify the most useful recommendations, including things like the people you are already connected to through Google (your chat buddies and contacts, for example). Soon we may also incorporate other signals, such as your connections on sites like Twitter, to ensure your recommendations are as relevant as possible”
Google are pulling the information from a number of sources including Google reader. I have to admit, I have never looked into how Google reader works in terms of following. I know there are people following my feed, but I have no interest in who they are and I have even less interest in following other people’s reader. When I look at my social circle via the Google dashboard to get an estimate of how big my circle is, I see:
But the more interesting part is Google will show you total +1′s for a page: “Or if you’re looking for a new pasta recipe, we’ll show you +1’s from your culinary genius college roommate. And even if none of your friends are baristas or caffeine addicts, we may still show you how many people across the web have +1’d your local coffee shop”. This is interesting and obviously poses the question, is this going to affect the rank of a page.
Google are already integrating twitter references into the search results:
but I rarely take much notice of them. But if you notice a result in a keyword space like “keyword review”, then a page that ranks on the first page with a number of +1′s, may garner a second look. It’s going to be extremely interesting to note if this will affect the CTR of the top 10 listings on Google organic. Lots of interesting data to be got from Google Webmaster Tools under Top Queries in terms of impressions to CTR of your listings.
For SEO
Who knows what this means for SEO, it’s just another way of personalising the results, which has been happening for years. I can’t see Google opening this up as a ranking factor for the time being as it would be extremely gamable – Mechanical Turk would suddenly have 100′s of +1 campaigns to go along with the Facebook Likes and Twitter campaigns. One thing Google would have to do if they want to open this up to the masses and improve rankings based on it’s feedback, is access the authority of the person doing the +1 – for example, something like the way Peer Index ranks twitter users:
This has already been discussed when Google announced they were using Tweets + Likes as a ranking factor. Although from results I have seen, the authority of a tweeter is not currently an influential factor, more great info on that from this SEOMoz post.
One thing is for sure, Google search is rapidly changing with the Vince update, May Day, and recent Google Panda/Farm update, thing’s are moving towards a more personalised experience.
Do you get bombarded every day by messages with irrelevant offers and pointless information? Are you frustrated at your inbox being littered with sales emails which are absolutely of no interest to you? Inbound marketing might be just the right solution to reduce informational polution online while helping marketeers gain better profits.
Inbound marketing refers to efforts that provide web users with information or tools of value to them, as opposed to outbound or interruptive marketing that pushes messages in front of them. According to research from inbound marketing solutions provider HubSpot, businesses dominated by inbound marketing have a 62% lower cost per lead than firms that do mostly outbound marketing. This result was similar to HubSpot’s findings from 2010.
Overall, respondents will spend 41% of their 2011 lead generation budgets on inbound channels and another 24% on outbound marketing, with the rest unclassified. Within the inbound portion, SEO dominated as the tactic with the greatest budget. Social media budgets increased between 2010 and 2011 to overtake paid search and the No. 2 inbound channel.
HubSpot also found that inbound channels were effective at turning leads into customers. Nearly three in five respondents had acquired a customer through a company blog or LinkedIn, while almost half had acquired one through Facebook and 42% through Twitter. Facebook proved the most effective inbound channel for customer acquisition for business-to-consumer firms, while LinkedIn performed best for B2Bs.
Investing in SEO training and internet marketing is no longer an option - it's a necessity. Search engine optimisation or SEO is the first step taken by many businesses to make sure their website is visible on Google and the other search engines. Once you've decided to undertake SEO as part of your marketing activities, you have to consider how you will implement this within your organisation. Your first decision then will be whether to outsource your SEO to an external agency or to invest in SEO training.
DMI is running an Advanced SEO Training course on May 17th and 18th.
Booking for this course will be available shortly. In the meantime, please call Peter on 01 271 1888 for more details.
Digital Marketing Institute delivers high quality training courses in all aspects of current digital marketing. We have recently partnered with the Cork College of Commerce to bring the course to Cork city.
This is a 12-Lecture Part Time course (taking place over 8 weeks) which takes place on Tuesday and Thursday evenings between 6:30pm and 9:30pm.
Where: Cork College of Commerce, Morrison's Island, Cork, Ireland
When: Start date Thursday 3rd March 2011
Time: 6.30pm - 9.30pm Each Week for a total of 12 weeks
Week 1 - Thursday 3rd March Week 2 - Tuesday 8th March & Thursday 10th March Week 3 - Tuesday 15th March Week 4 - Tuesday 22nd March & Thursday 24th March Week 5 - Tuesday 29th March Week 6 - Tuesday 5th April & Thursday 7th April Week 7 - Tuesday 12th April Week 8 - Tuesday 19th April & Thursday 21st April
Overview
As we are all aware, the Internet plays and ever-increasingly important role in our lives, whether in business or at home. For businesses, especially as the economy falters, businesses are looking to use the internet as a method of communicating, selling and marketing their products, services, brand and vision and generally interact with customers.
This course has been developed by digital marketing professionals for existing and aspiring digital marketing professionals. All of the lecturers are expert practitioners in their field. This course therefore provides attendees with comprehensive introduction to the concepts and application of digital marketing. It introduces a range of innovative approaches that have been taken in applying these ideas to online Marketing. Real life case studies and a very practical approach provide a cornerstone to this course, ensuring that students understand both the theory and be in a position to apply this in their own business.
Course Overview
The course includes all aspects of current thinking and application of online and digital marketing, including
Search Engine Optimisation
Pay per Click Marketing
Banner and other Digital Image marketing
Podcasting
Blogging
Social Networking
Affiliate Marketing
Email Marketing
Web Site Analytics
Dealing with Digital Agencies
Facebook
Twitter
Upon completion of this course, students will have an understanding of the essential concepts required to develop a career in Digital Marketing.
Lecturers
All of your lecturers are professionals in the Digital Marketing sector, running and delivering online marketing campaigns. Furthermore, all of your lecturers are senior members of (and some are board members of) their appropriate association. They base their training on their experiences and will be therefore using real life examples and case studies throughout the course.
Your lecturers for this Cork-based digital marketing training courses are all digital marketing practitioners. A complete list of our faculty is available here, and here is a short list of some of some of these lecturers:
12 Lectures over 8 Weeks, Evening Programme, 6.30pm - 9.30pm, each evening
Venue
Cork College of Commmerce, Cork
Who Should Attend
This course is designed for those who have little previous experience of online marketing and who want to get started in implementing these techniques in their business. The course is targeted to those with responsibility for developing or implementing an organisation’s online strategy, including senior management, marketing managers, communication specialists, webmasters and IT managers and personnel or would like to a pursue a career in online marketing.
Course Structure
Lecture 1.
How the Internet has Impacted Marketing Web Site Design and how it’s development has impacted marketing and how the web and it’s various can be applied to your business through the use of the online marketing techniques that we will introduce over the coming weeks.
Lecture 2.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Correctly implementing On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO on your web site can get your business listed at the top of Google and the other search engines. This lecture clearly explains how, by correctly implementing blogging, meta-tags, content, sitemaps, an inbound linking strategy and developing a comprehensive digital footprint, Google will find your site and place it to the top of the search results.
Lecture 3.
Pay Per Click Marketing (focusing on Google AdWords) Online advertising is now a critical part of any online marketing campaign. This lecture takes the student through the various Pay per Click products as well as taking everyone through various case studies. The lecturer will also set up a Google AdWords campaign.
Lecture 4.
Using Google Analytics to improve traffic and user navigation This lecture describes how to view and analyse web site statistics as part of an online marketing campaign. It is focused entirely on Google Analytics and how to implement Google Analytics on your web site and use it to find out who visits your site, where they come from, what pages they visit, etc, etc. You can then use this information to improve your visitor interaction.
Lecture 5.
Email Marketing in the Digital Marketing Mix We explain the ideas behind email marketing and how this has evolved over the past 10 years, introducing students to the leading email marketing tools and applications available on the market. The lecturer goes through some of the best practice examples of email marketing. Practical examples and case studies throughout.
Lecture 6.
Social Marketing With more than 140 million blogs currently being tracked by Technorati, the opportunities for businesses to speak with their customers is nearly unlimited. That’s why more and more companies are turning to the blogosphere to connect with consumers. Never before have had businesses had such effective access to the frustrations and desires of their target audience. This lecture clearly explains how to go about using blogs and social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) as part of the marketing mix to drive business.
Lecture 7.
Online PR and how to create and implement successful Online PR campaigns Students will learn how to plan and implement an Online PR Strategy using some or all of the Social Media applicatins and tools discussed in the previous lecture. The issues discussed will also include Online Brand and Reputation Management
Lecture 8.
Online Display Advertising - Create, Implement and Measure Online Advertising Campaigns Display and Banner now advertising now plays a huge part in the overall marketing mix. This lecture goes through the history of the development of this market. You will learn how to develop an online brief, understand the components of online advertising success and be able to understand and construct and online media campaign.
Lecture 9.
How Web Site Architecture can Affect Online Success A Web site’s information architecture and technical architecture are critical to its success in natural search results - and are important elements of paid search success, too. Dynamic URLs & dynamic content. This lecture discusses some of the following (in marketing terms!): HTTP and HTML, Redirects, JavaScript, CSS, Multiple languages, domains and sub-domains, Duplicate content issues, etc
Lecture 10.
Mobile Marketing and Video Optimisation This lecture discusses (a) the emergence of mobile marketing and how to usethisas art of your marketing campaign, and (b) how video is affecting our interaction with web sites and how you can take advantage of video, Youtube and other video content sites.
Lecture 11.
Affiliate Marketing What is Affiliate Marketing and what are the benefits of using Affiliate Marketing as an additional channel. How to set up a successful affiliate program. Using paid and natural keyword bidding and natural search to effectively promote products and services on search engines. Measuring results and case studies throughout.
Lecture 12.
Planning and Implementing a Digital Marketing Campaign This lecture brings together all of the elements in a digital marketing campaign. The advantages and shortcomings of each of the activities within a campaign are reviewed with real-life examples as to why and where a medium would be chosen.
Assessment
The Diploma is awarded to participants on the successful completion of a Digital Marketing Assignment. The assignment is a written document, giving students the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding and application of their newly acquired digital marketing knowledge.
Cost
Cost per participant - €1,495 1,250
Note that your place on the course is confirmed upon full payment of the course fee.
Digital Marketing Institute is running a 12 Week Web Marketing Course in Galway.
This Web Marketing course in Galway starts on Tuesday 8th February in Galway at 6.30pm
Overview of this Web Marketing Course
As we are all aware, the Internet plays and ever-increasingly important role in our lives, whether in business or at home. For businesses, especially as the economy falters, businesses are looking to use the internet as a method of communicating, selling and marketing their products, services, brand and vision and generally interact with customers.
This course has been developed by digital marketing professionals for existing and aspiring digital marketing professionals. All of the lecturers are expert practitioners in their field. This course therefore provides attendees with comprehensive introduction to the concepts and application of digital marketing. It introduces a range of innovative approaches that have been taken in applying these ideas to online Marketing. Real life case studies and a very practical approach provide a cornerstone to this course, ensuring that students understand both the theory and be in a position to apply this in their own business.
Course Overview
The course includes all aspects of current thinking and application of online and digital marketing, including
Search Engine Optimisation
Pay per Click Marketing
Banner and other Digital Image marketing
Web site architecture
Web 2.0 technologies
Podcasting
Blogging
Social Networking
Affiliate Marketing
Email Marketing
Web Site Analytics
Dealing with Digital Agencies
Facebook
Twitter
Upon completion of this course, students will have an understanding of the essential concepts required to develop a career in Digital Marketing.
This FREE Connector Social Media eBook is launched to coincide with the Showcase Ireland annual international arts & craft exhibition in Dublin. Attendees can come and see a daily social media presentation by Connector at the show
The Social Media eBook is based on a proven Connector 10 C´s Strategy Model which breaks down the utilization of social media into ten clear steps. The theory was developed to be universal and easily tailored to suit the individual needs of various clients and their marketing or communication challenges.
The eBook uses an Irish arts & crafts company, Loughcrew Design, as an example of how the Connector 10C’s Strategy Model can be applied to benefit the average small business.
eBook Download
Subscribe below to receive Connector email updates and to download your free copy of the Social Media eBook. Once you click Subscribe the download link will be sent to you via email.
Please contact us if you would like to avail of some of our social media expertise!
A conductor doesn’t need to know how to play every instrument to lead an orchestra. She just needs a comprehensive understanding of music and how to implement the musical plan with the ability to read ahead. Online Marketing is the same.
In my experience, rarely does a successful online marketing strategy work on a single channel. I have yet to come across a strategy, promoting a company, charity or a movement that just uses social media or another channel in isolation, and has produced successful results. It nearly always requires a multitude of channels allowing potential customers to receive information and engage on a platform they are familiar are with.
But the skill of performing online marketing doesn’t just mean knowing how the technology works. You have to know how to leverage the same content and message across multiple channels and platforms to satisfy the needs of those that have gifted us with the consent of opting-in.
I am seeing more and more small businesses attending social media events in search of the golden ticket, those elusive buttons to press to make their internet fortune. There is no magic app or social media plug-in. Marketing a small business is hard.
For me, understanding the big picture and the culture of all the channels is more important than knowing how the technology works.
To make beautiful music a successful marketer need only focus on leadership and being different, they need to take a holistic approach and know what instrument to play and when.
“Ian Dodson of WebKitchen is someone I've been working closely with for the past few years. Ian first impressed me, not just with his expert knowledge of his space but with his sound business insights..."
Contact Us|Sitemap|Policy|Back to Top Legal Information: Web Kitchen Limited | Registered Office: 93 Upper George Street, Dun Laoghaire, Co.Dublin, Ireland | Company Reg. No: 427135
Yesterday we came across a possible Internet fraud and identity theft issue. I wanted to highlight this in case you are also subject to this abuse.
By timing content to post when consumers are poised to be on Facebook, companies have a greater chance of being seen in a fan’s newsfeed. Additionally, the study found that engagement rates are 18% higher on Thursday and Friday than the other days of the week.
Apparently individuals born between 1946 and 1964 have been alienated by a lot of advertising campaigns online, in spite of high activity on the web, especially in online bying.
Investing in SEO training and internet marketing is no longer an option - it's a necessity. Search engine optimisation or SEO is the first step taken by many businesses to make sure their website is visible on Google and the other search engines. Once you've decided to undertake SEO as part of your marketing activities, you have to consider how you will implement this within your organisation. Your first decision then will be whether to outsource your SEO to an external agency or to invest in SEO training.
Digital Marketing Institute delivers high quality training courses in all aspects of current digital marketing. We have recently partnered with the 
Digital Marketing Institute is running a 12 Week Web Marketing Course in Galway.
