Archive for the ‘Strategy’ Category

For many years, I’ve been promoting the marketing virtues of Microsites. Before they were in vogue. While they were in vogue. Apparently now, after they have been in vogue.

During this time, the most important benefit of a Microsite has remained constant: Done correctly, your business builds an asset that will increase in value over time. Done incorrectly, of course, it’s nothing more than a marketing expense that disappears – like all perishable marketing executions, i.e., TV, radio and print ads. For example, the second a TV spots finishes, its value may linger a bit, but quickly diminishes and disappears. The spot itself has very little intrinsic long-term value. It is, after all, an expense.

Conversely, a Microsite – which is really a website that focuses on marketing objectives vs. a corporate website which has to serve many non-marketing masters too – serves as a marketing destination that you – the company – controls. You can change it as needed, without asking permission, and you (here’s the really important part) own the data! It is an investment, not an expense, because its value grows over time.

Today’s trend of building marketing programs on someone else’s platform, e.g., Facebook, could potentially be folly for companies that may be chasing Fool’s Gold.

Here’s why:

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Step one: Look at Bill Gates’ Blog. Do the exact opposite.

How bad is Bill Gates’ blog? It doesn’t even rank in the top ten for search results on Bing.com (Bing is Microsoft’s new name for its Google-killer, search engine – that’s OK, nobody else has heard of it either.) BTW, Gates’ blog ranks #4 in Google. Fake blogs rank higher. That’s not good.

Step two: Have someone on your staff read this long (but worthwhile) analysis on why Gates’ blog fails and how he can improve it.

Step three: Make sure your webmaster implements the recommendations in the aforementioned analysis.

Step four: Review your blog yourself and make sure it does the following:

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Google is in the process of launching a new, upgraded version of its search engine called “Caffeine.” Caffeine is a vital part of Google’s strategy to provide Real Time Search, Personalized Search, Localized Search and better Universal Search. Those who have tested this new version find it much faster than the older version of Google, and report it “seems more capable of producing real-time results.”

Here’s what you need to know:

Caffeine is the first major upgrade to the top-secret Google algorithm since 2006. While much of the way Google currently scores and ranks pages will remain unchanged, one new factor could significantly impact your site’s rankings.

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