Interested in Microsoft Surface 2 and all that it can do??
Website: www.surface.com

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Information architecture is not something that you can do quickly. This post recaps Omni Marketing’s presentation from Shari Thurow.

Information architecture and SEO
Challenge:
First, consider organization and labeling. It must be easy to use and your information must be easier to find.  If people cannot find what they want to find, they will leave your website and you will lose customers. Only an average of 12% of web visitors will return to a website that was unhelpful before.

Solutions:
Wireframes helps reduce lost customers, reduce development costs, increase crawlability, increase indexation, increase rankings and build brand value.  Tech teams often don’t think like your customer.  A technique to try is to take a website screenshot and remove design and content and individually quiz people about what page they are viewing.

Content MUST contain words and phrases that people type into search engines. Reduce  number of ”WTF” moments.

You do not want the technical model of your tech team. Accommodate navigational, informational, and question search types.

Understanding information architecture
Challenge:
Return to the idea of organization and labeling think about categorization, hierarchical taxonomy. Avoid practices like siloing and page rank sculpting.

Solution:
To have successful blogs and social media networks, use categorization. If you have different types of visitors or industries, versioning pages to include relevant keywords in the content is important.  Give multimedia a separate area in addition to their native locations. To test, make sure you’re observing the user target that you want to reach.  Pages should be unique, distinguishable and well-labeled. Think in terms of navigation labels over keywords.  Yup, SEO and information architecture are related.

For blogs, titles and headings SHOULD contain keywords. Use embedded text links to other previously written blogs and…categorize, categorize, categorize. This helps your articles and posts maintain traffic as they age.

A few resources:
Taxonomy Warehouse provides taxonomy structures by industry.
Use a tilde ”~” search to find keyword synonyms.

Check out The Huffington Post for a great author page structure.

Navigation Labels:
Only children and programmers “minesweep”, don’t require users to search for links. Make them obvious.

Spell out abbreviations.

Give people choices, but not too many. Drop downs give too many choices, one button makes people feel they’re being forced into a sales funnel.

Review Tips for Getting Valuable User Generated Content
Challenge:
How do you get good website, product and service reviews?

Solution:
Monitor and reward good reviews.

That’s it! Great presentation!

What triggers conversion? How does neuropsychology impact your marketing and communication efforts?  Key points from the SES opening keynote from Susan Bratton of Dishylist.

1. Success = Traffic + Conversions (most companies struggle with both!)

2. Copy is great! But your offer your product or service is paramount.

This brings Susan to the 4 Realms of Persuasion Marketing.

1. Structured Communication
Certain actions elicit specific results from customers.

2. Story-telling
In any medium, telling a good story and understanding nuances of communication will make a positive impact.  Use story-telling to convey benefits in a fun way.  Tell stories on your website, in webinars, interviews, etc. 

3. Copywriting
Join a mastermind group to find like-minded people with different acquired skills. You need feedback on copy and marketing tactics.

4. Neuromarketing
How well do you know your customer?  How do you use that knowledge to connect customers to your product?  Use keywords and have conversations with that audience. Sometimes a few long conversations will provide more insight than 1,000 web generated surveys.

Find cheat sheets and more information at conversiontriggers.com

Daily Analysis. On August 9th, we took a look at Twitter’s trending topics for Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, South Africa, Australia and the Worldwide buzz. Put simply, this simple 5-minute check gives us insight into topics affecting the globe and topics localized to specific countries.

Take a look at the table below to see this breakdown of global and localized national trending topics. Notice that the London Riots have become a major area of concern for the entire world, occupying a large portion of the trending twitter topics, not just worldwide, but in specific countries too. And according to a recent Mashable article, Twitter users not only shared footage of riots on Twitter, YouTube and Facebook, but now social media is a key mechanism for the organization of riot cleanup.

The United States’ State Department recognizes 195 independent countries worldwide. Although, many think of Twitter as highly global (and it is in respect to other companies), Twitter trends represent trended tweets from only 31 of the world’s 195 countries. Major countries not represented by Twitter Trends include Russia, China, and more surprisingly, South Korea.

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We encourage you to find Diane and The Metro St. Louis Cinderella Project on the web:
Website: www.cinderellastl.com
Twitter: @DonatePromDress

It’s really not that difficult, Google’s company timeline is a well-maintained list of fun, historical company information, social responsible projects and of course, their product launches starting with the naming of Google in 1997. We counted product launches, a few game-changing product updates and major company acquisitions using the Google corporate history timeline. Our tally came to nearly 102 products and acquisitions (although I’m sure we missed a few). You can’t blame us, with that much going on, we’d be surprised if even Google could keep track!

We’ve provided the annual product launch breakdown in the graph below. It shows how many products launched each year starting in 1997 and when a few of Google’s most distinguished products launched:

Google Plus is the latest social network launched by Google.

Our list of Google product launches and acquisitions includes Google’s launch, the acquisition of Blogger, Gmail, Google Earth, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Reader, the acquisition of YouTube, Android, Google Chrome, Google Wave, Google TV, Google Plus and more. This list of launches and acquisitions spans five pages, 313 words and over 3,260 characters. Several of the products have experienced success, several no longer exist, and several are waiting to find out.

So what will happen to Google Plus? Only time will tell. But we certainly wish it the very best of luck!!

However, with the vast array of monitoring tools available, it’s essential that a business finds the right fit. To help clarify, we took a look at some of the top social media monitoring tools: Alterian SM2, Lithium Social Media Monitoring, Radian6 Dashboard, Sysomos, Attensity 360, Hubspot, and Viralheat.

Prices vary from $1500 per month to under $100 per month, so it’s important to consider the functionality needed and resources available. The most advanced tools provide detailed, sophisticated reports and allow direct comparison against competitors. Also consider workflow needs when selecting a monitoring tool. A strong integrated workflow helps account users collaborate and coordinate when responding to social media posts and most importantly, it allows social media managers to track influential social network users. Lastly, it’s important to take into account user interface and reporting capabilities. A tool can be far more effective when the interface is intuitive and the reports are informative.

Social media monitoring tools allow a business to better understand its consumers and the state of its brand. With so many varied tools available, there are numerous options for any organization looking to listen and engage with social networks. For more information on effective social media strategies, contact The Net Impact.

Interestingly enough, out of the organizations that raised over $100,000 using social networks (dubbed “Master Fundraisers”), 30% were small organizations with annual budgets under $ 5 million. There is certainly potential for smaller NPOs to gain substantial returns on their investment in social media; however, it seems that few organizations want to dedicate the resources. Of the nonprofits surveyed, 75% dedicate only ¼ of a single employee’s time or less to social media, while 30% of the “Master Fundraisers” dedicated 2+ full-time employees solely to social media. Clearly there is a link between social media results and the level of investment an NPO puts into these tools. Last year Facebook communities for NPOs grew 161%; users of social networks are engaging with nonprofits in as many ways as possible, and this can mean direct benefits to the NPO in terms of membership, event attendance, and donations. Of the nonprofits that were not using social media, 60% of them cited “Lack of Strategy” as the primary reason for staying away.

Does your nonprofit organization have a clear strategy for social networks? Are you using your resources effectively to get the most out of social media? Hear about success stories and valuable tactics for a variety of budgets from professionals in the nonprofit sector at our June 21st seminar. Find more information and register for the FREE nonprofit seminar.

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We encourage you to link to Gregg and Unidev on the web.
Twitter: @unidev
Website: www.unidev.com
Facebook: Unidev’s Facebook Page

The Vincent Van Gogh Gallery posts daily on Van Gogh related news, events, exhibitions, books, quotes, FAQs and more. The posts often link to other sites like museums, news articles and artist galleries. Occasionally, The Van Gogh Gallery It is successful because of the loyal and dedicated base of Van Gogh fans who use the Facebook page as a forum to discuss all things Van Gogh.

Luckily, we don’t have to work too hard to get a lot of great user generated content. A lot of fans and contemporary artists influenced by Van Gogh will post messages and share photos.

Depending on the subject matter of your Facebook fan page, it may be easier or more difficult to achieve a fan base of this size. It’s not the same for everyone. Just make sure your content is relevant, focusing on the most identifiable and “conversation-sparking” aspect of your company. Think intuitively about whether or not what you’re posting is actually good fodder for conversation.