Generational Media Habits Should Shape Online Marketing, Flash Toys Don’t Equal Interaction, Social Link Spam, err… PR & I made $250 Blogging on Cal Train

Note to self regarding Caltrain: Do not put your coffee lid down in order to add sugar to your coffee. You may get really sick and be out of work for nearly a week. Ok, that may not have made me sick, but that is what I’m going with.

 Note to others regarding Caltrain: If you are riding Caltrain, do not do work. Especially if you ride between all the tech stops from San Francisco to San Jose. This means you Yahoo Guy; completing your Powerpoint presentation on the train, bad idea. And you too Quicken Girl; reading your corporate email on the train, not a good idea. 

And speaking of riding the train: So I’m going through my normal morning blog reading ritual on the train on the way to work, when I click over to the post CSS History Stealing Applied to Black Hat SEO. I see that he’s having a contest: Whoever creates a funny description for his site that incorporates his key target phases in 300 charaters or less wins $250.00. So following the process I usually use for Meta Description Copywriting I created the winning description. $250 for 5 minutes of work, can’t beat that. My Shoe Closet The City of San Francisco Traffic Court, thanks you.

BTW: You know you need a break from Search Engine Optimization when you win a contest and they ask you what Anchor text you want for the link back to your site and you ask for the text surronding the link as well! SEOs gotta love’em. And speaking of SEOs, see also: Thanks for the Game: It’s Been Fun Beating You.

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

• Forrester has been on a roll lately. From: How Consumers Find Web Sites In 2006. Generations’ Media Habits Shape Their Site-Finding Behavior: “To plan effective integrated campaigns, marketers must start with search and layer on site messaging in the media that resonate with target consumers: buzz, blogs, and banners for Gen Yers, deep search and word of mouth for Gen Xers, print and product packaging for Boomers, and the written word for Seniors.On “How consumers have found websites that they have visited in the past month”: 71% from general search engines (Why Search Engine Marketing is important), 46% from a link on another website (Why link building is important), 41% word of mouth.” (Emphasis is mine). Forrester Recomends that Marketers should:

1. Use search engine optimization as the backbone. All consumers favor search as the best way to find Web sites. Smart marketers will prioritize their search optimization efforts to ensure high relevance and ranking.
2. Orchestrate media channels by generation. Search is an essential part of the marketing mix, but marketers must leverage generational IQ to make smart choices about what other channels to include and how to portion the dollars.
3. Design creative to bridge cross-channel gaps. To capitalize on an optimal media mix, marketers must ensure that their creative goes the extra mile to help consumers bridge the gap between channels with which they’re engaged and the Web site itself.

• Also from Forrester: Profiling Social Network Users In Europe: “Social network sites are used by 17% of the European online population: In the UK, 34% of online consumers are members, making them Europe’s biggest users of social network sites. Users are young, Net-centric, and have bought into the social computing vision — they are heavy users of RSS, blogs, and podcasts in addition to being members of social networks. Almost 70% of social network users go online daily — compared with 52% of all Internet users in Europe. Around 19% of social network users have listened to podcasts and 10% subscribe to RSS feeds. MSN was one of the top three players in all the countries we surveyed — building its social networking presence on the back of its successful Web portals.”
• The 3 corners of radical trust: “But this media [the internet] requires a level of interaction where all other mediums have not required before. Most of the time, some sort of front end, basic interaction with a “flash toy”, game or otherwise seemed enough to keep the consumers coming to a site. But in reality, these offered little to no true communication with the client. In the end, the interest dissolves and the flash bit is used less and less. The sites that have offered true forms of consumer dialogue are the ones that are winning.” I’m currently on an online marketing mental tanget: What makes a site useful? Good to see others are pondering this. See also: Listening to the Pulse of the Internet
• Public Relations Social Link Invasion: “But what can happen is in our zeal to make it easy for people to share content (or in this case, press releases) we encourage social media spam in the form of “illogical submissions” to venues that aren’t really appropriate. Thus embedding quick submission links to certain venues can create a stream of inappropriate submissions.” Thanks Eric. See also: Vote for ChangeThis Manifesto on Social Media Optimization.

The I Also Glanced Over Reading List:

• 18 Questions Your CEO Forgot to Ask When Building Your Website. This post highlights why Internet marketing Consultant, Todd Malicoat is on everyone’s Blogroll (he’d be on mine if I ever got around to adding one): he creates resource posts that you bookmark and comeback to over and over. If I were a business, especially one with limited resouces, I would bookmark this post.
• Cool Tools: Ning - “A platform for creating and sharing Social Web Apps… you have the power to create your very own Social Web App in a few easy steps.” (via: Conversation blog). See also: Slideshare: “A kick-ass! new way to share slideshows on the web.” (via SEOmoz). BTW: : I love that that is the description that they write on their slideshare blog!
• Web 2.0: Problems of Measurement

The Too Cool: Goes to Big Spaceship’s Flash Effects Engine (via: Three Minds@Organic). From the Three Minds Blog, “Originally created for the Nike Air ‘Lift-off Experience‘, our friends at Big Spaceship have now opened up the source code for public consumption. It is an engine that allows you to experiment with Flash effects ranging from blend modes to bitmap filters. You then have the ability to take your creation and implement it on your own site or project. The latest release allows the integration of video and your own background images.”

“My heart is like a marching band / I’m a fan in the stands / Yes I am ”- Morris Brown - Outkast

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson