Jamie LeRoy
Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter
It seems like all the buzz this week is surrounding either Swine Flu or Twitter and its amazing growth. Well since the media has covered Swine Flu over-zealously (at times) this week, I’ll talk more about Twitter. So what’s the big deal? Well, for those of you who haven’t been living under a rock, Twitter is a social networking tool that is exploding with growth right now. It has gotten a lot of publicity lately because of all the celebrities using it, but it’s also a great way for business owners to reach their consumers on a 140 character level.
As great as Twitter is though (and I’m a recent convert, so I can’t speak harshly about it), it seems that they’re having a bit of trouble with their user retention. A recent article on MarketingVox showed that more than 60% of US Twitter users fail to return the following month, according to the BusinessInsider. It’s not like social networks like Facebook or MySpace can be accredited with anything near 100% user retention, but still they measure up at a descent 60%. Even Oprah was called out on not having “tweeted” for 4 days after she had publicly joined.
So this begs the question — What does Twitter have to do to keep its users? Well anyone who has used Facebook or MySpace knows that in addition to the status updates that can be posted there–there are a plethora of other applications, games, quizzes, 25 random things to list about yourself, photos to be posted. Twitter does have a lot of different applications associated with it, but for new users these may be hard to find. Also, Twitter is still young. And with significant growth comes exposure so hopefully users will start to trickle back in as it becomes more mainstream.
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30Apr
tmpdm
PR
NEW YORK (April 28, 2009) — TMP Directional Marketing (TMPDM), the largest local search marketing agency, was recognized as the 20th largest search marketing agency based on revenue, in Advertising Age’s 65th annual Agency Report.
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30Apr
Sherri Albus
Government, PPC, Ratings & Reviews, SEM, online marketing
Taxes have proven to be a big business in the United States, and not just for the state and federal government. According to Nielsen, tax services companies spent a total of $220 million on advertising in 2008, 11% more than the advertising spent in 2007.
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28Apr
Quinn Sheek
RSS Feeds
Almost all content-generating sites such as blogs and news websites are savvy enough to utilize and promote RSS feeds on their own websites. RSS feeds are a great way to stay in touch with website visitors that have subscribed to your content feeds. What a lot of bloggers out there don’t know is that promoting your blog on your own website may not be enough.
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28Apr
Scott Phillips
Publication, SEO, Search News, online marketing
In an unstable economic environment like today, marketers are demanding more accountability and ROI from their marketing budgets. Right now there are marketers around the globe searching for ways to get the best ROI from their efforts and they are turning to SEO for the answers.
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28Apr
LeAnn Hoksch
POV
Released last week, a consumer survey from The Opinion Research Corporation shows that 84% of Americans indicate that online customer reviews influence their decisions to purchase a product or service (p/s) however, only 28% of those surveyed say they have posted their own feedback online. The most popular p/s reviews investigated online included travel, electronics, household products and services, clothing, automotive, personal care and food.
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24Apr
Carrie Tobiason
Yellow Pages
In the past few months, news reports and articles have been questioning the stability of the Yellow Pages industry and predicting its demise. Declining usage coupled with the economic recession has had a drastic impact on many large Yellow Pages publishers, including R.H Donnelly & Idearc. In fact, on March 31st 2009, Idearc filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Despite the setback, Iderac’s CEO Scott Klein remains optimistic for the company’s future. The company is currently attempting to reinvent and reposition itself in the marketplace.
Idearc has recently revamped its sales force and has created new initiatives to continue to drive consumer usage of their products. Idearc recently launched its SuperGuarantee and Super Trade Exchange programs. The SuperGuarantee program aims to reassure consumers of the services they seek by compensating consumers that have failed to receive the services advertised via Superpages.com or Idearc’s directories. The Super Trade Exchange is aimed at advertisers, allowing them to swap inventory online. Both programs have been received positively from end users and are helping Idearc differentiate itself from its competitors. Although challenges still remain, Idearc hopes to emerge from its bankruptcy with a limited amount of debt. To read more on Idearc’s changing outlook, click here.
It will be interesting to see how other publishers follow suit and reposition their company and their capabilities to cater to the changing market. It seems that in order to survive the troubling economic times and changing Yellow Pages marketplace that most companies are going to have to face these issues proactively or face the inevitable consequences.
24Apr
